- Israeli forces have pushed forward from the mountaintop
village of Maroun er Ras captured Sunday to the fringes of Bint Jubeil,
Hizballah's south Lebanese capital. Monday they suffered nine wounded in
face to face combat. Whereas TV cameras showed much footage of the Maroun
er Ras engagement, the IDF's other battle pockets are kept under wraps.
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- Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who has an overall
view, warned Israel in an interview to the Lebanese A Safir Monday, July
24, that its ground incursions in Lebanon would not stop Hizballah rocket
fire against its cities.
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- He certainly meant this as a morale-depressant for Israel
troops. At the same time, DEBKAfile's military experts say that what he
says is correct and must be taken into account in any diplomatic formula
sought to end the warfare.
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- 1. He could go on firing his rockets even when a multinational
force is posted on the Lebanese-Israeli border. The force currently contemplated
by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert at this early stage of international
diplomacy would consist of German, French and Czech units.
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- 2. And even if multinational troops were deployed additionally
on the Lebanese-Syrian border, they would not hamper Hizballah's rocket
offensive. Therefore a buffer zone would offer no solution to a cessation
of cross-border hostilities.
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- DEBKAfile's military analysts say that the way the Israel-Hizballah
war has been prosecuted up until Monday, July 24, is more likely to bring
Nassrallah closer to his war objectives than Olmert.
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- Notwithstanding the IDF's important battle gains at a
number of focal South Lebanese points in the last 24 hours including
the latest raids on the outskirts of Bint Jubeil on the heels of the capture
of Maroun er Ras only one multiple firing rocket launcher (picture)
and 6 single-barrel launchers have been destroyed.
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- This figure will certainly multiply substantially in
the coming days. Yet it will not change the essential strategic picture
or stop the rocket fire from holding northern Israel and more than a million
inhabitants to siege.
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- Last week, Israel's army chiefs believed they had encountered
Hizballah's primary war tactic Viet Cong-style guerrilla warfare
out of hundreds of small bunkers scattered across the country. This week
had scarcely begun when a still more formidable impediment was discovered:
Hizballah camouflage techniques borrowed from the Japanese in the 1945
Iwo Jima battle. To stop the rockets coming, Israeli special forces must
continue to blow up the tunnels and also adopt the methods the US Army's
methods for overcoming the Japanese dug in at Iwo Jima and other Pacific
islands at the end of World War II. Without regard to losses, they stormed
Japanese dug-in positions and camouflaged units. using flame throwers and
gasoline to burn the foliage concealing the enemy.
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- DEBKA file's military sources report that Israeli military
chiefs have just begun studying Hizballah's arts of camouflage. A senior
officer told DEBKAfile grimly: "Now we know that when a stand of five
or six trees suddenly starts walking, we are seeing a 14-barreled Fajr
3 rocket launcher on the move; one or two trees in motion may conceal a
couple of Hizballah fighters."
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- But the situation is more difficult when the trees or
bushes stand still and blend in with the surrounding dense foliage. By
the time IDF spotters report five suspicious trees or bushes to overhead
aircraft, helicopters or the nearest ground units, the Hizballah launchers
or the fighters have moved on and changed their camouflage outfits. The
small Israeli special operations units called in to hunt and destroy the
last-seen mobile vegetation face a mystifying task.
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- "This is a high-precision operation," said
the officer. "It is time-consuming could take weeks if not months
- dangerous and calls for larger numbers of troops than we have available."
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- In the first ten days of the war, therefore, the Israeli
air force bombed out empty Hizballah premises in South Beirut and Baalbek,
but missed the moving woods and vegetation which concealed the rocket launchers
which explains why the blitz continued notwithstanding heavy Israeli
air force assaults on Hizballah's centers and strongholds.
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- But Israel military strategists have got a handle on
Hizballah's rocket-launching methods. Each rocket crew, carefully camouflaged,
advances independently to its firing position and fires a volley, never
a single rocket. If one crew chances on another, they all loose their rockets
simultaneously.
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- DEBKA file's military analysts assert that the rocket
offensive against Israel will go on for the following reasons:
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- 1. While the IDF has begun to understand Hizballah's
tactics and methods of warfare, the Olmert government has decided to deny
the operation sufficient ground troops to come to grips with the small
knots of moving rocket crewmen.
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- Some of DEBKA file's military experts fear the Israeli
government may be falling into the Bush administration's disastrous error
of allocating too few troops to the Iraq war for attaining its goals.
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- 2. Iran is constantly pumping through Syria fresh rocket
teams to replace those wiped out by Israeli forces.
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- 3. Hizballah's leader wants no part in the diplomatic
initiatives led by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in conjunction
with the Europeans, Olmert, the Lebanese government and moderate Sunni
Arab rulers. Nasrallah is playing his own game and will not be a party
to a ceasefire at this point or stop firing his rockets except on
his terms.
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- 4. He will show the same contempt for a multinational
force, however effective, deployed on Lebanon's borders with Israel and
Syria, and simply keep on shooting. He knows as well as anyone that German
or French troops will never go chasing through Lebanon's woods and hay
stacks to tackle his fighters in face-to-face combat. He may not stick
to as many as 100 rockets a day as at present, but he will keep his
hand on the button and push it whenever it suits him. Nasrallah will only
end the war when he can claim victory or is finally eliminated.
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- Most Israeli generals agree that going for a multinational
force, which appears to be the direction seriously contemplated by Ehud
Olmert, would constitute a repeat of the blunder Ariel Sharon and Olmert
himself perpetrated when, in their haste to evacuate the Gaza Strip last
summer, they handed security over the Gazan-Egyptian Philadelphi border
to Egyptian forces and the crossing to European monitors.
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- Nasrallah has already struck the pose of victor and is
dictating terms. Monday, July 24, he handed the Lebanese government a list
of the prisoners in Israeli jails whom he wants released as the price for
returning the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
He has not budged an inch from his initial demand for their release: indirect
negotiations for a prisoner swap.
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- The Israeli prime minister, who has switched his war
objectives several times, is heading for a course that may at best restore
the three abducted Israeli solders, Gilead Shalit in Hamas' hands, as well
as Goldwasser and Regev. But this course will not rescue northern Israel
and a third of the country from the nightmare of rockets falling night
and day and destroying their lives or the Palestinian Qassam missiles from
Gaza making life intolerable for Israel's south.
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