Small Wars & Insurgencies
ISSN: 0959-2318 (Print) 1743-9558 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fswi20
Israeli counter‐insurgency strategy and the war in
South Lebanon 1985–97
Clive Jones
To cite this article: Clive Jones (1997) Israeli counter‐insurgency strategy and the war in South
Lebanon 1985–97, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 8:3, 82-108, DOI: 10.1080/09592319708423186
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592319708423186
Published online: 26 Nov 2007.
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Israeli Counter-Insurgency Strategy and the
War in South Lebanon 1985-97
CLIVE JONES
In July 1993, following Israel's massive aerial and artillery bombardment of
suspected Hizb'Allah positions in south Lebanon codenamed 'Operation
Accountability', Amnon Abramovitz, a well-respected Israeli political
columnist enquired somewhat ruefully:
Which is the country tormenting a quarter of a million people and
forcing them to pressurise their government (Lebanon), to pressure a
second government (Syria), to pressure a third government (Iran), to
pressure the citizens of the first country (Hizb'Allah) to give up their
bad habits (of firing Katyushas)?'
This rather opaque summation of Israel's rational for bombarding south
Lebanon does nonetheless, encapsulate the central dilemma faced by Israel
in trying to prosecute a war against an elusive enemy, one which possesses
relatively few fixed military targets and bases, yet who on theological
grounds denies the right of the Jewish State to exist. Complicating the
situation still further has been the broader geopolitical context of the
conflict, with Jerusalem fully aware that Syria supports Hizb'Allah as a
means to exert pressure upon Israel with regard to future concessions on the
Golan Heights.2 Indeed, it remains ironic that President al-Asad, the
foremost critic of Arab rapprochement with the Israelis, remains protected
by that self-same peace process, knowing that Israel is unlikely to risk its
collapse by implementing an all out war with Damascus over tensions that
arise periodically in south Lebanon.
The present configuration of Israel's self-declared security zone in south
Lebanon is a result of its disastrous invasion and occupation of Lebanon in
June 1982, although direct Israeli involvement in the sectarian conflagration
that gripped Lebanon can be traced back to 1974.3 While ostensibly
designed to remove the immediate guerrilla threat posed to Israel's northern
border by armed elements of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO),
the political aims of the invasion were more radical: the destruction of the
PLO as a symbol of the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, and
the redrawing of the Lebanese political map under a Christian Maronite
ascendancy." That these aims failed to be realised was in no small part due
Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.8, No.3 (Winter 1997), pp.82-108
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
83
to the emergence among the Lebanese Shi'a Muslim community of a new,
more militant political activism. This found violent expression in the
formation of the Shi'a militia movement Amal in 1974, an acronym of
Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya (the Lebanese resistance brigades) and
some eight years later in the formation of Hizb' Allah (the Party of God) and
its military wing, the Islamic Resistance Movement. The campaign of
guerrilla war waged by these two groups against the Israel Defence Forces
(IDF) between 1982 and 1985, particularly the crude but effective use of
suicide car bombs, resulted in the deaths of some 650 Israeli soldiers and the
withdrawal of the IDF to its present zone of occupation in south Lebanon.
The security zone was now defined as protecting the settlements and towns
of northern Israel from guerrilla infiltration or attack, its justification by
Jerusalem based on the inability of a strong central government in Beirut to
exercise control over Lebanon's feuding polities.5
Much has been written regarding the wider geopolitical context of the
present struggle in south Lebanon, and in particular the ideology of
Hizb'Allah - based as it is on a particularist interpretation of Islamic texts,
and inspired by the teachings of the late Ayatollah Khomeini - which
regards the presence of Israel in the Muslim heartland of the Middle East as
an apostasy to be resisted at all costs.6 Little attention however has been paid
to the military strategy and tactics employed by Israel in confronting its
nemesis in south Lebanon. Again, it remains a mute point as to how to
define the conflict since its conduct by Israel defies easy categorisation as
constituting either a counter-insurgency campaign or a small war, albeit one
of attrition. But the cost to Israel of this last 'hot' front in the Arab-Israeli
conflict remains high; the death of some 73 soldiers in a helicopter crash en
route to Lebanon on 4 February 1997 provided an all too painful reminder
to its citizens of the human cost of maintaining a continued military
presence across its northern border.7
While mindful of the broader political setting of the conflict and in
particular, the role played by Syria in its prolongation, the focus of this
essay is to assess the strategies and tactics employd by the IDF in south
Lebanon against the context of Israeli military doctrine. It concentrates on
how the failure to develop a coherent strategy of counter-insurgency within
the IDF designed to counter the particular challenge of Hizb'Allah, has
resulted in Israel adopting draconian measures against Shi'a villages and
towns in south Lebanon. Contrary to Israel's assertions, the failure to either
devise or implement any semblance of a 'hearts and minds' campaign
among the Shi'a has merely served to reinforce Hizb'Allah's claim to be the
true protectors of that self-same population. The tendency to see the
problem of Hizb'Allah in purely military terms has actually weakened
Jerusalem's broader political aims in the region. If, as the Clauswitzian
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SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
dictum maintains 'war remains the pursuit of politics by other means', then
the operational methods employed by the IDF in south Lebanon have
proven counterproductive in Israel's declared political aim of achieving
peace and stability on its northern border.
Counter-Insurgency in Israel's Military Doctrine
Given the relative wealth of material on Israeli military doctrine, relatively
little analysis has emerged regarding its approach to the conduct of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. Israel's approach to military doctrine and its
application in war is a reflection of its particular position within the wider
constellation of the Middle East and is shaped by both the geographic and
demographic asymmetries it faces with regard to its Arab neighbours. The
idea of a 'military doctrine' remains, nonetheless, a somewhat amorphous
concept. In essence it is an eclectic entity comprising what Ariel Levite has
termed a 'collection of assumptions, assessments, guidelines and decisions,
both written and oral, and originating with different authorities and at
different points in time'.8 At the level of grand strategy, the aforementioned
asymmetries - particularly the need to avoid protracted or extensive
military commitments that are costly both in terms of men and material have produced what Stuart Cohen has defined as a 'dichotomous' Israeli
approach to national security. In short the Jewish state cannot inflict total
defeat on potential adversaries and thus can only hope to maintain the status
quo in a crisis situation. Yet Cohen goes on to note that:
At the operational level [of Israeli military doctrine] however,
[I]sraePs security needs have characteristically been offensive.
Mindful that their country's lack of territorial depth precludes the
possibility of absorbing enemy attacks, Israel's policy-makers have
traditionally regarded military attack as the only viable means of
strategic defence. Consequently, they have advocated 'deterrence by
[first strike] denial', not 'deterrence by [second strike] punishment."
As such, Israeli military doctrine has, since the inception of the state in
1948 been configured to reach a rapid decision on the battlefield in the
shortest possible time, decision being defined as the complete denial of a
belligerent's capability to engage further in combat operations.10 The
development of Israel's doctrine has remained congruent with the wider
demands of conventional warfare and deemed proportionate to the threat,
real or otherwise, posed by surrounding Arab states. Accordingly, emphasis
placed upon the speedy application of firepower and manoeuvre to secure a
favourable decision on the battlefield has been a hall-mark of Israel's
approach to the conduct of military operations. This emphasis upon
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
85
offensive operations does however, go beyond the normative constraints set
by Israel's geopolitical disposition; emphasis upon offensive operations
designed to secure a decision in the shortest possible time have allowed the
IDF to fashion its own environment on the battlefield to suits its particular
strengths, promote an esprit de corps, influence resource allocation since
offensive operations impose wider military requirements, while placing
constraints on the ability of the civilian leadership to interfere directly with
the conduct of military operations."
Offensive operations have become axiomatic to the IDF, regardless of
whether such operations are best suited to securing or maintaining the wider
political objectives set by the civilian leadership. What little that has been
written on Israel's approach to COIN operations continues to fall within this
offensive rubric. Stuart Cohen and Efraim Inbar have produced what they
have termed a 'taxonomy of modes of counter-insurgency force' that has
evolved in Israeli military thinking, based upon the level of threat posed to
the security of the Jewish state by Palestinian insurgents.12 This taxonomy
to be sure is descriptive rather than prescriptive, but is meant to highlight
the variables that inform the application of force levels in COIN operations.
The first of these variables is the political objectives which Cohen and Inbar
define as either 'moderate or extensive' in scope, moderate being defined in
terms of deterrence while extensive can in fact mean politicide.13
The choice of strategy to meet either moderate or extensive political
objectives constitute the second variable and falls into two categories:
annihilation or attrition. The former is defined as constituting a series of
engagements over a short period of time that correlates with the immediate
defeat of the insurgent threat. The latter is designed to achieve the military
and political exhaustion of the insurgent forces, thereby undermining their
ability to prosecute the insurgency further. The final variable identified by
Cohen and Inbar is the scale of violence to be employed. Again the
taxonomy posits two categories: major use of violence involving the
application of the IDF's overwhelming superiority in technology and
firepower to reach a decision, or minor application of violence, mainly
involving selected strikes and the use of special forces to attack or interdict
specific targets. As Cohen and Inbar readily concede, the exact constellation
of variables to be employed in COIN operations depends on a particular
analysis of the perceived level of threat. They outline eight case studies
where the three variables have been calibrated to produce a suitable
response deemed proportionate to meeting perceived political goals. These
operations have ranged from the use of artillery to strike at PLO positions
in southern Lebanon in 1981 - deemed to have been a minor use of violence
in pursuit of moderate political objectives - through to the use of massive
force in pursuit of extensive political goals. Given its declared aim of
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SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
destroying the political and military infrastructure of the PLO, Israel's
invasion of Lebanon in 1982 - Operation 'Peace for Galilee' - can be seen
in this regard and has been viewed as an attempt at politicide by some.14
What becomes evident in an examination of Israel's COIN campaigns
against the Palestinians is the extent to which offensive operations,
whatever their magnitude, have come to define the Israeli approach to such
operations, a clear legacy of the overall offensive orientation of Israeli
military doctrine. Thus in countering Palestinian insurgents, both in areas
adjacent to the Jewish State and further afield, Israel's operational methods
have included regime targeting, selected airstrikes, widespread artillery
bombardments, limited land incursions as well as full-scale combined
operations. While its origins lie in the Cold War literature of strategic
studies, regime targeting has been a conspicuous element of Israel COIN
operations. At its heart lies the belief that the removal of key individuals
from an insurgent organisation will induce neuralgic atrophy, leading to the
structural implosion in all or part of an insurgent organisation in its mode of
operations.15 The Israeli air attack on the PLO headquarters at Hammam asShatt, Tunis on 1 October 1985 in response to the murder of three Israelis
in Cyprus, and the assassination of Khalil Wazir (Abu Jihad) - regarded by
Israel as the organisational brain behind the Palestinian Intifada - on 16
April 1988 are testament to the efficacy of such thinking among both the
political and military elite in Israel.16 While the taxonomy outlined by
Cohen and Inbar relates specifically to the conduct of Israel's counterinsurgency campaigns against the Palestinians, such operational methods
have also defined the approach of the IDF towards combating Hizb' Allah.
The sagacity, however, of replicating this approach in prosecuting a low
intensity conflict in south Lebanon needs to be challenged and with it, the
rather styptic notions applied by Israel towards counter-insurgency.
Conspicuous by its absence has been any true appreciation of the integral
role that a 'hearts and mind' campaign should play in combating the
position of Hizb'Allah among the Shi'a of south Lebanon. Again, this is
partly a reflection of applying COIN methods designed to combat
Palestinian insurgents, rather than seeking to adopt such methods to new
realities. Whereas the Palestinians in Lebanon have been viewed as a
transient community whose 'right of return' to Palestine negates the very
idea of a Jewish State, the Shi'a Lebanese remain indigenous, both in
historical and ethnic terms, to the region of south Lebanon. Therefore, short
of mass expulsion by Israel they cannot be removed from the region on a
permanent basis. The requirement for a successful 'hearts and mind
campaign' is deemed by many writers on the subject of counter-insurgency
to be the crucial element in securing wider political objectives. George
Tanham has written of the three 'mis's' that should be avoided by all
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
87
military or security forces in the prosecution of a successful counterinsurgency campaign. The first of these is that soldiers should avoid
'misbehaviour' towards property or persons. The second is the 'misuse' of
firepower, which when perceived as indiscriminate or disproportionate to
the threat, serves only to alienate populations, a process that can impede
wider political objectives. Following from this, Tanham outlines the third
'mis', the 'misapplication of military force', in essence a broad
categorisation which nonetheless, warns against the excesses identified
within the first two categories."
The contours of a hearts and mind campaign can be discerned in Israel's
approach towards the Christian Maronite community of south Lebanon,
institutionalised under what has come to be known as the 'Good Fence'
policy. This has allowed residents of south Lebanon access to medical care
and employment in Israel proper, as well as the provision of aid in the form
of food, water and medical assistance towards communities inside the
security zone.18 For the most part however, Maronite Christian communities
have been the main recipients of Israel's largesse, a situation rooted in the
historical and cutural antipathy both parties have shared towards the
Palestinians." The most tangible expression of this alliance is still to be seen
in the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a militia force established under Israeli
tutalage in 1985 and commanded by a coterie of Christian officers under
Antoine Lahad. The historical alliance with the Maronite confession has,
however, obscured for Israel the relative decline in the fortunes of the
Maronite ascendancy in Lebanon. In 1982, just prior to Israel's invasion, it
was suggested by some IDF officers with experience of the byzantine
politics of Lebanon that Israel make common cause with the Amal
movement, a proposition rejected out of hand by Israeli military intelligence
on the grounds that the loyalty of too many members of Amal remained
suspect.20 The inherent distrust in Israel's approach to the Shi'a community
perhaps should have been questioned. Given the approbation heaped upon
the IDF by some Shi'a villagers, particularly in the Jebel Amil region in the
early stages of the 1982 invasion, Israel let slip a golden opportunity to
forge closer links with a community whose relations with the Palestinians
in their midst had become particularly tense.21 Thus, in continuing to 'nail
its fortunes to the Maronite mast', Israel's political and military leadership
not only ignored the demographic shift in favour of the Lebanese Shi'a, but
also failed to mitigate the worst excesses of the invasion on a people whose
politics were already subject to the radicalising influence of the Iranian
revolution.22
As such, Israel's approach to the problem of Hizb'Allah in south
Lebanon from 1985 onwards was pre-ordained, with set assumptions
regarding the various communities suffused with counter-insurgency
88
SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
methods biased towards offensive operations drawn from a long history of
combating Palestinian insurgents. Yet in terms of the level and intensity of
the fighting that has taken place in the security zone and beyond such
methods have been sorely tried by Hizb'Allah. Indeed, a close examination
of the operations carried out by the IDF would suggest that far from
undermining Hizb'Allah, Israel's actions have served only to entrench still
further the position of the Islamic Resistance Organisation - both in
symbolic and practical terms - among the Shi'a population of south
Lebanon.
The Conflict in South Lebanon: the Limits of Israel's COIN
Operations
Addressing a press conference concerning the establishment of the 'security
zone' in south Lebanon in May 1985, the then Israeli defence minister,
Yitzhak Rabin, remarked that, 'The IDF will deploy in the security zone in
south Lebanon, north of the Israeli border for one month "to make
arrangements in the zone and to test Syria's intentions.'"23 Some 12 years
later, Israel still has 1000 troops positioned inside the security zone
supporting 2000 militiamen of the SLA. The purpose of the security zone
remains the protection of Israel's northern towns and villages from guerrilla
attack, a role that up until 1992 the zone - an area some 8-15 kilometres
wide stretching from Israel's border and including the strategically
important town of Jezzin to its north - had performed well. None the less,
the IDF presence remains in full contravention of UN resolution 425, passed
following Israel's incursion into Lebanon in March 1978, which calls upon
Jerusalem to withdraw its forces and allow the United Nations forces in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) to deploy in the area prior to full sovereignty being
returned to the central government in Beirut.
The niceties of international law notwithstanding, successive Israeli
governments between 1985 and 1997 have continued to endorse a continued
Israeli presence in the security zone as the best means to secure stability
along the northern border of the Jewish State. This view appeared to be
reinforced when an appreciation of the longer term aims of Hizb'Allah were
taken in account. Speaking before the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and
Defence Committeee on 17 October 1995, Major-General Moshe Ya'alon,
the present head of Israeli military intelligence remarked that backed by
Iran, Hizb'Allah was determined to fufil a two stage plan. He continued, 'In
the first stage, the organisation [Hizb'Allah] wants to push Israel out of
southern Lebanon back to the international border. In the second stage its
aim is [the liberation of] Jerusalem.'24 Significant more in terms of defined
goals than immediate possibility, Ya'alon's remarks gave vent to growing
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
89
concern at the level of sophistication reached by Hizb'Allah, with support
from both Tehran and Damascus, in their attacks against IDF and SLA
targets in the security zone. As one Israeli commentary noted:
The organisation's chain of command is clearly defined and discipline
is very strict despite the fact that the [Hizb'Allah] commanders do not
wear insignia. They take regular military training courses and over the
years have built up a well developed training network. Several months
ago they held a large infantry and artillery training exercise. To this
extent they stopped being a terrorist organisation in the conventional
sense of the term some time ago.25
The qualitative transformation of Hizb'Allah in conducting combat
operations has been profound. The use of suicide car bombs, crude but
effective in forcing the IDF to withdraw from the bulk of Lebanon between
1982 and 1985 had, by 1996, been replaced by a greater tactical awareness,
seen by Major-General Amiram Levine, head of the IDF Northern
Command as reflecting the high calibre of training Hizb'Allah now
received from Iranian advisers based in south Lebanon.26 The effect of this
training was increasingly apparent in the rising number of Israeli and SLA
casualties in the security zone in the period 1993-97, which, given Israel's
sensitivity to casualties, Hizb'Allah hoped would undermine the national
consensus regarding the security zone. This was remarked upon quite
openly by Deputy Secretary-General of Hizb'Allah, ShaykhNa'im Kassem,
who declared that 'when an Israeli soldier is killed, senior Israeli officials
begin crying over his death... Their point of departure is preservation of
life, while our point of departure is preservation of principle and sacrifice.
What is the value of a life of humiliation?'27
The increased effectiveness of Hizb'Allah can be gleaned by examining
the scale of the IDF and SLA losses as outlined in Table 1. If IDF casualties
are taken as a whole for the years May 1993 to May 1997, and assuming
that some 4,000 troops have served in the security zone throughout this
period, then Israel has incurred an eight per cent casualty rate among
soldiers serving in south Lebanon. If the losses from the February 1997
helicopter crash are included, this figure rises to 10 per cent, a high
attritional rate given the relatively small numbers of combatants involved.
Shaykh Kassem's remarks highlight all too vividly the preparedness of
Hizb'Allah to embrace martyrdom in pursuit of a particular interpretation of
jihad. Israel identified from an early stage the immense influence wielded
by such spiritual leaders within Hizb'Allah and invested considerable
resources in attempting to locate and target such men, including Shaykh
Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, widely regarded as the spiritual leader of
Hizb'Allah. Such efforts were fully congruent with past Israeli practice of
90
SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
TABLE 1
ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCES /SOUTH LEBANESE ARMY CASUALTY FIGURES:
MAY 1993 - MAY 1997
Period
Israel Defence Forces
Killed
Wounded
16 May 1993 - 1 5 May 1994
May 1994-15 May 1995
May 1995- 15 May 1996
16 May 1996-15 May 1997
21
26
31
27*
6
64
90
61
23
23
21
9
8
7
25
13
TOTAL
105
221
76
53
Note:
South Lebanese Army
Killed
Wounded
* Total killed for this period does not include the 73 IDF soldiers killed in the Feb. 1997
helicopter crash.
Sources: The Jerusalem Report, Journal of Palestine Studies, Middle East Journal.
regime-targeting and the concomittant belief that long-term paralysis, if not
outright implosion of an organisation, would result from the removal of its
leadership. Until 1992, this targeting of key individuals had been limited to
abductions, as seen with that of Shaykh Abdul Karim Obeid by Israeli
special forces on 28 July 1989. The rational behind this kidnap was justified
by Israel on humanitarian grounds, it being argued by Israeli premier
Yitzhak Shamir that his abduction would force Hizb'AUah to negotiate over
the fate of the Western hostages held in Lebanon, as well as disclosing the
fate of three Israeli serviceman who had gone missing during operations in
Lebanon. It was also hoped that his capture would sow dissent within the
ranks of Hizb'AUah, given the relative ease with which Obeid was lifted,
quite literally, from his bed and transported to the Jewish State. Yet Israel's
action only helped to precipitate a wider regional crisis that at one point
threatened military intervention by the United States following the
execution of Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, a US marine on
secondment to UNIFIL, who had been kidnapped earlier by Islamic radicals
thought to have been members of Hizb'AUah.28
By far the most profound example of regime-targeting however, was the
assassination of Shaykh Hussein Abbas Musawi on 16 February 1992. From
an Israeli perspective, Musawi was a prize target. As the then spiritual head
of Hizb'AUah, he had been largely responsible for its growth and
development, including its adoption of an anti-West and anti-Israel platform
from 1982 onwards. His position at the apogee of the movement led Israel's
political and military elite to conclude that his removal would represent a
devestating blow to the military operations of the Islamic Resistance,
allowing a decision to emerge in Israel's favour. Moreover, with the release
of most of the Western hostages in 1991, Israel no longer felt constrained by
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
91
wider international concerns regarding the Lebanese political milieu. The
operation itself was precise, demonstrating not only Israeli possession of
high grade intelligence but also considerable skill by the IDF whose armed
attack helicopters launched guided missiles at the convoy in which Musawi
was travelling. Moshe Arens, then serving as Israeli defence minister in the
Likud coalition government of Shamir, justified the attack in terms of
deterrence, it being cited as a warning to all groups, be they Lebanese or
Palestinian, that they remained vulnerable to the military might of the
Jewish State.29
Unable to resist the temptation to remove such a key figure, the
assassination of Musawi did, nonetheless, cross a rubicon of restraint that
had been tacitly acknowledged by both sides. Despite the repeated call for
the liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem), often used by Hizb'Allah as a
metaphor for all of Palestine, the organisation had refrained from launching
direct attacks upon the northern part of Israel, confining its operations to
IDF/SLA targets within the security zone. Passions aroused by the killing of
Musawi, painful as it was for Hizb'Allah, were inflamed still further by the
knowledge that the attack was perpetrated by the IDF to the north of the
security zone. The response of Hizb'Allah was to launch a salvo of Katyusha
rockets on Israeli settlements in the Galilee panhandle. While inflicting little
collateral damage, the retort of the IDF four days later was to bombard the
Lebanese villages of Kafra and Yatar, just north of the security zone,
identified as centres of Hizb'Allah activity. It was estimated by one source
that over 3,000 rounds of high explosive shells were fired over a 24 hour
period, the highest expenditure rate of ammunition by the IDF since
Operation 'Peace for Galilee'.30 Israel issued a warning to the inhabitants of
the two villages to vacate their homes 48 hours prior to the bombardment but
the scale of the damage wrought, albeit limited in terms of non-combatant
casualties, could do little to endear the IDF or their SLA allies to the Shi'a
villagers in this particular part of Lebanon. Indeed, throughout south
Lebanon, Israel, in a practice adopted from policing the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, routinely destroyed the homes of Hizb'Allah members or those
suspected in some way of aiding and abetting the Islamic Resistance, a
strategy clearly anathema to winning over 'hearts and minds'.31
The price incurred by Jerusalem in killing Musawi - increased tension
along the northern border - denied the very achievements that Arens had
hoped to accrue from his removal. Indeed, Yitzhak Rabin, then leader of the
opposition Labour Party questioned the need to engage Hizb'Allah at all.
Moreover, given that the IDF High Command placed northern settlements
on high alert immediately after the assassination, Israel's political
leadership must have had a fair appreciation of the likely response their
action was bound to incur.32 A carbon copy of the assassination of Musawi
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SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
occured with the killing some three years later of Rida Yasin, a high-ranking
Hizb'Allah field commander, whose car was caught by a missile fired from
a Cobra helicopter just east of the port city of Tyre but, again, well outside
the security zone. The assassination was met with the almost ritual response
from Hizb'Allah. In the ensuing Katyusha bombardment, one Israeli
civilian was killed and a further 15 wounded.
While once more demonstrating the exacting level of proficiency
attained by the IDF in such operations, the killing of Yasin was, nonetheless,
indicative of the hightened unease experienced by the IDF and SLA over the
growing military prowess of the Islamic Resistance in the field.
Increasingly, reports of low levels of morale among Israeli troops in the
security zone began to appear in the Hebrew press. Questions were asked
over whether IDF soldiers were now receiving adequate training for the
rigours of patrolling in south Lebanon following the death of four
paratroopers in a 'friendly fire' incident in May 1993. Further scorn was
heaped on the preparedness of the IDF following video footage released by
Hizb'Allah and subsequently broadcast on Israeli television, of an assault
by their guerrillas on the fortified Israeli outpost of Dabshe in the security
zone. On 27 October 1994, a group of 20 Hizb'Allah guerrillas, in broad
daylight, stormed this hill-top post, tearing down the Israeli flag and
replacing it with the green banner of Islam. Some 70 men of the Givati
Infantry Brigade were reported to have fled the position once the attack
started or cowered in bunkers until the assault had finished. Whatever the
truth, the performance of the soldiers from the Givati Brigade received a
sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Others, such as the Israeli
military historian Yoav Gilber went further, citing the incident as evidence
that the 'spirit of self-sacrifice' that had served Israel well in its previous
wars, was sadly lacking among the rank and file of Israel's front-line
combat troops." The impact of these raids by Hizb'Allah lay not so much in
the collateral damage inflicted, but in their psychological impact upon the
IDF itself. Trained to conduct combined offensive operations, the manning
of hill-top fortresses - essentially static positions from which to direct
artillery and mortar fire - denied the mobile warfare deemed neccessary to
reach a decision on the battlefield. One Israeli officer was quoted as saying
that:
Hizb'Allah are a mini-Israeli army. They can do everything as well as
we can. They are so good at attacking us because they are using the
methods that our officers taught the soldiers of the Shah of Iran [Israel
had close military ties with Iran prior to the 1979 revolution] and in
which the officers of the Khomeini era retrained Hizb'Allah.34
Israel's response was predictable enough, relying upon artillery strikes
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
93
and close air support, often in the form of helicopter gunships, to exact
revenge on suspected positions of the Islamic Resistance. The problem with
such strikes was that 'Hizb'Allah targets', all too often became a
euphemism for a Lebanese village. The concomitant exchanges that
followed always carried the potential for a wider conflagration as
Hizb'Allah threatened, and sometimes initiated Katyusha bombardments
against northern Israel.
If a lack of fighting spirit has indeed characterised the performance of
some units of the IDF in the security zone, that of the SLA has appeared
periously close to collapse. In part this was due to the uncertainty
surrounding their future within a broader Middle East peace process if
Syrian-Israeli negotiations over the Golan Heights bore diplomatic fruit.
While SLA officers, the majority of whom were drawn from Christian
Maronite villagers, would be the recipients of Israel's diplomatic largesse, it
remains doubtful if such munificence would be extended to other ranks,
particularly those drawn from the Shi'a community. That the SLA had been
able to recruit among the Shi'ite communities of south Lebanon has had
more to do with financial exigency that political preference. In an area
blighted by 15 years of war, the $300 per month paid to SLA militiamen
often proved incentive enough for some to take 'the Israeli shilling'.35 Yet the
casualties incurred by the SLA at the hands of Hizb'Allah, coupled with the
wider geopolitical uncertainties pertaining to the Arab-Israeli peace process
had, by 1994, resulted not only in the need to increase the IDF presence in
the security zone, but the use of militia press-gangs to meet force level
requirements. No precise figures have ever been released by the Israelis but
defections from the militia began to increase by the beginning of 1995, a
process exacerbated by the ability of Hizb'Allah to engage in periodic bouts
of psychological warfare, threatening retribution on individual members of
the SLA on the one hand, while offering periodic amnesties to those willing
to desert the militia. Indeed, Tony Nahara, a senior SLA commander was
abducted and executed by Hizb'Allah in 1996 while concurrently, a special
Hizb'Allah unit under Atallah Ibrahim, called upon SLA soldiers to abandon
the 'crumbling militia', and return to their [Hizb'Allah] people, an offer
backed by the promise of financial recompense.36 As if to emphasise the
point, Hizb'Allah paraded two captured militiamen before a press conference
on 10 July 1996. The militiamen - one a Shi'ite, the other a Christian poured scorn on the SLA and compared the favourable treatment they had
received at the hands of the 'Party of God' with conditions at the notorious
al-Khayim prison in south Lebanon where Hizb'Allah suspects are detained
for indefinite periods without trial.37
The release of the two men was a prelude to a more macabre deal
between Hizb'Allah and Israel. In return for the remains of three IDF
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personel, Jerusalem sanctioned the return of the bodies of 123 Hizb'Allah
guerillas and the release of 45 Hizb'Allah members from al-Khayim, an
exchange facilitated by German officials through contacts in Syria and Iran
with Hizb'Allah. Whatever the wider diplomatic significance of this
exchange, this episode could have done little to bolster SLA morale. That
Israel was willing to countenance such asymmetric exchanges of prisoners
and bodies for the remains of three IDF soldiers did little to endear service
in the SLA among an already recalcitrent population only too aware that the
detainees released could soon be engaged in what Hizb'Allah defines as
resistance activities. While the IDF has suffered proportionally more
casualties than the SLA one observer noted the growing belief among the
ranks of the SLA that their role had now been reduced to that of 'sandbags
for an Israeli bunker'.38
Deterrence by Punishment and the Limits of 'Hearts and Minds.'
On 25 July 1993 and again on 11 April 1996, the world's attention was drawn
to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hizb'Allah when the IDF initiated
two massive air and artillery bombardments of south Lebanon. Continued
activity by the Islamic Resistance had exposed the limits of regime targeting.
Instead, in response to increased tension resulting from the rise in IDF
casualties, Jerusalem initiated mass bombardments of south Lebanon in what
clearly amounted to deterrence by punishment. The first of these, codenamed
Operation 'Accountability', was launched following the deaths of nine IDF
soldiers inside the security zone throughout July 1993. However regrettable,
the losses incurred by Israel were among servicemen, not civilians, operating
in a defined combat zone. Yet the reaction of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin reflected a wider frustration among both the IDF and the Israeli public
at the apparent immunity of the Islamic Resistance to Israeli countermeasures. The decision was taken to initiate a wider assault in July 1993 on
south Lebanon but sensitivity to further IDF losses negated the use of
infantry in a wider ground operation. Instead, reliance was placed upon the
mass bombardment of areas suspected to be under the control of the Islamic
Resistance inside the security zone and beyond. Such reliance upon artillery
and airstrikes went beyond the purely military rational of attempting to locate
and destroy the military capabilities of Hizb'Allah; it was an attempt to
induce a deliberate exodus of refugees towards Beirut in order to pressure the
government of Lebanese premier Elias Harawi into curtailing the activities
of the Islamic Resistance. In the week-long artillery assault 147 Lebanese
civilians were killed and more than 350,000 fled north towards Beirut to
escape the bombardment which targeted at least 30 Shi'ite villages.39
Whatever political leverage Rabin hoped to accrue, both inside Israel
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
95
and among its immediate neighbours, the assault did little to endear the
inhabitants of south Lebanon towards Israel's proclaimed aim of removing
Hizb'Allah as a political factor in the region. Rather than reacting to the
deaths of their serviceman with a measured response, Israel's bombardment,
lacking the finesse of the calibrated COIN operation required, appeared
both 'heartless and mindless' given the toll exacted on the civilian populace
in retribution. Moreover, it remained unclear what, if any, benefits were
gained from the assault. As expected, Hizb'Allah fired Katyusha rockets
into northern Israel, one of which hit an apartment block in Kiryat
Shmonah, killing two people and wounding 13 others. This tended to
obscure the initial reason used to justify Jerusalem's bombardment - the
killing of three soldiers - as Rabin pointed to the need to protect Israel's
northern border from continued rocket attacks. Evidence exists however, to
suggest that the decision to target Hizb'Allah bases and personnel beyond
the security zone was a tactical mistake since it only served to provoke
Hizb'Allah once more into striking at Israel's northern towns and
settlements.40
Moreover the unwritten understandings reached by Israel and
Hizb'Allah under the auspices of Washington and Damascus in the
aftermath of the bombardment merely codified a situation in the security
zone that did little to ameliorate the very concerns that had prompted the
IDF barrage in the first place: the attritional toll exacted by Hizb'Allah on
Israeli servicemen. These understandings prohibited Hizb'Allah from
launching military operations, rocket attacks or otherwise against Israeli
territory. In return, Israel was to refrain from direct attacks upon Lebanese
towns, villages and their inhabitants in the security zone. Nothing, however,
prevented continued attacks by Hizb'Allah upon IDF/SLA positions inside
the buffer zone - the very justification for Operation 'Accountability' while Israel interpreted the 'unwritten' agreement as allowing attacks on
Hizb'Allah bases in the security zone and beyond. The amorphous nature of
the agreement meant that both sides focused primarily on defining the scope
of the other's activities, rather than placing strict parameters on their own
military operations. For the Islamic Resistance this allowed them to present
themselves as the protector of the Lebanese people in south Lebanon.41
Hizb'Allah was quick to test the boundaries of the agreement. On 19
August 1993, a bomb and machine gun attack on an IDF patrol in the village
of Shihin, just inside the security zone resulted in the deaths of seven
soldiers. Israel's retaliation came in the form of an air attack on suspected
bases of the Hizb'Allah in the Bekaa valley, well outside the security zone.
Yet quite clearly, the ability of Hizb'Allah to engage in military activity in
south Lebanon remained largely unimpaired. In truth, the organisation's
activities remained part of a wider regional game, their military operations
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in the south condoned and supported by Damascus as a useful means to
exert pressure upon Jerusalem over the Golan Heights. To this end, Syria
has been prepared to remain a conduit for Iranian arms and supplies
destined for Hizb'Allah.42 But whatever the wider regional matrix, the
ability of Hizb'Allah to integrate itself into the communal fabric of the Shi'a
of south Lebanon highlights broader political goals. Indeed, in the wider
arena of Lebanese politics, Hizb'Allah scored notable successes in elections
to the Lebanese parliament in the summer of 1992, winning eight seats, the
largest bloc in the reconstituted assembly. Yet the war in the south remained
the focus of Hizb'Allah's efforts. In its attempts to maintain credibility for
its stance against Israel, the organisation initiated large-scale humanitarian
projects in those villages worst affected by the Israeli bombardment,
including building projects, medical relief and financial support to families
who had suffered most in the fighting. Such largesse, however, remained
within finite confessional limits with aid donated by Hizb'Allah to Christian
communities being meagre by comparison. Moreover, Hizb'Allah
reportedly assassinated those involved in the distribution of food and
medical supplies donated by Israel under the auspices of the civil aid
assistance programme, directed by Uri Lubrani, Israeli government coordinator for south Lebanon.43
Lubrani's position remains the closest Israel has come to engaging in a
co-ordinated hearts and minds campaign in south Lebanon. An extention in
essence of the 'Good Fence', Lubrani has overseen civil aid assistance
programmes (CAPs) to the residents of south Lebanon since the mid-1980s.
In one instance, Israel donated $250,000 to build a new school for the
predominantly Christian town of Marjayoun, headquarters also to the SLA.
While Israel has released little information regarding the scope of the CAP
activities, their main efforts appeared to be biased towards meeting the
needs of the Maronite community.44 Whatever benefits Israel hoped to
accrue by its CAP projects among all communities in south Lebanon were
offset by punitive measures implemented elsewhere against the inhabitants
of the security zone. For example, in July 1995 the IDF imposed a 12-mile
exclusion zone along the coast of south Lebanon, a move that created great
hardship among fisherman whose livelihoods were affected adversely.
Indeed, the Islamic Resistance regarded such measures as a violation of the
1993 agreement since the measures imposed upon the fisherman were seen
as a direct attack upon Lebanese civilians.45
Such measures remained indicative of Israel's approach to the problem
of Hizb'Allah, an approach that saw the Islamic Resistance as a military
problem whose solution lay within the context of a wider Middle East
settlement. Certainly, Israeli academics have questioned whether
Hizb'Allah could remain a viable player in south Lebanon if some form of
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
97
accommodation is to be reached between Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus.46
As such, the incentive to engage in a co-ordinated hearts and minds
campaign remains limited, with Hizb'Allah seen as a military problem best
solved by reliance upon the superior firepower of the IDF. Consequently,
the spectacular raid launched by the IDF helicopter gunships against the
'Ayn Dardara training camp in the Bekaa valley on 2 June 1994, resulting
in the deaths of over 40 members of the Islamic Resistance, highlighted the
overwhelming reliance Israel has continued to place upon military means to
assuage the challenge posed by Hizb'Allah. The attack, deep inside the
Bekaa valley and close to the Syrian border, brought Katyusha rockets down
upon northern Israel, the Islamic Resistance claiming, once again, that the
strike went beyond the permissable bounds set by the 1993 agreement.47
From the summer of 1993 to the spring of 1996, periodic bouts of
intense shelling punctuated the almost ritualized encounters between the
Islamic Resistance and the SLA/IDF. Both sides infringed the agreement of
1993, though the true perpertrators of any violation were often hard to
identify, shrouded by the acrimony of claim and counter-claim regarding
specific incidents. Certainly, tension in the security zone more than once
threatened to spill over into a wider conflagration, most notably when
Jewish targets were attacked in London and Buenos Aires in July 1994,
attacks thought to have been carried out in retaliation for the losses incurred
by the Islamic Resistance at 'Ayn Dardara.48 The metaphorical 'straw' that
finally broke the back of the 1993 agreement was the upsurge in violence in
the security zone in March 1996. Six Israeli soldiers lost their lives between
4 and 20 March 1996, including an officer killed by a suicide car bomb, a
method of attack not used by the Islamic Resistance since the mid-1980s.
The ante had been heightened further by the increased frequency of IDF
reconaissance flights over Beirut itself, indicating that any forthcoming
Israeli operation would be more extensive in its geographical sweep than
Operation 'Accountability'.49
More worrying for Israel, the Amal movement, long quiescent in
military operations in the south, took responsibility for an attack on a joint
IDF/SLA patrol in the security zone. Relations between Hizb'Allah and
Amal had often been tense and marked by periodic bouts of internecine
fighting in their attempts to exert hegemony over the Lebanese Shi'a.50 That
the two movements could present a united front, at least in terms of guerilla
operations, suggested a new, more intense phase in the south Lebanese
conflagration. This was not slow in coming; on 30 March artillery from an
Israeli controlled position hit the village of Yatar, killing two civilians. The
shelling by any standard was a violation of the 1993 agreement, and brought
immediate retribution on Israel's northern settlements. While the IDF
maintained that artillery fire had been directed at armed members of the
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Islamic Resistance moving outside the village, Israeli premier Shimon Peres
declared the shelling of Yatar to be a sad mistake with blame apportioned to
the lax fire-control methods of the SLA.51 Finally, the death of a Lebanese
boy by a roadside mine inside the security zone on 8 April 1996 once again
brought heavy salvoes of Katyusha rockets down on northern Israel.
Jerusalem's protestations that the mine was unexploded ordnance left over
from past conflicts did little to negate Hizb'Allah anger at what they saw as
a calculated transgression by the IDF of the rules of engagement.52
The campaign that Israel unleashed upon Lebanon on 11 April 1996 was
for more extensive, both in its political and military objectives than
Operation 'Accountability', and appeared at times to border on politicide.
Codenamed Operation 'Grapes of Wrath', targets throughout south
Lebanon, including the port cities of Tyre and Sidon up to and including
Beirut were attacked by the IDF following warnings to their inhabitants to
leave their homes, warnings that were conveyed either in so-called
communiques broadcast on 'Voice of the South', the SLA radio station, or
leaflets dropped from Israeli aircraft. Targets identified with Islamic
Resistance activity, both military and political, included houses and
buildings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital thought to be used
by senior Hizb'Allah figures. IDF aircraft also attacked the power station at
Jumhur on the outskirts of Beirut, blacking out portions of the city, a move
clearly designed to intimidate the government of Lebanese prime minister
Rifaq Hariri and threaten the continued, albeit fragile economic
rehabilitation of Lebanon if Beirut did not rein in Hizb'Allah or at least
place pressure on Damascus to do so.53
Israel's bombardment resulted in some 400,000 Lebanese fleeing north
to escape the bombardment by sea, land and air. Members of the Lebanese
government, cognisant of the magnitude of any relief effort entailed in such
an exodus, pleaded with civilians to remain in their homes, a call that went
largely unheaded, forcing the Lebanese Army to block roads leading to
Beirut. Israel hoped that the volume of this exodus would, when combined
with the totality of Israeli strikes, create a critical mass of public pressure
sufficient to curtail the activities of Hizb'Allah in south Lebanon.54 Official
Israeli anouncements during the assault made clear Jerusalem's belief that
Hizb'Allah 'has been hiding behind Lebanese citizens', a line of reasoning
that tried to remove the veil of legitimacy that Hizb'Allah and its military
operations enjoyed among the Lebanese Shi'a.55
Throughout Israel's bombardment, the Islamic resistance continued to
fire Katyusha rockets into Israel on a regular, if rather uncoordinated
fashion. While in no way comparable to the scale of the Lebanese exodus,
Israeli civilians were forced to leave northern towns under this threat, most
noticably in Kiryat Shmonah where 10,000 of its inhabitants were
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
99
evacuated. Nonethless, Israel believed it had the technological means to
locate and fire at launch sites - a device called 'Fire Finder' - which
combined a heat-seeking device with radar to deliver accurate coordinates
of a suspected Katyusha position. The reliance on such technology to
deliver sustained blows against Hizb'Allah nonetheless revealed the
continued political limits placed on IDF ground operations in Lebanon,
sensitive to the need to avoid casualties. Again claim and counter-claim
regarding the level of Hizb'Allah casualties became a subjective process.
What remained certain however was that reliance on technology rather than
high quality troops trained in COIN methods resulted in the tragedy that
befell the UN compound at Qana on 18 April 1996.
Often cited as the point where Operation 'Grapes of Wrath' turned sour
for the Israelis, Qana witnessed the slaughter of 102 Lebanese civilians
sheltering from the surrounding IDF barrage in the imagined safety of the
UN compound, manned by Fijian soldiers. As with much else in Lebanon,
truth soon became the first casualty as Israel portrayed the shelling as tragic
accident and blamed the Islamic Resistance for firing its missiles 300 meters
from the compound. Israel's version of events was challenged by the UN
report into the shelling, which, while agreeing that guerillas had fired three
Katyusha rockets near the compound, declared that this had been from a
distance of 600 meters. Moreover, UN officials cited video evidence of an
Israeli drone - used for reconaissance and artillery spotting - as proof that
the IDF must have known that the UN compound was providing temporary
refuge for 800 displaced persons. As the head of Israeli military
intelligence, Major-General Ya'alon opined seven days later after the
massacre:
The fact that civilians are evacuated from the villages into UN
facilities was known to us from the second day of the operation
[Grapes of Wrath]. In the intelligence wing there was no discussion of
whether there were two or six hundred casualties in Qana... The
relevant question was was it correct to open fire in such
circumstances.56
If Operation 'Grapes of Wrath' was meant to impose a new regional agenda
on Lebanon and, by extension, Damascus, it singularly failed. Reports prior
to the massacre at Qana suggested that considerable empathy with
Hizb'Allah existed among the population of south Lebanon, not least the
port city of Tyre, with one Shi'a resident remarking that, 'at least our boys
are defending our land'.57 While hard to ever gauge the depth of public
support or antagonism towards Hizb'Allah that Israel's bombardment
provoked, the symbolism of the Islamic Resistance defending Lebanese
honour remained powerful. As such, Israel's military action was greeted
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with outright condemnation from the main Lebanese confessions. This
created a rare national consensus best expressed in the widespread help
offered to refugees fleeing the bombardment among the disparate Lebanese
Muslim and Christian communities. Qana also exposed divisions between
Israel's political leadership and the IDF high command, as well as dissent
within the IDF high command itself. From declaring his rejection of any
new agreement with Hizb'Allah over conflict management in south
Lebanon, Peres accepted with alacrity American attempts to mediate a new
consensus between the warring parties in the south in the aftermath of the
maasacre. This in turn elicited strong criticism from Brigadier-General
Giora Inbar who declared that the IDF would 'not allow' Operation 'Grapes
of Wrath' to be halted. While forced to retract his comments, others in the
IDF felt that the tragedy of Qana masked the fact that the operation had
harmed the Islamic Resistance and should therefore be continued. Thus
Major-General Herzl Budwinger, commander of Israel's air force expressed
the view that, 'we were close to achieving these goals [the elimination of
Hizb'Allah] were it not for the tragic mishap resulting form the artillery
attack on Qana'.58
Such hubris was not reflected in the acrimony which emerged between
Israeli military intelligence and the IDF Northern Command, charged with
co-ordinating Operation Grapes of Wrath. Major-General Amiram Levine
blamed Israeli military intelligence for providing rather injudicious
assessments regarding Hizb'Allah capabilities, not least the amount of time
allocated to 'break Hizb'Allah' as Katyushas continued to fall on northern
Israel. Moreover, Levine declared that a political decision had been taken to
scale down the intensity of Israel's bombardment, a decision Levine
declared had left his command 'dejected and extremely angry'.59 This
dejection was compounded by the terms of the new ceasefire agreement
brokered by Washington's former Secretary of State, Warren Christoper on
26 April 1996. Unlike the 1993 agreement, this new 'understanding' was
committed to paper. It contained four main points:
1. The Islamic Resistance was prohibited from carrying out attacks by
whatever means into Israel.
2. The IDF and SLA were prohibited from targeting civilians or civilian
areas in Lebanon.
3. Both parties were to ensure that 'under no circumstances will civilians
be the target of attack and that civilian populated areas and industrial and
electrical installations will not be used as launching grounds for attacks'.
4. Without violating the understanding, both sides were entitled to conduct
military operations in the security zone in what the agreement termed
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
101
'the right of self-defence'.60
The understanding was an attempt to mitigate both the cause and the
worst effects of Operation 'Grapes of Wrath'. From an Israeli perspective,
it appeared to force Islamic Resistance operations into the open, beyond the
protective embrace of civilian areas. Conspicuous by its absence was any
mention of restricting Israeli military operations to the security zone.
Nonethless, the agreement smacked of recidivism, given that the need to
prevent attacks on Israeli positions inside the security zone - the driving
rational behind both the 1993 and 1996 operations - had not been achieved.
Still, in an effort to prevent the type of tension that had led up to 'Grapes of
Wrath', an International Monitoring Group (IMG) was set up under the
agreement. Comprising representatives of the United States, France, Israel,
Syria and Lebanon, the IMG was designed to arbitrate over any
infringement of the agreement within 24 hours of any party submitting
details of a violation. The true aim of the IMG was to build up confidence
building measures, thus allowing bilateral negotiations between Jerusalem
and Damascus, and Jerusalem and Beirut to progress towards a meaningful
regional peace agreement.
Entrenchment or 'Bringing the Boys Back Home?'
As in the wake of Operation Accountability, the Islamic Resistance proved
quick to test the resilience of the new accord. On 12 May 1996, five Israeli
soldiers were wounded in two separate attacks claimed by the Islamic
Resistance, prompting retaliation by IDF artillery and aircraft on suspected
Hizb'Allah targets north of the security zone. Yet such attacks highlighted
the paucity in IDF thinking in continued reliance on aerial and artillery fire
- even if driven by the political need to avert IDF casualties - without the
use of ground forces to press home attacks on specific positions or targets.
This was born out by the fact that, despite the weight and volume of IDF
fire directed on to south Lebanon in April 1996, the Islamic Resistance
continued to launch over 500 Katyusha rockets into south Lebanon."
Evidence made public by Major-General Levine and intelligence officers
from Northern Command highlighted the resilience of the Islamic
Resistance in terms of moral, training and logistical support, with careful
note taken of the manner in which Hizb'Allah had stockpiled arms and
ammunition in southern Lebanse villages in readiness for any future
confrontation with the IDF.62
The disclosure of a new IDF special forces unit operating in south
Lebanon does suggest that the IDF high command has realised the need to
include a permanent land based offensive option in combating the Islamic
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Resistance, particularly given the restrictions placed upon the broad use of
artillery fire in a suppressive role close to inhabited areas. The unit, Egoz,
was formed in July 1995 and tasked with countering the activity of
Hizb 'Allah in the hilly terrain of south Lebanon. This remains its primary
function and unlike other IDF units who have served in the security zone on
a rotational basis, Egoz (Hebrew for almond) remains a permanent fixture
in the IDF's order of battle in south Lebanon. According to the limited
publicity surrounding the unit it has been used mainly for aggressive
patrolling along routes identified as probable Islamic Resistance supply
lines. Confirmation of the unit's existence also formed part of the on-going
psychological campaign waged between Israel and Hizb'Allah, not only in
an attempt to restrict Islamic Resistance activity against IDF/SLA targets,
but also as a timely reminder to the Israeli public that the IDF could
continue to exact a toll from the guerrillas." Whatever the perceived
advantages gained from the disclosures surrounding Egoz, Israeli soldiers
have continued to be the target of well planned and, in the truest sense of
the word, executed operations at the hands of the Islamic Resistance.
Roadside bombs disguised as boulders have exacted heavy losses among
both the IDF and SLA, with such methods responsible for the majority of
IDF fatalities in 1996. Nor has the activity of the Islamic Resistance in
anyway faltered. In January 1997 UNIFIL logged some 50 guerrilla
operations against Israeli targets in the security zone.
The helicopter collision that killed 73 IDF soldiers on the night of 4
February 1997, remains, however, the greatest disaster to have befallen IDF
operations associated with south Lebanon. This calamity was probably
more significant than Israel is willing to admit. A profile of the deceased
highlighted the disproportionate number of officers among the dead - 17,
one of whom was a lieutenant colonel - as well as the death of 54 noncommissioned officers, all but one holding the rank of sergeant. Also among
the dead were Bedouin trackers, recruited from the few remaining tribes in
the Negev desert and employed by the IDF in a reconnaissance role.64 The
evidence to hand suggests that far from representing a normal troop rotation
as stated by Jerusalem, the soldiers were members of a special forces unit
en route to attack Hizb'Allah targets in south Lebanon.
Whatever the true nature of their mission, the death of so many young
soldiers served to intensify a debate, ongoing since Operation 'Grapes of
Wrath', about the continued sagacity of maintaining the security zone. Aluf
Ben, writing in Ha'aretz on 16 June 1996 likened the situation in south
Lebanon to a 'popular uprising', with Hizb'Allah enjoying unprecedented
legitimacy among the Lebanse Shi'a because of the tragedy at Qana.65 Such
sentiment had a resonance beyond normal Israeli analysis of the region that
all too often in the past had viewed Hizb'Allah as an organisation imposed
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
103
on south Lebanon from outside actors, rather than representing an
indigenous resistance movement to Israeli occupation that happened to be
inspired by a particular, albeit extreme, Islamist agenda. In this respect,
Qana was a watershed if only because any illusion that Hizb'Allah was a
foreign body, unrepresentative of local sympathies, was cruelly shattered.
As such, calls to bring the boys back home have become commonplace, not
least among senior political figues such as Yossi Beilin, former deputy
Foreign Minister between 1992 and 1996 and widely viewed as the architect
of the Oslo accords. Writing in Yediot Aharanot Beilin observed that:
It [the security zone] is not a real security zone for the northern
settlements, seeing that it is not wide enough to be out of Katyusha
range - and if there are no Katyushas this is because of the
understandings reached with Hizb'Allah and nothing else. It does not
contribute in any way to preventing infiltrations into Israel that could
not be prevented by the border fence. It is not necessary for the
operation of IDF helicopters in Lebanon. The main occupation of our
soldiers there is to protect themselves. They move about like knights
in armour, with difficulty and with limited freedom, and are sitting
ducks for local guerilla troops.66
The new Israeli defence minister in the government of Prime Minister
Binyamin Nethanyahu, Yitzhak Mordechai, was quick to condemn Beilin's
sentiments, citing the need for Beirut to disarm Hizb'Allah before Israel
would reconsider its position in south Lebanon. The debate had,
nonetheless, shifted away from securing the lives of the civilian population
to one concerned at the loss of life of IDF soldiers in what many now
refer to openly as the 'insecurity zone'. Some, including former officers
in the IDF have advocated a unilateral pull-out from Lebanon, arguing that
if the logic behind the zone was predicated on the need to prevent rocket
attacks hitting northern Israel, it has manifestly failed. Instructive have been
the views expressed by Colonel Jacques Neriah, a former member of Israeli
military intelligence, who remarked that Israel's approach to south Lebanon
since 1985 had been marked by what he termed 'intellectual stagnation',
that had only served to turn Hizb'Allah into the 'spearhead of the Lebanese
struggle - the element which expresses the yearning for independence
through attacks on the IDF'.67 Nariah continued that both Operations
'Accountability' and 'Grapes of Wrath' had 'sanctified the security zone
as the location for legitimate struggle', thereby allowing Hizb'Allah to
exert total control over the south. As such, the failure of the IDF to invest
serious time and effort in a co-ordinated hearts and minds campaign
to complement the judicious and proportionate use of force, has served only
to amplify the disadvantages that the IDF already faced in occupying
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a portion of another state whose population differs so markedly in terms of
ethnicity, culture and religion.
Conclusion
Any final solution of the conflict in south Lebanon remains dependent upon
various variables, not least the state of bilateral ties between Damascus and
Jerusalem, as well as the dynamics of the domestic political scene inside
Israel itself. These variables notwithstanding, the methods used by Israel in
south Lebanon have done little to strengthen Israel's hand in the broader
pursuit of peace. The former head of IDF military intelligence, Aharon
Yariv, observed somewhat wryly that while Syria clearly used Hizb'Allah to
exert pressure on Israel to compromise over the Golan Heights, 'If we react
with gunfire every time rockets are fired, then we have no chance of
reaching any kind of peace in southern Lebanon. It's a vicious circle.'68
While mindful of the wider geopolitical scenario being played out, the
overwhelming advantage that Israel possesses in firepower has done little to
negate either the political or military potency of Hizb'Allah. Indeed, all
evidence available suggests that where this force has been applied, be it in
the form of attritional bombardment, regime targeting or a combination of
both, Israel has become embroiled still further in the Lebanese morass.
Quite clearly, such use of force has become counter-productive,
strengthening the bonds between Hizb'Allah and the Shi'a populace in
south Lebanon however much Israel has tried to portray the movement as
an alien imposition.69 It could be argued that faced with an enemy driven by
the desire to destroy the Jewish state the IDF has little choice but to employ
the most extreme methods available. Such sentiment, however, confuses
rhetoric with reality. Despite the proclamations of Hizb'Allah's clerics, the
Islamic Resistance has been careful to restrict its operations to within the
security zone. The record to date suggests that assaults by the movement
into northern Israel have, for the most part, been reactions to Israeli
offensive operations in south Lebanon, not the cause of them.
Nonetheless, the often disproportionate use of force by the Israeli
military is derived from an offensive military doctrine that has failed to
calibrate the level of force used in south Lebanon with meaningful
investment in a co-ordinated hearts and minds programme. In short, the
taxonomy of IDF COIN options as outlined by Cohen and Inbar in dealing
previously with Palestinian insurgents, has failed to adjust itself to the
political and military exigencies of south Lebanon. This is not to suggest
that a radical revision of Israel's COIN operations and doctrine can now
supplant the appeal of Hizb'Allah among the Lebanese Shi'a, even though
evidence of such a rethink remains conspicuous by its absence.
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
105
Nonetheless, a more sophisticated approach towards COIN operations may
have restricted the political and military options available to Hizb'Allah and
allowed Jerusalem a greater input into the shape of any potential political
re-alignment in the region. If such a 'window of opportunity' ever existed
in the past, the intellectual stagnation in Israel's approach towards south
Lebanon - particularly the failure to evolve a counter-insurgency 'template'
more suited to local conditions - would now suggest that such a window has
been closed firmly for good.70
NOTES
1. Abramovitch's comments were reported by Shyam Bhatia, 'Israel takes revenge on
innocents', The Observer, 1 Aug. 1993.
2. For example, see the assessment , 'Israel and Syria: Trading Land for Peace', Strategic
Comments: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1 Nov. 1994.
3. A concise account of Israel's long association of political intrigue in Lebanon is to be found
in Kirsten E. Schulze, 'Israeli and Maronite Nationalisms: Is a Minority Alliance Natural?'
in Idem, Martin Stokes, and Colm Campbell (eds) Nationalism, Minorities and Diasporas:
Identities and Rights in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris 1996) pp. 158-70. See also
Augustus Richard Norton, '(In)Security Zones in South Lebanon', Journal of Palestine
Studies 23/1 (Autumn 1993) pp.62-3.
4. For a definitive account of Israel's decision to invade Lebanon in 1982 see Ze'ev Schiff and
Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War (London: Unwin & Allen 1986). For a more concise
summary, see Hirsh Goodman, 'The war that should never have been', Jerusalem Post
International, 13 April 1985; Shai Feldman and Heda Rechnitz-Kijner, 'Deception,
Consensus and War: Israel in Lebanon', Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, Paper No.27
(Oct. 1984).
5. There are numerous accounts regarding the origins, ideology and structure of Hizb'Allah.
See for example James Piscatori, 'The Shi'a of Lebanon and Hizb'Allah, the Party of God',
in Christine Jennett and Randal G. Stewart (eds) Politics of the Future (Melbourne:
Macmillan 1989) pp.292-320; Martin Kramer, 'Hizb'Allah's vision of the West',
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Papers No.16, 1989.
6. Hizb'Allah makes Constance reference in its propaganda to the conflict between the
'arrogance of the world' (mustakbirin), and the 'downtrodden of the world' (mustadafin).
See Esther Webman, 'Anti-Semitism as a Corollary of Anti-Zionism: A basic tenet of
Hizb'Allah ideology', Justice, No.6 (Aug. 1995) pp.11-18.
7. Shyam Bhatia, 'Crash highlights debate on role in south Lebanon', The Guardian, 5 Feb.
1997.
8. Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (Jerusalem: Westview
Press/The Jerusalem Post 1989) p.23.
9. Stuart A. Cohen, 'Changing Emphases in Israel's Military Commitments, 1981-1991:
Causes and Consequences', Journal of Strategic Studies 15/3 (Sept. 1992) pp.341-2.
10. Avi Kober, 'A paradigm in crisis? Israel's doctrine of Military Decision', Israel Affairs 12/11
(Autumn 1995) p.188.
11. Levite (note 8) pp.11-14.
12. Stuart A. Cohen and Efraim Inbar, 'Varieties of Counter-Insurgency Activities: Israel's
Military Operations against the Palestinians, 1948-90', Small Wars and Insurgencies 2/1
(April 1991) pp.41-60.
13. Ibid. p.43.
14. Ibid. pp.51-6.
15. See David Rodman, 'Regime-Targeting: a Strategy for Israel', Israel Affairs 2/1 (Autumn
106
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
1995) pp. 153-67. For the origins of regime-targeting, located in the wider strategic studies
literature of the Cold War, see Desmond Ball and Jefferson Richardson (eds) Strategic
Nuclear Targeting (London and Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1986); Robert Aldridge, First Strike
(London: Pluto Press 1983).
Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars (NY: Grove Weidenfeld 1991) pp.469-72.
George K. Tanham, 'The military and Counter-Insurgency', in John B. Hattendorf and
Malcolm H. Murfett (eds) The Limitations of Military Power (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1990) pp.92-3.
'The Good Fence in 1981: The other side of Israel-Lebanon Relations', Briefing document
125/24.1.82/2.04.045, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Information Division, Jerusalem.
Schulze (note3) p.158.
SchiffandYa'ari (note 4) pp.240-2.
Ibid, p.239; Helena Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon (London: Hutchinson 1985)
p.184.
Norton (note 3) pp.68-9.
Joshua Brilliant, 'Israel watches for Syria's next move', Jerusalem Post Internaional, 4 May
1985.
'Israeli general says Iran and Syria behind Hezbollah actions', BBC Summary of World
Broadcasts (hereafter BBC-SWB), ME/2438 MED/15, 19 Oct. 1995.
Naomi Levitsky, 'Zahal versus Hezbollah', Yediot Aharanot, 8 July 1994.
'Israeli army commander on "unprecedented" Iran involvement in Lebanon', BBC-SWB,
ME/2685 MED/8, 8 Aug. 1996.
Guy Brechor, 'Scare Tactics', Ha'aretz, 15 Dec. 1996.
Dilip Hiro, Lebanon, Fire and Embers: A History of the Lebanese Civil War (London:
Weidenfeld 1993) pp. 152-3.
'Israeli officials interviewed on Musawi killing: "Critical blow to Hizb'Allah'", BBC-SWB,
ME/1307 A/2-3, 18 Feb. 1992.
Ian Black, 'Arabs and Jews enact victory rituals in land of losers', The Guardian, 22 Feb.
1992.
Israel's policy of destroying Shi'a homes in retribution, real or otherwise, for support for
Hizb'Allah brought a sharp response from Shaykh Hussein Nasrallah who threatened
increased rocket attacks on northern Israel in response. See the commentary by Alex
Fishman, Yediot Aharanot, 29 Nov. 1995.
Amnon Danker, 'Hell, what were the considerations?', Hadashot, 21 Feb. 1992.
David Hirst, 'Israelis horrified by video shocker', The Guardian, 10 Nov. 1994.
Israel Shahak, 'Israel's war in south Lebanon', Middle East International, No.493, 3 Feb.
1995, pp.18-19. Most Israeli analysts remain convinced that Hizb'Allah's transformation
into an effective guerilla force, capable of mounting platoon and company sized attacks with
fire support from mortars on specified positions, is a result of Iranian instruction. See David
Rudge,' Hizb'Allah: New and Improved', Jerusalem Post International, 28 Oct. 1995.
David Hirst, 'Crossing the small but strategic frontier of peace', The Guardian, 16 Jan. 1995.
The incentives used to attract Shi'a recruits into the SLA have also included permits to allow
relatives to work inside Israel proper, as well as compensation to their families should they
be killed in action.
Guy Bechor, 'Scare Tactics', Ha'aretz, 15 Dec. 1996. One estimate by UNIFIL put the
number of desertions at around 200 for 1994-96. See Derek Brown, 'Israeli-backed militia
loses will to fight', The Guardian, 23 March 1996.
Guy Bechor, 'Life and Death at the hands of the party of Liberation', Ha 'aretz, 23 July 1996.
Norton (note 3) p.71.
Ibid. p.73. Addressing the Knesset defence and foreign affairs committee on 28 July Rabin
declared that the aim of Israel's assault had been 'to provoke an exodus of inhabitants from
southern Lebanon towards the north in order to put pressure on the Lebanese government.
See also Hirsh Goodman, 'Why Israel went into battle', Jerusalem Report 4/7 (12 Aug.
1993) pp.10-11.
See Ian Black, 'No security for civilians as shells rain down', The Guardian, 28 July 1993.
This point is made forcefully in a commentary by Guy Bechor, Ha'aretz, 29 Nov. 1995.
ISRAELI COIN STRATEGY AND S. LEBANON
107
42. See for example Hussein J. Agha and Ahmad S. Khalidi, Syria and Iran: Rivalry and
Cooperation (London: RIIA/Pinter 1995) pp.77-82.
43. Michael Rotem, 'Hizb'Allah reaps benefits from the past', Jerusalem Post, 30 July 1993.
44. David Rudge, 'Lubrani: Hizb'Allah would not survive peace', ibid. 12 April 1995.
45. See the commentary by Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz, 29 Nov. 1995.
46. See for example Eyal Zisser, 'Hizb'Allah in Lebanon - At the crossroads', in Bruce MaddyWeitzman and Efraim Inbar (eds) Religious Radicalism in the Greater Middle East (London:
Frank Cass 1997) pp.90-110. For an argument that suggests Hizb'Allah enjoys a wider
legitimacy in Lebanese politics see Judith Palmer Harik, 'Between Islam and the system:
sources and implications of popular support for Lebanon's Hizb'Allah', Journal of Conflict
Resolution 40/1 (March 1996) pp.41-67.
47. Robert Fisk, 'Israel wreaks vengeance on Hizb'Allah camp', The Independent, 3 June 1994.
48. David Hirst, 'An endless nasty little war', The Guardian, 29 July 1994.
49. 'Israeli officer, South Lebanon Army soldier killed by suicide bomber', BBC-SWB, ME/2567
MED/1, 22 March 1996; Robert Fisk, ' Israel and Iran trade threats over Lebanon', The
Independent, 22 March 1996.
50. For example, in Jan. 1989, members of Hizb'Allah attacked several Shi'a villages in south
Lebanon known to be bastions of support for Amal. Men were either shot, or had their throats
cut. See Martin Kramer, 'Sacrifice and Fratricide in Shi'ite Lebanon', in Mark Juergensmeyer
(ed), Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (London: Frank Cass 1992) pp.44-5.
51. 'Israeli PM says Israeli shelling of Lebanese village a "mistake"', BBC-SWB, ME/2575
MED/3 1 April 1996.
52. 'Hizb'Allah statement says Katyushas fired in response to killing of boy', BBC-SWB,
ME/2582 MED/1, 10 April 1996; 'Israel blames "old mine" for boy's death, threatens action
outside border strip', BBC-SWB, ME/2582 MED/2 10 April 1996.
53. Aluf Ben, 'Peres focusing pressure on Lebanese government', Ha 'aretz, 14 April 1996.
54. David Hirst and Derek Brown, 'Panic as Israelis step up attacks', The Guardian, 15 April
1996.
55. For example see the comments made by the Israeli Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General
Amnon Shahaq justifying attacks on Hizb'Allah targets in civilian areas. 'Israeli prime
minister says "no immunity" for Hizb'Allah', BBC-SWB, ME/2585 MED/6-7, 13 April
1996.
56. Derek Brown, 'Gunner's cover is blown', The Guardian, 11 May 1996.
57. See for example David Hirst,' We are all Hizb'Allah here. Our boys are defending our land',
The Guardian, 15 April 1996. See also Hala Jaber, Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance
(London: Fourth Estate 1997) pp. 199-202.
58. 'Israeli PM tells MP's he is not interested in a new understanding in Lebanon', BBC-SWB,
ME/2585 MED/9, 13 April 1996; 'Israeli general apologises for saying army would not
wear premature end to raids', BBC-SWB, ME/2589 MED/3, 18 April 1996; 'Israeli air force
chief confirms political goals of Lebanon operation', BBC-SWB, ME/2594 MED/11, 24
April 1996.
59. Eitan Rabin, 'Israel's Northern command officers cited on "intelligence failures'", Ha 'aretz,
21 April 1996.
60. See 'The text of understanding reached on Friday 26 April 1996 for the cease-fire in
Lebanon', Jerusalem Post, 28 April 1996.
61. The doyen of Israel's military analysts, Ze'ev Schiff made this point forcefully, arguing that
even in the 1991 Gulf War, when much larger Scud missiles were being fired at Israel and
Saudi Arabia, British and US special forces were still required to track and target these
missiles for destruction. See the front page commentary by Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz, 21 April
1996.
62. Eitan Rabin, 'Interview with IDF Major-General Amiram Levine, OC Northern Command',
Ha'aretz, 7 Aug. 1996.
63. Amir Rapaport, 'The IDF's secret weapon against Hizb'Allah', Yediot Aharonot, 5 Dec.
1996. For the psychological impact that Egoz was supposed to elicit see Guy Bechor, 'Scare
Tactics', Ha'aretz, 15 Dec. 1996.
64. See Al. J. Venter, 'Recent developments in the Levant preclude peace', Middle East, No.266
108
SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES
(April 1997) pp.12-13.
65. Aluf Ben, 'The Lebanese Experiment', Ha'arete, 16 June 1996.
66. Yossi Beilin, 'The Harmful Security', Yediot Aharanot, 17 July 1996.
67. Neriah's comments were expressed in an interview with Ha'aretz. For the full text of his
remarks see Amos Harel, 'Why do we need the security zone?', Ha'aretz, 2 July 1996.
68. Raine Marcus, 'Yariv: Solution must be political', Jerusalem Post, 30 July 1993.
69. A recent booklet distributed by the IDF's History Division explicitly recognises Hizb'Allah
as engaged in guerrilla, rather than terrorist operations as widely portrayed in the Israeli
media. It goes on to argue that for reasons of operational clarity, a clear distinction should be
made between Hizb'Allah on the one hand, and organisations such as Hamas and Islamic
Jihad on the other. This suggests that some at least within the IDF are willing to confer
legitimacy upon Hizb'Allah's military activities, if not the more extreme tenets of its ideotheology. See Amnon Barzilai, 'Zahal's History Division distributes pamphlet differentiating
between guerilla warfare and terrorist activity', Ha'aretz, 4 Aug. 1997.
70. The decision of the IDF high command to establish a 'guerrilla warfare school', designed to
impart lessons of the war in south Lebanon to troops about to serve operationally in the
security zone, is an implicit, if belated recognition by the IDF of the paucity of traditional
COIN methods in countering the military threat posed by Islamic Resistance. See the report,
'Zahal sets up guerilla warfare school to deal with Lebanon's Hizb'Allah', Yediot Aharanot,
16 Sept. 1997.