War against Hezbollah was a political disaster

The July-August 2006 conflagration between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite Islamist Hezbollah movement defies the common presumption that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inherently zero sum - that Israel's loss is always a commensurate gain for its adversaries, and vice versa.

As UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown remarked during the fourth week of fighting, this was an "odd war" in which "both sides think they're winning".

In fact, both sides achieved significant gains that may ultimately outweigh their losses and shift the dynamics of the conflict into a stable equilibrium.

Background

Following the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, the Israeli Government declined to respond forcefully to Hezbollah provocations for nearly six years. Fierce Israeli reprisals for cross-border attacks risked provoking Hezbollah into raining rockets on northern Israel, which would push any Israeli Government ineluctably into a full-scale war in Lebanon.

In view of Israel's preoccupation with the second Palestinian intifada, American desire for stability in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, and continued hopes that Syrian President Bashar Assad would come to the peace table, the day of reckoning was continually put off.

This tepid reprisal policy not only encouraged Hezbollah to continue the raids, but also bolstered the ability of its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to win the acquiescence of the Lebanese political establishment after the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.

Public outrage in Israel following Hezbollah's July 12 abduction of two Israeli soldiers gave Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a blank cheque to wage a full-scale war in Lebanon.

Although the declared goals of the Israeli campaign evolved during the fighting, it was geared toward the pursuit of distinct military, strategic, diplomatic, and political objectives.

The military outcome

Israel's primary military objective was to degrade Hezbollah's ability to launch cross-border air and ground attacks within whatever window of opportunity allowed for by Olmert's diplomatic campaign.

This relegation of military objectives behind diplomatic and political goals was based on the recognition that no military outcome would be decisive unless Hezbollah faced an effective arms embargo or domestic constraints in refitting its paramilitary apparatus after the war.

In view of the limited resources committed to the campaign, Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff General Dan Halutz's claim that Israel won "a victory on points, not a knockout" is a valid analogy up to a point.

Hezbollah appears to have lost a substantially greater share of its military assets and infrastructure than Israel. However, there was no reduction in Hezbollah rocket fire because an estimated 95 per cent of the rockets fired at Israel were short-range 107mm and 122mm Katyushas, which are very difficult to detect from the air.

Indeed, there was no observable degradation of Hezbollah military capabilities at all. The quality and endurance of its military performance exceeded Israeli expectations in virtually every domain.

In contrast, Israel's military performance fell well short of expectations. Nevertheless, the war greatly curtailed Hezbollah's freedom to project its military power owing to Israel's strategic and diplomatic successes.

The strategic outcome

The Israeli campaign was intended first and foremost to scare off the tourists - to raise the costs of Hezbollah's adventurism to such a degree that deliberate provocations will not be politically tenable for the foreseeable future. It also enhanced Israeli deterrence of Hezbollah in another important respect.

One of its principal aims, according to Israeli security analyst Yossi Alpher, was "to prove to Nasrallah that civilian Israel is far, far stronger than a spider web" - a reference to the so-called "spider web theory" popularised by Nasrallah, which holds that Israel's dazzling technological superiority masks a weak consumer society that is losing its willingness to make sacrifices in defence of its interests.

Nevertheless, the strategic balance sheet was by no means uniformly positive for Israel. Olmert may have compromised Israel's strategic credibility by initially demanding the unconditional release of its soldiers as a prior condition for a ceasefire, then later dropping the demand.

While Iran's ability to incite anti-Israeli violence from Lebanese soil will be impaired for some time to come, its ability to mobilise other combatants in the anti-Zionist front may receive a boost from Israel's lacklustre military performance.

The diplomatic outcome

Israel's primary diplomatic objective was to precipitate UN Security Council intervention in south Lebanon to block Hezbollah's freedom of action. In this regard, as the Wall Street Journal aptly observed, the governments of Israel, the United States, and Lebanon "were working together off much the same script" in the early days of the crisis.

Resolution 1701, which ended the hostilities in mid-August, was a diplomatic coup for Israel, calling for the deployment of an expanded 15,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force to ensure that Lebanese territory south of the Litani River "is not utilised for hostile activities of any kind [and] to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties".

While 1701 calls for the "the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks", it calls for Israel merely to cease all "offensive military operations" - a deliberately vague phrase that allows Israel to justify virtually anything as a defensive military operation.

Notwithstanding the tough language of Resolution 1701, its lack of a Chapter VII mandate leaves UNIFIL subordinate to the authority of the Lebanese Government.

Prior to the war, Lebanon’s ruling March 14 coalition was too politically weak to make any major policy decision without Hezbollah's endorsement. The most ambitious aim of the war was to change this.

The political outcome

The crux of the Lebanese Government's weakness is the fact that overriding Hezbollah's objections would lead to the departure of all Shiite ministers from the cabinet.

Thus, defiance of Nasrallah is feasible only if the coalition can find credible Shiite public figures willing to defy a Hezbollah boycott and join a new cabinet, or if it is resolved to rule without any pretence of legitimacy in the eyes of Lebanon’s largest sectarian group.

The first scenario requires a substantial erosion of Shiite support for Hezbollah, while the second requires a substantial hardening of non-Shiite perceptions of Hezbollah.

Public opinion polls conducted in Lebanon during and after the war confirm that the Israeli bombardment achieved the opposite on both scores. The Israelis do not appear to have had any strategy for undermining support for Hezbollah within the Shiite community other than elevating its level of collective suffering.

Hezbollah may not have expected the Israeli campaign, but it acted with the confidence of knowing that Iran could afford to rebuild far more than Israel could afford to destroy without alienating the outside world.

It appears that both the Israelis and the Americans were banking primarily on a souring of non-Shiite public perceptions of Hezbollah to push the Lebanese Government into accepting the deployment of a robust multi-national peacekeeping force.

While the immense collateral damage of Israeli air strikes was heavily concentrated in Shiite areas, the abrupt annulment of Lebanon's lucrative summer tourist season, cessation of air and sea traffic into the country, and destruction of major bridges and highway interchanges were acutely felt by all Lebanese.

However, public anger at Hezbollah was quickly overshadowed by outrage toward Israel as the economic toll of the bombardment mounted, and then began dissipating as the progression of the war (seen through victims' eyes) appeared to corroborate longstanding Hezbollah propaganda claims. The targeting of Lebanon's infrastructure and industry gave credence to Nasrallah's warnings that Israel was looking for any pretext to destroy the Lebanese economy.

The Bush administration's refusal to call for an unconditional cease-fire seemed to validate one of Nasrallah's favorite admonitions - that the American support was fickle and ultimately subordinate to Washington's alliance with Israel and pursuit of regional vendettas.

The war undermined the March 14 coalition's political leverage not only by revealing its modest placement in the scale of American priorities and boosting public support for Hezbollah, but also by exposing the Lebanese Government's total lack of planning for the contingency of a full-blown Israeli air campaign.

Implications

While Israel achieved significant strategic and diplomatic goals, the war against Hezbollah was a political disaster for Olmert. A strong public consensus in Israel that the military campaign was a failure is partly because of popular misconceptions about what was realistically possible to achieve.

Israel might have dealt Hezbollah a more serious blow had a different military strategy been followed, but there was never a viable prospect of preventing its regeneration once the dust settled.

Although Hezbollah suffered strategic and diplomatic setbacks, the war dramatically boosted its domestic and regional popular appeal, while eroding the strength of its adversaries.

This gives Nasrallah considerably more political leverage than he had before the war, effectively shelving any prospect of pressuring Hezbollah to disarm in advance of far-reaching political and economic reforms.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ordered a Lebanese military deployment of unprecedented strength south of the Litani River, but only after reaching an agreement with Nasrallah whereby Hezbollah keeps its weapons out of public view and the army pretends it doesn't see them.

Much like the governing coalition's 2005 electoral pact with Hezbollah, this "don't look, don't tell" arrangement was billed as a compromise, but largely preserved the status quo ante.

Since there is no way for Israel to disrupt re-supply of Hezbollah short of bombing all trucking traffic from Syria into Lebanon, the arms embargo imposed by Resolution 1701 cannot be enforced without the earnest co-operation of either the Lebanese or Syrian governments.

The sudden proliferation of calls for negotiations with Assad among American pundits is a pretty good indicator of how dimly prospects for the former are viewed in Washington.

Nevertheless, the outcome of the war may prove to be a stable equilibrium. Though he has essentially defused internal pressure to disarm, Nasrallah appears to recognise that violent provocation of Israel will be far too risky for the foreseeable future.

The implications of the war for outsiders cut several ways. Washington gained some strategic leverage over Iran, but its refusal to call for an unconditional ceasefire during the fighting enflamed anti-American sentiments throughout the Arab world, weakened the Lebanese political coalition it was hoping to strengthen, and embarrassed Arab governments that followed its lead by criticising Hezbollah early in the campaign.

The war also set in motion congressional pressure on the administration to take punitive actions against the Lebanese Government so long as Hezbollah is represented in the cabinet. All in all, the ability of the White House to decisively impact Lebanon's political trajectory has declined.

For Iran, the returns are mixed. The expanded UNIFIL deployment and Lebanon's new political map will discourage Iranian efforts to incite anti-Israeli violence from Lebanese soil as Tehran comes under greater international pressure to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Although Iran derived some diplomatic leverage from the crisis, the conventional wisdom that Iran has emerged stronger "by showing the world that it is capable of wreaking havoc through its support of the Hezbollah militants" must be qualified.

The resolve of the United States and Western European governments to derail Iran's nuclear program has not been substantially weakened by the crisis. However, the presence of European troops in close proximity to Hezbollah guerrillas may discourage support for American military action against Iran down the road.

Burgeoning anti-Israeli hostility in the Arab world obviously has its benefits for Iran, although the devastation of Lebanon during the war might temper its ability to translate pervasive anti-Israeli hostility among Palestinians into organised acts of violence.

The recent outpouring of popular support for Hezbollah across the region may discourage some Arab governments from overtly supporting American policy on Iran, but it has hardly mitigated their desire to see the end of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The pacification of south Lebanon is a significant strategic setback for Assad, and his blunder of having provided Hezbollah with substantial quantities of imported Russian anti-tank missiles and other weapons will likely complicate, if not preclude, future Syrian arms purchases from Moscow.

However, he derived considerable political capital from the war - both because Hezbollah is very popular among Syria's youth and because its increased stature in Lebanon may blunt the March 14 coalition's hostility to Syria.

It has also given him a new diplomatic lease on life, as a host of dignitaries in the American and Israeli foreign policy establishments have come out in favour of negotiations with Syria.