'Israel planning 3rd Lebanon war'

[PERSIAN GOD KING]

Israel is reportedly planning to launch its third war against Lebanon, exploiting the regional countries' current heightened preoccupation with their domestic upheavals.


“[The Lebanese resistance movement of] Hezbollah is in a state of alert and it anticipates an Israeli attack on Lebanon at any moment,” Lebanon's English-language newspaper The Daily Star reported on Thursday, citing an exclusive report by Al Joumhouria, another domestic daily.

According to the Arab-language newspaper's sources, Israel sees the 'regional situation' as an opportunity to wage the hostilities.

The reported developments take place amid ongoing anti-regime popular uprisings in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which have been inspired by successful Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions earlier in the year.

Al Joumhouria cited political sources close to Hezbollah as saying the resistance movement had -- in preparation to confront the Israeli offensives -- amassed a wide range of ammunitions, including thousands of rockets, advanced anti-aircraft weapons as well as long-range, surface-to-air, and surface-to-sea missiles.

Tel Aviv launched wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, were killed in the 33-Day War of 2006.

On both occasions, however, Hezbollah fighters defeated the Israeli forces and Tel Aviv was compelled to withdraw its troops without having achieved any of its objectives.

Hezbollah has announced that it has the capability to hit targets deep inside Israel and to strike Israeli Navy vessels even before they reach Lebanese territorial waters.

In July 2010, Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem said the movement knew which locations to target if Tel Aviv waged another war on the country.

"We now hold a large and precise bank of Israeli targets, and Israel will have to pay the price for any step it takes," Qassem told the Arab-language Al Nahar daily.

Al Joumhouria also said that Hezbollah's capabilities in the battleground now equaled those of Israel's, enabling the movement to even deter Israeli Air Force at high altitudes.

The Daily Star reported earlier in the year that Israel had been building up its military capabilities since the end of the 2006 war by introducing new weapons such as a multi-tiered anti-rocket missile system and a tank protection system into its arsenal.

US diplomatic cables of 2009 released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks show that Israel expects the next war to last two months.

The Arab-language daily noted that Hezbollah members had been partaking in periodical training and service to ensure readiness of such levels, which enables them to confront the enemy, should the war break out as soon as the next day.
PressTV - 'Israel planning 3rd Lebanon war'

 

[Al Bhatti]

From Al Joumhouria to Daily Star to Press TV?

 

[T90TankGuy]

wonder how many soothsayers they have on their payroll .

 

[Drawn_Sword_of_God]

3rd Lebanon war?
re ownage of IDF by hezbullah...

 

[Qasibr]

Here's an excerpt from Asia Times' analysis of the event:

The Ground War

After-battle reports of Hezbollah commanders now confirm that IDF troops never fully secured the border area and Maroun al-Ras was never fully taken. Nor did Hezbollah ever feel the need to call up its reserves, as Israel had done. "The entire war was fought by one Hezbollah brigade of 3,000 troops, and no more," one military expert in the region said. "The Nasr Brigade fought the entire war. Hezbollah never felt the need to reinforce it."

Reports from Lebanon underscore this point. Much to their surprise, Hezbollah commanders found that Israeli troops were poorly organized and disciplined. The only Israeli unit that performed up to standards was the Golani Brigade, according to Lebanese observers. The IDF was "a motley assortment", one official with a deep knowledge of US slang reported. "But that's what happens when you have spent four decades firing rubber bullets at women and children in the West Bank and Gaza."

IDF commanders were also disturbed by the performance of their troops, noting a signal lack of discipline even among its best-trained regular soldiers. The reserves were worse, and IDF commanders hesitated to put them into battle.

The resistance performed surprisingly well back in 2006, the war really shook Israel to their core, as their false claims of superiority were proven to be hollow.

However, Israel is an insidious enemy that has much in common with the indos to our east(both talk very nicely, and right when you're vulnerable or make the mistake of trusting them, they stab you in the back - look at Israel supporting the Kurdish PKK for decades against it's Turkish ally). I hope Hezbollah is not going to stick to old tactics simply because they led to success back then, because that makes one highly predictable, and Israeli tacticians would have studied their failures in-depth.

Israel ran out of Precision-Guided Munitions during that war, because they weren't able to accurately pinpoint Hezbollah's numerous forward supply depots and had to take out thousands of suspected hideouts, so to move now Israel would have had it's intel do a thorough workup using local assets, to see where hideouts are during peacetime. And also, if they're stocking up on PGMs that they ran out of earlier, it would be a dead giveaway. Perhaps they'd stock up covertly.