Israel's 2006 war with Iranian proxy forces

Carolyn Glick:
...
Hezbollah's assault was not the opening salvo of the war. That happened two and a half weeks earlier along the border with Gaza. The July 12 attack was a carbon copy of Hamas's June 25 assault.

At dawn that day, Hamas forces opened a salvo of mortar fire on IDF positions along the border with Gaza. Under cover of the fire, a Hamas cell penetrated Israel through an underground tunnel. The terrorists attacked a tank, killing two soldiers and abducting IDF corporal Gilad Shalit.

Following the opening assault, Hamas maintained its mortar, missile and rocket offensive against Israel for weeks.
In 2006, Hamas acted as a wholly-owned and operated Iranian proxy.

Iran began massively funding the Muslim Brotherhood group in 2005. Hamas operatives, like their Hezbollah counterparts and colleagues from the Muslim Brotherhood in Sinai, were brought to Iran for training. Iran smuggled massive quantities of weaponry to Gaza, through Egypt.

In other words, the misnamed Second Lebanon War was a two-front war. It was a coordinated assault on Israel by two Iranian controlled terror armies. They operated with a near identical doctrine and operations guides, albeit, with different capabilities.

Failing to recognize this fact, either during the war or afterwards, Israel's military leadership has yet to learn the appropriate lessons from the war. Both then and now, the IDF senior brass takes a myopic view of war. The enemy is not a larger force, coordinating and directing operations on the ground that it is the IDF's job to defeat, the enemy is what you see. And you don't need to think past your rifle sights.
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There is much more.

Like many wars, this one was blundered into by both sides.  The Iranian proxies thought they could induce a tick for tack exchange at a lower level of hostilities.  The Israeli response was much more significant that the Iranian proxies expected even if, as Glick suggest, it lack much strategic forethought.

I think one of the problems with the Israeli strategy is that it does not want another catastrophic victory that would require them to occupy enemy territory. As a result, they tend to engage in punishing strikes aimed at making enemies quit rather than strategic operations to destroy the enemy.

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