Chris At Home

to killing Hezbullah leader Nasrallah.

International commitments to exclude the Hezbollah militia from southern Lebanon and to disarm it already seem hollow, said the commander, who had a well-placed view of the war and its planning and has extensive experience in Lebanon.
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He also emphasized that, despite criticism from the Israeli public and even troops of the performance of the Army and government, he considered the threat and the fighting ability of Hezbollah to have been severely diminished.

Furthermore, he made it clear that Sheik Nasrallah remained a target as the leader of a group that Israel and the United States have labeled terrorist. “There’s only one solution for him,” he said. At another point, he said simply, “This man must die.”
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Israel and the United States, however, view Hezbollah as a tool of non-Arab Iran, which created it, and of Syria, which supports and helps to supply it, rather than being loyal to Lebanon and its multireligious government.

Israel, the officer said, views Hezbollah as “Iran’s western front’’ and, regardless of how poorly the new United Nations forces may perform, he argued, Israel will benefit from new international support for the extension of Lebanese sovereignty to the Israeli border, made most visible in the deployment of the Lebanese Army.

Israel planned a 15-day air campaing to force a ceasefire, but was surprised by the resistance, especially the number of modern anti-tank weapons. He says that Hezbullah knows that the IDF can destroy them at anytime, despite the terrorists' claim of victory.

The Israeli Army scored two important achievements, he confirmed. First, good intelligence allowed it to knock out up to 80 percent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range missile launchers in the first two days of the air war, preventing Sheik Nasrallah from firing a longer-range Iranian Zelzal missile on Tel Aviv.

More important, Israel was able to destroy launchers within 45 seconds to a minute after they were used, which no other army in the world can do with regularity, he said. Employing drones, radar, precision weapons and artillery, Israel could track a launching and bomb it.

But it could not do that with the thousands of short-range Katyusha rockets. They are small and easily portable, can be fired from buildings or simple metal tripods or even fired with a simple timer.

This is an interesting insight into the mindset of the IDF leaders and government. They still say they did what they set out to do: force a ceasefire that gave them increased leverage over Hezbullah and the UN's backing for Lebanese sovereignty over its territory. I don't think anyone outside of Israel feels they succeeded.