Israel's wealth of intelligence shapes air, ground campaign

JERUSALEM -- Israel is using intelligence developed over months and years, as well as new information gathered each day by commandos inside Lebanon, in its nine-day-old air and ground campaign to destroy Hezbollah's military capability, Israeli officials say.

The elite commando units are collecting detailed intelligence on sites identified by satellites and other technology as Hezbollah weapons stores or missile batteries, including underground bunker and tunnel complexes in southern Lebanon, according to the officials.

The use of Israeli ground troops to destroy the Hezbollah weapons sites in recent days has fueled speculation that Israel is preparing an invasion of southern Lebanon. ``In order to significantly harm Hezbollah, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will be forced to insert more and more ground forces into the depth of Lebanese territory," Amir Rapaport, military analyst for the Maariv daily, wrote yesterday.

The ground operations exposed Israeli soldiers to Hezbollah resistance on their home turf in the south of the country. At least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting Wednesday and yesterday around one such site near the Lebanese village of Maroun A-Ras, 1 mile inside Lebanon.

The flashes of Israeli artillery fire and explosions from Hezbollah rockets lit up the night sky near the border late last night as Israeli ambulances ferried wounded soldiers back from Lebanon under intense Hezbollah fire.

Yesterday's clashes occurred near an outpost abandoned by the retreating Israeli Army in May 2000 as it was withdrawing after an 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The site was identified using satellite photographs as a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel.

``We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed yesterday by the ground operation of our forces," said Miri Regev, an Israeli Army spokesman. ``This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations: to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens."

Israeli military officials said the operations have destroyed as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah's rocket capability, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But rockets are still raining down on towns and cities across northern Israel. Israeli officials say that results in part from Hezbollah's decentralized operational structure.

``We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. ``Hezbollah separated its leadership command and control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village who had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages," in northern Israel.

Israel didn't need to rely only on sophisticated intelligence to discover what appears to have been a huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah via Syria since 2000 because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press.

As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current conflict, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon via Syria.

But Israeli officials acknowledge they will struggle to locate the entire arsenal.

``We need a lot of patience," said Hanegbi. ``The IDF action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village."

A week into the conflict, Israeli pundits questioned whether aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign: to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week in the Hezbollah cross-border raid that set off the crisis.

After 18 years of occupation, Israelis are wary of returning to what some call the ``Lebanese quagmire." Many observers say the introduction of ground troops is inevitable. They fear it might take years to remove them.

But the uncertainty is an illusion, said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University.

``Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Steinberg. ``In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. "

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli Army officer began giving presentations to diplomats, reporters, and think-tank analysts, setting out the outlines of the current operation in detail.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a three-week campaign. The first week would concentrate on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, its command and control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus would shift to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces would be introduced to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions. There was no scenario to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

Like all military plans, this one is shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

``There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge -- a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. ``One is the air-power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables."

``The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on ground, " he said.

Globe correspondent Alon Tuval contributed to this report from the border area near Avivim in northern Israel.