The current mini-war between Israel and Hezbollah inspires a serious case of deja vu. It bears striking similarities to the Israel Defense Forces’ spring 1996 “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” and carrying important lessons for today. The 1996 operation, while ostensibly aiming to paralyze Hezbollah’s operational capacity, claimed hundreds of Lebanese civilian lives while gaining precious little relief for Israel’s beleagured northern population, which was then, as now, the target of incessant Hezbollah rocket attacks. Today, of course, the major difference is that Hezbollah is bolder and possesses an array of new long-range rocketry capable of hitting more distant and populous Israeli targets, as well as guided missiles of the sort used to hit a state-of-the-art Israeli corvette-class missile boat last week, killing four sailors and striking perhaps the greatest blow to Israel’s image of military supremacy since Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli commando raiding team on the Lebanese coast in 1998, killing fifteen. As Israel invests ever-greater military resources in its pursuit of Hezbollah, the potential for unprecedented escalation grows ever greater. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has warned of “new surprises” awaiting Israel; the IDF, meanwhile, has destroyed his home and headquarters in Beirut and has made public its intention to kill him, while bombing targets throughout Lebanon, including along the Syrian border. Yet the most striking parallel of all between the current episode and the 1996 mini-war is that Israel, for all its military might, cannot “win,” where victory is defined as a serious crippling of Hezbollah’s striking capacity, and an emerging regional context in which Hezbollah and Islamic extremism as a whole are marginalized.
 
Of course, two general rules of modern warfare have already stacked the odds against Israel’s success: first, escalating violence against religious extremism tends to beget more extremism, especially when massive (and seemingly avoidable) civilian casualties are inflicted. Second, a conventional army has rarely been able to dislodge a highly motivated and well-equipped guerilla army, with Israel’s 1982 ill-fated Lebanese invasion serving as a prime example. But there are deeper reasons why this operation may well serve to weaken Israel’s position vis-a-vis Hezbollah, and for these I turn again to the lessons of 1996.
 
Living in on Kibbutz Grofit in southern Israel at the time, I happened to become close with the family of then-Major General Moshe Ya’alon, at the time the chief of Israeli military intelligence (he would later be appointed chief of staff, to be replaced last year by the current chief of staff, Dan Halutz). The general would come home most Friday nights to spend some time with his family before departing the following day for headquarters. During these visits we spoke repeatedly about political and military matters, and in the midst of the 1996 bombing campaign I asked him why, despite Israel’s stated goal of crippling Hezbollah, the IDF avoided hitting its top leadership, going so far as to strike Hezbollah offices on the fourth floor of a Beirut high-rise at 7 AM, when the Israelis knew the offices would be empty. He replied that on previous occasions when Israel had struck serious blows at Hezbollah- a 1992 aerial attack on a training camp in which dozens of guerillas were killed, and the 1994 assassination of commander Sheikh Abbas Musawi by Israeli helicopters- Hezbollah had retaliated with strikes against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad. These were the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing over thirty, and the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community centre, in which 85 were killed. Both these bombings, the general told me, were assisted by the Iranian secret services. Escalation against Hezbollah, Israel had learned, could carry a terrible price.
 
Thus evolved the Israeli strategy of holding the Lebanese government- and by extension, Syria- accountable for Hezbollah attacks by bombing Lebanese civilian infrastructure, a form of collective punishment on a grand scale that forces all Lebanese to suffer for Hezbollah’s actions. Indeed, a 1993 bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon was codenamed “Operation Accountability.” Since its inception, this policy has been a charade; Israel knows full well that the Lebanese government is unable- and Syria unwilling- to rein in Hezbollah. Instead of turning Lebanese public opinion against Hezbollah, these policies tend chiefly to embitter Lebanese civilians against Israel, quite understandably. Presumably, then, the strategy is calibrated to satisfy Israeli public opinion, which tends to demand some form of retaliation for strikes by Hamas, Hezbollah, or other guerilla/terrorist organizations. It does little if anything to weaken the organizations responsible for attacking Israel, and serves to greatly tarnish Israel’s international standing (the fallout from the deaths of seven vacationing Canadians in an Israeli airstrike yesterday in Aitaroun has yet to reach its crescendo).
 
Indeed, the 1996 operation came in the wake of the assassination by a Jewish extremist of Israel’s popular PM Yitzhak Rabin and his replacement by perennial political loser Shimon Peres, who sought to shore up his military credentials with elections looming; he lost anyways to the right-wing Likud candidate, Bibi Netanyahu. Today, an unproven coalition of politicians with no military background- Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and defense minister Amir Peretz- similarly need to prove themselves to the security-craving Israeli public, although the response of previous PM and former general Ariel Sharon to a similar crisis would hardly have been less severe. My point here is not to insinuate that Israeli politicians have launched this campaign against Hezbollah primarily for personal political gain, but simply to underscore that the strategy they have adopted makes little strategic sense, has never succeeded in weakening Hezbollah in the past, and is unlikely to succeed now. Even when Israel has devoted considerable military resources to hunting Hezbollah operatives by air throughout Lebanon, as it eventually did in 1996, it has not succeeded in substantially reducing the number of rockets fired across the border. The guerillas and their rockets are too numerous, too mobile, and too difficult to detect from the air. Meanwhile, the cost of an Israeli ground assault would be prohibitive, as illustrated last week at the outset of the fighting when an Israeli tank in pursuit of Hezbollah attackers struck a mine, killing five Israeli soldiers. For all its technological sophistication, then, Israel’s hands are tied.
 
Ironically, if any government could truly be held accountable for aiding and abbetting Hezbollah, it would not be hapless and fragmented Lebanon but rather Hezbollah’s ideological and material benefactor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s emergent nuclear weapons program and increasingly sophisticated military, however, guarantee against Israeli strikes while enabling its leadership to taunt Israel with impunity. Meanwhile, if past history is any indication, the “surprises” promised by Hezbollah chief Nasrallah may well come in the form of new strikes against Israeli and/or Jewish targets around the world, which Israel would be relatively powerless to prevent. Other possiblities involve the deployment of weaponry as yet unseen in the history of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, such as Iranian-made rockets capable of hitting the outskirts of Tel Aviv, rockets that, unlike larger SCUDs or cruise missiles, cannot be shot down be Israel’s antimissile missile systems, and already exist in Hezbollah arsenals. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, Hezbollah is also likely to deploy more Iranian-made guided missiles of the sort already used to hit the Israeli naval ship, and may also acquire antiaircraft missiles to defend against Israeli warplanes- the loss of even one or two Israeli aircraft would represent another psychological blow to Israel, if not a tactical one, and would also represent a victory for Iran and the hundred or so military advisors from the elite Republican Guard that Israel insists are guiding Hezbollah’s moves from Lebanon (Iran denies any such presence). Meanwhile Hezbollah’s rockets have already claimed a toll in Israeli lives significantly greater than any previous rocket barrage, and have demonstrated a brand-new ability to strike deep into Israeli territory with a boldness seldom seen even in the midst of conventional Arab-Israeli wars.
 
For its part, in order to strike a substantive blow to Hezbollah, Israel must either kill Hassan Nasrallah and several of his chief advisors, which it has vowed to do, or kill a number of Hezbollah’s Iranian advisors. Both options dramatically increase the likelihood of escalation by Hezbollah and Iran, especially including strikes against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad, and neither threatens to significantly weaken Hezbollah’s political or military capacity. First, these leaders could easily be replaced; second, any such blows would be compensated for by a tremendous surge in Hezbollah popularity and recruitment, and likely a stronger military link with Iran. Like in 1996, Israel, for all its might, cannot protect its citizens against Hezbollah rockets- this time an even more abundant supply of longer-range rockets with larger warheads. Meanwhile, the world is made to understand yet again the power of religiously-driven, low-tech, well-organized militant organizations against states and their standing armies, and the ability of the Arab-Israeli conflict to unite unlikely allies- this time, Sunni Hamas and Shi’a Hezbollah- against their common Jewish enemy.                      

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