So the 2006 Mid East war rages on, and apparently is scheduled to end next week, because Bush has given Israel that long to finish destroying the ‘infrastructure’ of Hezbollah. It raises, in passing, an interesting question about the definition of ‘terrorist’ in international politics – surely if you possess ‘infrastructure’ you have passed into the last of Mao’s phases of guerilla warfare, and become a quasi-state?
A great deal of the infrastruture which the IDF are systematically destroying is civilian roads, bridges and utilities which sustain – or used to sustain – the normal daily life of the people of Lebanon, many of whom didn’t support Hezbollah before this week. A lot of it was built by Irish troops serving with UNIFIL as they tried to help restore normal life in south Lebanon while they were there. Hezbollah decided to enter Lebanese politics, and is now the largest single party in Lebanon, effectively ‘reversing into’ the state they were using as a base – but does this mean that the infrastructure of Lebanon is in any way a ‘legitimate target’?
One can’t but help wondering if there is an economic strategy at work here, as Israel tries to destroy the economies of any neighbouring state it can get away with bombing? However, building a reservoir of economic deprivation in the region is hardly a useful contribution to security.
Apart from the leaks of Bush’s ‘licence to kill’ policy, Israeli statements in the past few days they Syria and Iran are to blame give cause for concern. Last week, they said the Lebanese government was to blame for Hezbollah attacks on Israel, and then they pretty much destroyed the Lebanese economy. Since the Lebanese government never had enough money to build a big enough army, because they had not recovered from the wars of the 80s, this was hardly fair. Anyway, either Israel is pre-announcing attacks on Syria and Iran, is testing public opinion to see if it will tolerate such attacks, or is just raising the spectre of such attacks in order to later claim they were ‘restrained’
It is important to note that Hezbollah has got a great deal of support – hardware, money and intelligence – from Syria and Iran over the years. Without them, Hezbollah would be a much smaller organisation. However, since they will probably replace any hardware that Israel destroys in this war, it is hard to see how Israel can secure any more than a temporary respite from missile attacks from Lebanon. If Lebanon’s road network is significantly damaged, that process will be delayed. If most of the roads, and especially the bridges, in southern Lebanon, are destroyed, then the replacement weapons for Hezbollah will have to move along a limited number of routes. Israel can monitor those routes, follow the shipments and destroy them more easily. In striking at those convoys, they will not only destroy weapons, but also be inflict casualties on the Hezbollah members driving and leading the convoys. So some elements of Israeli targetting in southern Lebanon may make some sense – but not the ones we see on the front pages. No newspaper is going to print a picture of a destroyed bridge in the middle of some small village, when they can run with a shot of the fuel tanks at Beirut Airport.
It is remarkable how cyclical Israeli attacks on Lebanon are – since 1982, every ‘generation’ of the Israeli political establishment and IDF command has had a go at creating what they call a stable, non-hostile neighbour in Lebanon by bombing the country. Each time, they have been convinced they could make it work, that their plan and their execution of the plan was better than the previous ‘command generation’. I’m sure the majors and colonels running the operation on the ground now are convinced that they could do a better job than the brass back in Tel Aviv, and in 5 or 10 years time, they may well decide to try and prove that when they have risen to be the generals and ministers.
It still makes very little sense – Israel is using F-16s, tanks artillery and their navy to do a military task which would be more effectively handled by special forces, spy drones and some C4. They have invested a lot of money in being able to outgun any conventional force they will ever face, but using it for counter-terrorism is losing the ‘hearts and minds’ war everywhere from At Tiri to Galway.
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