Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel will press on with its weeklong Lebanon offensive until its captured soldiers are released and its citizens are safe from attacks. "Israel will continue to combat Hezbollah and will continue to strike targets of the group," Olmert said in a statement.
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First, I don’t believe, short of a full scale invasion of southern Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s fighting capacity will be effectively diminished. Such an invasion would have two important effects on the IDF, one would be that they’d suffer huge losses due to Hezbollah’s mining of their defensive positions, and the second would be an extremely high chance of triggering Syria’s forces into re-entering Lebanon. I don’t believe Olmert desires either of these effects, and so he will stay out of Lebanon and continue inflicting minor losses on Hezbollah until the UN finally steps in and supplies him with a face-saving exit.
The best Olmert can gain from the hostilities of the past week is for things to return to the status quo ante. Short of all out war with Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran -- a war that would see the use of nuclear weapons seriously considered by Israel-- Olmert will achieve nothing, and Hezbollah will have its hero status reaffirmed by the Muslim world for once again outlasting Israel in Lebanon.
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