Lebanon pays for Hezbollah's sins

July 14, 2006 | BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Beirutis expected the worst when word came Wednesday that Hezbollah, the militant group based in south Lebanon, had killed eight Israeli soldiers near the border and seized two more. The region was already on edge, with the Israeli siege of Gaza in its 18th day following the Palestinian kidnapping of an Israel Defense Forces soldier. Everyone knew that Israeli retaliation would be severe. The only question was whether Israel would confine itself to attacks on Hezbollah, or if it would hold Lebanon responsible and launch attacks across the board. Israel chose the latter course and has meted out savage punishment to this small country.

On Wednesday, IDF strikes destroyed the bridges connecting south Lebanon to the rest of the country. By nightfall, Israeli fighters had blasted the major highways, essentially sealing off the southern third from the center of the country. Early morning Thursday, warplanes bombed Rafiq Hariri Beirut International Airport, knocking out the runways. Minutes later, an Israeli rocket struck Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, wounding one person and sending local media into a frenzy over access to the scene that dispersed only when an IDF fighter screamed overhead and people ran for cover.

And so it continued all day. Bridges used just an hour before were smashed into rubble. Gunboats off the coast fired wildly into Palestinian militant camps. Attack helicopters ignited a fuel depot at the airport, while leaflets rained down upon the residents of the rundown Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods in southern Beirut, warning them to flee or face further airstrikes aimed at the Hezbollah leadership. The IDF also announced a total blockade of the country by air and sea. Late Thursday night it bombed the only major route out of Lebanon, the road to Damascus. In all, Israeli airstrikes were reported to have killed at least 55 civilians.

Israeli generals have said they want to deal Hezbollah a devastating blow and permanently clear the group away from Israel's northern border. Whether they can achieve this is uncertain. While there is no way the militant group can stand up to this kind of aerial assault, Hezbollah is a much more formidable adversary than the Palestinians militants in Gaza. The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon, as Hezbollah prefers to be called, is probably the most competent organization in the entire Arab Middle East. No other Arab army has defeated the mighty IDF, one of the most powerful armies in the world, as Hezbollah did in 2000 when it drove it out of south Lebanon. Syria has been whipped half a dozen times at Israeli hands. Jordan has lost so much land and earned so many refugees that it chose to anger the entire rest of the Arab world (and two-thirds of its population) and sue for a long-term peace deal just to avoid future losses. And Egypt? The most powerful and populous state in the Arab world doesn't even want Gaza back, let alone have another go at the IDF.

Hezbollah remains the only military force that the Israelis really respect, based on its top-notch training and equipment supplied by Iran, and a brand of Shiite Islam that lends both extreme discipline and total fearlessness. Hezbollah boasts thousands of fighters, many battle-hardened, backed by a significant number of artillery pieces and rockets. It constitutes no threat to invade and hold northern Israel. But the daring and successful operation it pulled off on Wednesday shows that it cannot be taken lightly. Ambushing an IDF Humvee patrol, Hezbollah forces killed three Israeli soldiers and seized two more. When the Israelis sent tanks across the border in pursuit, a powerful cache of buried explosives destroyed one tank, killing its four-man crew. And in the face of massive air, artillery and naval strikes against Lebanese infrastructure and military targets, Hezbollah has managed to fire hundreds of rockets and artillery shells into northern Israel; late on Thursday, rockets were reported to have struck the major Israeli city of Haifa. Even the U.S. Navy reportedly pulled its ships out of Haifa's ports.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed that his group had kidnapped the soldiers and set a major prisoner swap as the condition of their release.

Israel rejected any negotiations and launched massive retaliatory strikes. "The Lebanese government needs to understand that there is a price for its inaction. They need to understand that if they are not able to deal with terror, we will have no choice but to fight with them," IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Thursday.

But while Israel's actions could be defended as a deterrent against an act of aggression, they also amount to the collective punishment of the Lebanese society and government, which have little say over Hezbollah's activities.

The situation puts the Lebanese government and military in an extremely tough position. The government simply cannot control Hezbollah. It cannot take it on politically because of its support among Lebanon's Shiite Muslim population, in a country where almost everyone still votes for their religion's candidate regardless of merit. Nor can the well-trained but tiny and underequipped Lebanese army take on the Shiite militia.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has had to walk a political tightrope over Hezbollah's close relationship with Syria. Now, Hezbollah's actions and the Israeli response have put him in an almost surreal position. A favorite of the Bush administration for throwing out the Syrian military occupation last year in the wake of Rafiq Hariri's murder (widely believed by Syrian agents), Lebanon's new government has been gently pushing Hezbollah into political dialogue, with the goal of disarming the group or integrating it into the Lebanese army. But now Siniora's government faces wanton destruction at the hands of America's other favorite Middle East country, which is demanding two kidnapped soldiers that Siniora simply cannot deliver.

Next page: A doctor holds up a tiny arm: "Here is your 'terrorist'"