A worse alternative to dividing Lebanon with Syria is an unconditionally supported Christian strongman there. He would have to engage in ugly, Sabra- and Shatila- style massacres in order to terrify the local Muslims into abandoning support for Islamic guerrillas. In such a scenario, the IDF would have to directly assist Lebanon’s Christian army on occasions.

The least desirable of workable options is to foster any Lebanese government with a firm grip on the militants. So far, the only candidate to form such a government is Hezbollah. The Lebanese army’s protracted fight with the insignificant Fatah al-Islam group in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp shows that army incapable of cornering the many guerrilla groups embedded in several Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, each seething with weapons. Even if a Palestinian state is created, it won’t let the refugees back – Abbas understands that these inner-city throngs, with no experience of productive work for three generations, would blow up his state. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are immensely more radical – patriotic – even than Gazans, to say nothing of the relatively affluent and moderate West Bankers. Abbas’ partitioning of what they see as a Palestinian homeland with Israel is inconsequential for them. With a population density of over 50,000 jobless Arabs per square kilometer, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon will erupt, launching immense guerrilla warfare around that powerless country. Hezbollah, popular among the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, is the only force that can keep the otherwise uncontrollable Palestinian militants at bay.

Hezbollah is radical and irresponsible now, but would behave differently when ruling the country. A Hezbollah burdened with the civic responsibilities of government, engaged with France and the West generally, would moderate as every other revolutionary group has done upon coming to power. Now, Hezbollah is engaged in terrorism only because it can afford irresponsibility – in fact, it is paid to be that way. But at the national level, Iran wouldn’t be able to provide meaningful aid to all of Lebanon and would inevitably lose influence with a Hezbollah in power. It is inconceivable that a Hezbollah government would launch a conventional war against Israel, or sponsor terrorist operations, if risking a conventional reprisal. A Hezbollah in power, unlike a Hezbollah in opposition, would care a lot about Israel bombing the Beirut airport. Even now, Hezbollah is not exactly a terrorist organization. It mostly works in welfare projects and defense. Hezbollah’s bunkers along the Israel-Lebanon border are defensive; bunkers are not used for offense. Hezbollah stocks mid-range missiles, also a strategically defensive weapon. Hezbollah only demanded that Israel go from Lebanon and now from the unimportant Shebaa farms, not that the Jewish state be taken off the map. Kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, if planned by Hezbollah central command at all rather than by its local mavericks, are a little something that Hezbollah must show its sponsors and supporters. At any rate, isolated cross-border kidnappings are not war, and historically Israel had demonstrated a high tolerance for such incidents with Egypt, Jordan, or Lebanon; Hezbollah did not imagine that it would start a war with Israel by kidnapping the IDF soldiers.

It’s ethically unpleasant to cooperate with Hezbollah, but Israel cooperates with the PLO, so the moral aspects should be no problem. Israel continuously carps at Hamas for kidnapping Shalit, but rarely utters a word about the soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. After France had invited Hezbollah for talks, Europe would eventually welcome the militant group. Face it: Hezbollah is the only real power in Lebanon. Killing them off would create a power vacuum. If Israel wants to talk with Lebanon, there’s no one else to talk with but Hezbollah.

Fighting Hezbollah is strategically worthless for Israel. In the best-case scenario, if Hezbollah goes away from the scene, another militant group will arise to fill the power vacuum. Lebanon, besieged by powerful neighbors and internal religious conflicts, is weak and susceptible to militants. When there is an opportunity in Lebanon, insurgents will rush in to exploit it; atheist Palestinians yesterday, Shiite Hezbollah today, Sunni Palestinians or whoever else tomorrow. Israel can strain Hezbollah’s resources with sabotage, police enforcement, and low-level military activities, but need not extinguish the group.

Hezbollah enjoys Iranian subsidies and free arms shipments from Syria. While Israel cannot realistically establish aerial control over the Syrian-Lebanese border, periodic rocket attacks on unauthorized traffic could restrict the arms flow to Hezbollah. Drive out Lebanese merchants – who financially support Hezbollah – from Sierra Leone and Congo, replace them with Israeli diamond traders. Take control of the drug trade now handled by Hezbollah. Also, flood Gaza with cheap drugs to divert the Arab youth, instead of Hezbollah’s drugs that are now flooding Israel.

The Israeli passive defense against Lebanon won’t work; no passive defense does. The Soviet Union agreed to every German demand, showered Germany with aid and supplies, assembled forces at the borders which should have deterred the aggressor – but was attacked anyway.

Peace does not come abruptly, especially when only one side wishes it. Peace is a product of exhaustion. No single move such as disengagement can achieve peace, but only protracted efforts – military efforts. Israel tried the opposite approach with Egypt, hoping that a peace treaty would lead to peaceful relations; nope. Both the Israeli and the Egyptian armies grew qualitatively after the Camp David accords and the Egyptians still hate the Israelis. Countries usually achieve peace through total wars. Limited expeditions suffice only over non-critical objectives, but even then, accumulated grievances often lead to a total war. Britain did not annihilate Argentina over the insignificant Falkland Islands, but after several attempts to establish the status of Alsace-Lorraine through limited war, France and Germany resorted to two total wars, incidentally dragging in many other nations. Israel lacks the resources for a total – necessarily protracted – war even with Lebanon, short of nuking that country. Israel’s two viable strategies in relation to Lebanon are a strong government there of whatever orientation or a centuries long, seemingly indecisive, low-intensity conflict. Lebanese guerrillas will shell Israel, Israel will bomb the Beirut airport, the UN will intervene, Israel will withdraw, the guerrillas will regain their forces and so on in an almost endless cycle. Rationalist children of the Enlightenment want clear-cut solutions with immediate results. In social relations, such solutions do not exist.

Welcome to the good old world of realpolitik, where violence still rules.

The previous civil war ran substantially along the Christian-Muslim line. Now, significant numbers of Christians and Druzes align with Shiite Hezbollah. Christians see better hopes in aligning with Muslim opposition against Sunni Muslim majority. Many are appalled by pro-American, anti-Syrian hard line of Saniora’s government. Hezbollah attracts others with honesty, non-corruption, determined strength, socialist welfare and egalitarianism, and anti-imperialism. The current standoff is not religious, but ideological.

Hezbollah’s monopoly on opposition to pro-Western government should be ended. Israel has to foster an opposition competitor to Hezbollah. Any pro-Syrian, anti-Western, leftist, or Christian group would do. The point is not to make another South Lebanon Army, but to stop Hezbollah from being the center of anti-government gravitation.

The West needs to evaluate the immediate causes of the civil conflict in Lebanon. They are: American disregard for the power realities and unthinking drive for democracy. There is no country named Lebanon; it is the land of Greater Syria. Multi-religious Lebanese society could never govern itself with modicum of stability. Spoiled by French hedonism, mainstream Lebanese urban types don’t want to defend their country against insurrection. Syria is Lebanon’s only hope for oppressive safety. Alternatively, the world has to accept partition of Lebanon into religiously homogenous enclaves and create oh-so-needed Christian buffer state, a lightning rod between Israel and Muslims.

The Lebanese conflict was triggered by the US-imposed democratization, a much-touted Cedar revolution which brought Hezbollah to power in free elections. Hezbollah demands its legal right to have the government representation proportional to the election results. Saniora sticks to the correct, tribal, undemocratic arrangement of the religious groups’ quotas in government and parliament. The West pushed democratization enough to destroy the fragile Lebanese power equilibrium, but then stopped, stunned at the results.

The West promised Israel to beef up the Lebanese army to rein in Hezbollah. Now the Lebanese army cannot even stop Hezbollah’s tire-burners. Lebanese government lacks political will or army’s support to crush Hezbollah. Israel licks PR wounds from the two Lebanese wars. American government just doesn’t understand what goes on. Syria is the only force that could control Lebanon. At least, Israel would have a weak conventional enemy, rather than guerrilla opponent hiding behind civilians.

Small incursions are no solution: when IDF withdraws from Lebanese villages, Hezbollah moves back in. Halutz’s bombing of Lebanon into compliance was a viable strategy. If anything, Halutz wasn’t consistent: limited bombing terrifies little. All Lebanese must have felt endangered in order to abandon their support for Hezbollah. Then again, Halutz was politically limited to pinpoint strikes. He could not massively retaliate against Hezbollah’s sponsors: Iran and Syria.

Halutz shoulders the responsibility, but also shares it with others. Chief of Staff is a team player, but Sharon beheaded the army by retiring many competent officers who did not agree with Gush Katif‘ destruction.

One thing rarely brought up against Halutz is the state’s policy of murdering Israeli Special Forces which largely consist of religious Jews and settlers. The Staff routinely sent them into fighting without tactical planning or firepower support in the unnecessarily deadly urban combat.

Israeli police shows little corruption on the mid-level, and regularly attempts to bring political thugs to justice. Silent collaboration of their subordinates is disgusting; frauds remained widely known in the narrow circles for years. Forcing the corrupt Olmert out of the office is a just thing to do, but Netanyahu is also no messiah: he is weak politically. That’s why I don’t actively support the efforts to oust Olmert. Beyond the fringe politicians like Baruch Marzel, there is no alternative to the Olmert-like ruling clique. Instead of changing the government yet another time, the Jews should abandon the idea that the government chosen by leftist and Arab majority could do any good to Israel. Rather, we should dictate our will to any government through violent no-step-back opposition to uprooting the settlements.

Despite the protests even from the leftist activist-turned-defense minister Peretz, Olmert proceeds to remove checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. Would the families of the Jews killed because of the relaxed security sue Olmert for wrongful deaths? A building contractor would be sued for neglecting safety rules.

It came out almost unnoticed that the guerrillas arrested for the October 2006 shooting are members of the Hamas and PIJ simultaneously. The differences between the groups are exaggerated. Rank-and-file members are more radical than each group’s leadership: activity of a single group was insufficient to them, and they joined another group to get more of the action. Settlement with Hamas won’t neutralize all the guerrillas.

Israel must partition Lebanon with Syria, and set up a Christian state between them. Alternatively, the West could pour enough money into Lebanon through the existing government to bribe voters away from Iran and Hezbollah. Otherwise, Lebanon is going to become a shia state or slip into another civil war.

So far, Hezbollah pushes for a peaceful takeover of the Lebanese state. They attract Lebanese Christians with reconstruction aid. Hezbollah procured a Christian screen for itself, the presidential candidate Aoun. Lebanese Christians dislike the American-installed anti-Syrian government and will submit to strong but secure Islamic rule. Iran is pumping money in Lebanon to create a shiite axis or rather an Iranian-dominated empire. Syria prefers any Lebanese government to an anti-Syrian nationalist democracy. With Hezbollah in power, Iran will de facto border Israel and influence the Mediterranean. Iran and Syria will all but encircle Israel.

Hezbollah attracts voters with money, glory, and security. Israel must discredit those claims: destroy the hospitals and other institutions in Hezbolah’s social services network, bomb neighborhoods rebuilt with Hezbollah money, and target villages with Hezbollah presence. Israel cannot feasibly destroy Hezbollah, so she must humiliate it and destroy its public credibility. Israel must show the Lebanese that Hezbollah bears no fruit. Short of that, Lebanon will become a radical Islamic state in the image of Iran.

The Lebanese publicly support Hezbollah but privately criticize it. The Lebanese are very extraverted, even compared to generally extravert Arabs. For them, show is everything. That attitude promotes glorious guerillas but also makes them vulnerable; a crack in that credibility would extinguish the support.

Armies routinely use cluster bombs, but only the Jews – the usually culprits – are accused of planting duds to kill civilians . Never mind the absurdity of the allegations. The Israeli army, over-sensitive to Western media, warned the guerillas of the air attacks and took large losses in urban fighting to spare the enemy population. The suggestion that the Israelis spread duds in the final days of the war to harm civilians is divorced from reality.

Cluster bombs are necessary and efficient weapons. They have been used continuously since WWII. They are not horrific devices, just more powerful and economical weapons. Cluster bombs have a lower destruction/casualty ratio than conventional bombs. During the war, Israel had to clear certain areas—already abandoned by civilians—of guerillas. Cluster bombs did that with less destruction.

Why Israel stepped up the use of cluster bombs when a cease-fire loomed? Blame the media. Journalists with little understanding of military affairs decry cluster weapons, and Israel rarely used them throughout the war to avoid intensifying the pressure for a cease-fire. When the cease-fire was certain, Israel had no reason to placate the media and tried to achieve maximum results in the final hours. Hezbollah similarly intensified its rocket barrages.

The UN figure of 350,000 bomblets left is incredible. The US cluster weapons which Israel uses have a declared dud rate of 5%. The UN implicitly claims that Israel fired the incredible 20,000 cluster bombs and warheads. The real dud ratio—entirely the fault of the US manufacturers—is higher, possibly 12-20%, but many duds are dead and not dangerous.

Harm to civilians from cluster duds is a novel issue. Neither the UN nor the media screamed when the US had that problem in Afghanistan. There is no easy solution: painting the bomblets yellow actually attracted children rather than warned them. The threat isn’t major: the Lebanese can tell the children to not touch the clearly identifiable bomblets, and the fields could be plowed to detonate them. Every war theater remains dangerous for years; people in the USSR were killed by unexploded bombs decades after WWII.

Land-mining South Lebanon is a viable tactic certain to decrease cross-border incidents. In the cluster weapons affair, the Israeli government did not do that.

Peacekeepers don’t disarm Hezbollah. Good. The worse is for the better. We needed a government as incompetent as Olmert’s to shake Israelis out of their lethargic compliance. We need rockets from Gaza to make up our mind to clearing our Muslim enemies out of Galilee. Jews deluded themselves even amidst the flood of anti-semitism in Germany. A clear and present danger is not enough. Let the apocalypse roll. Only make sure that the Israelis have the military means to win; 1967, not 1942.

Israel stated on several occasions that Hezbollah fights with the newest weapons. In fact, their Russian anti-tank RPG-29s are twenty years old. Zelzal-2, Hezbollah’s ultimate weapon, is about the same venerable age. Smaller missiles are also 15-30 years old.

Hezbollah has only basic weapons, not Star Wars equipment. RPG-29s are so simple that Russia left plenty of them to its former satellites when it withdrew from the Eastern bloc. Even Syria parted with its arsenal of PRG-29s and delivered them to Hezbollah.

The Israeli government lies. Hezbollah is not better armed than most armies. Light guns, very simple missiles, and conventional explosives form the core of its arsenal. Ideologically motivated guerillas with primitive weapons often defeat regular armies without strategy.

The RPG-29 became a problem for Israel because she deployed tanks in Lebanon without covering them with helicopters. That was a major tactical flaw. Tanks are unprotected against side attacks, and hovering helicopters watch for ambushes. The Israeli General Staff, bent on pinpoint strikes and urban warfare, deployed helicopters for air attacks but had not enough to protect the tanks. They also feared Hezbollah would use RPGs against our helicopters. Israel had to change tactics to massive air strikes instead of sending troops and tanks without air cover.

Israel accused Great Britain of selling Hezbollah . . . night vision goggles! Next we will demand sanctions against Levi’s for selling jeans to terrorists.

Israel buys plenty of American weapons and cannot blame Russia for selling to Hezbollah. In all likelihood, the Russians did not even sell RPG-29s and other weapons to Hezbollah. Since the start of the Chechen war, the Russians have become considerably estranged from the Islamic terrorist organizations. But even if Russia did sell the RPG, that wasn’t wrong by any standards. Israel supplies weapons to paramilitary groups around the world.

If Russian weapons are so good they give mighty Israel problems, why don’t we buy weapons from Russia? They are way cheaper than the American systems and often better. Russian planes and Ukrainian tanks are cost-effective against Muslim armies. Russian Strela anti-missile systems would have relieved Israeli concerns about Zelzal-2 rockets. Israel does not buy some weapons from Russia because she fears upsetting her American masters. Instead, she absurdly opposes guerillas with top-of-the-line planes, helicopters, and tanks. Swimming in the profusion of US weapons, Israel loses her competitive edge of ingenuous and daring battles with relatively low-tech weapons. Lebanon-2006 showed that the best weapons can’t replace tactics, specialized training, and unorthodox military thinking.

Israel laughed at Palestinian complaints about the disproportional use of force. Israel did not significantly limit her choice of weapons during the operations in Gaza and Lebanon. A country that attacks ramshackle villages with Apache helicopters and Mercava tanks cannot demand that her enemies use only rifles. Actually, Israel would likely object even if Hezbollah used only rifles: Israel criticized Palestinians for throwing stones at our troops. The Israeli left calls the territories “occupied” but scream when Arabs oppose occupation.

Tell the nation the truth. We lost in Lebanon because of the lack of strategy, not because our enemy was armed well.

Israelis tolerate losses, just as Americans tolerated them in WWII but not in Vietnam. When war is necessary and conducted reasonably, people accept losses. We oppose useless wars, useless deaths. Israeli society demonstrated overwhelming consensus for the Lebanese war; even the Left supported the war. The Israeli government, not Israelis, needed the cease-fire to cover its lack of strategy. Beside, Israel needed not suffer heavy casualties in urban combat. The IDF had reasonably good intelligence and could have destroyed Hezbollah’s positions from the air with non-conventional weapons. Israelis generally supported the air attacks regardless of Lebanese civilian casualties. The Lebanese elected Hezbollah with their eyes wide open.

So far, Israel has drained Hezbollah some, but Hezbollah won the PR battle for Muslim minds and will recover very soon. Potential donors and volunteers are numerous. In the best-case scenario, hostilities will resume, and even the Israeli government will be forced to do something meaningful, perhaps clear a buffer zone in South Lebanon. Any solution short of dismantling the Lebanese state and sharing the land among Israel, Arab Christians, and Syria would not be sustainable. In the worst case, the Israeli government will give in to Hezbollah’s major demands: a Palestinian state and evacuation of Judea and Samaria. The missiles pouring from Gaza and Lebanon showed many Israelis what they tried to forget: that no concessions bring peace with Muslims. Popular acceptance of to the evacuation of Judea and Samaria has dwindled, though the Left still favors withdrawal. Their attitude is unrelated to international politics or military considerations. The Left fight their real political enemy, religious Jews, even at the cost of collaborating with the Arabs. In the worst tradition of Jewish self-hatred, Israel’s Left wants to gentilize the Jewish state. Abandoning Judea and meekly submitting to Muslim goodwill is the Left’s way of humiliating religious and nationalist Jews. The Israeli Left, uniquely, includes both US-style democratizers and Soviet-style socialists; any ideology is good for them so long as it undermines the Jewish character of Israeli society. The Israeli government controls the media and has a powerful grip on people’s minds. The government also controls huge groups of voters through extensive welfare programs. Neither reason nor popular opinion matters in Israeli politics. Olmert & Co. will likely continue to press for withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s objective is not peace. Jews can live peacefully in New York. Israel was founded because the Jews want to live on their land, and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are Jewish lands. Hardly any country ever traded religiously or ideologically critical land for peace; to the contrary, scores of countries have fought over even minor land disputes. Israel, a foreign body in the Middle East, will never be at peace; no country is permanently at peace. Preparing for imminent war, it is better to be bigger than smaller. Beside, no concession can bring Israel peace: the giveaway of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria will only prompt the Muslims to press for the right of return for descendants of the 1948 refugees, compensation, partitioning of Jerusalem, autonomy for Arab communities in Israel, and normalization of Israeli Arabs, particularly giving them ministerial portfolios. Full normalization means letting an Israeli Arab become Israeli Minister of Defense. The current minister is a Peace Now activist.

Visitors to Beirut in the 1980s were surprised to see busy restaurants and happy crowds alongside the city’s devastated quarters. People got used to violence. That is happening in Lebanon now.

Wartime violence terrifies the enemy population. Violence that no longer terrifies is pointless. Israel is wasting lives and resources and inflicting useless devastation. Israeli retaliation no longer frightens the Lebanese but only fans hatred of Israel.

Limited violence leads nowhere. Israel had already killed more people in the Lebanese campaign than in Deir Yassin. That unapologetic burst of violence produced the desired results. The current protracted moderate violence is costly and ineffective.

The Israeli government lost the opportunity to trumpet the deaths of several dozen Lebanese in Kfar Qana as an example to villages that host Hezbollah. The people in Kfar Qana were dead, anyway. Israel should have used their deaths. Olmert stupidly apologized and lost the effect.

Wars are about killing. Terrifying violence stops wars. Do not waste an enemy’s lives. Escalate beyond the enemy’s tolerance, disregard media condemnations, and see the war ended.