Hezbollah surprises its enemy

Hezbollah surprises its enemy

8/7/2006 8:45:00 AM GMT

Yesterday Hezbollah’s rockets killed 15 Israelis, mostly soldiers, the deadliest barrage of the Lebanese resistance’s attacks in nearly a month of fighting against the Israeli occupying army.

Three years ago, when a powerful quake hit the Iranian city of Bam, killing 35,000 people, transport planes carrying aid poured in from everywhere, including Syria. Those planes, the Israeli military intelligence alleges, returned to Damascus carrying sophisticated weapons, including long-range Zelzal missiles, which Israel claims Syrians passed on to the Lebanese resistance movement in southern Lebanon, stated a New York Times editorial.

Israel’s claims that those weaponry shipments were passed on to Hezbollah, bitter foe of Israel, “are just one indication of how - with the help of its main sponsors, Iran and Syria”, the Lebanese resistance’s military might and arsenal have majorly improved over the past six years, since Hezbollah forced the Israelis out of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese umbrella organization of groups and organizations rejecting the Israeli presence in Lebanon and the Middle East, is a significant force in Lebanon’s politics and a major provider of social services, operating schools, hospitals, and agricultural services, for thousands of Lebanese.

The group’s fighters are well trained like an army.

“They are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” admitted a soldier who just returned from Lebanon.

“They are trained and highly qualified”, with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

Hezbollah, known for its close links to Iran and Syria, was founded in 1982 to confront the Israeli army and end its illegitimate presence and occupation of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s stockpile of what some experts describe as Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, 3,000 of which have hit Israeli towns, received much attention from the media recently, specially with the great losses inflicted upon the Israelis since the conflict broke last month.

The New York Times put the number of Israelis killed since Lebanon’s offensive began at 48, but officials say they’re over 70.

Also during the past six years, both Tehran and Damascus provided satellite communications and some of the world’s best infantry weapons, including Russian-made antitank weapons and Semtex plastic explosives.

They also provided training on how to use such weapons against the Israelis.

But the credit should be given to Hezbollah’s fighters’ talent and skillful use of such weapons, specially the wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of about two miles.

With Russian-made antitank missiles, capable of penetrating armor, Hezbollah fighters managed to destroy many Israeli vehicles, including its most modern tank, the Merkava, on about 20 percent of their hits, according to Israeli tank commanders at the front.

“They use them like artillery to hit houses,” said Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli Army’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 fighters also use tunnels so as to quickly emerge from the ground, fire a shoulder-held antitank missile, and vanish immediately.

“We know what they have and how they work,” General Kuperwasser said.

“But we don’t know where all the tunnels are. So they can achieve tactical surprise.”

They also use antitank missiles, which Israelis consider their “main fear”, said David Ben-Nun, 24, an enlisted man in the Nahal brigade who just returned from a week in Lebanon.

Although the Israelis admit that Hezbollah’s fighters are few, between 2,000 and 4,000, Timur Goksel, who was the senior political adviser to Unifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which monitors the border until 2003, describes Hezbollah as much as the Israelis do: “careful, patient, attuned to gathering intelligence, scholars of guerrilla warfare from the American Revolution to Mao and the Vietcong”.

“Hezbollah has studied asymmetrical warfare,” Mr. Goksel said.

“They have staff work and they do long-term planning, something the Palestinians never do,”

“They watch for two months to note every detail of their enemy. They review their operations - what they did wrong, how the enemy responded. And they have flexible tactics, without a large hierarchical command structure.”

“Hezbollah has much better weapons than before,” he said, noting that military confrontation with the Israeli army for 18 years, made Hezbollah fighters “not afraid of the Israeli Army anymore”.

Goskel, speaking during a telephone interview from Beirut, further stated that Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israelis and study their flaws, gave its fighters confidence that the Israeli Army “is a normal human army, with normal vulnerabilities and follies.”

Hezbollah’s tactics focus on trying to draw Israeli ground forces farther into Lebanon, according to Mr. Goksel.

“They want to draw them in to well-prepared battlefields,” like Aita al Shaab.

“They know the Israelis depend too much on armor, which is a prime target for them. And they want Israeli supply lines to lengthen, so they’re easier to hit.”

The Hezbollah fighters “are not just farmers who have been given weapons to fire,” he said. “They are persistent and well trained.”

Hezbollah, or the Party of God, emerged in Lebanon in the early 1980s and soon became the region’s leading resistance and anti Israeli movement, determined to drive Israeli occupiers out from Lebanon and the Middle East region.

In 2000 the group witnessed one of its main aims being achieved. Hezbollah fighters defeated the well equipped Israeli army, forcing it end its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon.

The movement now serves as an inspiration to Palestinian resistance groups fighting to liberate their occupied lands.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12372