Israel's Military Superiority Questioned

If Israel’s invasion of Lebanon proved anything, it was that Israel’s military might was no match for modern guerilla warfare.
When the ceasefire was declared, the Israeli army’s much vaulted invincibility was shattered and Hezbollah was stronger. As a result, Israel was also weakened in the eyes of the Arab world where, for decades, it was the nation capable of crushing any Arab foe.
For the time being, Israel has a nuclear advantage over all other nations in the Middle East but Hezbollah has proved that Israel’s conventional forces were not all they were cracked up to be.
Hezbollah has already held victory rallies and announced that it still retains over 20,000 rockets while the Israeli Cabinet and the military continue to argue about who was responsible for the failed invasion of Lebanon. Israel carpet bombed Lebanon with cluster weapons and phosphorous bombs. It leveled town villages, and most of the capital Beirut, but on the ground its mechanized infantry divisions and Special Forces took a beating from a well organized guerilla force. That force, much like the Vietcong in Vietnam, was dug in over years, waiting for the moment to take on a superior military.
Any competent military historian would have to say it was Vietnam all over again. Israel thought it could bomb Lebanon into submission but it did not understand that modern armies are no match for well organized insurgent forces, a lesson the US is learning in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the height of the bombing in Lebanon, when Lebanese civilians were worst hit, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice declared that the world was seeing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East” and that the Lebanese population would turn against Hezbollah. Like the Israeli government, she and other senior members of the Bush White House, as well as British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, knew a sustained Israeli bombing would destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon. But, they naively believed that Lebanese Christians and Muslims would not blame Israel, or the US and Britain that given a green light to the bombing, but would turn on Hezbollah. They would see that Hezbollah’s recklessness in kidnapping two Israeli soldiers had led to the utter destruction of Lebanon. From the ashes of the country a new democratic movement would emerge with Hezbollah defeated.
That absurd thesis drove the Israelis to bomb civilian areas and to leave 350,000 cluster bomb droplets throughout Lebanon. Condoleezza Rice, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert and Tony Blair got it wrong because Israel’s reaction to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers was excessive and the rest of the world knew it. From the first day of bombing, it was clear Israel had exploited the kidnapping to invade Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah. Plans for such an invasion had been in the works for some time and had the approval of the White House. Unlike Europeans who regarded Hezbollah as part of the political process in Lebanon, neo-conservatives in the White House and Pentagon had always believed Hezbollah needed to be destroyed to teach its backers, Syria and Iran, a lesson. It was just another plank in the neocon thesis of creating regime change across the Middle East. The Israeli military and Pentagon experts thought Hezbollah would be a pushover, but in the end the Israeli military had little stomach for prolonged, close-quarters' combat which was the only type of combat that could have possibly have destroyed an enemy dug into tunnels – an enemy with the overwhelming support of the population.
Israel was so well prepared for the invasion of Lebanon, it unleashed its most sophisticated media blitz in decades, offering interviews to the international news media and providing interpreters. It also made available video footage of its bombing runs and daily footage of the damage caused by Hezbollah rockets. But none of that could erase the international condemnation of the Israeli government’s excessive zeal to bomb Lebanon back to the Stone Age.
On September 22, Hezbollah leader, Sheik Nasrallah, who the Israelis have vowed to assassinate, emerged from the shadows to lead a victory parade in the bombed out suburbs of south Beirut. He told two hundred thousands onlookers that Hezbollah would not give up its arsenal until Lebanon had an army capable of defending the country and it would not be disarmed by UN forces. He also declared that the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, whom Israel citied as its reason for going to war, would only be released as a part of a prisoner swap with Israel.
Nasrallah carefully timed his victory rally to coincide with Israel’s final pull-out from Lebanon and thereby signaled yet another humiliation for Israel’s military. Overall, Israel failed to enforce its pre-ceasefire demands that only when 15,000 UN troops were in Lebanon, and a portion of that force was placed on the Lebanese border with Syria, would Israeli tanks and infantry be withdrawn from Lebanon. So far, there are only 4.600 UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and none of them is policing the border with Syria. There also is no UN mandate for its soldiers to disarm Hezbollah.
In the final analysis, Israel suffered an ignominious defeat and weakened not only its standing in the Middle East but also that of the US, which applauded the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and supplied the cluster and phosphorous bombs the Israel Air Force and artillery units used on Lebanese civilian areas.