Israel's bombardment of Lebanon may be only the prelude to an even wider field of conflict.
The motives and intentions of the Hamas militia in Gaza and the Hizbollah guerillas in southern Lebanon will clearly be key elements in influencing the direction of the current conflict in the middle east. Equally significant in affecting its course will be the reaction of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to the missile strikes on Haifa on 16-17 July 2006 (when eight railway workers were killed and dozens more people wounded, followed today by a barrage of attacks that hit diverse targets).
The Israeli prime minister and defence minister, Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz, warned after the first attack of "far-reaching consequences" and vowed to "change the reality" Israel was involved in. But what Israel decides to do in the next hours and days will be determined not just by its recent military experiences; it will also draw on its longer-term memories of previous involvements in Lebanon.
The institutional memory is important because the considerable reversals the IDF encountered in the mid-1980s affected a number of young IDF officers who are now senior commanders. They hold these positions at a time when the Israeli cabinet including the civilian prime minister, Ehud Olmert has relatively few people with military expertise; one result is that the political leadership is likely to be more strongly influenced by the current military command than would normally be the case.
For that command, memories of the IDF experience in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 1985 are still fresh. Sharon's "Operation Peace for Galilee" that started on 6 June 1982 was supposedly about preventing Palestinian militias from firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel, but it turned out to be an attempt to occupy much of southern Lebanon before a move north towards Beirut to destroy the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
International pressure eventually forced the IDF to withdraw from west Beirut, but not before well over 10,000 civilians had been killed in the siege, culminating in the Falangist massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in September 1982. After their withdrawal from the city, IDF forces continued to occupy most of southern Lebanon where they faced increasing opposition from Hizbollah, the newly-formed anti-occupation group which won widespread support among the marginalised Shi'a communities of southern Lebanon and large parts of Beirut.
The three-year period from 1982 to 1985 was a bruising and chastening experience for the IDF as it fought an increasingly confident guerrilla army that became proficient both at ambushes and suicide-bombings. By 1985, the IDF had been forced to withdraw from all but the southernmost part of Lebanon in a process that cost the lives of 500 soldiers and constituted the most definite defeat for the Israeli military in the near-forty years of the state's existence.
This precedent is highly relevant to today's conflict, as comparative examples can illustrate. Britain's humiliation over Suez in 1956 was a formative influence on young British naval officers and deeply marked their outlook when, as senior officers, they fought the Falklands war with Argentina in 1982; the United States military leadership saw the 1991 Gulf war over Kuwait as redeeming its experience in Vietnam. In the same way, the current IDF leadership is profoundly affected by its earlier experience at the hands of Hizbollah.
Israel's new vulnerability
At the same time, the burden of history on Israeli shoulders is inevitably only part of the current context. In recent years Israel has developed a unilateralist stance that is based on withdrawal from Gaza, and a partial withdrawal from the West Bank, leaving a thoroughly non-viable Palestinian entity that uses huge walls and electronic barriers to keep Israel safe. The crude rockets from Gaza and their more sophisticated counterparts form southern Lebanon are, for the Israelis, the first signs of the futility of this policy, but they are made worse by the nature of recent events.
The immediate crisis was triggered by the Hamas militia digging a tunnel deep under the border into Israel and kidnapping an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, on 25 June. This alone was an embarrassment, but the Hizbollah cross-border incursion on 12 July whether or not coordinated with Hamas was much worse. An attack on an Israeli patrol near Zirat was followed by a pursuit of the attackers by Israeli forces in which a heavily-armoured Merkava main battle tank, one of the most powerful in the world, was destroyed by a 1,300-kilogram bomb that killed five Israeli soldiers.
The immediate escalation included multiple Israeli air strikes into Lebanon and Hizbollah firing unguided rockets into northern Israel, including newer versions of the Katyusha that can reach deep into Israel. The most remarkable development, though, was an attack on a Saar-5 class missile corvette of the Israeli navy, killing four crew members and crippling the ship.
The INS Ahi-Hanit is one of three ships of its class, all designed in Israel but built in the United States. They are the largest and best-fortified warships in the Israeli navy. While small by western standards they are designed for sea control in the eastern Mediterranean, have "stealth" features and include point-defence systems for countering cruise missiles. There are indications that the Ahi-Hanit was hit by one of two missiles launched by Hizbollah units while it was attacking Beirut international airport. One missile missed, but the other impacted in the area of the helicopter deck, causing massive damage, killing four sailors and nearing sinking the ship.
Unconfirmed reports from Israel indicate that the missiles were C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles, variants of what are often called the Silkworm group, manufactured in China. It is not at all clear that the IDF even knew that such missiles were deployed in Lebanon. They are radar-controlled and have a substantial "anti-jamming" capability but the Saar-5 corvettes were specifically designed and armed to counter such attacks.
One of the ominous aspects of the aftermath was a claim from an IDF source that the missiles were launched by a specialist Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit working with Hizbollah militia in Lebanon. Whether or not this is true, the very suggestion adds to strident voices in Washington that see the current conflict as one that must necessarily involve the United States, since the hands of both Syria and Iran are seen in the current escalation (see this week's edition of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard).
With the Hizbollah incursions, the Ahi-Hanit attack and the Haifa missile strikes all happening in quick succession, the IDF is responding along a previous pattern of taking immediate and massive action before international antagonism forces a pause. The current bombing campaign in Lebanon has two aims: damaging the transport system and Hizbollah's logistics network to prevent the launching of further missiles and rockets, and engaging in large-scale targeting of the Lebanese economy to punish the Lebanese and force the Lebanese army to curtail Hizbollah.
There is little prospect that either will work. Hizbollah is reported to have more than 12,000 rockets and missiles available. Most of these are 107mm and 122mm unguided Katyusha rockets; the latter have a maximum range of barely thirty kilometres, but the attacks on Haifa may indicate use of the more powerful 240mm Fajr-3 with a range of forty kilometres. Moreover, a missile strike on 16 July on Afula, deep in Galilee, suggests that the 333mm Fajr-5, with a seventy-kilometre range, may also be operational.
Hizbollah's huge stocks of missiles have been built up over many years, and deployed in a complex pattern of dispersal across southern Lebanon. This means that, if Hizbollah is intent on continuing its armed campaign, nothing short of an all-out invasion of southern Lebanon would stop them from perpetrating further attacks.
As to Israel's intention of forcing Lebanon to curb Hizbollah by inflicting damage and punishment on it, the attacks by Israel on Lebanese army and navy units on 17 July questions the very existence of such a policy. If Lebanon is to be "encouraged" to rein in Hizbollah, attacking the Lebanese armed forces makes no sense.
This suggests that the continual large-scale bombing could be preparation for a major ground assault by the IDF within the next few days. It is also possible that Israel will extend its air attacks to specific targets in Syria, such as air bases used in the transit of weapons and equipment to Hizbollah. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that the IDF will undertake a long-range air-strike on one or more of the missile factories in Iran, as a warning sign to Tehran to curtail its support for Hizbollah.
The continued Israeli attacks on Lebanese infrastructure and the possible targeting of selected sites in Syria and Iran will have little or no effect on Hizbollah and will combine to increase greatly the anti-Israeli and anti-American mood across the region. This will not stop Israel, the more so because of the strong support available from Washington in no way diminished by the statement released at the G8 summit in St Petersburg on 16 July.
Israeli society is, to an extent, traumatised by the experience of recent days; in this sense the Israeli political leaders are right in saying that the attacks on Haifa do change everything. Israelis have assumed that they had acquired a high degree of security through their sheer military power and overwhelming control of the Palestinian territories, yet they have now become vulnerable when they least expected it.
Warmongering or peacemaking?
It is probably true that only outside intervention will prevent a substantial escalation in the coming days, but there is no sign that such intervention will come from Washington or London (where Tony Blair's government too lays the blame at the doors of Syria and Iran). This might just have been the occasion for the European Union to use its influence, but there is little sign of leadership from that source; and suggestions from the United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and from Tony Blair that an international peacekeeping force be sent to southern Lebanon have been firmly rejected by Tel Aviv.
Unless Hizbollah decides that it has achieved sufficient political progress by demonstrating Israel's vulnerability, it is unlikely to hold back. Even if it does, the IDF will not willingly exercise restraint the memories of its previous defeat in the 1980s are a heavy, embittering weight on the minds of senior Israeli military officers. That is one reason why the current crisis is so dangerous and could well escalate across the region.
