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Showing posts with the label hisbollah

Has Israel Learned From the Hezbollah War?

Everyone is comparing the fight in Gaza with Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah . But I just chatted with an informed observer, who sees some key differences. One lesson [Prime Minister Ehud Olmert] clearly has learned is expectation management. At the start of the 2006 war, he pledged to cripple Hezbollah's military capabilities in southern Lebanon, to force the group to give back some captured Israeli soldiers, and to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its arsenal. That was never realistic. This time around, he's being more measured, talking about simply restoring some sense of normalcy to sourthern Israel - though the decision to reject a 48 hour ceasefire makes you wonder if he's again getting seduced by the concept of total victory. In terms of how the operation is conducted, the two major takeaways from [the] Winograd [Commission, which examined the Israeli efforts in '06] were that: (a) even though it took a month for the ground invasion to heat u...