The Agony of Stalemate

Israel entered the conflict in Lebanon with several counts against it - mainly related to the ability of its army to transcend the political environment in which the Israeli government must operate with respect to Lebanon, the Arab world, and the United States. The first, it seemed, was what many people saw as the absolute political necessity of the military mission. The new prime minister was running the risk of appearing weak in front of his sworn enemies, and it appears that in a way this conflict was forced upon him by an eager public and an impatient defense establishment. The second count appears to be the inherent difficulty of the military mission itself - digging out enemy combat infrastructure deeply embedded within a state that the Israeli government would prefer not to antagonize. The third appears to be that Hizbullah not only had no fear of the Israel Defense Forces, they expressed particular disdain for the Lebanese government, even to the point of encouraging its collapse. The fourth is that the public relations aspect of the war favored Hizbullah from the conflict's outset. The IDF's particular initial strategy - taking out infrastructure from the air with very little ground combat activity - played directly into Hizbullah's strategy of using civilians and civilian infrastructure as cover for military operations. The tragedy and simultaneous PR fiasco of Qana was in every way an inevitability given the IDF's over-reliance on air power. The fifth was that however counterfeit the message of Hizbullah and no matter how skeptical common Lebanese were of it, an Israeli onslaught would push a majority of Lebanese into their camp. The sixth and last problem I will mention here is that the Israeli government understood from the beginning that they would not be given a permanent green light and blank check from the U.S. to blast away on the territory on which the U.S. had recently invested so much diplomatic capital and political energy. There would be a time limit.

There are other lesser reasons that could be enumerated here as well. These problems going into the IDF's operation meant that military dilemmas became political ones, and vice versa. As Stratfor notes in a report this evening:

Israel's problem is twofold. First, from where we sit, the operation looks to be going slowly. That could be because Israel is moving cautiously to reduce Hezbollah positions with minimal casualties to Israeli forces. Alternatively, it could be because Hezbollah is putting up stiff resistance. It is hard to tell from a distance, but Nasrallah's statement seemed to concede what logic would indicate, which is that Hezbollah is fighting hard but is unlikely to win in the south.

The second problem is that simply taking Lebanon up as far as the Litani River achieves neither of Israel's goals. One of these goals is to eliminate the threat of rocket attacks. To do this even for the short-range rockets, Israel must move beyond the Litani, by at least ten miles; to completely eliminate the threat they must move substantially further north, at least into the Bekaa
Valley. Its other stated goal is to crush Hezbollah as a fighting force. That means eliminating Hezbollah forces not only south of Beirut but in the Beirut area and in the Bekaa Valley. If Israel simply stops at the Litani, it has only a partial solution. On the other hand, the Israelis have not even finished Hezbollah in the south.

So, Stratfor maintains that facts on the ground would indicate that the IDF has neither time nor ease of mission on its side. Other problems remain:

One of the things that the Israelis said Thursday was that there is an intelligence problem. There were stories in the Arab press that the Israeli raid on the hospital in Baalbek was intended to capture Nasrallah -- who indeed was captured, but it was the wrong Hassan Nasrallah, captured while playing cards with friends. We don't know if this story is true, but we do know that Israel has not been able to shut down Hezbollah rocket fire, which is more an intelligence problem than a targeting issue. There are too many rockets in too many unknown places.

Meanwhile, Uzi Dayan -- former commander of Sayeret Matkal, an elite unit -- said Israel needs "bargaining chips" in the form of Hezbollah leaders, in order to secure the return of captured Israeli soldiers. That was an interesting statement, not because it was official -- it wasn't -- but because it indicated the mood of senior Israeli military leaders. If you are looking for bargaining chips, you expect to be bargaining.