Israel weighs response to Hezbollah rocket threat
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Would Israel attack Lebanese army?
Ben Caspit reports that a “significant part of [Israeli] Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's talks in Washington on March 7 was devoted to a war in Lebanon that could erupt at any given moment. According to top Israeli defense sources, this war, if it takes place, must be completely different from the last one. It must last a shorter amount of time and squeeze much greater destructive capabilities into smaller units of time.”
Caspit adds that since the 2006 war, Liberman sees that “the distinction between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah forces has been blurred considerably over the past few years, as has the distinction between Hezbollah — which also operates on the political level — and the sovereign state in which it resides. The IDF's working assumption is that the Lebanese army will play an active role against Israel in the next war on Lebanon, operating under Hezbollah's command. … Another difference anticipated in the next campaign is the balance of terror. While during Israel's second war in Lebanon, the devastation to Israel was limited, today Hezbollah is capable of striking any given point in the country.”
“Israel is aware that at present, it has no real answer to the rocket threat,” Caspit writes. “What this means is that the only option left to Israel is an immediate, dramatic and aggressive attack against all of Lebanon's vital infrastructure, or as Israeli officers and senior Israeli officials have been describing it for the past decade, 'sending Lebanon back to the Stone Age.'”
