Israel and Lebanon: a long and bitter entanglement

Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Israel's Bar Elon University and a consultant to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says a key difference between then and now is the relative military weakness of Syria, which has supported Hizbullah, primarily by allowing Iranian arms shipments to pass through its territory.

In 2005, Syria withdrew its forces from Lebanon, pushed out by a wave of anger at the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister and a leader of the anti-Syrian opposition in the country. The UN has since blamed Syria for his murder.

"Syria is much weaker than it was. One of the goals of the 1982 war was to severely weaken or defeat the Syrian Army and to change the face of the Middle East. That's not even in the footnotes now," says Mr. Steinberg. "Israel could not have moved against the PLO in 1982 without engaging the Syrian Army ... today, there's no confrontation with Syria. They're essentially not a player in this."

That's a dramatically different view than the one expressed by the US; senior US officials say Syria has it in its power to order Hizbullah to give up.

Steinberg says that "talking about the complete destruction of Hizbullah is probably not realistic" and that he doesn't expect Israel's offensive will last beyond another month, let alone a full-scale invasion. He says the goals of the current fighting are to degrade Hizbullah's offensive capabilities while reminding all of Lebanon of Israel's overwhelming military superiority.

"We will end up most likely with a much weakened Hizbullah and a much strengthened Lebanon," Steinberg says. "The Lebanese don't want to pay this price again ... so we'll have increased ability of Israeli deterrence." In the coming years, he argues: "Israel is likely to adopt the same policies it's using in Gaza. Once they see bunkers or other military abilities being built, Israel will go in with short commando raids to destroy them."

To be sure, not all are convinced that a limited offensive that fails to destroy Hizbullah will make the region more peaceful, or reestablish Israeli deterrence. "All that Hizbullah has to do to 'win' is survive," argues Marc Lynch, a political scientist and expert on the Middle East at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. "A big part of Israel's power in the region is its cultivated air of absolute supremacy [and] the only people who didn't buy into this was Hizbullah. I think this is seriously degrading this cult of omnipotence."

Of course, Israeli officials continue to insist that the objective is nothing short of completely destroying Hizbullah. A failure of world powers to call for an immediate cease-fire at a conference on the crisis in Rome Wednesday was interpreted by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon in an interview with Israel's Army Radio as "permission from the world ... to continue the operation – this war – until Hizbullah won't be located in Lebanon."

But if Steinberg is right, Israel's current strategy is dramatically different then the one employed in the last war. In 1978, with Lebanon already mired in civil war, Israel cultivated local proxies – in particular the South Lebanese Army (SLA) – to fight its enemies inside Lebanon. Then, the SLA was used to patrol the 12-mile buffer zone Israel sought to create along the border, backed by Israeli munitions and military advisers.

Later, Christian Phalangist militias were also armed and supported by Israel to strike at Palestinian refugee camps – which led to the massacre of up to 3,000 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982 and further radicalization of Israel's opponents.

This time, Israel has no local allies, and there are no signs it is trying to cultivate them. It has repeatedly bombed Lebanese military posts and civilian infrastructure in and around Beirut. While Israel wants a buffer zone to push Hizbullah's rockets out of range of Israeli cities, Steinbergsays it's unlikely the army will occupy ground in depth to try to achieve that objective.

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