orit

Friday, October 8, 1999

How we won the war in Lebanon
By Orit Shohat

On September 19, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz declared that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had defeated Hezbollah. Why did he choose that particular date to announce the IDF's victory? Because that was the day on which Ma'ariv's Yom Kippur edition appeared and Mofaz was asked to make a festive statement after having completed his first year as chief of staff."To the best of my understanding," he was quoted as saying, "we have triumphed over Hezbollah." After uttering this proclamation, he felt in good enough spirits to make the kind of optimistic predictions that are better left unsaid for fear that they could bring bad luck. He spoke of increasing frustration among the ranks of Hezbollah, of the fact that its members no longer dare to fire Katyusha rockets at Israel, of the improved performance of our military intelligence, and of the drop in the number of victims of Hezbollah attacks.

After such euphoric statements from Mofaz, one is strongly tempted to ask him why on earth we are planning to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the near future? If we are in such a great position, why should we leave?

The rosy vision Mofaz conjured up on the eve of Yom Kippur was further beautified by the head of the Northern Command, Brigadier-General Effie Eitam, in an interview he granted on the eve of the festival of Sukkot. Eitam described Israel's victory over Hezbollah as an achievement with significant international ramifications: "I think that the IDF has made an important innovation here, an innovation that is a major contribution to western culture in its battle against guerrilla warfare. The IDF has succeeded in formulating ... creative intellectual processes that have enabled us to develop patterns of operation in areas where we enjoy an advantage. These operational patterns have produced a serious headache for Hezbollah."

I suggest reading the interview with Eitam from start to finish to anyone who wants to know what megalomania is all about.

Rather than admit that the operations of the IDF's elite patrol units against Hezbollah have been a dismal failure, Eitam simply says that "this format has outlived its usefulness." Nor does he reveal that the top brass fears convoys could be easy targets for road-side bombs and prefers to avoid dispatching them, using instead Lebanese subcontractors to deliver supplies to our troops.

Eitam makes no reference to casualties sustained by the South Lebanon Army (SLA) although, from a military standpoint, these are really IDF casualties. He does not mention the fact that IDF soldiers prefer to remain in the shelter of their well-protected outposts. Nor does he mention the massive bombing raids carried by the Israel Air Force in order to reduce the risks faced by our ground troops. There are today some senior commanders serving on Israel's northern frontier who say the IDF is acting like an army in retreat, just trying to stay alive and therefore keeping its operations to a bare minimum. But this does not stop Eitam from talking as if he has everything under control.

"What makes the United States a superpower?" Eitam asks rhetorically. "Well, first of all, there is America's control of outer space. The moment the Americans find a way of conducting continuous observation of the entire globe, the world will gradually 'flatten itself out' because there will be much less chance of doing things covertly. If you can create a time-space continuum, then you are definitely in the driver's seat."

Readers frightened by this comparison between America and Israel might well ask themselves: "What, in heaven's name, is Eitam talking about?" What he is doing is trying to explain how intellectual creativity can turn mountainous Lebanon into a flat plain. "To illustrate this point," he elaborates, "let us think of Lebanon as a blanket with a number of folds. Up until now, the purpose of our combat actions has been to create an edge for ourselves despite the folds in the blanket. Now we have decided that we will use elements that will flatten out the folds .... We understood that we would have to create a process that would flatten out the folds and would, in effect, turn the entire surface into a desert or an ocean."

The main problem with this pretentious image is that one shooting incident resulting in several deaths is enough to turn the entire picture upside down. The plain will once again become a series of mountains and the desert Eitam is describing will become a roller coaster ride. Hezbollah needs only one day of successful fighting to turn this whole concept of control of the time-space continuum into a tragedy of bereavement and failure.

One off-target bomb dropped by the IAF would be enough to produce a lethal retaliatory unleashing of Katyusha rockets against communities in northern Israel and to make us totally rethink the wisdom of massive bombing raids, while some genius will pop up with an idea for an innovative intellectual alternative. Why is Eitam speaking of an international patent we have invented to effectively put the lid on guerrilla warfare, when experience has shown us time and again that Hezbollah has always found counter-patents to everything we have come up with? After a bomb killed Brigadier General Erez Gerstein, Barak announced his intention to pull back all Israeli troops from Lebanon.

The bottom line of our involvement in Lebanon is not a stunning military achievement, but rather a crushing moral defeat. Any "victories" we can claim in Lebanon are ephemeral, accidental and they last only until the death of the next senior Israeli army commander or until the number of soldiers killed in Lebanon exceeds the emotional capacity of Israeli society.

The facts on the ground in Lebanon must never be forgotten. The term "victory" is measured today - justly or not - by the number of dead bodies and not by our ability to stretch flat a folded blanket. Any victory we can speak of is temporal and deceptive. Hezbollah will not surrender its weapons and its soldiers will not run away from the battle. Nothing could possibly have justified the trumpet-blowing of these two holiday season interviews