Reasons for deliberate pace in Lebanon

NY Times:

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“Hezbollah is organized more like an army than the Palestinian militias, and they are supported with some of the best weapons systems that Iran and Syria have,” said Yaakov Amidror, an Israeli major general, now in the reserves, who headed the research and assessment branch of Israeli military intelligence.

“Never before in history has a terrorist organization had such state-ofthe-art military equipment,” from medium-range rockets and laser-guided antitank missiles to well-designed explosive mines that can cripple an advanced tank, General Amidror said.

At the same time, Hezbollah has no armor or easily visible storehouses or logistics lines, the Israelis say, and its members live among the civilian population of southern Lebanon, storing their weaponry in civilian buildings.

That is why Israel’s top commanders say this operation may take many weeks.

That is a judgment supported in Washington by Henry A. Crumpton, the former director of the C.I.A.’s campaign in Afghanistan in 2001-02 and now the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

Hezbollah has “been able to build pretty stalwart defenses, pretty elaborate bunker systems, and they are fighting hard right now,” he said Tuesday, adding, “So it will take a while for the Israelis to get in there and deny that space.”

At the Pentagon, senior military planners cast the conflict as a localized example of America’s broader campaign against global terrorism and said any faltering by Israel could harm the American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hezbollah “has features of a stateless terrorist organization, but it also holds territory — and is quite dug in there — and is able to hold at risk the population of the regional superpower in the way that only national militaries once could,” said a senior military officer with experience in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

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Avi Dichter, the Israeli minister for public security and until recently the director of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, said, “If there are surprises, they’re local surprises, not strategic surprises.”

By that he meant the depth and quality of Hezbollah’s underground bunkers and storehouses, Israeli officials said. Mr. Dichter said Israel’s deliberate pace was an effort to minimize casualties — both to Israeli forces and to Lebanese civilians.

“You can do it in a short time,” he said. “You can flood southern Lebanon with ground troops and you can bomb villages without warning anyone, and it will be faster. But you’ll kill a lot more innocent people and suffer a lot more casualties, and we don’t intend to do either.”

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Israel's reluctance to destroy whole villages will certainly slow the pace. While Israel has had limited success in destroying much of Hezballah's arsenal, the Hezzies more visible infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. From its housing and offices to its banks, Israel has setback the terrorist several years. While Hezballah has integrated into Lebanon making it more difficult to weed out some of its weapons, it has also been very visible in Beirut where it has joined the government. Hezballah is now responsible for prevoking the destruction of a significant amount of Lebanon's infrastructure. Repairing that will soak up much of the aid money that will come into the country. If Iran and Syria attempt to rebuild Hezballah, it is going to cost them a significant amount of money and they will be the only source for those funds.