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Abstract
This article examines the military strategies employed during the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War and assesses the political war aims based on the outcome of the war. The assessment argues that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)'s strategy could not realistically attain Israel's strategic aims because the IDF struggled to translate tactical successes into strategic gains. Hezbollah's strategy more effectively matched the war's conduct and enabled it to attain more, albeit limited, war aims.
Notes
1. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), vii.
2. 2. David Makovsky and Jeffrey White, “Lessons and Implications of the Israel–Hizbollah War,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, policy focus 60 (2006): 47.
3. Ahron Bregman, Israel's Wars: A History since 1947 (London: Routledge, 2009), 278.
4. Anthony Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War (Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2007), 6.
5. William M. Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2007), 40.
6. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 4.
7. Avi Kober, “The Second Lebanon War,” The Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Perspectives, vol. 22 (2006): 1.
8. Bregman, Israel's Wars, 276.
9. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 91–92.
10. Ibid., 100.
11. Ibid., 48.
12. Uri Bar-Joseph, ‘The Hubris of Initial Victory’ in Clive Jones and Sergio Catignani, eds., Israel and Hizbollah: An Asymmetric Conflict in a Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2012), 153.
13. Matt M. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War,” Washington: Combat Studies Institute, The Long War Series, occasional paper 26 (2008): 38–39.
14. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 157.
15. Bar-Joseph, “The Hubris of Initial Victory,” 151.
16. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 56.
17. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days,116.
18. Bar-Joseph, The Hubris of Initial Victory, 153.
19. Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God (New York: Random House, 2011), 398.
20. Arkin, Divining Victory, 47.
21. Bregman, Israel's Wars, 279.
22. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 43.
23. Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege to Die (New York: Free Press, 2011), 64.
24. Bar-Joseph, The Hubris of Initial Victory, 154.
25. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 48.
26. Bregman, Israel's Wars, 282.
27. Rashid Khalidi, “Forward,” in Nubar Hovsepian, ed., The War on Lebanon: A Reader (New York, Olive Branch Press, 2007), xviii.
28. Harel & Issacharoff, 34 Days, 212.
29. Kober, “The Second Lebanon War,” 4.
30. Bregman, Israel's Wars, 290.
31. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 8.
32. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 84.
33. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 37.
34. Andrew Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus, no. 63 (2006): 8.
35. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizbollah's Outlook in the Current Conflict: Motives, Strategy and Objectives,” Carnegie Policy Outlook (2006): 3.
36. Reinoud Leenders, “How the Rebel Regained His Cause: Hizbullah & the Sixth Arab-Israeli War,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 6 (2006): 38.
37. Richard Augustus Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 135.
38. Cambanis, A Privilege to Die, 17.
39. Daniel Sobelman, “Hizbollah–from Terror to Resistance: Towards a National Defence Strategy,” in Clive Jones and Sergio Catignani, eds., Israel and Hizbollah (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), 63.
40. Norton, Hezbollah, 116.
41. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 10.
42. Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizbollah's Outlook,” 3–4.
43. Nicholas Noe, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah (London: Verso, 2007), 394.
44. Harel & Issacharoff, 34 Days, 46.
45. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 19.
46. Arkin, Divining Victory, 136.
47. Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” 9.
48. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 47.
49. Blanford, Warriors of God, 344.
50. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 44.
51. Uzi Rubin, “The Rocket Campaign against Israel During the 2006 Lebanon War,” The Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Bar-Illan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies, no. 71 (2007): 4.
52. Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, September, 2008), 50.
53. Rubin, “The Rocket Campaign,” 10.
54. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 189.
55. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 47.
56. Blanford, Warriors of God, 381.
57. Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” 5.
58. Arkin, Divining Victory, 18.
59. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 16.
60. Biddle and Friedman, “The 2006 Lebanon Campaign,” 52.
61. Ibid., 52–54.
62. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 22.
63. Bregman, Israel's Wars, 276.
64. Arkin, Divining Victory, 206 and 242.
65. Ibid., iv.
66. Norton, Hezbollah, 142.
67. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 249.
68. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 17.
69. Norton, Hezbollah,142.
70. The Telegraph, “Israel and Hezbollah Sign Prisoner Exchange Deal,” March 22, 2013, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/2264757/Israel-and-Hizbollah-sign-prisoner-exchange-deal.html.
71. Amir Kulick, “The Next War with Hizbollah,” Strategic Assessment, vol. 10, no. 3 (2007): 2.