The Hezbollah military (i.e. terrorist), political and propaganda machine has been proven to be successful. This is the very reason that makes it imperative for Israel to root out and dismantle the Islamofascist terrorist organization. The next imperative is to find a way to cut off supply lines from Islamofascist rogue nations such as Syria and Iran.
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Hezbollah, Already a Capable Military Force, Makes Full Use of Civilian Shields and Media Manipulation
Iranian and Syrian Support Could Spark Wider War, Future Strikes
By Editorial Assistant Paul Weitz and JINSA Staff.
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
August 12, 2006
If there was any doubt as to what Hezbollah was doing in the six years since the Israel Defense Force (IDF) pulled out of Lebanon, the last month of fighting clearly showed it wasn’t the promotion of agriculture. The terror organization’s battlefield successes reveal extensive preparations for combat with the IDF from clever fortifications, sophisticated weapons, intensive high-level training and a slick media manipulation department. Alone, this would make its compliment of some 3,500 fighters, about an infantry brigade size force, a capable enemy. Its military attributes, coupled with tactics that have it wrap the Lebanese civilian population around its fighters, make it the toughest foe the IDF, which has tried to avoid civilian casualties even at the expense of its own combat effectiveness, has ever confronted on the battlefield.
Hezbollah’s July 12 raid, when it crossed into Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, now appears to have been calculated to draw the IDF into conflict in southern Lebanon. Speculation as to why has centered on drawing attention away from the international debate over Iran’s nuclear program. Nevertheless, Hezbollah was clearly prepared for the Israeli incursion and immediately responded with devastating strikes against IDF infantry and armored units and mobilized its media department to cast IDF/AF strikes against its command centers and munitions stores in residential areas as attacks against the Lebanese civilian population.
To prevent Iran and Syria from re-supplying Hezbollah - more than 3,700 artillery rockets (known as Katyushas) have already been fired into Israel - the IDF/AF has targeted highways and bridges near the Lebanese border. In addition to the air strikes, what the Israeli military is mostly interested in is stopping the rockets that are reaching deeper and deeper into Israel. The IDF discovered, however, that it could not defeat Hezbollah solely through an air campaign. IDF ground operations commenced on July 22 and, owing to the fierce Hezbollah resistance, the number of troops deployed was doubled on August 1 and increased again on August 11 to some 30,000.
Since July 12, Hezbollah has bombarded Israel with a variety of battlefield rockets acquired in the six years since the IDF withdrew from Lebanese territory. An average of 150 missiles per day have been landing in Israel, mostly fired from areas north of the present location of Israeli forces. As of August 11, 41 Israeli civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded while approximately 5,500 Israeli buildings have been struck, more than 300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes, and more than one million are living in bomb shelters. More than two million Israelis live within Hezbollah rocket range.
A Hardened Army That Fights Like Terrorists
Hezbollah fighters frequently wear civilian clothes in combat to blend in with the local population, popping out periodically to launch rockets and then retreat to civilian buildings. In combat with Israeli troops, they make skillful use of prepared fighting positions, communication tunnels and hidden arms caches. Rockets and other arms are not stored in bases or armories like conventional militaries but instead are stashed in homes and businesses as well as in caves and small valleys in rural areas. Lebanese civilians loyal to Hezbollah occupy many of these locations, forcing the IDF into the difficult situation of having to kill civilians in order to stop the attacks. In addition, the sites are heavily booby-trapped, which has slowed the IDF’s ground assault.
Instances of Hezbollah’s use of civilian structures as fighting positions began to be reported by the third week of the war. Canada’s National Post newspaper reported on an Israeli strike on a hospital in Tyre, Lebanon on August 5. A surgeon led a group of journalists of the damaged structure. “Look what they did to this place,” a clearly upset Dr. Fouad Fatah said. “Why in the world would the Israelis target a hospital?” The probable answer was found a few hours later in a field nearby, the National Post reported. Hidden in the tall grass were the burned remains of a rocket-launcher. Confronted with the evidence, Fatah admitted to the newspaper’s reporter that his hospital could have been used as a site from which to fire rockets into Israel. “What choice do we have? We need to fight back from somewhere,” he said.
Despite the clear nature of the problem, the IDF has bent over backwards in its attempts to avoid civilian casualties. Prior to air strikes on Hezbollah positions in residential areas the IDF/AF routinely drops leaflets warning the local population of coming attacks giving Hezbollah advanced notice and time to redeploy. Such relinquishing of tactical initiative is unprecedented.
The mobile nature of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal allows launch teams to move quickly from location to location when there is any sign of Israeli military pressure. Timur Goksel, who served for 24 years as a senior adviser and spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and has tracked Hezbollah’s military capabilities for all those years said, “Hezbollah militants regularly move the weapons, [usually stored in wooden crates], to launch sites in cars, station wagons and vans,” The Wall Street Journal reported, July 17. This may well explain the IDF/Air Force’s targeting of what the media have reported as “civilian” vehicles.
Managing Media Coverage
Media management has been another key Hezbollah strength and played a large role in turning world opinion against Israel after even Arab states were critical of Hezbollah’s aggression during the first week after the July 12 attack. Special units escort reporters into all Hezbollah-held areas and allow only vetted local persons to talk with reporters, it has been widely reported. In fact, mainstream reporters in the region have grown so disgusted with the blatant scripting of coverage and demands made of them by Hezbollah’s self-described “Media Relations Department” that they have filed reports on the phenomenon, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Nic Robertson. The Hezbollah leadership cannily refuses to discuss its own fighters’ deaths and reports all battlefield casualties as civilians.
The vast extent to which Hezbollah was prepared for an Israeli incursion stunned many in the Israeli Army, including high-ranking officials. Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” a soldier who just returned from Lebanon told Steve Erlanger of The New York Times, August 7. “They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and, sometimes, Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.” It has been no secret that for at least the last two decades that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has been training Hezbollah fighters in bases in Iran and provides advisors in Lebanon, especially for the use of more sophisticated weapons systems including the Zelzal missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and the C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles, all of which were provide by Iran in the last few years. The strike on the IDF/Navy Sa’ar 5 corvette, INS Hanit, was by an Iranian-made copy of a Chinese C-802. According to security sources quoted by The New York Sun, July 19, Iran has maintained a small cadre of advisors in Lebanon numbering some several dozen but substantially increased the number just prior to Hezbollah’s July 12 attack.
Vast Preparations for Fighting Israel
Discussing Hezbollah’s fortifications, IDF Col. Mordechai Kahane, the commander of the Golani brigade’s elite Egoz unit, told The Times’ Erlanger, “Hezbollah put us to sleep É the thoroughness surprised us all. A Hezbollah weapons storeroom is not just a natural cave. It’s a pit with concrete, ladders, emergency openings and escape routes. We didn’t know it was that well organized.”
The key to any success Israel has been able to achieve with its air power has been due to intelligence provided by the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, as well as the terrorism experts in the IDF’s research division, particularly Unit-504, it was reported in Ha’aretz, July 25. Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon told the Israeli daily the intelligence organizations discovered that “Hezbollah built special rooms inside ordinary residential buildings used to launch rockets, but they didn’t know that we know that, and were surprised.”
Israeli intelligence has estimated that Hezbollah’s remaining rocket arsenal is only 50 percent or less of what it held at the beginning of the conflict. Fifty percent of 13,000 rockets is still a significant amount and Israel believes that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will use the remainder efficiently and may even save the last amount for some sort of spectacular attack. So far human intelligence has been the most important intelligence-gathering resource used by Mossad and Unit-504, which includes recruiting, locating, and running agents.
Transforming Southern Lebanon Into a Battlefield
Since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah transformed the Lebanese towns near the border of Israel into disguised forts full of prepared fighting positions, tunnels, ammunition caches, concealed sniper positions, mine fields and zones pre-sighted for mortar fire all in preparation for a major Israeli infantry and armor attack. In many ways, these preparations have allowed Hezbollah to engage IDF troops in villages just several hundred yards from the Israel-Lebanon border more than three weeks into the war.
An IDF officer told the Jerusalem Post, August 9, that it would then take four to six weeks to clear out the Hezbollah presence from southern Lebanon from the Litani river south and to destroy the thousands of Katyusha rockets and rocket launchers believed to be in that area. The IDF estimates that the 400 square mile area between the Litani River and the Israeli border is home to 70 percent of the Katyusha rockets launched at northern Israel. Areas north of the Litani River include towns like Nabatiyeh, from where Hezbollah has been firing rockets at the upper Galilee, as well as Haifa and other coastal Israeli cities.
As of the second week of August, Hezbollah’s Nasser Unit, in charge of southern Lebanon, was still operational, its strength augmented by reservists called up in anticipation of an Israeli ground incursion to recover the kidnapped IDF soldiers, according to the Jerusalem Post. An unnamed high ranking IDF officer said Hezbollah still retained its command and control abilities throughout Lebanon and had fighters deployed in between 100-130 villages south of the Litani River. North of the river, the officer said, Hezbollah had a smaller presence. In southern Lebanon, within the security zone the IDF had created, soldiers battled for nearly three weeks in two Hezbollah strongholds - Bint Jbail and Ayta a-Shaab - scenes of heavy fighting between IDF troops and Hezbollah gunmen on August 9.
Influencing Hezbollah behind the scenes is Iran and the country’s fire-breathing leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the1980s, when Hezbollah was founded during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, and the initial leader of Hezbollah pledged his loyalty to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran became a major supporter sending millions of dollars in arms and cash to the militant organization monthly. Iran’s continuing support has become more apparent in recent days when the Israeli warship. Hezbollah has been able to acquire a few different kinds of this variety from Iran. These include the Misagh family of man portable air defense missiles, essentially Iranian-produced copies of the Chinese QW-1 Vanguard missile system.
From Simple Rockets to Sophisticated Cruise Missiles
Hezbollah’s weapon of choice against Israel is the Katyusha artillery rocket. Originally developed by the Soviet Union during WWII, the many varieties of the Katyusha have a range between 12 and 22 kms. Somewhat recently, Hezbollah acquired Iranian Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 versions of Katyusha with ranges of 45 km and 75 km respectively. Hezbollah has been using the Fajr to strike the densely populated urban area of Haifa.
Iran is suspected of supplying Hezbollah with a variety of other rockets, rocket launchers, missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades. When Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah announced that he had some “surprises” in store for Israel, he was possibly be referring to the even longer-range Zelzal rockets. These include the Zelzal-3, and ZelzalÐ3B, with ranges of 200 and 260 kms. respectively. Other long-range missiles Israeli intelligence suspects Hezbollah has obtained include the Nazeat 6-H, and 10-H, with ranges of 100 and 140 kms respectively. These particular missiles are derived from the Russian “Frog” battlefield ballistic missiles, which have a range of 68 kms.
The reason Hezbollah had not launched long-range Iranian-made Fajr rockets at Israel is due to Teheran’s opposition, Israeli defense officials told the Jerusalem Post, August 4. Strikes on Tel Aviv could compel Israel to attack Syria or Iran directly. The logic is that if the war was started to take attention off Iran’s nuclear program, it has succeeded. Any widening now would undermine Damascus and Tehran. Furthermore, the IDF also believes that it seriously damaged Hezbollah’s stores of its longest-range rockets including almost two-thirds of the Zelzals in the first night of air strikes in mid-July.
The mobility of the truck-mounted artillery rocket systems and of the individual rockets and the single launchers which can be carried in a station wagon or pickup truck, the IDF is unaware where to strike until the rockets have already been launched. Adding to Israel’s problems is the fact that Hezbollah often uses improvised timing devices, like some as simple as a digital watch to launch the rockets, so by the time Israel is able to mobilize an attack, the fighters are long gone and the damage has been done. “It’s a big problem for [Israel], the launchers pop up only for a few minutes before the rocket goesÉwe just can’t get to them all,” a senior Israeli military official told The Wall Street Journal, July 17.
Hezbollah is well organized with military regiments with officers, organized regionally in northern, central, and southern Lebanon. The unit stationed in the south which the IDF calls the the Nasser Unit or refers to as the “Katyusha Unit”. One reason attacks with the shortest range Katyushas have dropped off Israeli military intelligence believes is that it has become difficult to re-supply Hezbollah units in the south due to IDF/AF strikes that destroyed bridges and roads into the area. The unit responsible for the attacks on Haifa and the surrounding area is the Hezbollah’s central Lebanon-based “Medium Range Rocket Unit,” as the IDF calls it. This is the unit believed to be in possession of the Fajr-5 and Zelzal rockets.
Iran has supplied Hezbollah with state-of-the-art anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) including the RPG-29, considered to have caused the most IDF casualties with its two-phase warhead, including a devastating strike on a squad of soldiers taking refuge inside a building. Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile inventory also includes the Russian Metis-M, the French Milan, a reverse-engineered Iranian copy of the U.S. Dragon called the Saeghe-2, and several Iranian-produced versions of the ubiquitous Russian RPG-7.
Hezbollah has also used its older anti-tank missiles, such as the 9M14 Malyutka known in the West as the AT-3 Sagger, as anti-personnel weapons launched at structures in which Israeli troops are sheltered, with a first strike cracking the typical cement block wall and the second exploding inside. “They use them like artillery to hit houses,” said Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the IDF’s director of intelligence analysis. “They can use them accurately up to even three kilometers, and they go through a wall like through the armor of a tank.”
Hezbollah’s success with advanced anti-tank missiles against the Merkava tank has led the IDF/AF to focus at preventing more of these missiles from entering Lebanon from Syria. The missiles have damaged or destroyed Israeli armored vehicles including the IDF’s front-line Merkava tank on about 20 percent of their hits, Israeli tank commanders at the front revealed to the media. As of mid-August, three Merkavas have been damaged and seven crewmen killed. As Israel achieves greater success interdicting the weapons shipments it has become clear that the Syrian government itself is supplying these weapons. Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkott, head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate, told the Jerusalem News Wire on July 19, 2006 “These are rockets that belong to the Syrian Army. You can’t find these in the Damascus market.”
Since Iran and Syria are believed to be the instigators of the current violence, many in Israel are not ruling out the possibility of a confrontation with either, or even both countries. Housing and Construction Minister Isaac Herzog, a member of the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet, told a Wall Street Journal reporter on July 17, “we place full responsibility on for the crisis in Syria and Iran.” He then added, “we are not ruling out any operation and we will not forget who is responsible.”
Copyright JINSA, © 1999-2006. All Rights Reserved.
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