PTo eliminate Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, during an attack in Beirut on Friday, September 27, the number of civilian victims it caused is still unknown, three days later, it was necessary for the Israeli army to use eighty bombs and almost twenty years of preparation. . This period is what has passed since the previous war, led by Israel in Lebanon, in 2006.
A thirty-three-day conflict with a ground invasion, marked by bombings that devastated infrastructure and caused the death of nearly 1,200 Lebanese, without allowing any clear military success. On July 19, 2006, the air force attempted to kill Hassan Nasrallah, who was taking refuge in an underground bunker in Beirut. Thirty tons of bombs were dropped on the southern suburbs, but the general secretary of the Party of God emerged unscathed, like a hero, from the rubble.
After 2006, radical changes
Hassan Nasrallah, after the negotiated end of the conflict, celebrated the “divine victory” of his troops, while a commission of inquiry, on the Israeli side, examined the dysfunctions of his own campaign. go to war for “restore its deterrent capacity”After the kidnapping of two soldiers, the Israeli army returned with a high number of casualties (117 dead soldiers) and the feeling of an aborted mission.
The analysis of the failures of 2006 would lead to radical changes, aimed at avenging this humiliating episode, with a reorientation of the army’s priorities and resources. Miri Eisin, director of the Anti-Terrorism Institute at Reichmann University in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, after a career in the army, witnessed this new strategic situation: “From that moment on, the military and intelligence community focused on what was called the ‘northern threat,’ which was not limited to Hezbollah, but included Iran, the custodians of the revolution, or Syria. From this approach emerged a doctrine on how to dismantle Hezbollah’s capabilities, primarily attacking command and communications. »
TO “weak point” A problem has been detected, says the former head of military intelligence: the increase in Hezbollah’s communication needs, linked to the rapid development of its capabilities. At the same time, the Shiite party was also developing, with the help of Iran, a large arsenal, consisting of rockets, missiles, some of them guided, and then, soon, drones. An attack force estimated by the Israeli army at more than one hundred thousand “projectiles.” This arsenal was also to be the center of all the attention of the general staff. It captured an enormous proportion of resources, in a context of increasing use of high technology, at the expense of the traditional sectors, infantry and artillery.
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