The Second Lebanon War broke out on July 12, 2006, without either Israel or Hezbollah intending this escalation. However, the abduction of IDF soldiers that day by a Hezbollah cell created a new reality in the north that prompted Israel to embark on a military operation, which ultimately became a war. The course of the war and its outcomes strongly affected subsequent internal and external Israeli, Lebanese, and regional processes.
Hindsight provides an opportunity to examine the war and its ramifications from a broader and more...
The Second Lebanon War broke out on July 12, 2006, without either Israel or Hezbollah intending this escalation. However, the abduction of IDF soldiers that day by a Hezbollah cell created a new reality in the north that prompted Israel to embark on a military operation, which ultimately became a war. The course of the war and its outcomes strongly affected subsequent internal and external Israeli, Lebanese, and regional processes. Hindsight provides an opportunity to examine the war and its ramifications from a broader and more...
After more than six blood-soaked years, some half a million dead (mostly civilians), and millions of displaced people and refugees, there are signs that the military stage in the Syrian civil war is approaching an end. Israel, which has largely been distanced from the Syrian quagmire, senses its lack of influence over arrangements currently underway in Moscow, Tehran, Ankara, Astana, and Geneva. Following Israel’s recent aerial attack deep in Syria on a storage site serving Hezbollah and/or forces subordinate to Iran Prime Minister...
The public discourse during Operation Protective Edge (2014) reflected a higher degree of willingness to accept military casualties than it had during previous wars or operations, particularly the Second Lebanon War (2006). In this article, I seek to clarify the prevailing argument regarding Israeli society’s greater willingness to accept military deaths, and to show that this argument should not be accepted at face value. My argument is that casualty sensitivity exists, but it is more complex than it appears to be and is also...
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006 ended the Second Lebanon War and outlined the security regime that has been in effect for the past decade between Israel and its northern neighbor. To support the Lebanese government in fulfilling the resolution, UNIFIL, the temporary UN force in Lebanon (first established in 1978 by UN Security Council Resolution 425), was expanded from 2,000 soldiers before the 2006 war to 12,000 troops of higher quality. In the decade since its reestablishment, UNIFIL II helped stabilize the...
The processes that led to the Second Lebanon War and the events that took place during the war are analyzed six years after the war. The starting point for the analysis is the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, which, according to the analysis, was justified. However, from a broad perspective, it is evident that the overall processes since the withdrawal led to strategic choices that resulted in the IDF’s reduced operational preparedness. The article examines the decision making processes near the start of and during the course of the...
Operation Change of Direction, the code name given to Israel’s war against Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006 by the Operations Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was the most inconclusive performance by far in the IDF’s many trials by fire since 1948, in that it represented the first time that a major regional confrontation ended without a clear cut victory on Israel’s part. The campaign’s uneven course and outcome resulted from a more overarching deficiency in strategy choice, whose most flawed...
The recent threats by Ali Larijani, chairman of the Iranian parliament and a member of the Iranian leader’s innermost circle, that a military attack by the West, headed by the United States, against its Syrian ally would lead to an attack on Israel are another stage in Iran’s efforts to deter the US and Israel from undertaking a military action against it. Although Iran’s actual willingness to come to the help of its allies and protיgיs cannot be assessed, it seems that the key tools available to it are its proxies, especially the...
Almost four years after the Second Lebanon War (July-August 2006) and more than a year and a half after Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), it has been demonstrated again that deterrence as a major instrument for defense of the civilian home front works, at least for now. Hizbollah, though building up its military capacities, has religiously observed the ceasefire in the north for what is the longest period of quiet on the Lebanese border in years. Likewise Hamas has refrained from launching...
Although the writing was on the wall for several years prior, it appearsthat time will show that the first day of the Second Lebanon War markeda watershed. The war presented the public in Israel with a clear picture ofa threat that has changed radically. Before the war, the IDF had focusedon combating Palestinian terrorism and on attempting to construct anupdated understanding of warfare against the classical military threat;the war, however, revealed the full force of the threat coming from hightrajectory fire.
Amos Gilad, the head of the Defense Ministry’s political-security branch, testified before the Winograd Commission about grim words that do not describe any disaster in the military arena, rather the mindset and sense in Israel regarding the adoption of UN Security Resolution 1701. It seems that this testimony reflects to a large extent the lack of preparedness and thought characteristic of the political dimension – as well as the military level – in everything connected with the Second Lebanon War.
