Israel’s Attack Is 3-Pronged

With the air war over Lebanon entering its second week, Israeli commanders believe they have been able to significantly reduce Hezbollah’s military power but plan to press ahead with a campaign that has been running at nearly 300 combat sorties a day.

Officials here acknowledge that international pressure for a diplomatic solution will eventually choke off their offensive. But they have made it clear that they hope to continue until they have destroyed a greater share of Hezbollah’s missiles and the group’s ability to launch them.

“Overall, knock on wood, there have been fewer rockets” fired at Israeli towns and cities, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel’s northern command, said Tuesday on Israeli television. “I think we should assume that it will take a few more weeks” to complete the job, he said.

The air campaign has three prongs, military analysts say.

In southern Lebanon, the goal is to undermine Hezbollah’s ability to launch rockets against towns and cities in northern Israel.

At the start of the fighting, Israeli analysts estimated that Hezbollah had 10,000 Katyusha rockets and a smaller store of sophisticated, longer-range missiles from Syria and Iran. Many of the rockets are positioned in densely populated neighborhoods, sometimes cached in homes, officials here say.

Israeli strategists believe that the round-the-clock airstrikes have destroyed about one-third of the long-range missiles, according to news reports here citing military intelligence sources.

But the same reports suggested that the offensive would not be considered a success unless it made a deeper dent in Hezbollah’s arsenal -- taking more than 60% of the rockets out of commission.

Beyond quelling the rocket fire, Israel has two other goals.

In the eastern Bekaa Valley, which Israeli officials have described as a prime route for smuggling arms from Syria, Israel is seeking to destroy Hezbollah’s logistical network.

An Israeli airstrike Tuesday blew up a convoy of trucks in the Bekaa carrying arms for Hezbollah that were being moved in from Syria, the Israeli military said.

Officials declined to specify the amount or type of weaponry they believed the trucks were carrying, but said the strike triggered enormous secondary explosions, indicating a large arms shipment.

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, the chief targets are the symbols of Hezbollah’s power.

“The army is acting on all three of these levels with increasing force,” wrote Alex Fishman, the military affairs correspondent for Israel’s daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

In pressing its air campaign, Israel is prosecuting the war on its own terms, but faces a formidable adversary and a constrained timetable.

A poll published Tuesday in the Yediot Aharonot indicated that 86% of the Israeli public believes the wide-ranging assaults against Lebanon have been an appropriate response to Hezbollah’s actions.

Outside Israel, however, criticism has mounted rapidly over the rising civilian death toll in Lebanon, more than 230 as the fighting ended a seventh day, and the devastation of the Arab nation’s infrastructure.

However, the Bush administration, Israel’s main ally, has taken no steps to rein in the attacks.

Israeli officials say they are taking all possible measures to avoid killing and maiming innocents. But with warplanes staging relentless strikes on roads and bridges and with Hezbollah’s weaponry said to be scattered among southern Lebanon’s villages, civilian deaths and injuries are inevitable.

Attacks on roads and bridges are generally described by the Israeli military as intended to impede the movement of weaponry, but some observers also see them as meant to punish and demoralize the Lebanese population for having granted Hezbollah so great a share of political power.

The second constraint involves the limitations of air power.

Israeli strategists acknowledge that Hezbollah’s rocket and missile stockpiles cannot be dealt with by airstrikes alone.

“It’s not practical to think that destruction of all the missiles and all the launchpads can be done by the air force,” former air force commander Avihu Ben-Nun told Israel Radio. “This is because of camouflage and concealing of rockets in deep bunkers and inside villages where they are protected by the civilian presence.”

But Israel remains extremely wary of ground combat in Lebanon.

The bloodying the Jewish state’s troops suffered at Hezbollah’s hands in the “buffer zone” Israel tried to carve out in southern Lebanon during the 1980s and 1990s left Israelis extremely reluctant to again engage the guerrillas on their home turf.

A large-scale ground incursion remains an option, but one that Israel hopes to avoid. To many Israelis, the watchword for land combat in Lebanon remains botz -- mud, or quagmire.

Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, the army’s deputy chief of staff, told Israel Radio on Tuesday, “At this point, we don’t think we need to bring massive ground forces into Lebanon.”

But, he added, “if we need to do it, that too shall be done.”

Along the frontier, the Israeli military says, small forces -- mainly elite commandos -- are “flitting” in and out of Lebanon, mainly working to disarm bombs and wreck Hezbollah outposts.

Israel has also been reinforcing its border fortifications. A high priority, according to commanders, is to prevent Hezbollah from infiltrating Israeli border towns. A successful Hezbollah raid on a civilian target, at a time when deadly rocket raids already have terrorized Israelis, would be a huge psychological blow.

Even with Hezbollah’s concerted weapons buildup in the six years since Israel quit southern Lebanon, the Israeli army is a vastly superior fighting force. But Hezbollah -- as Israel knows from bitter experience -- has excelled at finding ways to compensate for a lopsided difference in conventional firepower.

When Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah declared last week that Hezbollah had “surprises” in store for Israeli forces, no one in Israeli military circles took the warning lightly.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel since the fighting began, but Israeli strategists estimate that the salvos have used up less than one-tenth of the Katyusha stockpile.

Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah also has Iranian-made Raad 2 and Raad 3 missiles. They are thought to have been used in an attack Sunday on the northern port city of Haifa that killed eight Israelis -- Hezbollah’s deadliest strike so far.

More formidable weapons, Iranian-made Fajr and Zilzal rockets capable of hitting the Tel Aviv area, 75 miles south of the border, have not yet been unleashed. Israeli intelligence analysts believe that would require an explicit go-ahead from Iran.

The Israeli military reported destroying at least one Zilzal missile in an airstrike Monday, but it was not clear whether an attempted launch was in progress at the time.

With Israeli aircraft flying hundreds of combat sorties daily, commanders worry about Hezbollah’s known stock of shoulder-fired missiles, and perhaps more sophisticated antiaircraft missiles as well.

The potential use of aerial drones against key installations in Israel is another source of deep concern.

Last week, it was initially believed that an explosives-laden drone had been used to cripple an Israeli ship off the Lebanese coast, but it turned out instead to have been another unpleasant surprise: an Iranian radar-guided C-802 missile that Israel did not know Hezbollah possessed.

Even that encounter seemed reminiscent of Israel’s experiences with Hezbollah: The Israeli ship had a sophisticated array of antimissile defenses, but the system was not activated because such an assault was not expected from shore. Four sailors died in the attack.

Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting are focused on the idea of an international force to patrol the frontier, but Israel has turned its attention to ways in which it can make the border area a no-go zone -- for civilians and fighters alike.

Military officials told Israeli lawmakers last week that a half-mile strip north of the border was being cleared of residents.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz was quoted Monday as saying that Israel would try once again to establish a buffer zone in Lebanon’s south, but not use Israeli troops to police it.

“One of the aims of the operation is to establish a security area,” he said. “But without the presence of IDF soldiers.”

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Some leaving, some talking

Evacuation from Lebanon and diplomatic efforts intensified Tuesday as Israel and Hezbollah forces continued to exchange cross-border attacks. However, Israel said it was ready to fight for several more weeks and send in more ground troops if necessary. Highlights of daily developments:

Diplomacy

* British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan call for a larger, stronger international force to stabilize the Israel-Lebanon border area; Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter says Israel might accept such a stabilization force. About 2,000 U.N. troops are stationed in Lebanon now.

* A U.N. delegation led by special envoy Vijay Nambiar meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to discuss ways to end the fighting.

* The European Union’s foreign policy leader, Javier Solana, says he will go to Israel to help explore a way to end hostilities.

* President Bush says he believes Syria is attempting to reassert its dominance of Lebanon.

* The White House announces that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s expected trip to the Mideast will be delayed.

Evacuation

U.S. helicopters fly Americans out of Beirut, and a contracted Lebanese cruise ship, the Orient Queen, arrives to take others. The ship was to leave Beirut this morning. Nine U.S. warships are dispatched to Lebanese waters to provide security and aid in evacuation. Ships from Spain, Italy and Britain are also en route.

Foreigners in Lebanon

Canada ... 40,000

Philippines ... 30,000

Australia ... 25,000

U.S. ... 25,000

Britain ... 22,000*

France ... 20,000

*Includes 10,000 with dual nationality

Lebanon

Israeli warplanes continue to pound targets from the border to Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley. An airstrike on a house in Aitaroun kills as many as nine members of one family, including children.

Israel

Hezbollah attacks several cities with rockets, killing at least one person in Nahariya.

Gaza Strip

The Rafah border crossing with Egypt is temporarily opened, allowing some of the 2,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt by fighting in Gaza to return home. The opening applies only to people going from Egypt to Gaza and who are considered “humanitarian cases.”

Death toll

More than 230 in Lebanon, 25 in Israel

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Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, ESRI, GlobeXplorer (2001)

Los Angeles Times

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Israel’s aircraft

Israel is flying dozens of sorties over Lebanon. F-16 fighters are the mainstay of Israel’s air force, which also includes Israeli- and U.S.-made advanced and precision-guided weapons.

Air force inventory

F-15s: 89

F-16s: 248

Attack helicopters: 96

Other: Communications, surveillance and transport aircraft and unmanned craft.

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F-16

This multi-role tactical fighter became operational in Israel in 1980.

The baseline F-16 has a combat radius of 740 miles and is equipped with two 2,000-pound bombs and two AIM-9 missiles.

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Apache helicopter

Attack helicopter can be equipped with precision missiles, rockets and automatic cannons.

Is quick-reacting and can fight close to destroy, disrupt or delay enemy forces day or night and in bad weather.

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Source: GlobalSecurity.org, Graphics reporting by Julie Sheer