There is something that does not quite add up in the belated US drive for peace in the Lebanon. It is not simply that the UN cease-fire resolution rides roughshod over the protests of the Lebanese government whose country is being violated by Israeli aggression. It is increasingly noted all over the world that the so-called invincible Israeli military has failed — and is failing — to crush Hezbollah and, in particular, it even appears unable to stop the daily barrage of rockets fired from southern Lebanon into Israel.
It takes nothing away from the bravery of Hezbollah fighters to say that this is a battle that few expected them to win. The sheer range and quantity of the largely US-supplied military technology that the Israelis can bring to bear on Hezbollah units fighting in a remarkably small area south of the Litani River — about 150 square miles — is overwhelming. At the start of the conflict, we saw Israeli footage of precision-guided bombs destroying missile sites or, in the raid on the Bekaa Valley, taking out individual vehicles that innocently or not were moving along the road toward the hospital, which Israeli commandoes had seized. Even allowing for the fact that Hezbollah may be launching missiles from a few miles north of the Litani, it is still an extremely small battlefield for Israeli drones to patrol. With all the technology at their fingertips, Israel’s commanders surely ought to be able to pinpoint any rocket site, well before missiles have been launched from it.
Yet Hezbollah’s weapons continue to smash into Israel. Why?
Can it be that Israel wants these headline-grabbing events to continue? Does the government need the death and destruction Hezbollah is causing to fuel the anger of ordinary Israelis and ensure continued backing for Israeli aggression? Or might it be that as long as Hezbollah rockets are exploding on Israeli soil, Israel can justify its continued bombardment of Lebanon? Without Hezbollah’s attacks, Israel would stand exposed as the military bully that it is and the current international outcry at its aggression become serious and well-articulated outrage.
The story is being circulated that the White House is angry that its Israeli allies have failed to deliver the expected military victory in the breathing space Washington’s diplomats secured. This could be a smoke screen. Though Hezbollah of course denies it, there are now reliable reports that in the continuing free-for-all, targeted Israeli raids are degrading their opponents. The latest Israeli pinpoint raid was on a Tyre apartment block, ostensibly because a rocket had been fired from it. There must have been more behind this action; otherwise why would Israeli commanders have sent in ground troops rather then a precision bomb?
It looks very much as if, in the fog of war, the Israelis and their US allies are actually pursuing another carefully conceived and highly destructive plan. So at the moment, they have no interest in destroying all Hezbollah’s missiles any more than they really wanted to kill Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in the raid on Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters on the first day of their savage aggression.
