2006 Lebanon War
The 2006 Lebanon War was a 34-day armed conflict in Lebanon, fought between Hezbollah and Israel. The war started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. It marked the third Israeli invasion into Lebanon since 1978.
After Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah aimed for the release of Lebanese citizens held in Israeli prisons. On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah ambushed Israeli soldiers on the border, killing three and capturing two; a further five were killed during a failed Israeli rescue attempt. Hezbollah demanded an exchange of prisoners with Israel. Israel launched airstrikes and artillery fire on targets in Lebanon, attacking both Hezbollah military targets and Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport. Israel launched a ground invasion of Southern Lebanon and imposed an air-and-naval blockade on the country. Hezbollah then launched more rockets into northern Israel and engaged the IDF in guerrilla warfare from hardened positions. According to Israeli sources, Hezbollah fired close to 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel from their arsenal of around 15,000 held before the war.
On 11 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 in an effort to end the hostilities, which called for disarmament of Hezbollah, Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, and for the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces and an enlarged United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon in the south. The Lebanese Army began deploying in Southern Lebanon on 17 August and the blockade was lifted on 8 September. On 1 October, most Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon, although the last of the troops continued to occupy the border-straddling village of Ghajar.
Both Hezbollah and the Israeli government claimed victory, while the Winograd Commission deemed the war a missed opportunity for Israel as it did not lead to disarmament of Hezbollah. The conflict is believed to have killed between 1,191 and 1,300 Lebanese people, and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis. The remains of the two captured soldiers, whose fates were unknown, were returned to Israel on 16 July 2008 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Etymology
The war is known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War. The war is also known as the Israel–Hezbollah War of 2006.Background
Cross-border attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization dated as far back as 1968, following the 1967 Six-Day War; the area became a significant base for attacks following the arrival of the PLO leadership and its Fatah brigade following their 1971 expulsion from Jordan. Starting about this time, increasing demographic tensions related to the Lebanese National Pact, which had divided governmental powers among religious groups throughout the country 30 years previously, began running high and led in part to the Lebanese Civil War.During the 1978 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, Israel failed to stem the Palestinian attacks. Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982 and forcibly expelled the PLO. Israel withdrew to a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon, held with the aid of proxy militants in the South Lebanon Army.
The invasion also led to the conception of a new Shi'a militant group, which in 1985, established itself politically under the name Hezbollah, and declared an armed struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory. When the Lebanese Civil War ended and other warring factions agreed to disarm, both Hezbollah and the SLA refused. Ten years later, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon to the UN-designated and internationally recognized Blue Line border in 2000.
The withdrawal also led to the immediate collapse of the SLA, and Hezbollah quickly took control of the area. Later, citing allegations of Lebanese prisoners in Israel and continued Israeli control of the Shebaa farms region, occupied by Israel from Syria in 1967 but considered by Hezbollah to be part of Lebanon, Hezbollah intensified its cross-border attacks, and used the tactic of seizing soldiers from Israel as leverage for a prisoner exchange in 2004.
In 2005, Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon.
In August 2006, in an article in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh claimed that the White House gave the green light for the Israeli government to execute an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Supposedly, communication between the Israeli government and the US government about this came as early as two months in advance of the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hezbollah prior to the conflict in July 2006.
According to Conal Urquhart in The Guardian, the Winograd Committee leaked a testimony from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggesting that Olmert "had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006."
Abduction efforts in the year prior to conflict
In June 2005, an Israel Defense Forces paratroop unit operating near the Shebaa Farms engaged three Lebanese it identified as Hezbollah special force members, killing one. Videotapes recovered by the paratroopers contained footage of the three recording detailed accounts of the area.Over the following 12 months, Hezbollah made three unsuccessful attempts to abduct Israeli soldiers. On 21 November 2005, a number of Hezbollah special forces attempted to attack an Israeli outpost in Ghajar, a village straddling the border between Lebanon and the Golan Heights. The outpost had been deserted following an intelligence warning, and three of the Hezbollah militants were killed when Israeli sniper David Markovich shot a rocket-propelled grenade they were carrying, causing it to explode. From his sniper position, Markovich shot and killed a fourth gunman shortly thereafter.
Course of the war
Hezbollah cross-border raid
At around 9am local time on 12 July 2006, Hezbollah launched diversionary rocket attacks toward Israeli military positions near the coast and near the border village of Zar'it as well as on the Israeli town of Shlomi and other villages. Five civilians were injured. Six Israeli military positions were fired on, and the surveillance cameras knocked out.At the same time, a Hezbollah ground contingent infiltrated the border into Israel through a "dead zone" in the border fence, hiding in an overgrown wadi. They attacked a patrol of two Israeli Humvees patrolling the border near Zar'it, using pre-positioned explosives and anti-tank missiles, killing three soldiers, injuring two, and capturing two soldiers.
In response to the Hezbollah feint attacks, the IDF conducted a routine check of its positions and patrols, and found that contact with two jeeps was lost. A rescue force was immediately dispatched to the area, and confirmed that two soldiers were missing after 20 minutes. A Merkava Mk III tank, an armored personnel carrier, and a helicopter were immediately dispatched into Lebanon. The tank hit a large land mine, killing its crew of four. Another soldier was killed and two lightly injured by mortar fire as they attempted to recover the bodies.
Hezbollah named the attack "Operation Truthful Promise" after leader Hassan Nasrallah's public pledges over the prior year and a half to seize Israeli soldiers and swap them for four Lebanese held by Israel:
- Samir Kuntar ;
- Nasim Nisr ;
- Yahya Skaf ;
- Ali Faratan.
Israeli response
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the seizure of the soldiers as an "act of war" by the sovereign state of Lebanon, stating that "Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions" and promising a "very painful and far-reaching response." Israel blamed the Lebanese government for the raid, as it was carried out from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah had two ministers serving in the Lebanese cabinet at that time.In response, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denied any knowledge of the raid and stated that he did not condone it. An emergency meeting of the Lebanese government reaffirmed this position.
The Israel Defense Forces attacked targets within Lebanon with artillery and airstrikes hours before the Israeli Cabinet met to discuss a response. The targets consisted of bridges and roads in Lebanon, which were hit to prevent Hezbollah from transporting the abductees. An Israeli airstrike also destroyed the runways of Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport. Forty-four civilians were killed. The Israeli Air Force also targeted Hezbollah's long-range rocket-and-missile stockpiles, destroying many of them on the ground in the first days of the war. Many of Hezbollah's longer-range rocket launchers were destroyed within the first hours of the Israeli attack.
Later that same day, the Cabinet decided to authorize the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and their deputies to pursue the plan which they had proposed for action within Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert officially demanded that the Israel Defense Forces avoid civilian casualties whenever possible. Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz said, "if the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years" while the head of Israel's Northern Command Udi Adam said, "this affair is between Israel and the state of Lebanon. Where to attack? Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate—not just southern Lebanon, not just the line of Hezbollah posts."
On 12 July 2006, the Israeli Cabinet promised that Israel would "respond aggressively and harshly to those who carried out, and are responsible for, today's action". The Cabinet's communiqué stated, in part, that the "Lebanese Government responsible for the action that originated on its soil." A retired Israeli Army Colonel explained that the rationale behind the attack was to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut.
On 16 July, the Israeli Cabinet released a communiqué explaining that, although Israel had engaged in military operations within Lebanon, its war was not against the Lebanese government. The communiqué stated: "Israel is not fighting Lebanon but the terrorist element there, led by Nasrallah and his cohorts, who have made Lebanon a hostage and created Syrian- and Iranian-sponsored terrorist enclaves of murder."
When asked in August about the proportionality of the response, Prime Minister Olmert stated that the "war started not only by killing eight Israeli soldiers and abducting two but by shooting Katyusha and other rockets on the northern cities of Israel on that same morning. Indiscriminately." He added "no country in Europe would have responded in such a restrained manner as Israel did."