The Blue Voice

Friday, July 21, 2006

Planning for war against Lebanon

This article strikes me as important for understanding the current Israeli-Lebanese war: Israel set war plan more than a year ago: Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon by Matthew Kalman San Francisco Chronicle 07/21/06.

Once I saw the title, I could recite what the official response would be to any criticism or questions based on the article: militaries make all kinds of plans all the time, it doesn't mean anything in particular.

But the information in this article provides additional circumstantial evidence that the capture ("kidnapping") of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah on July 12 was a pretext for a much broader, long-planned military assault on Lebanon. The article is worth examining in some detail:

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis. (my emphasis)

I did a real double-take when I read that first paragraph just quoted. First of all, if American journalists were given detailed "presentations" - Kalman's report uses the plural - why weren't they reporting on this on, say, July 13? It's obviously relevant to a major story. Now, I don't have Lexus-Nexus access, and I can't claim to have read every major article published on this war over the last week. But I have been keeping up with the story. And this is the first I remember hearing about this.

Our "press corps" is becoming as addicted to secrecy as the Cheney-Bush administration, it would appear. Okay, the Israeli military official's name was anonymous, but should the other "diplomats, journalists and think tanks" be anonymous? And an "off-the-record" presentation means that the name of the presenter is to be kept secret; a "deep off-the-record" presentation would mean that the information had to be kept secret. So the term Kalman is using meant that under the terms of the briefing, they could have reported the substance of the presentations right away.

And why wait until July 13? Wasn't this newsworthy enough to publish "more than a year ago"? Maybe they were, but this is the first reference I recall seeing to these briefings.

Another serious implication of this article is that it tell us that the US State Department was briefed "more than a year ago" about an Israeli plan for a massive three-week campaign against Lebanese Hizbollah. So, when the clearly disproportionate Israeli response to the Hizbollah attack of July 12 started, the State Department at least had good reason to think that we were seeing the implementation of these war plans. So, when the US took an initial position to refrain from pressing for a mutual cease-fire, our diplomatic corps at least had a very good idea of what they were facilitating.

Not that any of that is a big surprise. But it is new evidence (at least to me) that raises a number of questions.

Notice how Kalman describes Week 1 of the war plan: "The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries." I wonder if that war plan was specific that Israel intended to strike against the Lebanese army, civilian infrastructure, Shi'a residential neighborhoods, trucks, milk factories, and targets in the north of the country far from the areas where Hizbollah operates.

As Kalman writes:

Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.

Is Kalman the first of those "U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks" to make this connection? (Kalman doesn't directly say that he was among the group directly receiving the briefing, although it's probably safe to infer that.)

Kalman writes:

In the six years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.

"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board." (my emphasis)

Which gets us back to the Christian Science Monitor report I cited in a post yesterday.

Israel had this war plan ready to go more than a year ago. According to the Monitor, Hizbollah "even launched a well-planned assault on an Israeli position last November with the intention of snatching soldiers". Presumably this was a raid inside Israel. This was no less a violation of international law - and an impressive military feat for Hizbollah - than the July 12 raid, although the latter resulted in two prisoners taken. Why did Israel not launch its plannend attack then? What is the political difference in the timing?

But this also means that it's harder to see the current war as an emotional reaction to a humiliating Hizbollah raid. Hizbollah had attempted such raids at least once before. Hizbollah leader Nasrallah had repeatedly threatened to take captives. Israel had a far-reaching war plan against Lebanon in place, a plan which they had "simulated and rehearsed across the board" (Steinberg quoted by Kalman). While panic and human mistakes are often underrated as factors in events like this, the circumstances strongly suggest that Israel was waiting for more than just a Hizbollah provocation. We can only speculate at this point on what those might be. The idea that the Lebanon war may in part be designed to strength the influence of the Iran hawks and/or the Syria hawks in Washington is still just a speculation, though not an implausible one.

This following paragraph is a good example of how the most important parts of an article are sometimes buried several paragraphs down:

"We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages." (my emphasis)

Now, this is not some Tony-Snow-type media talking head. Although I'm sure the Knesset has its share, like the US Congress, of blowhards with impressive sounding titles that don't actually know what they are talking about.

But Hanegbi's statement is remarkable. If Hizbollah has "separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization", then why did Israel drop 23 tons of bombs on a site in a residential neighborhood of Beirut that they claimed was a bunker for top Hizbollah leaders? If the Hizbollah soldiers who are presenting the most immediate dangers to Israeli civilians were operating indendently of the top leadership - and the claim is entirely plausible - why hasn't Israel concentrated on taking out the rocket launchers? Which, not incidentally, are legitimate military targets.

Kalman gives a good statement of Israel's dilemma in this war:

The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel's aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign - to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week - remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon. (my emphasis)

The basic answer is no, air power will not be enough. And by embracing far wider war aims than simply striking back in a limited way at Hizbollah, aims that include devastating Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and attacking the Lebanese army that Israel says (ridiculously) that it expects to take control of southern Lebanon from Hizbollah, Israel's leaders have put themselves in a real bind: occupy southern Lebanon again for an extended period and face constant guerrilla warfare there, or end the operation more repidly with the result that Hizbollah will be far from disabled in attacking Israel in the future and that the Lebanese central government will be less able than two weeks ago to disarm Hizbollah and exert full central government control in the south.

But Israel, like the US, has its own air power enthusiasts:

Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

"There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. "One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground."

The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) are reportedly reluctant to take on a new occupation of Lebanon. Understandably so:

Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza - as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq - that a traditional military campaign would be counter-effective.

"A big invasion is not suitable here," said Marzuk. "We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces." (my emphasis)

Kalman also writes of those external Hizbollah sponsorts that we're hearing so much about:

Israel didn't need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.

Once again, this is confirmation that Iran and Syria support Hizbollah. But that is a very different thing from either of those states exerting operational control over the organization. Such an arrangement seems to be unlikely in the extreme.

Finally, the article provides a round-up of the "score" in this war as of the time of the article, a score measured in human lives and pain and destruction:

Since fighting started

- Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.

- Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

- At least 330 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.

- 32 Israelis have been killed, among them 17 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least 12 soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.

- Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian. (my emphasis)

Out of 1,255 targets hit by Israel in the air war in Lebanon, two hundred of them, or 16%, have been rocket launchers. In conjuction with the remarkable statement above from Tzachi Hanegbi, I would say that apart from any questions of the war's justifications, Israeli citizens have good reason to ask whether the IDF has been using the right priorities in their air war.

Why would they not concentrate on trying to take out as many Hizbollah rocket launchers as possible in the early days of the war, for which we know that plans have been ready for "more than a year"? I suspect the answer has to do in part with the IDF preference for using air power. Making the rocket launchers the initial priority would have meant far more troops on the ground to locate the launchers. Which might well have meant more Israeli soldiers would have become casualties. It would also likely have meant that more clearly-identifed Hizbollah combatants would have been killed and fewer civilian non-combatants in Lebanon - and in Israel, if more of the rocket launchers had been take out earlier.

Notice also the description of the Lebanese death toll: 330 Lebanese, of whom 20 were Lebanese soldiers (who in theory were not the target of Isreal's war effort) and three, that's three, were Hizbollah guerrillas. I'm sure somewhat different counts have been estimated. But, again, not only the rest of the world but Israeli civilians at the receiving end of Hizbollah rockets have good reason to question the military priorities of the IDF in this war.

posted at 1:38:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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