PTo eliminate Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, during a strike in Beirut on Friday September 27, the number of civilian victims it caused is still unknown, three days later, it was necessary to Israeli army eighty bombs and almost twenty years of preparation. This period is the one that has passed since the previous war, led by Israel in Lebanon, in 2006.
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A thirty-three-day conflict with land invasion, marked by bombings which ravaged infrastructure and led to the death of nearly 1,200 Lebanese, without allowing any clear military successes. 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, a hero, from the rubble.
After 2006, radical changes
Hassan Nasrallah, after the negotiated end of the conflict, celebrated the “divine victory” of its troops, while a commission of inquiry, on the Israeli side, looked into the dysfunctions of their own campaign. Going to war for “restore its deterrent capacity”after the kidnapping of two soldiers, the Israeli army returned with a high number of losses (117 soldiers killed) and the feeling of an aborted mission.
The analysis of the failures of 2006 would lead to radical changes, intended to take revenge on this humiliating episode, with a reorientation of the army’s priorities and resources. Miri Eisin, director of the Counterterrorism Institute at Reichmann University in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, after a career in the army, witnessed this new strategic situation: “From that point 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 revolution or Syria. From this focus emerged a doctrine on how to dismantle Hezbollah’s capabilities, by primarily attacking command and communications. »
And “weak point” had been detected, notes 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, made up of rockets, missiles, some of which were guided, and then, soon, drones. A strike force estimated by the Israeli army at more than one hundred thousand “projectiles”. This arsenal was also going to be the center of all the attention of the general staff. It captured a huge share 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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