Second Lebanon War. On the battlefields and in politics
Part one.
Four days have passed, and no information has been received about the prisoners ...
Since October 2005, Major General Udi Adam commanded the Northern Front.
He was not a bosom friend of Dan Halutz.
His second personality problem was relations with his subordinate, commander of the 91st division, General Haly Hirsch.
Hirsch's hyperactivity constantly forced Adam to pull the reins. Even before the war, Adam turned to military intelligence with the order to give him some 200 targets for shelling beyond Lebanese border. A detailed list was not provided to him. What to do? Airplanes fly with might and main, but ground troops do not receive orders for an offensive. But there was artillery, and she began to shoot. Thousands of shells flew nowhere. Damage from them was minimal.
On July 16, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Moshe Kaplinsky rode along the Northern Front and saw nothing comforting.
The day before, a meeting was held at the General Staff, at which Adam was not even invited. Conversations continued to revolve around air raids. Still not thinking about ground operations ...
Hirsch’s 91st Division entered Lebanese territory on July 19, after a week of aerial bombardment. Initially, this division stood at the border, which began operations. According to representatives of the Israeli army, it was a "targeted" operation in the border zone. The General Staff of the Israeli army for the first time admitted that special forces operate in southern Lebanon to search and eliminate missile launchers, as well as warehouses weapons and small groups of Hezbollah fighters. The intensity of rocket attacks on Israeli cities by Hezbollah fighters, however, decreased slightly.
When the ground hostilities began, most analysts assumed they would last a matter of days. This hope was based on two historical parallels. At firstat least three Arab-Israeli wars (1956, 1967 and 1973) lasted from 6 to 18 days; the most successful Israeli strategy is a victorious blitzkrieg, not a prolonged positional war. Secondly, numerous Israeli operations conducted in Lebanon, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza over the past fifteen years (Retribution Days, 1993; Bunches of Wrath, 1996; Protective Wall, 2002; Rainbow in the Clouds, 2004 and others ) also lasted no more than a few days each.
Hirsch decided to attack the high-rise of Shaked, then the Shiite village of Marun-a-Ras 1,5 km from the border, and then move forward to the larger village of Bint-Jubail, which lay 4 km deeper to the north-west.
At 7:34 a.m., Adam approved the plan. In the Shaken hill, the Lebanese dug bunkers that went 50 meters deep into the soil. The bunkers were built seriously. Water supply, ventilation, electricity, toilets, disguise - everything was provided. Internal telephone lines connected the bunkers into one network and led to the nearest village. Hirsch did not know the structure of the bunkers. He ordered a group of commandos of 18 people from the Maglan compound to advance to Shaked. Following them were to move another 76 people and 4 tank.
Special forces climbed on Shaked. At 11:40 a.m., they suddenly realized that they were in the hornet’s nest of the bunker system when they stumbled upon the iron door of one of them. They began throwing grenades at the entrances and vents of the bunkers, the bunkers woke up, and Israeli soldiers came under heavy crossfire. Help with Major Amit Zeevi rushed to help, but her tanks came under mortar fire.
A viscous complex battle led to the victory of the Maglan unit commander, Colonel Eliezer, who arrived on the hill with additional reinforcements. The bunkers took and marveled at the air conditioners installed in them for a long time. Israeli intelligence knew about bunker systems, but this information was not transferred in time to the active forceswhich was later surprised by the former intelligence officer, retired Major General Achron Zeevi (Farkash), the father of Amit Zeevi.
On the same morning, a battalion of paratroopers Colonel Nimrod Aloni entered the village of Marun-a-Ras, consisting of 700 houses, which the militants decided to defend. Again they did not calculate the forces, again they had to urgently send reinforcements in the form of a reconnaissance unit of the "Egoz" from the Golani division.
The front sector was led by Colonel Hyun Livni. The commandos arrived with Colonel Mordecai Kahana, whom Livni, anxious for the fate of Aloni’s paratroopers, ordered to go around the village and put the militants in a hopeless position surrounded. Kahana didn’t understand him, and rushed straight to the village to help the paratroopers. The battle as a whole developed in favor of the IDF, they took the village, destroyed almost all (665 houses), the number of Lebanese killed significantly exceeded Israeli losses. Moreover, the soldiers picked up a field radio from the killed militant and were able to hear Hezbollah’s orders about movements and counterattacks.
Aviation she was so carried away by long-distance raids that the support of the advancing troops on earth was insufficient. On the night of July 20, the Israeli Air Force dropped more than 23 tons of bombs, including special bombs to destroy underground structures, on one of the suburbs of Beirut - Burj al-Baranekh. According to Israeli intelligence, Sheikh Nasrallah took refuge in an underground bunker in the area. During this day, militants fired at least 34 missiles in northern Israel.
Over the past day, about 10 thousand people - citizens of different countries of the world were evacuated from Lebanon in military and civilian ships, and the Cypriot authorities cried out that they could not cope with such an influx of refugees. US Marines landed in Beirut from the US Nashville landing ship to evacuate about six thousand Americans.
There was an American university in Beirut and other institutions. President Bush quickly stated that if it was decided to deploy peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, then Americans should be there.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on Israel to immediately ceasefire. According to the Foreign Ministry, the scale of the Israeli operation did not meet the stated goal - the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hezbollah’s infrastructure. It was necessary to somehow answer, and the Israeli ambassador in Moscow quickly found: is it possible to hope for Russia's help in the release of Israeli soldiers? If not, excuse me, we are somehow ourselves.
Lebanese Prime Minister Signora suddenly began to hint in the heat that the Lebanese army “could not remain passive” if Israel sent ground troops to his country, but he got excited and the Lebanese army did not go to battle in the IDF.
Then Signora announced the need for disarmament of the Hezbollah group, and again got excited. He had to cry out that Lebanon itself was not able to do this, and therefore he was asking for help from the international community.
According to Lebanese authorities, financial losses from Israeli air raids amounted to at least $ 2 billion, and the war has just begun. There was something to be scared of.
On July 21, several thousand reservists were called up for military service due to the fact that the Israeli army in southern Lebanon faced unexpectedly powerful resistance from militants. The decision was made on July 20 at a special meeting of the Israeli leadership. Reservists were first sent to the Gaza Strip, and the liberated regular units were sent to southern Lebanon. So the number of warring divisions reached two. After the Israeli Air Force launched bombing raids on the border areas of southern Lebanon, the military hoped to destroy at least half of Hezbollah’s military potential. The final cleaning of the area should have been carried out by land units, since the further use of aviation was recognized as ineffective. However, during the period of July 19–20, the Israelis during the liquidation of the Hezbollah fortifications lost about ten people killed, as well as the Merkava IV tank and two Apache attack helicopters. We do not know exactly how many militants opposed the IDF. Analysts say "a few thousand."
July 22, aviation again bombed the towers of mobile and television communications. Leaflets were scattered over southern Lebanon, urging the population of the southern villages of Lebanon to leave their homes and go north, beyond the Litani River, in order to avoid civilian casualties.
By this time, the military strategy of Hezbollah began to become more or less clear. Firstly, she also counted on "non-contact" missile operations at a distance; secondly, if it comes to contact fights, she did not rely on maneuvers on the ground, but on her bunkers, caves, anti-tank grenade launchers and mines, with the goal of destroying the greatest possible number of Israeli soldiers and equipment.
By July 23, the number of Israelis (military and local residents) who died during the conflict reached 35 (15 of them died as a result of rocket attacks on northern cities). On the Lebanese side, more than 350 people died.
Aviation bombed a building belonging to Hezbollah in the port city of Sidon, along the suburbs of Beirut and bridges and highways in the Baalbek area.
The Americans rushed to Israel’s request for the supply of high-precision aviation ammunition as part of a multi-million dollar contract, approved last year.
Amir Peretz turned to NATO to lead a multinational peacekeeping force in the region, as the Lebanese army is too weak to take control of areas cleared by Israel of Hezbollah militants. NATO said nothing. But for a politician, even if you can’t do anything, it’s important to say something. So the Syrian information minister, Mohsen Bilyal, suddenly threatened that if Israel continued to advance to the north of Lebanese territory, then the Syrian authorities would be forced to intervene in the conflict. These were also empty words, the Syrians did not budge.
So the Americans had to do something, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Israel.
On July 23, Olmert finally began to seek a political way out of the war. Tzipi Livni repeated his plan to him, but no decision was made, and decided to wait for a meeting with Condoleezza.
And at the front, a major operation finally ripened. BintJubail lying behind Marun-a-Ras was a large village with a population of 30 thousand. You can’t comb it with a battalion, we decided to use several parts. Halutz himself flew to the Northern Front to Udi Adam to discuss the details of the operation. They decided not to take the city, but to enter, shoot the terrorists, collect weapons and leave. They decided to attack on Sunday, July 23. Due to delays in the advance, the attack began only after a day. Golani fighters attacked the city from the east, and paratroopers from the west. But the Hezbollah governors were able to read the map. They understood that after the capture of Marun-a-Ras, an attack on Bint Jubail was inevitable, and accordingly prepared. By the sixty militants who were usually in the city, reinforcements arrived, which were located in abandoned houses. About 120 militants did not go to the city, but took positions between him and the neighboring village of Einat. The fight went hot and lasted until the next day, July 25th. In general, the victory was for the Israelis, who learned how to conduct urban fighting in the Gaza Strip. Satisfied Adam ordered the troops to withdraw. Near him was Deputy Halutz General Kaplinsky. He did not want to withdraw troops from the town; not all weapon depots were still found. Then Halutz made a compromise decision: let some of the troops withdraw, and let some remain in case the militants climb into the city again. The soldiers had already begun to move beyond the Israeli border, as the chief of the General Staff changed his mind and ordered Adam to completely seize the city. Adam hinted that a couple of brigades should be abandoned, but Halutz insisted. So Bint-Jubail had to be taken again ...
On the same day, July 24, Condoleezza Rice rushed to Beirut, met with Fuad Signora, and then separately with the Lebanese Parliament Speaker Shiite Nabih Berry and began to persuade them to disarm Hezbollah and send their native Lebanese troops to the south of the country. And abroad will help you.
Before departure, Rice met in Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal in Washington, after which she called on the parties for an early ceasefire, although she previously stated that a ceasefire would not solve the problem, as it would allow Hezbollah to resume its attacks on Israel over time.
Nabih Berry rejected the American package of proposals, because he knew that Hezbollah insisted on an immediate unconditional ceasefire as the first step towards a settlement. Despite the fact that the woman, Condy seriously settled on Berry, but he had connections directly with Hezbollah and behaved proudly with such wealthy rear areas. Signora prudently said nothing. On the evening of this day, Rice reached Jerusalem. She had dinner with Tzipi Livni, who set out to her colleague her plan for ending the war.
Chewing absentmindedly and listening to Tzipi, Rice pretended that Britain, Canada, Australia, and Signora himself would support all this and that UN troops would come to the south of Lebanon in normal numbers, but Signora wants these stupid Shaba farms to be transferred to him or under UN control. No farms, Livni snapped.
The next day, Rice met with Olmert. No farms, he repeated. Well, make at least some concession that you cling to these farms, Rice wondered.
But Olmert farm defended.
And the 51st battalion of the Golani brigade set off to take the Lebanese town. for the second time. This was expected, and 40-60 serious thugs leaked into the streets and set up an ambush. In addition, they prepared Katyushas in their homes to launch rockets. The Israelis stumbled upon these Shiites by accident, and the surprise was the same on both sides. Another difficult battle ensued in the streets and houses.
The Israelis were led by the battalion commander, Yaniv Assor. When the IDF cleaned Ramallah in 2002, it used bulldozers, tanks and helicopter strikes. Now Golani soldiers had no tanks or bulldozers. As a result, the battle was reduced to automatic firefights, knives and brass knuckles. The IDF’s technical superiority could not be used, but all had the same brass knuckles. In many cases, Israeli soldiers were surrounded and shot back before help came. In the first seconds of the battle, the Israelis suffered major losses. The battle continued for several hours. Due to the dense fire, evacuation of the wounded was impossible for a long time. The situation was complicated by fears that the militants would try to capture the prisoners or even the remains of the killed Israelis for a subsequent exchange. The evacuation of the wounded lasted six hours under continuous enemy fire. The wounded had to carry 3 km to a place where a helicopter could land.
Four Israeli Air Force helicopters landed one after another in Lebanese territory to pick up the wounded. Under the guise of artillery and a smokescreen, pilots planted their cars only for a minute, so as not to become a target for Hezbollah. Eight people died. The battle won with difficulty ...
On the night of July 25, one of Hezbollah’s leaders, Abu Jaafar, commander of the “central sector” of the group on the Lebanese-Israeli border, died. He was killed during the shelling of Hezbollah positions near the village of Marun al-Ras. Nasrallah still could not reach.
Nasrallah did not have a firm confidence in his abilities. Therefore, he tried to drag Syria into the war with Israel. First, Hezbollah television reported that the Israelis bombed targets in Syria, then they fired at the Golan Heights with their Katyushas, and finally they launched the Raad -1 Syrian missiles against Haifa.
Nobody bombed us! Such an answer came from Damascus. The Syrians did not go for a provocation. They even stated that the convoy of weapons trucks bombed by Israeli pilots did not belong to Syrian militants. Bashar al-Assad’s regime did not provide any official political support for Hezbollah.
Olmert and Halutz had a bad mood every day. The death of eight soldiers in one battle greatly affected public sentiment. The Israeli media published interviews with officers from the Golani brigade, who claimed that too little effort had been devoted to clearing Bint Jubail. During the already outbreak of the battle, air support, they said, was also insufficient. (And where is military censorship? ..)
Of course, the international community should have shown its concern for a new war. In the midst of the fighting for Bint Jubail, Signora flew to Rome for a settlement conference. It was attended by representatives of four of the five members of the UN Security Council (without China), the largest countries of the European Union and several countries of the Middle East: Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (but without Israel, Syria and Iran). We were going to discuss the Livni-Signora-Rice plan on disarming Hezbollah and the deployment of Lebanese and UN troops to the south of the country.
Before leaving, Signoru was taken aside by the Minister of Water and Energy of Lebanon, Muhammad Fanish, who represented Hezbollah in his government. Whatever you, dear Prime Minister, do not spit in Rome, know that Hezbollah will not be disarmed. With this, Signora flew to Italy.
The Rome Conference revealed another player in the Middle East arena - France.
Condoleezza Rice from the USA nevertheless expressed Israel’s position: a ceasefire is impossible without addressing the causes of the current conflict, Hezbollah must first be disarmed and expelled from the border territories with the participation of foreign peacekeepers, preferably under the auspices of NATO. The conflict was provoked by Syria and Iran. The French had a different point of view: NATO troops should not be sent to the Middle East, since they are considered here as an "armed formation of the West"; a ceasefire should precede the entry of peacekeepers and negotiations on a settlement. According to French President Jacques Chirac, Iran shares responsibility for the conflict, but he refrains from directly accusing him.
Russia, again preoccupied with US hegemony, accordingly, practically supported France. The conflict cannot be allowed to go beyond Lebanon and affect Syria and Iran; there are suspicions that the Lebanese campaign can be seen by the United States only as a prelude to the campaign against Iran.
The conference yielded little. With the support of the United States and several European countries, Israel was able to continue the military operation. At the same time, France, Russia and the Arab countries insisted that the United Nations forces not act as NATO peacekeepers. In any case, the end of the war did not come. In Israel, the virtual absence of the outcome of the conference in Rome was regarded as its success. Minister of Justice Haim Ramon:
A peace conference or without a peace conference, but on July 27, Hezbollah fighters fired 75 missiles at Israeli territory. As a result of the shelling, 20 people were injured. In Kiryat Shmona, one of the missiles hit the Galim Chemicals chemical plant, which produces cleaning products. The explosion started a fire. Eight rockets exploded in Tiberias. Missiles are reported to be directly hit in three houses in Karmiel and three more in Nahariya. The total number of missiles fired over Israel reached one and a half thousand.
They were allowed to fight further, but it didn’t work out very well. Instead of occupying the entire Lebanon zone to the Litany River, ground operations were reduced to local battles around the villages of Kapra and Yaatar. By this time, the total death toll was 433 from the Lebanese side and 52 from the Israeli side. The Lebanese Minister of Health said that up to 600 Lebanese were killed during the conflict, with 1788 injured in varying degrees of severity.
On July 27, when almost two weeks after the outbreak of the war, the government finally got together to seriously discuss the question: to fight or not to fight? Prior to this, Halutz in his General Staff had something chemical, so much so that even his boss Peretz knew little. But now the state has a question: to call or not to call on the reservists?
Shimon Peres said clearly: "We need to decide - either we go to war and take risks, or we go to peace and pay the price for it." Nobody wanted to pay, so they decided to mobilize three divisions. In total, 62 reservists were mobilized during the war in the IDF.
Suddenly, at the same time, a meeting of the Lebanese Cabinet of Ministers approved the idea of Signora, expressed in Rome, about the deployment of the UN army and troops in the south of the country. Moreover, Shiite ministers also voted in favor. This made it clear to everyone that Nasrallah did not at all believe that he was defeating the IDF. Everyone fussed, and through the American ambassador in Beirut, Jeffrey Feltman, the Lebanese government began informally negotiating an end to the war with Israel. Rice, however, was in no hurry. Let Hezbollah still have a little half. She hinted to Olmert that it would take about a week, at least 72 hours, until a ceasefire resolution was adopted at the UN. And then bureaucratic red tape. In general, if you want to beat Shiites, you have almost ten more days. With this, Condy was about to fly from Jerusalem to Beirut.
July 28 as a result of air strikes in the cities of Lebanon (Tire, Bekaa) killed 14 people. Hezbollah launched 50 rockets in the Israeli cities of Nazareth, Kiryat Shmona, Safed, which injured 7 people. Hezbollah’s use of a new type of missile, the Khybar-1, was noted. Not the slightest progress.
On the night of July 30, Israeli aircraft attacked Hezbollah rocket launchers in the Lebanese village of Cana, 10 km east of Tire. During the 20 days of the war, about 150 rockets were launched from Kana against Israeli targets. Blows were also carried out on buildings where, according to Israeli intelligence, missiles were stored. Residents of Kana were warned in advance that Kana was in the war zone and that they should leave their homes. The next morning, the Lebanese side said that as a result of airstrikes in the village, a three-story residential building collapsed, in the basement of which more than 100 local residents took refuge.
But everything turned out very simple. Israeli Air Force planes hunted for Hezbollah Katyusha launchers and stomped around the house in the village of Kana. And there are the children. Subsequently (August 2), the number of victims was specified: according to data confirmed by the Lebanese authorities, 28 people died as a result of the incident, of which 16 were children ...
On Sunday morning, July 30, the US Secretary of State dined peacefully with Tzipi Livni. Next, she was scheduled to meet with Amir Peretz. During breakfast, the assistants of Livni received information about the large number of killed Lebanese civilians in the village of Kana, but were silent. At about the same time, Peretz also found out that a crazy rocket had hit civilians in Kan, but said nothing, not daring to become the first to say this gloomy news to the Americans. As a result, Rice recognized everything herself and wildly angered both at Peretz and at Livni.
Reporting the incident caused a storm of indignation throughout Lebanon. In Beirut, a crowd of thousands with national Lebanese flags and banners of the Hezbollah group stormed the building of the Lebanese UN office, smashed the office, smashed furniture, knocked out glass and set fire to the building. After this, Signora advised Rice not to fly to Lebanon - they would throw stones at him.
The Israeli Air Force attacked several more targets in Qana, located 400-500 m from this place. The Israeli leadership called the incident a "tragic mistake."
After that, the Israeli government announced that it was suspending its operations for 48 hours in southern Lebanon. The US and Israel have accused Hezbollah of using civilians as a human shield. By the way, this was not the first mistake of the IDF. UN peacekeepers paid the lives of Lebanese civilians. On July 25, the UN observation post was in the shelling area 21 times, from 13:20 to 19:30, when observers were killed. 12 times Israeli rockets exploded less than 100 meters from the post. UN observers called the Israelis at least 10 times, asking them to stop shelling targets near their post. UN officials confirmed that the positions of Hezbollah militants are indeed located in the area of the UN post. One of the dead UN peacekeepers, Major P. Hess von Kruedener from Canada, a few days before his death in his message from Lebanon made it clear that Hezbollah fighters use the peacekeepers as a "human shield."
After the death of UN peacekeepers from an Israeli bomb, Australia announced the withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon.
The UN Security Council was not able to adopt a resolution in connection with the death in Lebanon of four military personnel of the peacekeeping force. The draft resolution was proposed by China, whose citizen was among the dead. The project sharply condemned the aggressive actions of Israel. The United States, however, stated that it would not support the Chinese version, since it did not regard the incident as a deliberate murder, and opposed the use of the term “conviction” in relation to the Israeli military operations in Lebanon. On this incident hushed up.
On the night of July 30–31, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was convened in New York in connection with the tragedy in Caen. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded the strongest possible condemnation of Israel for what happened in Qana and to achieve an immediate ceasefire in the conflict zone. However, at the insistence of the United States, these proposals were excluded from the original text of the resolution. The resolution, for which all 15 members of the UN Security Council unanimously voted, only expressed "shock and pain":
However, to protect Israel, as before, America after Cana could not.
Since the armies stopped fighting in the desert fields, and began to fight in the midst of human settlements, the civilian population inevitably pays with their lives for every war.
Israel, as promised, announced the introduction of a 48-hour moratorium on air strikes across Lebanon, during which civilians will be able to leave dangerous areas in southern Lebanon. After that, the operation against the militants of the Hezbollah group was supposed to be continued and expanded. It sounds good - "expanded", but how? First, on August 1, helicopters landed special forces of the Matkal and Shaldag formations near the city of Baalbek, not far from the Syrian border. The attack was unexpected for Hezbollah, but the course of the war did not change. The rest was a stalemate. Instead of searching for and destroying Katyushas, they began chasing after militants from the elite Nasser unit. The orders on the ground the IDF commanders received the most incredible. Instead of “capturing and holding X’s village or Igrek high,” Nahal brigade commander Colonel Miki Edelstein, for example, received orders from Halutz to enter the town of Taibe and “destroy 110 terrorists.” Why not 111?
Naturally, seeing how tight the Israeli offensive is, the journalists rushed to find out the reason for the persistence of Hezbollah. Sheikh Hassan Naim Kassem, one of the founders of this organization and deputy of Nasrallah himself, admitted in an interview that the organization had been preparing for a conflict with Israel since it withdrew its forces from South Lebanon in 2000 because it was not convinced that “the claims Israel to Lebanon, despite the withdrawal of forces, are in the past. " Over the past 6 years, he said, Hezbollah has been stockpiling weapons and has been preparing numerous bunkers and tunnels: “If not for these preparations, Lebanon would be crushed for several hours.” Israeli intelligence knew about these preparations, as mentioned above, but she did not know that the war would begin on July 12th.
As a result, a ground attack was not like an attack, but trampling on the spot.
But there is nothing to do, since the bullets are already whistling. And on August 1, the Israeli government approved a plan to expand the land operation in Lebanon, submitted by Pepper. To prevent rocket attacks by militants, the Israeli army intended to create a buffer zone several kilometers deep in southern Lebanon. To do this, it was necessary to double the number of troops in the conflict zone. The Israelis expected to complete the main phase of the operation before the end of the week. A similar security zone that existed in southern Lebanon until 2000 extended to the Litani River, which, as we recall, flows 20-25 km from the border. Israeli forces intended to remain in Lebanon until international peacekeeping forces arrived in the region. That was stated.
In order to implement the orders of the Israeli Air Force government, they dealt powerful blows in almost the entire border zone, after which the special forces and paratroopers began sweeps across the front. According to Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station, fierce fighting took place in the area of the villages of Adisa, Kfar Kala, and again at Eita-a-Shaab. During these battles, several Israeli soldiers were killed and wounded, a tank and an army bulldozer were hit.
But the increase in troops involved caused wild supply difficulties, including even supplying soldiers with water and food at the forefront. The procurement officers turned out to be extremely weak for a war unexpected for all.
When they sorted it out later, it turned out that the IDF started some sort of reorganization, at the height of which it all started, and the command of the Northern Front gave conflicting orders, and the supply fell into the wrong squads ...
On the same day, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad addressed the Syrian army, urging her to increase vigilance. Bashar al-Assad ordered the troops to be put on high alert and partially mobilized. He stated that Syria would not succumb to international pressure and would not stop "supporting fraternal resistance forces."
Well, there was no sadness.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu Gate said after a meeting with Bashar al-Assad that Syria is opposed to the introduction of any new international forces in southern Lebanon, considering it sufficient to increase the size of the contingent of the UN temporary forces.
The number of Lebanese dead by August 1 reached 617, the Israelis 51. The Israeli army managed to advance 6-7 km into Lebanese territory and only on isolated sites. Hezbollah leaders were not succeeded by the Israeli forces in capturing or liquidating from the air, although in the past, when such a decision was made, they were taken out. Nasrallah’s predecessor, A. Musawi, was killed in February 1992 during a targeted bombardment, and two and a half years earlier, in July 1989, Israeli commandos abducted one of the Hezbollah’s leaders, Sheikh A. K. Obeid who spent fifteen years in an Israeli prison.
As the army was replaced!
However, there have been some successes. The Alexandroni Infantry Brigade was recruited from reservists. She entered the war on the evening of August 1, and her throw in the coastal zone of the Lebanese border was very successful. It was commanded by Colonel Shlomi Cohen. The brigade captured several villages without much loss.
On August 2, 215 missiles were fired at Israeli territory (a sad record for a war). It was the most massive shelling since the start of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. The city of Beit Shean, located more than 60 km from the border with Lebanon, was first bombarded. In just 22 days of fighting in Israel, 19 civilians were killed, about 450 were injured. According to the Lebanese rescue service Al-Igas, the death toll in Lebanon, according to updated data, reached at least 828 people, 3200 wounded.
But Hezbollah continued to snap, and the situation in Lebanon continued to deteriorate. Since the blockade of the country's coast was introduced, ships could not enter Lebanese ports. The fuel reserves in Lebanon remained for 2-3 days. UN officials in Jerusalem rushed to the Israeli authorities to obtain permits for the safe approach of fuel tankers to Beirut.
On August 3, militants fired about 160 rockets in northern Israeli cities, 110 of them - within half an hour after 16:00. At the same time, for the first time, militants shot in a volley of 40 missiles simultaneously in the Western Galilee. Alarm sirens sounded in almost all northern cities. More than 30 missiles fell on the Golan Heights.
10 rockets exploded in the city of Kiryat Shmona, eight - in the area of Tiberias. Eight civilians in northern Israel died and about 60 were injured that Thursday. Five of them were killed north of Haifa in Acre, three in the Ma'alot area, 26 were hospitalized.
The leaders of Muslim countries, meanwhile, gathered in Malaysia to decide how to immediately cease fire in the conflict zone, as well as urgently introduce peacekeeping forces there. During this discussion, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed "to destroy the Jewish state" to achieve peace in the Middle East. What other peacekeeping forces? ..
Olmert, on the contrary, in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, said that the Israeli army would not leave southern Lebanon until these forces appeared there. In his opinion, and few could argue with him about this, the UN contingent in Lebanon showed its inefficiency by allowing the capture of southern Lebanon by Hezbollah fighters:
In general, not from Fiji, he added privately. And the total number of Israeli troops involved in Lebanon has grown to 10 thousand.
On August 3, for the first time since the start of the war, Nasrallah proposed a truce to Israel. Speaking on Lebanese television, Sheikh Hassan promised to stop rocket attacks on Israeli territory if Israel ceases to shell residential areas in Lebanon. If Israel bombed the central quarters of Beirut, Hezbollah would strike at Tel Aviv, but it snapped.
Israeli pilots, meanwhile, continued to strike, subjecting the southern suburbs of Beirut to the most massive bombardment in 24 days of hostilities. Within an hour, over 25 bombs and about six missiles were dropped on the Uzi alone in the Shiite quarter. Powerful airstrikes were inflicted on the international airport of the Lebanese capital and four bridges 20 km north of the capital in the direction of Syria. As a result of these attacks, all land routes for refugees to leave Beirut were once again cut off and the only food delivery channel to Beirut was blocked. The aircraft also bombed four bridges north of Beirut.
In retaliation on the evening of August 4, the city of Hadera, located about 90 km from the border with Lebanon, was subjected to rocket fire. It was the farthest shelling of Israeli territory since the outbreak of hostilities. According to Hezbollah, the Khybar-1 (Fadzhar-5z) missiles were used in the shelling. The rocket was fired from Tire; on the night of August 5, the launcher with which the shelling was carried out was destroyed.
According to Israeli police, on August 4, Hezbollah fighters fired at least 200 rockets into Israeli territory. Most of the missiles were fired in the city of Kiryat Shmona - 60, in Nahariya - 32, in Maalot - 14, in Karmiel - 11, in Safed - 6. Iran’s representatives for the first time recognized that Iran had indeed equipped Hezbollah with long-range missiles " Zelsal-2. " In an interview with an Iranian newspaper, the head of the Intifada conference organization, Mokhtashami Pur, said that Iran had transferred the missiles “to protect Lebanon.”
On the night of August 5, the Israeli Navy special forces detachment, based on electronic intelligence data, struck one of the Hezbollah focal points in the city of Tire. The Air Force bombed a missile launcher in the long-suffering Kana, from which shelling of Haifa was carried out.
On August 6, Hezbollah fighters subjected the northern regions of Israel to the most intense shelling of all time during the conflict. Almost all settlements north of Haifa were in the affected area. In Kfar Giladi alone, near the Lebanese border, about 15 missiles were fired in 80 minutes. One of them exploded at a gathering point of reservists right among the people. As a result, 12 people were killed and another 14 were injured of varying severity. All Israeli radio screamed about the incident, and Hezbollah craftsmen listened to radio messages and, accordingly, intensified the shelling of this particular kibbutz. At the same time, they fired on Haifa and killed three civilians. After this event, public opinion lost all favor for Olmert ...
To be continued ...
Sources:
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Uri Milstein. Second Lebanon war: what really happened there.
Malyshkin K.A. Conducting information warfare operations by participants in the Lebanese-Israeli armed conflict (July – August 2006).
Israel and Lebanon: Problematic Proximity. J. Spyer, 2015.
Articles from Wikipedia, etc.
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