DeansMusings

The ceasefire with Hezbollah : In my previous posts I have said that (unlike 2006) Hezbollah cannot simply stay at the Israel border while threatening Israel with rockets. From 1 Oct 24, after a year, the Israeli army began operations inside Lebanon, though the bulk of the Israel army was operating against Gaza, leaving only a small force on the Lebanon border, Hezbollah was still taking unsustainable losses – the loss ratio was 26:1 compared to 6:1 in 2006. At the same time Hezbollah’s rocket attacks inflicted less damage in a year than they did in one month in 2006. While many Israeli residents of border settlements had to leave with a resulting strain on the economy, the loss to Lebanon’s economy from a similar displacement was higher. Understanding that Hezbollah could not just remain dug in to positions in south Lebanon is important in understanding why a ceasefire was agreed to. The other point I made was that Israel’s objective was to push Hezbollah out of south Lebanon, t...

The war against Hezbollah  (part 7 - Israel's war series) It has been just over a month since the IDF began a full-fledged war against Hezbollah. Before analyzing that, it would be useful to see how operations against both Hamas and Hezbollah have taken place compared to what I predicted in previous posts. Hamas: In my post of 25 Aug I had suggested that the fighting against Hamas was largely over and Hamas, having lost the bulk of its fighters was incapable of offering organized resistance. I had identified three IDF divisions that would handle Gaza, not by occupying the whole Gaza strip but by cutting it off from outside support and cutting parts of Gaza from each other, by occupying corridors. The IDF would them conduct air strikes, or limited ground incursions against Hamas fighters, until Hamas’s fighting ability is fully degraded. As suggested, the 162 nd , 252 and 143 rd Divisions have, since the beginning of Sept, been the only formations operating against Hamas in G...

  Since my last post in April, there have been some significant non military developments in this  conflict.  Israel’s GDP grew in the 1 st Quarter of 2024 (after a fall in Q4 2023), showing it has shrugged off the effect of war. GDP growth was close to pre war estimates. Iran will elect a new President on 28 th June. His policy may impact Israel’s policy towards Hezbollah. A word about the deployable strength of the IDF : An IDF brigade is barely 2000 personnel (it is lower in an armored brigade), compared to over 3000 in an Indian army brigade. Reserve personnel who have been mobilized and form the bulk of the IDF soldiers in combat in Gaza, cannot be mobilized for more than 60 days. Thus reserve units who have been fighting in Gaza for several months, have deployed only individual battalions of those brigades at any point of time. A particular reserve brigade may be deployed in Gaza on paper, but in reality, only a single battalion (barely 500 personnel) of t...

 After 6 months of the ground war, I want to look at how Israel fared so far. Israel had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Destroy Hamas’s capacity to be threat. 2. Get their hostages back 3. Handle any threat from Hezbollah, West Bank, or others while operating against Hamas. Strategic: 1. Put any talk of a Palestinian state on the back burner (as it has been after Saudi and UAE     normalized relations with Israel) Hamas had the following objectives: Operational: 1. Demonstrate that Israel was not invincible (either on Oct 7, or in subsequent fighting).   2. Get back some of their prisoners in exchange for hostages. Strategic: 1. Force the world community to seriously discuss the creation of a Palestinian state. 2. Start a larger war against Israel with the participation of Hezbollah, Iranian proxies and other      Palestinians in the west bank. My view, as expressed in part 1 of this series, was that if the IDF suff...