Jon Elmer
The true game-changer
The true game-changer in the region was Israel's defeat in south
Lebanon in the 2006 July War. For 34 days, a seemingly unending
stockpile of rockets drove Israelis into bomb shelters and halted daily
life throughout nearly the whole country. When Israel's brutal air war
failed to halt the rockets, a ground war was launched by the Israeli
army.
If every war is to have its signifying battle - the July War was
defined in Bint Jbeil. Israel's conscripted army and its reserves walked
right into a prepared enemy that had changed the rules of the game -
mixing guerrilla operations with conventional military tactics. In so
doing, Hezbollah dealt Israel a psychological blow that carried the
"spectacle" of defeat, as Israel's Haaretz newspaper characterised it.
According to Israel's Winograd Commission - tasked by the state with
investigating the July War failings - the battle in Bint Jbeil was the
turning point of the war, "a symbol of the unsuccessful action of the
Israel Defence Forces throughout the fighting".
A successful model was in place, and Palestinians took note.
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