Warriors of God (69 page)

The antirocket shield has been trumpeted as a major technological breakthrough, the culmination of a decade and a half searching for a solution to the threat posed by Hezbollah's rockets. According to the Israeli media, the Iron Dome system “aced” its field tests, successfully shooting down numerous calibers of rocket and even mortar rounds. But it is uncertain how it will fare in a wartime scenario against multiple rocket barrages from Lebanon. Critics claim the concept is prohibitively expensive, noting the exorbitant cost of the interceptor missiles (estimated at $300,000 to $400,000 each for David's Sling and $35,000 to $50,000 each for Iron Dome) compared with the few hundred dollars each for Hezbollah's Katyusha and Hamas's Qassam rockets they are meant to defeat. Iron Dome's manufacturer, the state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems—the same company that developed the Spike antitank missile in the 1990s—says that the system is intended to target only those rockets that are heading toward towns and villages. The rockets falling toward unpopulated areas will be left alone.

The real flaw, however, is that the antirocket systems are a tactical solution to a strategic problem. The threat posed by the rockets of Hamas and particularly Hezbollah is not in the number of casualties nor the amount of direct damage they inflict, but in the disruption they cause to normal life in Israel. When fighting flares along the border, the residents of northern Israel are instructed to enter the bunkers or leave their homes for safer areas farther south regardless of whether Hezbollah actually launches rockets. During the flare-up in fighting in February 2000, Hezbollah paralyzed life in northern Israel for 48 hours at a cost of $2.4 million a day in lost business without firing a single rocket across the border.

No matter how effective the Iron Dome and David's Sling systems, they cannot neutralize the strategic dilemma caused by Hezbollah's rockets. For example, if Hezbollah fires ten thousand rockets into northern Israel in the next war and 80 percent of them are knocked out of the sky by interceptor missiles, that still leaves two thousand rockets falling on the heads of Israeli citizens. Does the Israeli army tell the residents of the north not to bother heading to the bunkers or moving south because only two thousand rockets are coming their way instead of ten thousand?

The Israeli public may discover that in the next war the costly antirocket batteries will not be deployed to defend their homes and businesses but will be installed around key strategic sites in Israel such as industrial and infrastructure centers and army and air force bases, which are expected to be the focus of Hezbollah's newly acquired guided missiles.

Even the antimissile defenses for Israel's fleet of Merkava Mark 4 tanks may struggle against the “swarming” tactics being further developed by Hezbollah's antitank units. From the mid-1990s, Hezbollah practiced firing multiple missiles at a single Israeli tank or APC with the aim of detonating the panels of reactive armor, thereby exposing the steel skin and making it vulnerable to a follow-up missile. The tactic was used extensively during the 2006 war, although it involved the expenditure of large numbers of relatively expensive advanced antitank missiles such as the AT-14 Kornet for each target. To overcome the new defensive measures being installed on Israeli Merkava tanks, Hezbollah fighters have hinted to me that they will double up the swarming tactic by firing large numbers of relatively unsophisticated and cheap rockets and missiles, such as recoilless rifles, RPGs, and older antitank missile systems. That could explain the inclusion of three thousand antitank rounds for 106 mm recoilless rifles found by Israeli naval commandos when they stormed the cargo vessel
Francop
in 2009. The 106 mm recoilless rifle is considered obsolete by most armies and is incapable of piercing the armor of modern tanks, especially those as well protected as the Merkava Mark 4. But it is accurate to a thousand yards and would be an effective, and economical, swarming weapon in tandem with RPGs and
the smaller man-portable SPG-9 73 mm recoilless rifles with which Hezbollah is also equipped to overwhelm Israeli armor defenses. Once the panels of reactive armor have been destroyed, the killing blow could then be delivered by a more advanced missile such as the Kornet AT-14.

In October 2008, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the IDF's Northern Command, unveiled the so-called “Dahiyah doctrine,” named after Beirut's southern suburbs where Hezbollah's leadership resides. The doctrine states that in a future war, Hezbollah areas would be flattened, similar to the destruction inflicted on Dahiyah in the 2006 conflict. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause damage and destruction,” he said in an interview with Israel's
Yedioth Ahronoth
newspaper. “From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

The idea was expanded upon by Gabriel Siboni, the Israeli military strategist, who recommended swift strikes that prioritized infrastructure assets over rocket launchers.
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In Syria, Siboni added, punishment should be aimed at the leadership, the military, and the state infrastructure. In Lebanon, Hezbollah targets should be hit simultaneously with economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organization. “Moreover, the closer the relationship between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, the more the elements of the Lebanese state infrastructure should be targeted,” he wrote. Siboni's article was written a year before two Hezbollah ministers joined the coalition government headed by Saad Hariri. “Such a response will create a lasting memory among Syrian and Lebanese decision makers, thereby increasing Israeli deterrence and reducing the likelihood of hostilities against Israel for an extended period,” Siboni added.

The public threats and articulation of a massive and disproportionate bombing campaign against Lebanon is intended, first and foremost, to deter Hezbollah from launching a war. If a conflict does break out,
however, Israeli strategists believe that attempting to crush Hezbollah with militarily force cannot succeed. Hunting for camouflaged and mobile rocket launchers and flushing Hezbollah fighters from their underground lairs is labor-intensive and will incur heavy troop casualties without any guarantee of success.

“For practical reasons, we cannot defeat Hezbollah,” Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security advisor during the governments of Ariel Sharon, told me. “We have to define Lebanon as our enemy. The Lebanese government must know that it has only two possibilities: one, to let the relative calm continue, and two, that a war will devastate Lebanon.”

A foretaste of what the Lebanese can expect in the next war came at the end of December 2008, when Israel launched a three-week ground and air offensive against Gaza. Dubbed by Israel as Operation Cast Lead, the purpose was to inflict massive damage on Hamas, which not only retained a military wing but also had administered Gaza since winning legislative elections in January 2006. Israeli military engineers neutralized many of Hamas's IEDs by jamming radio frequencies and using brute force, with armored D-9 bulldozers clearing paths for troops. Coordination among separate military units—ground troops, artillery, air force, and navy—was greatly improved. Frontline commanders for the first time were allocated direct control over air support operations, including UAVs, without the need to pass requests through the Israeli Air Force. Many new technological systems were fielded for the first time, including remote control surveillance vehicles and handheld tennis-ball-shaped reconnaissance cameras that could be thrown inside buildings for 360-degree coverage of the interior.

Hamas's military performance was poor. The Palestinian group had borrowed some of Hezbollah's tactics—including the construction of bunkers and tunnels and extensive use of IEDs and antiarmor missiles—while firing rockets into Israel. But the qualitative differences between Hamas's capabilities and those of Hezbollah, as well as their respective operational environments, were enormous.

By the time fighting ended on January 17, Israel had achieved a tactical victory over Hamas, helping restore some confidence within the IDF and the Israeli public after the debacle of the 2006 war against Hezbollah.

But Israel's use of overwhelming force against Gaza and the high number of Palestinian casualties (around thirteen hundred, mostly civilians) and widespread destruction to property drew international reproach and led to a precedent-setting UN inquiry, the results of which could have legal ramifications for Israel's future conduct in war. The inquiry headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, found that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes, but the bulk of the final report's criticism was directed at the Jewish state. The Goldstone report could complicate Israel's plans to implement the Dahiyah doctrine in Lebanon. The promised destruction of Lebanese infrastructure in the next war has already garnered the attention of international human rights groups.

In some respects, the Dahiyah doctrine is a throwback to the air and artillery offensives the IDF waged against Hezbollah in the 1990s—the seven-day Operation Accountability in July 1993 and the sixteen-day Grapes of Wrath in April 1996. Both operations were intended to inflict punishment on Lebanese civilians and government for supporting Hezbollah's resistance campaign against the IDF in south Lebanon. They both failed because Israel misunderstood the dynamics between Hezbollah and the civilian population and the realities of the Lebanon-Syria relationship in which Beirut was subordinate to Damascus and could not have blocked Hezbollah even if it had wanted to. Furthermore, Israel's excessive use of firepower (in which a total of 280 Lebanese died in the two operations) cost the sympathy of the international community.

The difference between the 1990s operations and the Dahiyah doctrine is that the former campaigns were tactical knee-jerk responses to deteriorating situations in south Lebanon rather than a component of a long-term strategy. The Dahiyah doctrine has been conceived in a different political environment to that of the mid-1990s. Hezbollah's popularity has declined since 2000, with the Lebanese today evenly split over Hezbollah's armed status. Israel anticipates that if the Dahiyah doctrine were implemented against Lebanon, the backlash in the aftermath would further erode Hezbollah's domestic standing.

Yet the real utility of the doctrine lies in its powers of deterrence rather than its application. Israel regularly promotes the doctrine to scare the Lebanese and to discourage Hezbollah from creating mischief out of fear of the repercussions on its core Shia constituency. On this level, the Dahiyah doctrine has some purpose. The flaw in the doctrine will emerge, however, if a conflict arises and Israel chooses to launch an overwhelming assault on Lebanese infrastructure. In such an event, Hezbollah will not play by Israel's rules and merely retire chastened when the IDF decides after a few days that sufficient punishment has been inflicted on Lebanon. On the contrary, Hezbollah will press on with its attack and Israel will be forced to respond and get dragged into an inevitable ground campaign with the resulting high casualties and uncertain outcome.

Hezbollah's unprecedented military buildup since 2006 in arms, technology, and manpower, coupled with the IDF's reconfiguration to fight a war on its northern front and the creation of the Dahiyah doctrine, suggests that the next conflict will be fought with few restraints.

Hezbollah believes that the scale of the next war will be of such magnitude that the result will change the political shape of the Middle East and will even mark the beginning of the end of Israel. Since 2006, the notion that Israel faces imminent destruction has become a cornerstone of Nasrallah's speeches. In August 2007, he addressed the Israelis, saying, “If you Zionists think of launching a war on Lebanon, I will not promise you surprises like the ones that happened [in 2006], but I promise you a big surprise that could change the course of the war and the fate of the region.” Nasrallah elaborated on this theme in February 2008, saying that the “elimination of Israel from existence is inevitable because this is a historical and divine law from which there is no escape. This is definite.”

Other than heavenly decree, Nasrallah listed several more prosaic
reasons why he believes Israel is doomed in the long term. Among them were the fact that Israel was an “alien entity” in a region of mainly Arabs and Muslims; the continued determination of the Palestinian people to return to their homeland despite six decades of exile; declining international support for Israel; the higher Palestinian birthrate (the so-called “demographic weapon”); the moral decay he sees within Israeli society; and the waning reputation of the Israeli army.

Nasrallah argues that if one accepts that the IDF is the backbone of Israel, then its defeat will presage the downfall of the Jewish state. In February 2008, Nasrallah warned Israel it would experience in the next war “a fight that you have never witnessed throughout your history.”

“Your army, your tanks, the remainder of your standing, and the remainder of your deterrence will be destroyed in the south, and Israel will remain without an army,” he said. “When Israel becomes without an army, it will no longer exist.”

Such thunderous and apocalyptic predictions are part of Hezbollah's skillful information operations, a tool of psychological warfare to help bolster Hezbollah's deterrence posture against Israel and preserve the “balance of terror.” But for the grassroots cadres of the Islamic Resistance, Nasrallah's promises of Israel's imminent destruction are not dismissed as mere rhetorical flourishes but are absorbed and accepted, becoming an article of faith that is further sustained by the intense training programs and exhaustive battle plans for the next war. In numerous conversations with Hezbollah fighters since 2006, I hear the same rigid, unassailable confidence that Israel will be defeated and destroyed in the next war.