Paul Rogers believes that Hezbollah won. David Ucko argues that Israel emerged as the strategic victor. What’s your view?
Two prominent voices lead the debate, but you should have a say too! To post a comment, go straight to the end of the page...
The new facts on the ground in southern Lebanon suggest that the instant conventional wisdom about Hizbollah's victory over Israel is wrong
David Ucko
Although Hizbollah remains in place and Israel's recourse to war tarnished the country's reputation globally, it is, however, possible to view the conflict from another perspective - one in which Israel emerges as the strategic victor, of sorts.
A quick comparison between the situation now and that prior to the invasion reveals why Israel may take some satisfaction over its performance in the war.
Most importantly, in southern Lebanon there is now a reinforced and growing United Nations peacekeeping presence. The combined effect of the Unifil II and Lebanese deployments is to put the spotlight on Hizbollah. The UN and Lebanese presence in southern Lebanon is there precisely to ensure that Hizbollah does not launch any further attacks on Israel. Should Hizbollah fail to comply with this expectation, it would clearly be perceived as being at fault, and the breach of the ceasefire would in the international arena corrode any good faith it might have accrued as a side-product of IDF heavy-handedness.
This all seems to amount to an Israeli military success: while not disarmed, Hizbollah now operates under the watchful eye of UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army. It no doubt possesses the capabilities to renew hostilities, but at a considerable cost to its profile. From this perspective, Israel - not Hizbollah - stands out as the strategic victor of the Lebanese war.
David Ucko is Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. The argument that, after all, Hizbollah's war with Israel was a failure is the product of military-commerial spin
Paul Rogers
A new interpretation of the war's outcome suggests that the Lebanon war was less a defeat for Israel then may have been supposed.
On the Hizbollah side, it has become clear that there was a major miscalculation over Israel's likely reaction to the cross-border raid on 12 July and the kidnapping of two Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers that precipitated the war. This meant that many of the Hizbollah units were caught by surprise, which may explain the limited early responses, especially the relatively small number of missile launches.
By any measure Israel had, on paper, a very much stronger array of armed forces than Hizbollah. The end result, though, was that the Hizbollah forces were sufficiently robust and motivated to be able to respond in a manner that caused surprise verging on amazement among the more careful Israeli analysts.
Israel failed in its core war aim of defeating Hizbollah, despite the element of surprise and the long period of preparation. While Israel may seek to learn from this, Hizbollah, too, is undergoing an intensive learning experience, having succeeded against the odds in the largest conflict with the IDF for two decades. Hizbollah did indeed emerge successfully from the war and one of the world's most advanced and heavily armed conventional armies was not able to succeed.
Paul Rogers is professor in Peace Studies at Bradford University.
These statements are abridged versions of articles published on openDemocracy.net.
