Lebanon: Israel's Vietnam?

December 11, 1997

author PETER HIRSCHBERG

More than 100 families are mourning soldiers killed in or en route to Lebanon this year. Has the ‘security zone,’ designed to prevent enemy gunmen attacking across the northern border, outlived its usefulness? Is it time to bring the troops home?

WHEN LT. EYAL SHIMONI clambered through the hatch of his Merkava II on September 18, he had reason to feel pretty safe. The 21-year-old commander was inside one of the world’s most advanced tanks, protected by a thick anti-missile coating. The army had invested millions in boosting the protective armor of just such tanks, for duty in the hazardous, guerrilla-friendly terrain of South Lebanon.

But any sense of security was fatally illusory. Iranian-backed Hizballah gunmen launched a broad offensive that day, firing mortars and missiles at dozens of Israeli army bases, and those of its proxy South Lebanon Army militia. When Shimoni’s tank, deployed in the heart of Israel’s South Lebanon security zone, moved out to provide cover for troops, it took a direct hit from a “Faggot” anti-tank missile. The protective armor was penetrated. Shimoni died instantly.

A senior officer in the Northern Command reportedly described the loss as “bad luck — a limited success” for Hizballah. But a month later, it happened again. On October 18, another Merkava II, operating in the eastern sector of the zone, also took a direct hit from a Hizballah missile, and also proved pregnable. Sgt. Ronen Hayun, 19, was killed on the spot.

Delighted by its double “success,” Hizballah began bragging publicly about having secured the Merkava blueprint and discovered its “weak spot.” The notion has been curtly dismissed by Israeli military analysts (who nevertheless acknowledge that the Merkava, like all tanks, does have a weak spot between the turret and the body). But be it bad luck, uncannily accurate fire, or proof of a much-enhanced offensive capability, the fact of the Hizballah killings is emblematic of the Israel Defense Forces’ deteriorating condition in southern Lebanon.

Since 1985, when Israel pulled out of most of the territory it took in the Lebanon War and set up the security zone buffer, a war of attrition has smoldered. The zone, 23 kilometers (14 miles) at its widest point and four kilometers (2.5 miles) at its narrowest, is patrolled by Israeli troops (about 1,500, according to foreign reports) and the 2,500-strong SLA. It is intended to protect Israeli citizens by keeping Hizballah and Palestinian rejectionist groups away from Israel’s north. But there’s a price, in the lives of Israeli and SLA soldiers. And lately, it’s become evident that the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Hizballah, with no more than 1,500 fighters, is gaining ascendancy.

A Hizballah squad on October 8 crossed the security zone to a position just 150 meters from the border fence, killed two soldiers, then melted away. A month earlier, a naval commando unit walked into a Hizballah ambush; 12 soldiers were killed. Days later, five soldiers burned to death in a brushfire ignited by friendly fire during the shelling of Hizballah positions.

Hizballah fighters are receiving increasingly sophisticated weaponry — including night-vision equipment and upgraded missiles — and are getting better at using it. In the past few months, 50 planeloads of arms, including advanced “Sagger” and “Faggot” anti-tank missiles, have reached Hizballah from Iran via Damascus airport — Syria tacitly encouraging Hizballah to intensify its war, in the hope that Israel might be pressured into making concessions on the Golan Heights as part of a comprehensive peace treaty. Chief of Staff Amnon Shahak has reportedly been telling Knesset members the army is struggling to gather intelligence on Hizballah activities and plans.

Uri Lubrani, the veteran coordinator of government activities in Lebanon, is determinedly non-alarmist, insisting that “there are ups and downs in Lebanon all the time. It’s a fight based on points, not knockouts. We’re not giving up.” But the toll is getting heavier. Shimoni and Hayun were two of 38 soldiers to lose their lives in Lebanon in the first 10 months of this year — a figure far higher than the death toll in any year since the security zone was created. And that is without taking into account the 73 soldiers who died en route to Lebanon last February, when two transport helicopters collided in Israel’s worst-ever military air accident. In 1996, by comparison, 26 soldiers died; in 1995 it was 23, and in the decade prior to that it averaged 13 per year. (The total number of soldiers killed since 1985 is 219; another 694 have been injured; in that same period, 358 SLA soldiers have been killed.)

With the Israeli death toll mounting, the ratio of casualties is shifting inexorably to Hizballah’s advantage. Lebanese security sources calculate the average annual Hizballah death toll in recent years at 45, with the figure for this year at 56. Put another way, that means Hizballah used to lose more than three fighters for every Israeli soldier killed; nowadays, the ratio has dropped below 2:1 and is moving toward 1:1.

For years, Israelis have watched the funerals of soldiers killed in Lebanon, winced, and pushed aside their fears over their own children fighting there, convincing themselves there is no better alternative. Now, though, the number of bodybags coming home from a war that many sense cannot be won is spurring a harsh public debate about whether the army should be there at all.

It’s a debate that crosses the political divide, with some Labor members strenuously defending the ongoing military presence, and some ministers contemplating a withdrawal even in the absence of a deal backed by Lebanon’s powerful patron, Syria.

With the clear support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai rules out a unilateral troop pullout. “Any unilateral change will only make the situation worse,” he said in a recent interview, alluding to the concern that Hizballah would simply fill the vacuum created by the Israeli departure from the security zone, and redirect its attacks into Israel itself. “There can be no adventurism at the expense of the lives of our citizens.”

Sixty percent of Israeli Jews support Mordechai’s “stay-put” stance, according to a Tel Aviv University poll. But 32 percent favor a unilateral pullout— and they are making themselves felt.

A movement calling itself “Four Mothers” has begun agitating for withdrawal — “urging the government to rethink,” says Rachel Ben-Dor, one of the founders. She and three other mothers with sons in Lebanon got together after the helicopter disaster, having become convinced that the army is fighting a losing battle. “We are saying, ‘Damn it!’” shouts Ben-Dor, who lives in the northern town of Rosh Pinah and whose son serves in an elite unit. “From the moment our children are born, we know what will be: There is a war. People are being killed. Something is rotten here; something has to change.”

The Four Mothers, joined since by hundreds of activists, have held protests at the border, distributed stickers proclaiming “Freedom from Lebanon — 97” at traffic junctions, and lobbied President Ezer Weizman, ministers and Knesset members. Whenever a soldier dies, they demonstrate outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. Linda Ben-Zvi, who handles English-language PR for the movement, says it has collected 20,000 signatures in favor of withdrawal.

Ben-Zvi, whose son Arik recently completed his army service, accuses politicians and military planners of not wanting to alter the present policy for fear of the political fall-out or because they have too much prestige invested in it. It’s a situation which Ben-Zvi, who hails from Colorado and who participated in the 1960s U.S. anti-war protests, argues is chillingly similar to America’s involvement in Vietnam. When her husband, Shmuel, a former officer in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, brought up the Vietnam comparison during a 2_-hour meeting the group had with Mordechai, the defense minister almost blew a fuse.

“I said to him,” says Shmuel, “that I hope, when he writes his autobiography, he won’t have to make the same apology (for a mistaken war) that (U.S. secretary of defense Robert) McNamara made. He was pretty upset with the analogy. It touched a nerve.”

The U.S. lost some 50,000 troops in an unsuccessful, 20-year-effort to prevent the Communists of North Vietnam from uniting the South under their leadership. “I realize there are differences between the conflicts,” says Shmuel Ben-Zvi, “but this is also a guerrilla war that can’t be won. The topographical conditions are advantageous to the other side, they have a supportive population and open borders to supportive countries. For those who formulated the policy (in South Lebanon) to change their position now would be a virtual admission that they had pursued a wrong policy for so many years and through so many unnecessary deaths. They are prisoners of this conception and it’s difficult for them to change.”

IT IS NOVEMBER 9, AND A GROUP OF about 20 supporters of the Four Mothers movement, most of them women, gather outside the Jerusalem International Convention Center on the opening night of the Likud party’s conference. The police are trying to move them across the street. “But we aren’t political,“ objects one woman. “This isn’t against Bibi.”

Arguing as they are ushered backwards, the protesters dig in at the center’s parking lot, line up and unfurl their banners. “Every Victim Has a Name,” reads one. Another carries the names of soldiers killed in Lebanon, white writing on black.

Likud delegates arriving for the conference are unanimously hostile. “We aren’t a country that goes down on its knees,” barks one. “What you want will put all the Shi’ites on our border. You’re bringing the army to its knees, showing them we’re cowards.”

“Go to hell,” shouts another, deliberately walking through a banner two women are holding, forcing them to let go. “Go home and let us have our conference in peace.” “That’s right,” one of the women responds. “You’re going home tonight, but what about the soldiers?”

“The criticism we hear most,” Linda Ben-Zvi has remarked a few days earlier, “is that we’re undermining army morale.” Many of the sons, she says, strongly object to what their mothers are doing. But, she argues, herein lies a major difference between the 60s Vietnam protests and today’s get-the-troops-out-of-Lebanon campaign. “During Vietnam, we regarded the soldiers as our enemies. The soldiers in Lebanon are our sons. We support them completely. It’s for their sake we’re acting. Our protest is aimed at the government.”

The strongest political backing for the Four Mothers’ stance comes from Labor’s Yossi Beilin, who has launched his own Movement for a Peaceful Withdrawal from Lebanon. Given the Israeli and Syrian intransigence about renewing peace talks, Beilin claims, “we’re becoming hostages of Hafiz al-Asad,” enabling the Syrian president to use Hizballah as a lever.

If an agreement with Syria or with the existing forces in Lebanon is unattainable, Beilin believes, Israel should unilaterally leave the security zone, redeploy in strength along the northern border, and make clear that the Lebanese government will be held responsible for any cross-border hostilities. That way, if there are attacks, Israel will be able to hit back, hard. At present, by contrast, Israel faces intense international opposition to large scale military action in Lebanon, where it is seen as an occupier. And it is restrained by U.S.-brokered accords, limiting the scope of army actions, which were hammered out after the April 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath bombardment, during which 100 refugees were killed by Israeli shells that fell on a U.N. base.

“When I withdraw,” says Beilin, “I do so on the assumption that Hizballah may strike at us (across the border). But it’s easier for us to fight on our soil. We know every valley, every tree, every stone and the population is supportive. Once you cross the border, you have none of this.”

How can he promise northern residents they’ll be safer without a security zone? Between 1970 and 1982, about 40 civilians died in cross-border attacks; since the zone was established, “only” six have died. Beilin counters that, in the past 15 years, there have been only nine attempts to infiltrate — none by Hizballah. Take the October 8 operation, for instance: That the Hizballah fighters came within meters of the fence, but made no attempt to cross it, he argues, proves their violent opposition is to Israel’s presence in Lebanon, not to Israel itself. Reuven Merhav, once a deputy to Lubrani and a former Foreign Ministry director general, adds that Hizballah might actually be weakened by an Israeli pullout, or forced into increased mainstream political integration in Lebanon. “Our presence there,” he says, “is their raison d’etre. I honestly believe that, within three to five years, we’d look back and see how foolish we were to stay, not to have cut the Gordian knot earlier.”

For now, the decision-makers are still arguing that leaving Lebanon remains much more dangerous than staying put. They sketch a nightmarish scenario whereby Israel, having withdrawn its forces, faces an alliance of guerrilla organizations working relentlessly to cross the border and massacre civilians. “After a few weeks, or months,” warns Lubrani, “they’ll attack a school bus, maybe even shoot at it from within Lebanon. Then what do we do? The IDF will have to go back into Lebanon — with bigger forces, a more hostile local population and no allies. The same threats will be there, but closer to our jugular.”

While Lubrani acknowledges the legitimacy of the public debate, he rejects the Vietnam analogies as “demagoguery.” There has not, he insists, been any change in the strategic situation in Lebanon, no shift that could reasonably justify a pullout now: “I’m not brave enough to say let’s leave Lebanon and see what happens. I can see the price too clearly. It will be much heavier.” The bottom line, he contends, is that in the absence of Syrian consent, there can be no deal in Lebanon. “More than ever before, Lebanon is under total Syrian control. There is no Syrian bypass route.”

That’s a view shared by Labor Knesset Member Ephraim Sneh, one of the architects of the security zone. “The primary goal of the zone,” argues Sneh, who was commander there in the early 1980s, “is being achieved — quiet life in northern Israel.” There’d be no such quiet after a unilateral pullout, he asserts. “Hizballah openly declares its desire to help the Palestinians liberate Palestine. The Vietcong,” he adds, dismissing the Vietnam allusions, “was not trying to conquer America. It did not engrave the Washington Monument on its symbols the way Hizballah displays Jerusalem.”

Indeed, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah made clear in an October German magazine interview that even if Israel withdraws, his organization will not lay down its weapons. Netanyahu “wants to be guaranteed that we will not chase him into northern Israel,” he scoffed. “I say to Netanyahu, ‘We do not recognize the existence of a northern Israel. That is occupied northern Palestine.’” While some in the Beilin camp argue that such comments are designed to keep Israel in Lebanon, people like Sneh believe Nasrallah must be taken at his word.

THE HIZBALLAH SUCCESSES and the Israeli debate are generating unease among the residents of South Lebanon, especially those linked to the SLA. Israel, after all, foots the SLA salary bill, and several thousand SLA relatives cross the border to work in Israel every day.

While Beilin talks of integrating the SLA rank-and-file into the Lebanese Army post-withdrawal, and organizing asylum, possibly in France, for its senior commanders, the SLA’s commander, Gen. Antoine Lahad, has made clear that he has no intention of fleeing his country. Were Israel to withdraw unilaterally, he warns, part of his force would join Hizballah, and the remainder might evolve into a new anti-Israel militia.

And while Lubrani dismisses reports of a wave of defections from the SLA to Hizballah, loyalties may be shifting. Sneh acknowledges, for example, that Hizballah fighters would not have been able to get close to the border undetected without assistance from the local population. “They’re looking for a life insurance policy,” he says. “And for some of them, that can be in the form of cooperation with Hizballah. The more we talk about a pullout, the greater the number willing to help Hizballah will be.”

IN LATE NOVEMber, the defense establishment did what its critics have been demanding: It completed a three-week reappraisal of policy in Lebanon. And it reached an unequivocal conclusion: The army has to stay where it is. For Rachel Ben-Dor, maintaining the status quo is scandalous: “We are sending our children there to commit suicide, into a madness in which they have no chance. How many more families will be victims of this inaction?”

Sneh is unmoved. “The war in Lebanon is against the most anti-Semitic ideology since World War II,” he declares. “It’s a war against Khomeinism, against Teheran, not against (the South Lebanon town of) Nabatiyeh. A nation that cannot bear casualties cannot exist in the Middle East.”

Copyright The Jerusalem Report

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