by Maj. (res.) Gilad Ach, Chairman of "Reservists of the Victory Generation" and Director of the Ad Kan organization, translated by Hillel Fendel.
The recipe to do so is straightforward, but requires courage.
After more than a month
since the beginning of the IDF's campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon, anyone
who took part in the ground offensive can agree on the following facts:
1. The enemy was
significantly weaker than what we expected. In fact, in most of the villages
there was hardly any resistance, and whatever military opposition we
encountered was overcome fairly quickly.
2. Our offensive was east-to-west, not deep into
more northern Lebanese territory. We sought to "visit" all the
villages that are relatively close to Israel, without going to the second-tier
villages.
3. Actually, these
weren't exactly villages. The amount of weapons, tunnels, and anti-tank
missiles that we found in every house in the Shiite towns and villages, as well
as rocket launching pads directed at Israel from every corner, giving them
total control over our northern communities, rendered these
"villages" genuine military camps, camouflaged by a "combat
supporting" civilian populace.
If the Hizbullah leaders – especially the now-deceased Sheikh Nasrallah –
had had the time or the notion to order this tremendous military array to
attack Israel, the amount of dead and kidnapped Israelis we could have suffered
would likely have been much greater than the numbers we experienced on Simchat
Torah a year ago.
4. Lebanon is,
indeed, a poor country – but the plethora of large houses, luxury cars, and
private swimming pools that we saw, as well as other indications, attest to the
unusual wealth of the Shiite population in southern Lebanon.
5. The UNIFIL
peace-keeping forces and the Lebanese Army are an intrinsic part of the game
being played there by Iran. They most certainly saw with their own eyes, or
otherwise knew of, the tunnel openings, the tunnel excavations, the launch
pads, the mining of the roads, the trucks carrying long-range rockets, the
explosive drones, and more and more. They saw and were silent. They saw and
cooperated with our enemy.
6. What Israel owes
its Mossad and intelligence community people cannot be expressed in words. The
reason why Hizbullah is suffering such great losses now is because of the total
state of bedlam and confusion it entered as a result of our ingenious beeper-and-pager
attacks, as well as the liquidation of Nasrallah shortly afterwards. Basically,
the once-arrogant Hizbullah has turned into a mouse running for its life ever
since. It is not even able to arm the charges it itself hid in the fields
because it is so busy retreating.
All of
these facts lead us to the following simple conclusions:
We must
not allow a recurrence of that which we experienced with Hizbullah in the past!
We have neither the privilege nor the right to enable Hizbullah to rebuild
itself and its monstrous array of threats to northern Israel right over our
border!
Yes,
there is a national fear of sinking into the "Lebanese swamp." Much
of the country is still traumatized by the frequent losses we suffered in the
years after the Second Lebanese War.
But in
order that we not betray the trust that history has granted us, it is my
understanding that we actually have no choice but to quickly execute the
following four operations:
1. We must deepen
our ground offensive and take it further north, all the way up to the Litani
River. Though it flows mostly north to south, its east-west section flows 10
kilometers north of Tyre, about 30 kilometers north of the border with Israel.
We must define the entire area of southern Lebanon from Israel to this section
of the Litani as a closed military zone, and as a buffer zone with no residents.
It will be enclosed by a fence, which already exists on the existing
Israeli-Lebanese border, and IDF outposts will populate the area. This will
prevent a ground invasion from Lebanon into Israel, of the catastrophic type we
experienced last October 7th, for many years to come.
2. We can reach a
ceasefire agreement with Lebanon – in exchange for the exile of the entire
political echelon of Hizbullah, as well as whatever is left of its military
leadership. In addition, all still-living terrorists who engaged in firing long-range
rockets at us must be extradited to Israel.
3. The Christian
and Druze leaders in Lebanon must be invited and brought to Israel to speak in
the Knesset, and we must help bolster their standing in Lebanon.
4. With American
backing, and as part of the ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese unwritten
National Pact that mandates the selection of national leaders according to
ethnicity must be abolished. There must also be democratic elections for the
Parliament, which will release Lebanon from its Shi'ite-Iranian bear hug. For
decades, this system has made Lebanon into a country lacking basic governmental
stability. [The present situation is that the president must be a Maronite
Christian, the speaker of the Parliament - a Shi'ite Muslim, and the prime
minister must be a Sunni Muslim. According to Wikipedia, efforts to alter or
abolish this system have been at the center of Lebanese politics for decades. -
HF]
These actions are the
only ones that can save us from the mistakes we made after the First and Second
Lebanese Wars. They can also help save Lebanon from its Iranian captors, and
bring quiet to our northern border for many years forward.
We can only hope for,
and demand, the necessary courage and maneuverings in the political sphere of
the type that have served us so well on the battlefield.