The Shock Of Stalemate
For the first time in its entire history since 1948, Israel walked away from the battlefield without scoring an outright and convincing victory, in effect a stalemate. Israel has never fought a war with numerical superiority, this time the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) was fought to a standstill by a force far less in numbers. Totally dominant in weapons and munitions on the ground, Israel’s Air Force ruled the skies unhindered, over 10000 sorties delivering tons of ordnance in the form of precision-guided bombs, and smart missiles alongwith heavy stuff like “daisy-cutters”, etc. 155 mm self-propelled guns constantly pounded Hezbollah positions, with direct tank fire on Hezbollah strong points from Merkawa tanks (MKs 1 & 2 with the regular 105 mm gun and MK 3 with the smooth barrel 120 mm gun). This tremendous concentrated firepower was followed by waves of mechanized infantry, they could not dislodge dedicated Hezbollah fighters. That failure shattered a myth built up carefully over the years, that the Arabs could not stand upto Israel’s military might. The IDF did achieve, through a UN Resolution a bufferzone of sorts, UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army moving in between Israel’s border and the Litani River in South Lebanon to enforce the ceasefire. One doubts the Hezbollah will allow themselves to be disarmed.
Spinning Out Of Control
The situation in the Middle East is rapidly degenerating from terrible to atrocious. Already bordering on living hell for those at ground zero in the battle zone in Lebanon, the conflagration could spread out of control. While the mainly Sunni Hamas are offering token resistance to the Israeli ground incursion in Gaza, Shia Hezbollah are putting up a robust resistance in South Lebanon. Israel has every right like any nation on the Earth to defend itself, however the disproportionate response has been shocking to its friends and foes alike, undermining Israel’s moral domination in western perceptions. In the eyes of its immediate neighbours and the rest of the muslim world, the callousness reinforces their opposition to Israel’s existence, even among those who have been persuaded over the years through intellectual interaction that Israel can live in peaceful co-existence with its neighbours.