War in The Middle East

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

ANALYSIS: Hezbollah is still showing no signs of breaking

By Amos Harel

It was a bad news day. In the morning, Israeli forces in Lebanon clashed with Hezbollah near Avivim. Two soldiers were killed. In the afternoon, Hezbollah began to shell the entire northern region heavily. Scores of Katyusha rockets were fired and two children from Nazareth were killed. For eight days, the Israel Defense Forces has been pounding Lebanon and dropping thousands of tons of bombs on it, yet Hezbollah remains the same intransigent rival as before. It is showing no signs of breaking.

The Israeli detail, operating in an especially entangled area in the former buffer zone, intended to take out Katyusha launchers. But the Hezbollah unit responsible for most of the short-range rocket fire from South Lebanon was not sufficiently harmed.

The air force's first assault last week, aimed at long-range rockets in central Lebanon, caused considerable damage. Now the army is conducting a series of small ground operations to trace launchers in the thicket close to the border. The soldiers in the Maroun Ras area found a compound in a forest, complete with weapons bunkers, shelters and launchers that had been prepared a long time in advance. From here, rockets were launched at Safed, Ma'alot and the Miron Air Force base. The Hezbollah group hiding there surprised the IDF force and in the close-range fire exchange, two Israeli soldiers and two Hezbollah members were killed.

This incident illustrates three things. First, that like the IDF, Hezbollah too has been preparing for this confrontation for six years; second, that not everything can be done from the air. Third, that such a ground operation involves quite a few casualties and the government will have to consider this fact if it decides on a more massive invasion in the future.

The UN delegation that came to try to solve the crisis, is not optimistic. One member said it would be five-six weeks before the fighting ended. The envoys believe Hezbollah is not interested in a cease-fire and Israel cannot agree to one.

Despite its losses, whose extent is debatable, and the destruction of its headquarters, the Shi'ite organization is far from feeling defeated. Apparently Iran is encouraging it to go on fighting, while Israel's only real weapon is military pressure. Once Israel eases the pressure, Hezbollah will have no reason to reach an agreement. Deploying the Lebanese Army, a multinational force or both along the border, is in Israel's interest and perhaps Lebanon's, but not Hezbollah's and certainly not Iran's.

Israel in a trap

European diplomats believe Israel has maneuvered itself into a trap. It cannot stop the operation without having real political achievements to show its public, but prolonged fighting will seriously try its citizens' fortitude and will not guarantee the expected achievements.

When Hassan Nasrallah decided to launch the attack on Israel, he did not take into consideration the fundamental change in Israel's attitude to fatalities - both its own and the enemy's. There is, of course, a terrible human and psychological price for the murder of 15 Israeli civilians in a week, but we have experienced worse weeks and months. In March 2002 more than 130 Israelis were killed. On the other hand, the emotional callousness toward killing Palestinians applies to Lebanon as well. This enabled the government to order attacks on rockets inside houses in Lebanese villages, even though it was clear that many civilians would be killed as a result.

The war in the north, which has no official name yet, is a strange confrontation in which front line and home front mix. The Gulf War in 1991was longer (about six weeks) and also threatened the center, but ended with one Israeli fatality. This time the north is under a much greater threat. But after a hard week there are no displays of hysterics like in Tel Aviv of '91. Those who want to leave do, but nobody is condemning them as they did in the past.

A Home Front Command poll at the beginning of the week shows that most people in the north rate its fortitude as "medium to high." Most residents do not intend to leave their homes and their level of solidarity with the military operation is very high.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/740649.html

[karoaper]

Re: War in The Middle East

F any Armenian that choses to live anywhere in Israel.

I will root for Hizbollah.

Brilliant answer.
Armenians were one of the first Christians to settle in Jerusalem and the holy land. Through Turks and Memluks, Armenians have guarded and preserved ancient Armenian churches and schools. Perhaps you'd say F them too?

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Brilliant answer.
Armenians were one of the first Christians to settle in Jerusalem and the holy land. Through Turks and Memluks, Armenians have guarded and preserved ancient Armenian churches and schools. Perhaps you'd say F them too?

I was actually talking about Yerevantsis who marry j-e-w-s, or in some cases act as j-e-w-s, in order to go to Israel. No, I would not want anyone bombing Jerusalem. Although, with the way things are going, I would not blame anyone if they wanted to turn that whole f-ing country into a parking lot. We are gradually being pulled into World War III by the "chosen" J-e-w-s because the natives of the land they 'stole' wont accept them. Enough is enough.

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Hezbollah's Skill More Military Than Militia

By Peter Spiegel and Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writers
July 20, 2006

WASHINGTON — Hezbollah's ability to use relatively advanced weapons in the last week of fighting against Israel, as well as the variety of its armaments, has surprised U.S. military experts, current and former officials involved in Middle East policy said.

Hezbollah has gained attributes more often associated with a national military — fixed training bases, rocket-launching facilities, well-trained artillerymen — than with a guerrilla or terrorist group, they said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are involved, said Hezbollah fighters, once viewed as a ragtag group of guerrillas, appear to have received training by Iran in sophisticated missile technologies. Some of the training may have taken place in Iran, they said.

"The analysis around here is they have more expertise than the Lebanese military," a senior U.S. military official said. U.S. defense and intelligence officials said that — despite the speculation of some analysts, including Israeli officials, that Iran was directly involved in the combat — there was little evidence that its special operations groups were fighting alongside the Shiite Muslim militants. Former officials warned that Hezbollah's closed nature and the politics involved in such assessments made any determination of Iranian intent highly uncertain.

"This is an opaque universe that's very hard to penetrate, and there's a lot of extrapolation based on bits of information," said Jon B. Alterman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who worked on Mideast issues in the State Department under President Bush. Israeli intelligence officials said assistance, including basic weapons and supplies, continues to flow from Iran. One Israeli intelligence official said there was new evidence that Iran had stepped up arms shipments through Camp Zabadani, a longtime base that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard maintains in Syria, near the Lebanese border.

"The order to increase assistance" to Hezbollah fighters came "directly from Tehran with the approval of the bureau of the leader Khamenei," the official said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. He asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. "The assistance mainly includes a large amount of weapons as well as ammunition, cash, field rations," he said.

Iranian assistance could extend Hezbollah's ability to sustain the current fighting. During the last three days, Israel has detected the movement of several shipments of weapons and supplies from Iran to the Revolutionary Guard base as well as to nearby warehouses, where arms have been stockpiled in recent years, Israeli officials said.

An Israeli air raid Tuesday destroyed an arms-laden convoy of trucks that had originated at Camp Zabadani, entered Lebanon and was bound for the militants, the Israeli intelligence official said. He cited a summary of intelligence gathered through surveillance technology and other means. The shipments from Iran to Lebanon via Syria in the last few days included FL-10 naval missiles, which are based on Chinese technology and have a range of nine to 18 miles, as well as Katyusha short-range artillery rockets and Iranian-made Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, the Israelis allege.

The strongest evidence of Iranian involvement with Hezbollah involves the missile used to cripple an Israeli ship off the coast of Beirut on Friday. U.S. officials also point to Hezbollah rocket attacks deep inside Israeli territory. If the missiles that struck the ship and landed in Israeli cities were "fired by Hezbollah themselves, they would have had to have training in these missile technologies," the senior U.S. military official said, noting that such training probably would have come from Iranian military schools.

"If not Iranians, surely they were people trained in Iran," said the Israeli intelligence official, speaking of the personnel who launched the anti-ship missile. That rocket was believed to be a C-802, Iranian-produced and based on Chinese technology. "That missile had never been fired in Lebanon before, and it hit its target. In order to learn that system, you have to fire the missile. We would have learned of such tests if they had happened in Lebanon," he said.

U.S. officials were also surprised when Israel said that some of the longer-range artillery rockets that had hit northern Israel were made by Syria, said David Schenker, until recently the Pentagon official overseeing Lebanon policy. "There was broad knowledge there was Iranian involvement; there was a broad-based thought Syria was too smart to do something like that," said Schenker, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Israeli military and intelligence officials have been warning for years about the increasing number of long-range, Iranian-supplied rockets flowing into the hands of Hezbollah. U.S. and Israeli analysts and officials believe that Hezbollah's weaponry includes thousands of the relatively unsophisticated Katyushas, as well as about 100 longer-range Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 rockets, which can travel about 25 and 75 miles, respectively.

Of greater concern to Israel, and the subject of much more speculation, is whether Hezbollah possesses the Iranian-made Zelzal 2 missile. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based information clearinghouse, estimates the range of that weapon at 60 to 240 miles, which would put virtually all Israeli cities within striking distance of southern Lebanon. The Israeli government says Hezbollah has had at least four of the missiles, one of which it says it destroyed and another it says malfunctioned.

The U.S. military offers mixed assessments of Israel's success in destroying Hezbollah rockets. One Pentagon official said that because of the mobility of most of the estimated 10,000 to 12,000 rockets in Hezbollah's arsenal, Israel has been forced to focus on command and control sites and other fixed bases. The Pentagon official said only about 1,000 of Hezbollah's rockets are believed to have been fired or destroyed. "The Israelis believe they have had some effect, but Hezbollah remains in this fight," he said. "They can sustain this for quite some time."

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-hezarms20jul20,1,1888258.story?coll=la-news-a_section

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Why Hezbollah is Winning... So Far

The stakes in the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war are significantly higher than most observers understand. If Hezbollah and Hamas win—and winning just means surviving, given that Israel’s objective is to destroy both entities—a powerful state will have suffered a new kind of defeat, again, a defeat across at least one international boundary and maybe two, depending on how one defines Gaza’s border. The balance between states and “fourth generation warfare” forces will be altered world-wide, and not to a trivial degree.

So far, Hezbollah is winning. As Arab states stood silent and helpless before Israel’s assault on Hamas, another non-state entity, Hezbollah, intervened to relieve the siege of Gaza by opening a second front. Its initial move, a brilliantly conducted raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two for the loss of one Hezbollah fighter, showed once again that Hezbollah can take on state armed forces on even terms (the Chechens are the only other 4GW force to demonstrate that capability). In both respects, the contrast with Arab states will be clear on the street, pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.

Hezbollah then pulled off two more firsts. It responded effectively to terror bombing from the air, which state think is their monopoly, with rocket barrages that reached deep into Israel. Once can only imagine how this resonated world-wide with people who are often bombed but can never bomb back. And, it attacked another state monopoly, navies, by hitting and disabling a blockading Israeli warship with something (I question Israel’s claim that the weapon was a C-801 anti-ship missile, which should have sunk a small missile corvette). Hezbollah’s leadership has promised more such surprises.

In response, Israel has had to hit not Hezbollah but the state of Lebanon. Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, referring to the initial Hezbollah raid, said, “I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act but the act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason.” This is an obvious fiction, as the state of Lebanon had nothing to do with the raid and cannot control Hezbollah. But it is a necessary fiction for Israel, because otherwise who can it respond against? Again we see the power 4GW entities obtain by hiding within states but not being a state.

What comes next? In the short run, the question may be which runs out first, Hezbollah’s supply of rockets or the world’s patience with Israel bombing the helpless state of Lebanon. If the latter continues much longer, the Lebanese government may collapse, undoing one of America’s few recent successes in the Islamic world.

The critical question is whether the current fighting spreads region-wide. It is possible that Hezbollah attacked Israel not only to relieve the siege of Hamas in Gaza but also to pre-empt an Israeli strike on Iran. The current Iranian government is not disposed to sit passively like Saddam and await an Israeli or American attack. It may have given Hezbollah a green light in order to bog Israel down locally to the point where it would not also want war with Iran.

Read More: http://counterpunch.com/Lind07202006.html

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Military Matters: Hezbollah's achievement

By WILLIAM S. LIND

CLEVELAND, July 20 (UPI) -- With Hezbollah's entry into the war between Israel and Hamas, Fourth Generation War has taken another developmental step forward. For the first time, a non-state entity has gone to war with a state not by waging an insurgency against a state invader, but across an international boundary. Again we see how those who define 4GW simply as insurgency are looking at only a small part of the picture.

I think the stakes in the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war are significantly higher than most observers understand. If Hezbollah and Hamas win -- and winning just means surviving, given that Israel's objective is to destroy both entities -- a powerful state will have suffered a new kind of defeat, again, a defeat across at least one international boundary and maybe two, depending on how one defines Gaza's border. The balance between states and 4GW forces will be altered world-wide, and not to a trivial degree.

So far, Hezbollah is winning. As Arab states stood silent and helpless before Israel's assault on Hamas, another non-state entity, Hezbollah, intervened to relieve the siege of Gaza by opening a second front.

Its initial move, a brilliantly conducted raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two for the loss of one Hezbollah fighter, showed once again that Hezbollah can take on state armed forces on even terms. Tthe Chechens are the only other 4GW force to demonstrate that capability. In both respects, the contrast with Arab states will be clear on the street, pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.

Hezbollah then pulled off two more firsts. It responded effectively to terror bombing from the air, which state think is their monopoly, with rocket barrages that reached deep into Israel. Once can only imagine how this resonated world-wide with people who are often bombed but can never bomb back. And, it attacked another state monopoly, navies, by hitting and disabling a blockading Israeli warship with something. I question Israel's claim that the weapon was a C-801 anti-ship missile, which should have sunk a small missile corvette.

Hezbollah's leadership has promised more such surprises.

In response, Israel has had to hit not Hezbollah but the state of Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, referring to the initial Hezbollah raid, said, "I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act but the act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason." This is an obvious fiction, as the state of Lebanon had nothing to do with the raid and cannot control Hezbollah. But it is a necessary fiction for Israel, because otherwise who can it respond against? Again we see the power 4GW entities obtain by hiding within states but not being a state.

What comes next? In the short run, the question may be which runs out first, Hezbollah's supply of rockets or the world's patience with Israel bombing the helpless state of Lebanon. If the latter continues much longer, the Lebanese government may collapse, undoing one of America's few recent successes in the Islamic world.

The critical question is whether the current fighting spreads region-wide. It is possible that Hezbollah attacked Israel not only to relieve the siege of Hamas in Gaza but also to pre-empt an Israeli strike on Iran. The current Iranian government is not disposed to sit passively like Saddam Hussein and await an Israeli or American attack. It may have given Hezbollah a green light in order to bog Israel down locally to the point where it would not also want war with Iran.

However, Israel's response may be exactly the opposite. Olmert also said, "Nothing will deter us, whatever far-reaching ramifications regarding our relations on the northern border and in the region there may be." The phrase "in the region" could refer to Syria, Iran or both.

If Israel does attack Iran, the "summer of 1914" analogy may play itself out, catastrophically for the United States. As I have warned many times, war with Iran -- and Iran has publicly stated it would regard an Israeli attack as an attack by the United States also -- could easily cost America the army it now has deployed in Iraq. It would almost certainly send shock waves through an already fragile world economy, potentially bringing that house of cards down. A Bush administration that has sneered at "stability" could find out just how high the price of instability can be.

It is clear what Washington needs to do to try to prevent such an outcome: publicly distance the United States from Israel while privately informing Olmert that it will not tolerate an Israeli strike on Iran. Unfortunately, Israel is to America what Serbia was to Russia in 1914. That may be the most disturbing aspect of the "summer of 1914" analogy.

--

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.)

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060721-122936-8629r

[karoaper]

Re: War in The Middle East

I was actually talking about Yerevantsis who marry j-e-w-s, or in some cases act as j-e-w-s, in order to go to Israel. No, I would not want anyone bombing Jerusalem. Although, with the way things are going, I would not blame anyone if they wanted to turn that whole f-ing country into a parking lot. We are gradually being pulled into World War III by the "chosen" J-e-w-s because the natives of the land they 'stole' wont accept them. Enough is enough.

Well, that kind of behaviour is irritating I must admit. But while I despise Israel for its facistic inhumanity, I'm not exactly filled with fuzzy thoughts when I think of Hezbollah or Hamas or other fanatic bastards.

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

Well, that kind of behaviour is irritating I must admit. But while I despise Israel for its facistic inhumanity, I'm not exactly filled with fuzzy thoughts when I think of Hezbollah or Hamas or other fanatic bastards.

Hamas and the Hizbollah are the direct off-springs of Israeli actions within the middle east. These organizations did not just simply come into existence out of no where. I have great respect for Hizbollah because they are the only ones in the Middle East, along with Syria and Iran of course, that have kept their honor, dignity and ideology intact, and they are the only ones in the region who actually punch back at the Israeli military. The rest of the Arab world are a bunch of petty w-h-o-r-e-s for the west.

The corrupt dictatorial states of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Jordan, Pakistan - are all American client states, they are in full union within the highest levels of government. Also, Islamic terrorism, Sunni fundamentalism (Al-Qaeda) is direct the product of these "America" friendly states. Iran, Syria and Iraq are being targeted today because they don't play the "One World Order" game.

[OMG]

Re: War in The Middle East

If I was an Arabs living in the region, I would have expect Israel to get nuked a long time ago. I suggest you go an learn about the history of the region in question. The fabrication called Israel is a criminal entity and is as vile as Turkey - they will eventually be destroyed.

i am furious with israel. that doesn't mean i am not also angry with the other side's violence, too. i care lots about innocent little kids in israel. don't you too?

i don't root for anyone who shoots rockets and kills people. i won't take a side, because they are both wrong (although i think israel is much more in the wrong here).

i wouldn't hope or expect anyone ever get nuked. ever. (above said)

i agree with some things you say.

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

i am furious with israel. that doesn't mean i am not also angry with the other side's violence, too. i care lots about innocent little kids in israel. don't you too?

I care as much about them as I care about Turks.

The Palestinians and the South Lebanese are fully justified in their actions against the Zionist war-machine. There is no such thing as an innocent Israeli. If a J-e-w lives in Israel then they are guilty of war crimes - simple as that.

These barbarians even conspired with Turks against us Armenians in 1915 to obtain land rights in Palestine. They have tried everything from war crimes to blackmail to prostitution in order to steal the land from the natives population.

Oh, did I forget to mention that they are professional victims?

In my eyes, they are the same as Turks.