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Ignoring Hezbollah: a costly error

While focused on Palestinian issues, militia quietly built up forces, weapons to become a real threat

BY MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Correspondent

August 8, 2006

JERUSALEM - The war that has torn apart southern Lebanon, forced the evacuation of northern Israel and inflamed the Middle East could scarcely have been imagined two months ago, even in a country used to fighting its neighbors.

Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim militia that has quickly become Israel's most visible enemy, barely registered in the election campaigns early this year. Politicians had promised to get tough with the militant Hamas-led Palestinian government, argued over Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip and debated a plan to leave the West Bank.

So how did it come to this? Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers and killing of eight on July 12 and a crushing Israeli response have cost hundreds of lives in Lebanon - including at least 49 yesterday - and nearly 100 in Israel, ballooning into an international crisis.

"We didn't need it, and we didn't want it," said Etty Braun, 53, a social worker hurrying to a meeting in Jerusalem's Germany Colony neighborhood Sunday. "We got used to living with problems with the Palestinians, not with Lebanon."

In many ways, though, it was a conflict quietly building, officials and experts here say. As with events that have started other wars, the kidnapping only ignited a battle Israeli leaders believed they would eventually have to fight anyway.

For six years, Israel had mostly ignored border raids and rocket attacks from Hezbollah, allowing it to develop into a significant threat. The country was preoccupied with a Palestinian uprising and did not want to get entangled in Lebanon after ending its 18-year occupation in 2000.

Now, under a new and militarily inexperienced prime minister, Ehud Olmert, Israel wanted to show the Arab world that it had not grown weak after withdrawing from Lebanon and Gaza.

Hezbollah became more aggressive and championed the Palestinian cause. The pressure to secure the northern border also ratcheted up because Iran, which backs the Lebanese militia, emerged as a potential nuclear power under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has threatened Israel's existence.

"It was like a land mine that was waiting to explode," Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli army strategist and a professor at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center, said of the skirmishes with Hezbollah. "So if it wouldn't have exploded this time, it would have exploded in, let's say, three months from now, a year from now."

Aviad, a 23-year-old lieutenant whose unit was resting yesterday at a kibbutz in the north after a week raiding houses inside Lebanon, said he sees this battle as the latest in an ongoing struggle. As he spoke, Israeli missiles shot through the sky behind him, burning red and leaving a trail of smoke.

"We all look at it as part of a continuous war that Israel has been in since the early days of our ancestors," said Aviad, who agreed to be identified by his first name. "Everywhere we've been, we've had war, since ever - since the Romans."

The war has been hugely popular among Israelis, who believe they are confronting an enemy with both strength and moral clarity - unlike the Palestinian conflict, which features thorny issues such as plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Israeli officials proudly describe this war as a defense of their sovereignty.

"It's not for Israel to absorb even one missile on its civilian population," said Gideon Meir, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official. "If we succeed in this campaign, anyone who would like to start another provocation will have to think twice."

Still, many residents here think Israel will not achieve its aim of removing Hezbollah from the border and neutralizing it. The militia over four weeks has withstood an air onslaught and used guerrilla tactics to hold a force of 10,000 troops at bay, while its rockets have claimed an increasing number of Israeli casualties.

The reaction was starkly different in October 2000, when Hezbollah members crept over the border and abducted three soldiers, five months after Israel ended its occupation.

At the time, a Palestinian uprising had just broken out, and Israel was unwilling to fight on two fronts. Nor did leaders want to engage again in Lebanon. So they negotiated a trade in 2004 of prisoners in Israeli jails for the bodies of the soldiers, believed to have died of injuries suffered in the abduction. Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah celebrated it as a victory over Israel.

Since 2000, Hezbollah has grown in strength, stockpiled 12,000 rockets with help from Iran and Syria, and established itself as a political and social presence in Lebanon. Israel did little to counter its attacks.

"We were busy with the Palestinians for the past six years, and we ignored the threat which was building, the much bigger threat," said Avi Pazner, an official in Olmert's office.

Ariel Sharon, who served as prime minister from 2001 until a stroke in January, had his own history precluding a foray into Lebanon. As defense minister, he led the 1982 offensive that began Israel's occupation.

Many Israelis have come to believe that the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, rather than fostering peace, have signaled weakness.