Paradigm shift: how Hezbollah won the July 2006 war

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2008/04/paradigm-shift-how-hezbollah-won-july.html

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The Israelis only deceive themselves when they use alibis — bad decisions or inadequate preparation — to ‘explain’ their military failures. Ever since their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in April 2000, the Israeli leadership had prepared for the occasion to deal a knockout blow to Hezbollah. Indeed, when the Israelis launched their latest invasion of Lebanon, they had had more than six years to prepare.

The Hezbollah too had prepared. Without fanfare, but with dedication, discipline, skill, and cunning, the Hezbollah leaders assembled an arsenal of low-tech rockets as well as more advanced missiles; they built secret bunkers; they laid out defensible communications; they acquired capabilities in electronic warfare; they used drones and eaves-dropping equipment to gather information; they placed spies inside Israel; they studied their enemy; and, most importantly, they had planned and trained, while maintaining the highest secrecy.

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Israel had started the war against Lebanon, convinced that it could destroy Hezbollah or greatly diminish its military force within a few days — and do it with air power alone. Israel’s decision to end the war 33 days later, even as Hezbollah kept up its barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel, was a dark chapter in Israel’s military history. Israel’s military might had been neutralised by a seemingly Lilliputian adversary.

In July 2006, agility and cunning favoured the Hezbollah. Consider the victories that Israel failed to score against this tiny but agile foe: it failed to destroy or jam Hezbollah’s communications network; to knock out its television and radio stations; to kill or capture Hassan Nasrallah; or to dent Hezbollah’s ability to launch Katyusha rockets into Israel.

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The Hezbollah scored its most impressive military victory in the area of intelligence. Israel’s electronic warfare systems are amongst the most advanced in the world; they are war-tested and developed in cooperation with the United States. Indeed, the Israeli commanders were certain at the outset of the war of their ability to jam Hezbollah communications. They were wrong. Hezbollah’s command and control system remained operational throughout the war; they evaded Israeli jamming devices by using fibre optic lines instead of relying on wireless signals.

The Hezbollah had blocked the Barak anti-missile system on Israeli ships; hacked into Israeli battlefield communications in order to monitor Israeli tank movements; and, they monitored cell phone conversations in Hebrew between Israeli reservists and their families. They intercepted Israeli military communications on battlefield casualties and announced them on their media network. They successfully employed decoys to hide the location of hundreds of bunkers they had built in southern Lebanon to store weapons and shelter their fighters. As a world leader in weapons technology and communications, Israel had held a decisive advantage in electronic warfare in its wars with Arab armies. The Hezbollah neutralised this advantage.

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If the Hezbollah can extend these advantages, if it can add shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to its arsenal and bring down a few Israeli helicopters and jets, Israel could quickly lose its unchallenged control over Lebanese skies. Israel’s daily and wanton violations of Lebanese airspace would also come to an end.

The Hezbollah offers Israel a new kind of asymmetric warfare: it combines low-tech guerilla tactics with sophisticated missile and communications technology. Understandably, the Israelis find these Hezbollah achievements hard to digest. What the world witnessed in Lebanon in July 2006 were events that contain the potential for shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Earlier, the Iraqi insurgents had demonstrated that they can make an occupation — even by the world’s greatest power — very costly. Now, the Hezbollah had shown that a disciplined guerilla force, with access to advanced missiles, can repel the most powerful invading army.

It appears that the weapons gap that had opened up in recent decades between western powers and the weaker, technologically backward nations may be closing....Will the 21st century herald the dawn of another era of gains for movements of resistance across Asia, Africa and Latin America?