A week into the conflict with Hezbollah , Israel has made optimistic assessments of the damage done to Hezbollah’s arsenal. The Israeli military destroyed most of the long- and medium-range missiles that posed the greatest damage to Israeli population centers While thousands of short-range rockets may be used up or destroyed, the current conflict did not mitigate the risk posed to northern Israel by short-range, Katyusha rockets because Hezbollah may possess as many as 13,000 of them.
Depriving Hezbollah of most of its medium- and long- range rockets would be a significant military success, robbing the organization of the ability to threaten the most vital areas of Israel. However, Israel may fall short of other goals aimed at weakening Hezbollah if international and domestic pressures lead to a premature ceasefire. Hezbollah will claim certain political victories if a ceasefire is negotiated too early.
While Israel has done damage to Hezbollah’s arsenal, it will be difficult to prevent rearmament with a ceasefire, as the Lebanese government will not be able to move fast enough to prevent new rockets from coming in from Syria . Israel will have to attack those rockets, violating any ceasefire agreement, or let them through, compromising the progress they have made thus far.
The ground incursion into Lebanon has been limited, and while Israel has generally been stronger than Hezbollah, press reports describing “fierce resistance” in southern Lebanon, Israeli setbacks, and limited territorial gains for the Israeli military fuel Hezbollah propagandizing and allow it to inflate its image as the only capable defender of Lebanon. For Hezbollah, this image, as much as its rockets, allows it to maintain a large base of domestic and international support and much of its political power. With respect to this aspect of Hezbollah’s power, Israel would have been better off refraining from sending in ground troops. Now that it has, Israel will have to crush Hezbollah with a much larger and fiercer deployment to shatter the myth of Hezbollah’s capability for resistance. Signs are pointing to a deescalation, however, and Hezbollah stands to win a propaganda war in its “effective” confrontation of Israeli forces in the south.
Israel is trying to remind the Lebanese who it was that brought this unnecessary hardship and violence upon them. Israeli planes scattered leaflets in Tyre to remind citizens that Hezbollah was not defending them, but rather was provoking more destruction (source). Most of Lebanon’s Shia population, so long inundated by Hezbollah’s constant propaganda casting itself as their savior, is not going to be inclined to see it this way. They are not likely to see the conflict as originating with Hezbollah’s cross-border raid to kidnap two Israeli soldiers , but rather as part of a larger plan that Israel was waiting for an excuse to activate. This is bolstered by “news” reports from the southern frontier broadcast over Hezbollah and Hezbollah-sympathizing media outlets, describing Hezbollah forces as holding back the Israelis from further invasion into Lebanon. Murmurs of a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah are also disconcerting, as such an exchange would allow Hezbollah to claim yet another victory.
Ultimately, Hezbollah could weather this conflict well or be significantly weakened, depending upon what happens immediately after the fighting ends. If Hezbollah is the only organization doing most of the reconstruction, then it will come out stronger in the areas that it helps to clean up. If the international community and the Lebanese government rebuild the country, Hezbollah will be finally marginalized.
