Second Lebanon War. Completion, results, conclusions
On August 7, shelling of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley continued. A fierce battle unfolded in the area of the village of Hula. The fighting for Bint Jubail continued, where militants from ATGM killed two Israelis - Major Yotam Lotan and Sergeant Noam Meyerson, and also knocked out one tank. Against this background, for several days, the ripening decision to replace the commander of the Lebanese front, General Adam, went over to the practical plane, and 49-year-old General Moshe Kaplinsky came to replace Adam.
Adam was tolerant of this, Kaplinsky treated Adam respectfully, but in general it was decided that the retired Adam would remain at headquarters. Adam, the tanker himself, was dissatisfied with Halutz’s orders beyond measure, but how to resist the boss?
Kaplinsky in 2000 was one of the leaders in the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. The general was considered an authoritative expert in the tactics of ground forces and was well acquainted with the situation. Kaplinsky was officially appointed representative of the General Staff to lead the military operation in Lebanon. At the same time, the commander of the Northern Military District, Major General Udi Adam, officially kept his post, although the Israeli press from the very beginning of the conflict voted about his professional suitability and readiness to lead a non-classical tank, and a partisan war against well-trained and armed militants.
Fuad Signora was able to get his parliament to approve his decision to deploy 15 Lebanese state soldiers in southern Lebanon. Even Hezbollah ministers voted in favor. Olmert was delighted. The fact that extremists supported the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon indicated that the Hezbollah forces were running out and the group’s leadership was seeking a ceasefire. As the prime minister said then,
“The faster our army can leave Lebanon, the more we will be happy. But this will happen only after the main goals are achieved - the removal of Hezbollah from the northern border and the cessation of rocket attacks. ”
On August 9, five Israeli soldiers died and several were injured, and the tank was damaged. Pepper had to explain. He explained at a meeting between Olmert and German Foreign Minister Steinmeier that Hezbollah uses modern Russian-made anti-tank systems against Israeli troops:
"In the past, they promised us that they would not fall into Hezbollah’s hands, but today they are being used against soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon."
The Ha-Arez newspaper wrote about the same thing: with reference to the Israeli intelligence services, it was alleged here that the militants used RPG-29 hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers, which Russia supplied to Syria. The RPG-29 shot is capable of penetrating the armor of Israeli Merkava tanks. Hezbollah’s availability of a modern anti-tank weapons Russian-made in Israel began to speak back in 2005. They said something, but they didn’t prepare the Merkava.
It was not politically possible to end the war on such a note. Finally, by August 10, they decided to do what they had to start with: launch a general offensive to the Litani River. But as? On this, as always, there were two opinions. The command of the Northern (Lebanese) front invited the divisions of Galya Hirsch (No. 91) to continue to advance north from their positions, the divisions of Guy Tsur (No. 162) to move across the southern Lebanon from the Israeli border from east to west, and the paratroopers under the command of Eyal Eisenberg land from helicopters near the Litani River and they are waiting who will be the first to break through to them.
Olmert did not undertake to solve the military task, but for his benefit, the former chief of the general staff and retired lieutenant general Shaul Mofaz was the minister in his office. Olmert turned to him for professional advice.
Having cast a professional eye over the command plan, Mofaz advised him to forget about it and offered his own option in return. He believed that two divisions should, without any helicopters, strike along the sea to Tire, turn inland into the Litani River - and immediately the entire Hezbollah has the IDF in its rear. Will she want to fight after that further? Olmert liked the logic of Mofaz's plan, and he ordered that Pepper and Halutz take it as a basis. But the two opposed sharply. They could not have acted otherwise, the chairs were already swinging under both, and then Mofaz with his own initiative. Political adversary. Then the cautious Olmert put the matter to the discussion of the cabinet. During the discussion, the matter turned out so that civil ministers argued with the military personnel about the details of the military offensive was inconvenient. As a result, they forgot about the Mofaz plan, and the war plan, under which Halutz and Peretz had already signed up, gained strength.
By this time (during the thirty days of the war) 100 Israelis were killed (64 of them - military, 36 - civilians), and the number of ground-to-ground missiles that fell in Israel exceeded two thousand.
On the same day, finally began a large-scale evacuation of Israelis from the northern regions of the country, the most affected by Hezbollah rocket attacks. Residents who have not yet evacuated themselves were transported to Tel Aviv and placed in hotels through the Sohnut agency and the Birthright program. The cost of the operation was 2 million shekels (more than 450 thousand dollars). At first it was about the evacuation of about 14 thousand people for a period of one week.
Despite the decision made on August 9 to expand the ground operation in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, on the night of August 10, Ehud Olmert ordered the operation to be postponed, according to the official version, to enable the UN Security Council to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. The UN was just deciding on a ceasefire; Ambassadors Bolton from the United States and La Sabliere from France once again ratified the conditions for this ceasefire.
It would seem that since the offensive was launched, we must hurry. Observers, however, believed in those days that Israel was forced to postpone the operation under US pressure. The White House warned de Israel that the expansion of the operation in Lebanon could lead to an escalation of violence. The United States really began to give in to the ideas of France, which has always supported Lebanon, to end the war immediately. But “immediately” meant defeat for Israel.
Local action continued as usual. The Israeli command announced the capture of the Lebanese city of Marjayun, 9 km from the border.
For a large-scale operation, a regrouping of forces was required. The Israelis intended to continue to bypass settlements, occupying strategic heights, and only after that proceed to the destruction of Hezbollah militants. Enough unnecessary victims. Such an operation required careful study and formation and transfer of additional units to the war zone. However, it was necessary to hurry until a ceasefire had not yet been officially announced by the UN. They decided to attack at two in the afternoon of August 11.
From the morning of August 11, in response to the losses, the Israeli army subjected aviation and land and sea artillery attacks on settlements and Hezbollah rear bases throughout Lebanon. Beirut and Tire were also hit by air.
Divisions of the Northern Front received orders to attack, when the clock has already struck 5 pm this Friday. Within half an hour, the order reached the brigades and battalions. Not only in the evening, but for the Nahal brigade, Division 162 unexpectedly changed the order. Instead of the planned crossing of the Saluki River from the west, she was to attack a system of bunkers near the border in the forehead.
At the same time, in the most literal sense, at 6 pm Israeli time, the Americans and the French at the UN agreed on the conditions for a ceasefire, including the deployment of 15 Lebanese soldiers in the south of the country and excluding from it mention of Shaba farms. Within one and a half hours, from 6 to 7:30 pm, Signora and Nasrallah agreed to the terms. Exactly at 8:20 p.m. this agreed draft of the future UN resolution No. 1701 got to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.
At the time when Livni and Rice congratulated each other over the telephone with the end of the war, at 9 o’clock in the evening, Ejal Eisenberg’s paratroopers began to land from helicopters on Lebanese territory. At the same time, the first divisions of the 162nd division went on the offensive in the general direction to the Saluki rivulet. In a few hours, the contingent of Israeli troops in Lebanon was virtually tripled. At this point, about 50-60 thousand IDF soldiers fought against Hezbollah. The seizure of the territory to the Litani River could also guarantee that it would then be transferred under the control of the Lebanese army.
At the same time, in a conversation with Condoleezza, Rice Ehud Olmert told her that Israel was ready to end the operation immediately after its main demands were accepted by the international community: Hezbollah militants should be disarmed and withdrawn from southern Lebanon, where they should be introduced a large international military contingent with the participation of the Lebanese government army. This evasive response was intended to stretch time, as the military told Olmert that it would take 60 hours to advance. Showers, they said about eight hours, and when she heard about 60, she called the prime minister.
“I don’t understand this hochma about 60 hours, and if I don’t understand, nobody will understand.”
So she said.
It was difficult for her to be between the UN and the IDF. Olmert said that 60 hours are needed for the troops to reach the Litani River. Livni contacted Kofi Annan, and he decided that the ceasefire would enter into force 48 hours after its announcement at the UN. So the IDF received two days for the offensive. To finally settle everything, on the same eventful Friday night, Olmert called President Bush, for the first time in the war.
Exactly at 7:52 p.m. August 11 New York time (2:52 a.m. August 12, Middle Eastern time), the UN Security Council unanimously voted for resolution No. 1701 on a ceasefire in Lebanon. The draft resolution was jointly put forward by France and the United States. The resolution obligated Hezbollah and Israel to ceasefire on August 14, provided for the long-awaited deployment of 15 UN troops in southern Lebanon, ordered Lebanon to introduce an equal number of its own troops in the buffer zone from the Lebanese-Israeli border to the Litani River and
“The disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon [according to UN Security Council resolution No. 15591 so that ... power and weapons in Lebanon belong only to the Lebanese state.”
According to the resolution, weapons should not be sold and delivered to Lebanon without the permission of the government. In parallel with the deployment of UNIFIL and Lebanon troops, Israel must withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory. On the whole, it was Israel’s diplomatic half-victory, since now, at least theoretically, Hezbollah was losing its cherished bunkers on the border.
French troops were expected to form the basis of UN forces in Lebanon.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Russia supported the resolution, but was not going to send its peacekeepers to the conflict zone.
According to the resolution, UN troops received additional powers to ensure a ceasefire. In particular, they could use weapons to protect civilians and representatives of humanitarian organizations. Israel and Lebanon supported the resolution.
Nasrallah on August 12 has now openly stated in an interview with CNN that his organization will obey the resolution.
Iranian Foreign Minister says on Iranian television that Resolution No. 1701
"Serves Zionist interests."
And Lieutenant Colonel Effy Defrin was supposed to lead his 9th tank battalion of the 401th tank brigade in Saluki. He knew that his fighters did not have enough training due to appeals to the annual training camp, that supplies were intermittent, that orders from superiors were not coordinated, and that his soldiers were eager for battle, despite all this. Casting strong words about the fact that the supporting infantry had not been given hand grenades, he learned that his tankers did not know how to attach smoke bombs to cars, since they had not been taught this at the training camps. After that, strong words fell from Defrin so abundantly, as if he had their whole warehouse behind his teeth. But his battalion used to patrol the surroundings of Jericho, where there wasn’t much to maneuver and smoke screens. And now we need to move to Rab-a-Tatlin, KhirbetKseyf, Kantara, then to Saluki, Randoria and then almost to the coastal Tire. Well, that is not to Cyprus ...
Again with a delay, the ground offensive began in the very first hours of August 12, Saturday. The battalion of the Nahal brigade attacked the village of Randoria, where serious Hezbollah guys were waiting for them at 3 a.m.
An hour later, when it was already getting light, Defrin was informed that his tanks could move. The column moved towards Saluki along the bottom of a dry river with a distance of 20 meters between the cars. Defrin was in the fourth car, counting from the head of the column. The first three vehicles seemed to go quietly, when suddenly three anti-tank missiles hit his tank one by one, and he stood up. At the same moment, a cannon was blown up by a tank in front of Defrin's car. Defrin survived, but was out of order. Despite the loss of the commander, the battalion advanced further under fire and lost on the hillside 300 meters away from the intended path. The battalion was not given a tank bulldozer to clear the rubble, and the movement did not work fast. Another tank was blown up by a mine. Another tank just slid off a steep slope. Finally, the remaining tanks reached the village and opened methodical fire on its houses.
Houses and bunkers snapped. A few more tanks were shot down from hand grenade launchers. Tankers and a platoon of support infantry made their way from the burning tank to the burning tank and pulled out the wounded. Stretchers and first-aid kits were burned in cars; the wounded were dragged to a group of trees down the hill. Reinforcements did not arrive. There was no artillery and air support. Believing that the militants would want to capture the body of the killed soldier or tanker, they took all the bodies with them and moved down under enemy fire.
All day, August 12, fierce clashes were 7 km from the Israeli border. Militants near the village of Yater shot down an Israeli military helicopter, which landed troops near the village. They succeeded, since the landing was carried out, even at night, but with a full moon. The Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter crashed from an SA-7 rocket, and five crew members died. Keren Tendler, a helicopter mechanic, was the only female soldier to die in this war.
Keren was the first woman in Israel to become a combat helicopter mechanic. She owns the words:
"My goal is to prove to everyone that such a purely male profession, as a crew member of a combat helicopter and aircraft, is entirely female forces. Women can be as cool aviation specialists as men, and even better than them."
The commandant of the paratroopers, Colonel Hagay Mordechai, survived; he flew one helicopter earlier. In total, 20 helicopters were involved in the operation. However, after the helicopter was shot down, they decided not to send more paratroopers to the rear, and the Givati and Maglan formations remained in Israel.
Another helicopter landing was landed near the village of Kafra, 5 km behind the front line.
In total, 24 Israeli soldiers died on that day.
Since Defrin to Randoria not break through. succeeded, this task was now to be carried out by the tank battalion of Lieutenant Colonel Tsakhi Segev. Segev led the tanks to the attack to the right of the previous battlefield and by three o’clock on Sunday morning made his way to the Nakhal battalion near the village. Now, finally, one could think about the coordinated actions of the tank brigade and the infantry brigade "Nahal", but an order came from above to stop and wait for a ceasefire announcement. The paratroopers landed from helicopters had already been made to attack the village of Jebel Amal in order to put an end to the Katyushas in her houses, as the order had been received from the division to “dismiss” due to the ceasefire and ceasefire.
And all because at 4 o’clock that day, General Gadi Aizenkot, the chief of the operational department of the general staff, had to decide whether to continue the offensive or interrupt it. Since Halutz and Kaplinsky rushed north, he had to consult with Brigadier General Josi Beidec, a scout. Given the heavy casualties, the slow advance and the approaching cease-fire, both decided to abort the offensive. Upon learning of this via video link, Halutz and Kaplinsky opposed. Now it was up to Pepper to decide. Asked for the post of Minister of Defense - make military decisions. He habitually agreed with Halutz, but news from the UN did not give them a choice.
On August 13, the people discussed the UN resolution and the reaction of their own government. It turned out the actual recognition of his defeat and inability to win the war against Hezbollah.
In particular, the problem of the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers was not resolved, which was the reason for the hostilities. The resolution merely called for their release. In addition, Israel would prefer to have a contingent of NATO forces in southern Lebanon, rather than the UN. There were calls for the resignation of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense. They were accused of inexperience, which was expressed in the belief that the Hezbollah problem could be solved with the help of air strikes alone, and in the delay in starting a major ground operation.
The opposition demands the creation of a state commission to investigate the actions of state structures and the army during the conflict.
In the meantime, fierce battles were fought in the Ait HaShaab region, 700 meters from the Israeli border. During August 13, virtually the entire Israeli north was subjected to intensive rocket fire. One of the rockets fell at the entrance to the Safed Police Department. About 100 rockets exploded in the Kiryat Shmona area. In the Western Galilee as a result of rocket explosions, severe fires arose. In the afternoon, Hezbollah attacked Haifu and Kriot in a massive bombardment.
On August 14, until 8 a.m., when the ceasefire agreement entered into force, rocket attacks on Israeli territory and skirmishes of the ground forces with Hezbollah continued. A few hours before the end of the war, television reporters were able to film the launch of the Katyusha from a Lebanese village lying just one kilometer from the Israeli town of Metula.
At 8 o’clock in the morning the fighting ceased, and all frowned at Olmert.
What have we achieved in 33 days of fighting?
Olmert, in turn, frowned at the generals.
Israel has so far reserved the right to self-defense and declared the maintenance of the sea and air blockade of Lebanon. A few hours before the ceasefire, Israeli planes scattered leaflets over Beirut warning that if Hezbollah violated the terms of the ceasefire, Israel’s retaliation would be even stronger than before.
In turn, the Lebanese government, due to internal disagreements, could not agree on the disarmament of Hezbollah militants. Thus, Security Council resolution No. 1559, requiring Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, was not implemented.
In the morning, thousands of Lebanese refugees in long convoys of vehicles moved from the north of the country to their homes in the south along the few surviving roads. So ended the most incomprehensible in all history Israeli war ...
During the fighting and as a result of Hezbollah rocket attacks 166 Israelis were killed: 121 military personnel and 45 civilians. About 2000 people were injured.
Victims among the civilian population of Lebanon amounted to 1140 people killed and over 4000 wounded.
According to the Lebanese government, as early as July 19, Lebanon’s damage from Israeli bombing totaled $ 2,5 billion. Many infrastructure facilities were destroyed, long-term damage was caused only to the tourism business, which recently recovered after the Civil War, which created 10-15% of the country's GDP.
Israel suffered losses. The rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory affected 70 settlements whose infrastructure was damaged in the hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the All-Israel Association of Industrialists, in the first one and a half to two weeks of the war, only the direct losses of industrial enterprises came close to half a billion dollars. Millions of losses were suffered by the trade sector and the tourism business.
According to various sources, during the hostilities the Israeli army suffered the following losses in military equipment and weapons: 10 helicopters received damage requiring repair; in addition, 60 to 150 armored vehicles (including up to 30 tanks) were destroyed and damaged. According to O. Granovsky, about 60 units of armored vehicles received combat damage, including 48-52 tanks, of which 5 were irretrievably.
Already on August 16, representatives of Sheikh Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah was not going to disarm and withdraw fighters across the Litani River.
On August 19, however, the Lebanese army began to unfold in southern Lebanon.
* * *
International politics is a very cynical area of relations. Everyone is looking for a weak spot in a neighbor and an opportunity to rebuke him for something. Since the country's geography dictates both its policy and its military doctrine, it is clear that the army has done and is doing the maximum possible for Israel, which is vulnerable within its borders. For several decades, Israel’s neighbors have been planning to destroy Israel as such, which implied the physical death of those citizens who did not have time to escape. Realism now dictates the rejection of such a policy, however, if the Israeli army weakens, at that very moment the old Arab slogans “dump the Jews into the sea” will come to life and someone will want to put them into practice again.
The cynicism of terrorists is manifested in the use of their own civilians as a "human shield." Militant leaders realize that they are weaker than a regular trained army. How can one win? The only way is to arouse the sympathy of the “world community” and seek outside help. Therefore, militants will provoke military operations and sweeps in densely populated areas, which is almost inevitably associated with possible losses among civilians. Therefore, any, even the smallest miss of Israeli soldiers will be used against the whole country 100 percent. So the army becomes an instrument for political manipulation of the opponents of Israel.
We also understand that protracted conflicts cannot be resolved by military means, and sooner or later diplomacy will replace the war. Diplomats and politicians, however, need military victories like air in order to negotiate in a way convenient for them. Since the conventional wars died out, the Israeli army has increasingly become a political tool. Time is perfecting this tool, but it will take many more years for humanity to work out the optimal tactics of the fight against terror, which will include military and non-military components.
* * *
In this war, however, it was from the army that they expected the usual military decisions - and did not wait. The whole country asked: why? Major General Udi Adam resigned in mid-September, without waiting for an answer to this question. In early November, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, commander of the 91st Division, resigned. On January 17, 2007, Halutz resigned. Another division commander, Brigadier General Erez Zuckerman, resigned in the summer of 2007, almost immediately followed by the resignation of the Israeli military commander fleet Vice Admiral David Ben-Basat, who was not forgiven for the loss of the Hanit corvette.
The army needs to be improved! - the whole country screamed once after the war. It is necessary, it is necessary, the military themselves assented, for this we need 30 billion shekels in addition to the budget over the next three years. This figure appeared already in September and at first shocked the Knesset. So what to do? It was necessary to send the Trophy tanks (Vetrovka), which had been fully developed by that time, to the army, and so on. Major General Gabi Ashkenazi, who had previously worked in the Ministry of Defense as general director, took Halutz’s place in the General Staff.
He was in good standing. Many joked that this appointment was the only right action of Pepper for all his 13 months of leadership of the Ministry of Defense. This is actually not true. During his not very long tenure as Minister of Defense, he launched the irreversible process of adopting a tactical missile defense system designed to protect against unguided missiles with a flight range of 4 to 70 kilometers - the Iron Dome.
The Iron Dome is "the most important project at the moment, and therefore we need to weigh the possibility of defining the development program as an" emergency program "and speed it up as much as possible."
On November 12, 2006, the R&D Department of the Israeli Ministry of Defense instructed Rafael to begin full-scale development of the project. On December 1, 2006, Amir Peretz made a decision: counteraction to short-range missiles is necessary and necessary, this answer is the Iron Dome and it requires external sources of financing. A long-term financing program started working, and the first battery went on combat alert in March 2011.
Unlike the military, politicians did not want to resign. They believed that the war as a whole can be considered almost successful, if we recall what tasks were set at the very first government meeting after the abduction of soldiers:
1. Move Hezbollah away from the border with Israel - performed.
2. To inflict a crushing blow on the military power of Hezbollah and thereby free the north of Israel from the threat of terrorism - partially completed. (Hezbollah hid its losses for a long time. First they talked about 69 killed militants, then about 90, in December 2006 already about 250, and the present number is still unknown.)
3. Apply scare tactics - performed.
4. To force the Lebanese government and state army to control the entire territory of the country or to involve additional international forces in this - performed.
5. Create conditions for the release of abducted Israeli soldiers - not performed.
6. Trying to keep Syria out of the war - performed.
Responsibility lay with the entire cabinet, as the cabinet discussed and voted. But most of the ministers were quickly found: this is not our common fiasco, this is Olmert's fiasco - and they boldly attacked the prime minister.
Olmert was not going to leave the premieres. In the end, he really wanted the best, the army let him down, and he just didn’t immediately understand it. And a smart apparatchik, a former lawyer and mayor of Jerusalem approached his problems philosophically and practically.
The state commission was not created immediately, but with delays. She was led by an elderly judge, Eliyahu Vinograd, a former Tel Aviv court president. He was supposed to be helped by Professor Ruth Gavison of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, political scientist Professor Ihezkiel Dror, and two retired generals: Menachem Einan and Haim Nadel. Olmert managed to delay the creation of the commission, appoint it chairman of Vinograd, who was nice to him, instead of the proposed chairman of the Supreme Court, Aaron Barak, to bring in people he liked, and give Vinograd the mandate to investigate not only the war itself, but also the entire six-year period, starting from the withdrawal of troops from Lebanon in 2000. Olmert rightly believed that all the army mistakes were made precisely in these six years, and he has nothing to do with this. Pleased with the work done, Olmert began to wait for the conclusions of the commission.
He had one strong trump card, although not adequately appreciated by the country's population: the long war did not plunge Israel into an economic crisis, unemployment did not increase, and the shekel did not fall. In 2005, Israel produced $ 183 billion worth of goods, and the average per capita income, although it did not reach European standards, was still at about the level of New Zealand, Greece, Spain and Italy. The commission will work, months will pass, people will calm down, as the situation in the country will not worsen.
Grapes presented his preliminary report in April 2007, eight months after the war. The first passions had already subsided, but this report made Olmert flinch. Having given their due place to six years of declining combat capability of the army (how could Sharon have allowed this to happen?), The authors devoted the bulk of the report to the week of July 12-17, when Olmert and his government made major decisions about the war and made their basic mistakes. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz were directly criticized.
"The decision to respond with an immediate intense military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and approved military plan, based on a thorough study of the complex: characteristics of the Lebanese front."
The word "failure" is mentioned in the report dozens of times.
The IDF got it for the lack of initiative and ingenuity in the face of obstacles. The preliminary report did not offer, and could not directly offer, Olmert and Peretz to resign, although there were hints of this in the report. But the clever former judge Vinograd left the decisive word for the prime minister himself. Olmert took advantage of this expertly. The full final report of the commission was supposed to be presented in the summer of 2007, with accurate maneuvers Olmert delayed this period until January 2008, when the passions calmed down even more. So he remained in his chair for almost a year and in the early autumn of 2008 resigned not because of the war, but because of a police investigation into some of his financial incorrectnesses.
On March 21, 2007, the Knesset Special Commission decided to name the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah the Second Lebanon War.
"The main thing is that we kept our promise to quickly choose a name for the war,"
- said the chairman of the commission, Jacob Edry.
According to a survey conducted by Ynet, 77% agreed that this is the most appropriate name for the latest conflict.
This decision meant that, firstly, the state would have to pay more substantial compensation to the population whose property was damaged by hostilities. Secondly, the military leadership will have to admit defeat in a full-fledged war, and not in a "conflict."
IDF block for participating in the 2006 war
Two and a half years of Olmert’s premiership after the war turned out to be very calm for Israel. Pepper went into oblivion, and the Histadrut stopped paralyzing nationwide strikes, there were practically no Palestinian terrorist attacks in the country, prices, except for gas, remained more or less stable, Olmert didn’t make new disengagement with the Palestinians, about the partition of Jerusalem and the exit from the Golan Heights people did not remember, the Israeli shekel rose against the dollar, the euro and the British pound, Eilat began to receive visa-free tourists from Russia, the northern border ceased to bother.
On the night of September 6, 2007, Israeli aircraft bombed a military facility in north-eastern Syria that was considered "connected with nuclear energy," Assad Jr. built it with the help of North Korea. And Assad did not even move, limited himself to screams. These screams were short-lived, since in the area of the bombed site in Deir al-Zur they really found elements of radioactive uranium, but this is a completely different story ...
Sources of
Shterenshis M. At the beginning of the XXI century. History of Israel, 2019.
Tsyganok A.D., Batyushin S.A., Melkov S.A. Russian view of the wars of Israel.
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.
Information