International Politics - Are Israeli Tactics Working?

[theLIBERTARIAN]

Israel has a very strong army, but I really don't think they can get enough troops to win a war against Iran. No way. I am not sure Iran can win a war against Israel either.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Israel could secure an airport in Iran so they could start landing troops, but then what? I don't think they could beat the country. They could drop bombs on targets.

[Nictoe]

Both sides have been preparing for years for this current conflict. It might even make Iraq look insignificant. Funny how the massive Iraq mission was suppose to promote peace and stability in the region. Watch out for the growing domestic clamor to open up the spigots from the strategic petroleum reserve.

[theLIBERTARIAN]

[bestsynd]

US and Chinese Weapons and Technology Being Used in Israeli Hezbollah Conflict – Israelis Were Surprised by Attacks on Warship and Cities

July16th 2006



F-16



Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon have been able to launch rockets into southern Lebanon while Israeli artillery has fired into Lebanon. An estimated 45 people were killed and 100 injured in attacks on Lebanon by the Israeli military. The Canadian government says that eight vacationing Canadians were killed and six were critically wounded in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has been able to strike deep into Israel, which was not expected by the Israelis. Evidently some Israeli analysts were under the impression that they could launch an offensive into Lebanon with impunity. The International Herald Tribune reported that the Israelis claim that the rockets were a Syrian-produced copy of an Iranian Fajr-3 model. These rockets have a range of about 30 miles. This is a change from the smaller Katyushas rockets that Hezbollah has been using.
F-16

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[Nictoe]

Iran's Hizbollah says ready to attack US, Israel

Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:09pm ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.

"We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year," said Iranian Hizbollah's spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

"They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America's interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader's green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three ... we welcome it," he said.

Iranian religious organisations have made great public show of recruiting volunteers for "martyrdom-seeking operations" in recent years, usually threatening U.S. interests in case of any attack against the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.

But there is no record of an Iranian volunteer from these recruitment campaigns taking part in an attack.

Iran's Hizbollah (Party of God) says it is spiritually bound to Shi'ite Muslim guerrillas in Lebanon but its command structure and funding are unclear.

Despite Iranian Hizbollah's insistence that it takes orders from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, government ministries say Hizbollah does not implement official policy. Iran's government has said it hopes for a diplomatic solution to the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.

While Iran did fund and support Lebanese Hizbollah during the 1980s, Tehran says it has not contributed troops or weapons in the latest violence. Israel says Iranian armaments have been fired against it.

[theLIBERTARIAN]

If they were able to get a nuke in the harbor of Long Beach, it would devastate our economy.

[Nictoe]

As Lebanon bombing continues, the dead must wait

According to the Times:

Carpenters are running out of wood for coffins. Bodies are stacked three or four high in a truck at the local hospital morgue. The stench is spreading in the rubble.

The morbid reality of Israel's bombing campaign of the south is reaching almost every corner of this city. Just a few miles from the Rest House hotel, where the United Nations was evacuating civilians on Thursday, wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the village of Hosh, officials said.

Officials at the Tyre Government Hospital inside a local Palestinian refugee camp said they counted the bodies of 50 children among the 115 in the refrigerated truck in the morgue, though their count could not be independently confirmed.

The Times states that because of bombed-out roads and bridges, few families have been able to make it to the hospital to claim their dead. Even those relatives who reach the morgue are unable to arrange for proper burials. The city is prepared to begin burying the dead in mass graves, and the Tyre morgue has ordered more than 100 coffins with special handles, so they can more easily be removed from the ground for reburial later.

Still other bodies remaining rotting along the roadsides, because the dangers of removing them are too great for emergency workers to risk.

Even the UN peacekeepers packed up and left Tyre on Thursday. As they departed, there were fears of an even heavier bombardment and rumors of a full-fledged Israeli invasion.

[Nictoe]

There are burnt-out tanks, but few Israeli troops

Evidence in border villages shows heavy price paid for limited incursion

Jonathan Steele in Marwahin
Monday August 7, 2006

Guardian

It is perhaps the world's most dangerous road, snaking up and down through boulder-strewn hills and wadis along the Lebanese-Israeli border. By Israel's account, its forces are moving between four and six miles beyond it to take control of a long strip of Lebanese territory before the UN security council votes for a cessation of hostilities.
But reporters travelling along the border road on Saturday found few signs of an Israeli presence, let alone success. People in only one village had seen Israeli troops recently. Elsewhere, there was evidence of Israeli failures: burnt-out or crippled tanks. Despite the message of success Israel's generals and politicians are giving their public, the reality on the ground appeared mixed.

At the western end of the border road just inland from the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil) at Naqura, Hizbullah fighters were launching Katysuha rockets from positions within three miles of Israel.

Scarred

Driving east through Aalma ech Chaab and Dhaira, reporters could see clusters of antennae and army huts on the Israeli side of the border but no sign of any incursion.

At Marwahin, where the road offers a clear view of the greenhouses and neat red-tiled roofs of the Israeli community of Zarit only 200 yards away, the ground was scarred with tank tracks. A broken metal towing cable lay on the ground, an apparent sign of mishap. Nearby were bits of caterpillar track. A mile further at the junction of the side-road to Debel a burnt-out Merkava tank was stuck in the trees, its cannon pointing limply downwards.

Here the border runs along the top of a hill where a heavily fortified Israeli base sits cheek by jowl alongside UN monitoring position 5-42, a collection of white trailers and a watchtower inside blast walls. The road to Debel was littered with more broken tracks and towing cables. Hizbullah's resistance had clearly made its mark.

Beyond the Debel turnoff, reporters could hear a fierce battle for the village of Aita ech Chaab. Israeli shells and tank rounds were pounding it and setting fire to bushes on the hillsides to deny Hizbullah fighters cover. It is the only place on the north-south border where Israel seemed to be trying to advance.

Israel has not sought to penetrate the next village of Rmeish, which has a Christian population of several hundred. The last portion of the border before it turns north towards Metulla -the current centre of the fighting - contains the towns of Bint Jbeil and Aitaroun, which Israeli forces tried to take in the first days of the war and then withdrew after losing nine men.

The trip along the border road became possible when Israel allowed a UN convoy to bring food aid to the isolated Christian village of Debel. This was the first access to border villages for 10 days.

With one white armoured personnel carrier in front and another at the back, three UN food lorries set off from Naqura. The thump of outgoing tank and artillery rounds provided a constant accompaniment from the Israeli side.

In a press car behind the convoy sat the Archbishop of Tyre, clad in a white cassock. The Israeli onslaught has hit Shia Muslim villages hardest because of suspected links with Hizbullah's guerrilla fighters, but many Christans have stayed, their houses intact but their supplies dwindling fast.

Control

"They have the dignity of mountain people. They don't want to live as refugees in a school in Beirut", said Archbishop Chucrallah Hajje, while French and Ghanaian troops unloaded food parcels outside the small church.

Before the convoy set off from UN headquarters, monitors said Israeli forces came in by day but pulled back at night, remaining a few hundred yards inside the border. As a claim to control territory this seemed less than convincing. Israeli troops were still being shot at from villages, the observers said.

The deepest Israeli presence inside Lebanon that the convoy encountered was at Jibbain, a Sunni village two miles from the border. The archbishop wanted to give aid here too, in part to show his concern was not only for bringing aid to Christians.

On Sunday Israeli commandos landed near Mansouri on the coast north of Naqoura, killing a Lebanese army intelligence official and wounding seven soldiers. The purpose may have been to squeeze the Hizbullah launch teams between Jibbain and Mansouri.

If so, it would confirm that, rather than an occupation of south Lebanon, the Israelis are going for limited gains.

[bestsynd]

The United Nations Security Council passed UN Resolution 1701 on August 11th calling for the cessations of all hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. While not explicitly stating that Hezbollah disarm, it does imply it, according to the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

The resolution calls for Israel to stop "all offensive military operations" without defining what that means or making a comparable disarmament demand on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It leaves the option open for Israel to respond if, in its judgment, it faces what it believes is an imminent threat.

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[Nictoe]

I do believe that in the middle east, the term: 'cease fire' actually means...accelarated warfare. In that part of the region, one must always think the exact OPPOSITE to get at the truth.

[theLIBERTARIAN]

I am not sure what the whole operation accomplished. Also, it is interesting that Israel may have crossed into Lebanon, not the other way around. I guess the IDF has been doing that almost every day since 2000.

[bestsynd]

President Bush says that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have defeated Hezbollah guerillas. Many pundits have been saying that much of the Arab world views this as a victory for Hezbollah. They claim the small rebel force was able to stand-up to the strongest army in the Middle East.

The President said “Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis.” He said this at the State Department after a day of meetings with his top defense, diplomatic and national security advisers.

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[Nictoe]

Gee, I always thought the 'defeated' side is always suppose to give up its weapons.

Lebanon government compromise would allow Hezbollah to keep hidden weapons in south

15/08/2006

Lebanese army could deploy within two days

By Yoav Stern and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and News Agencies

A compromise agreement now being hammered out between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government would allow the Shi'ite guerillas to keep hidden weapons in south Lebanon, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Tuesday.

While Hezbollah would need to keep the weapons it possesses south of the Litani River hidden, an agreement for areas north of the river would be "left to a long term solution," the paper reported.

If the proposed compromise is accepted Tuesday by the Lebanese government, it would violate the terms of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ending the war in Lebanon. The resolution rules that the Lebanese army and UNIFIL may be the only armed forces in the territory between the Litani River south to the Israeli border.

[theLIBERTARIAN]

I wouldn't expect Hezbollah to give up there weapons. Who knows though.

[bestsynd]

Chaos broke out on the streets of Beirut Lebanon Thursday as pro-government university students clashed with Hezbollah supporters. There were cars set on fire and fights using homemade clubs and stones. The military was called in to quell the violence.

There were at least three killed and dozens wounded according to a report from the Associated Press (Reuters is reporting that there were four students killed). But the fallout reaches far beyond the casualty count. The clashes, sparked by a cafeteria scuffle between pro-government Sunni Muslims and pro-Hezbollah Shiites, has cast doubt on the government’s ability to keep order.

The Bush Administration has pleaded for calm in Lebanon, as forces work to topple the embattled Prime Minister Fouad Siniora government. Sean McCormack, State Department spokesman, told reporters that “There are certain irresponsible parties in Lebanon who have been provoking an atmosphere of confrontation and antagonism within the political system."

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