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Deterring Hizbullah

(Washington Post) Max Boot - While Israel can certainly inflict heavy losses on its foes, it cannot simply vanquish them and, instead, will have to live with adversaries on its borders in the hope that it can deter them from further hostilities in the near future. None of this is to deny that Israel has inflicted major blows against Hizbullah. Netanyahu summed up Israel's achievements in announcing the ceasefire on Tuesday: "We have taken out the organization's top leadership, we have destroyed most of their rockets and missiles, we have killed thousands of terrorists, and we demolished their underground terror infrastructure abutting our border, infrastructure they had been building for years." But it is clear that Hizbullah, while substantially degraded as a military force, is far from defeated. On Sunday, Hizbullah fired 250 rockets and other projectiles at central and northern Israel. Israel's Institute for National Security Studies reports that Hizbullah has lost 2,450 fighters out of 40,000 to 50,000. Hizbullah undoubtedly has tens of thousands of missiles and fighters left with which to rebuild its military capacity - and it is likely to return to southern Lebanon, next to the Israeli border - no matter what the ceasefire agreement states. As soon as Lebanese refugees return to southern Lebanon, Hizbullah fighters will be in their midst. Trying to prevent Hizbullah from rebuilding in the region would require Israeli soldiers to occupy southern Lebanon themselves. Israel can live with Hizbullah fighters on its frontiers as long as they are deterred from actually attacking Israel. The 2006 ceasefire agreement did buy 17 years of peace, and, if the current one does the same, it will be an important achievement - one that will allow more than 60,000 Israeli refugees to return to their homes and rebuild their communities in northern Israel.
2024-11-28 00:00:00
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