Israels mål är att minska Irans och Syriens förmåga att kunna använda Hizbolha för att atackera Israel. Medlet är att, i största möjliga utsträckning, använda sig av flygvapnet, eftersom man vill minimera de egna förlusterna.
Citat:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1150886029438&pagename=J Post%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Iran is reported to have several hundred of its own Revolutionary Guards based in Lebanon, working with Hizbullah; some of them may well have been killed in the Israel Air Force's raids on Hizbullah's Dahiya command neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
But Israel remains determined, so far as it is able, not to have this conflict escalate to include those two enemy states. Indeed there is a concern in the defense establishment that Hizbullah, isolated and struggling for survival amid the intensifying IAF strikes, may resort to desperate measures to try and draw in the Syrians - including even firing itself on a Syrian target, an attack that would be misrepresented as Israeli fire in the hope of prompting the already jumpy Syrians into injudicious action.
From the Israeli point of view, Lebanon is the sovereign power from whose territory Hizbullah has been allowed to operate and in whose territory it has established its military infrastructure. That's where the quarrel is, and that's where it is playing out.
In terms of the parameters of this conflict, Israel has its register of targets, and intends to strike at them until, it hopes, it reaches the stage where Hizbullah can no longer be counted a significant threat to Israeli territory. Even a unilateral Hizbullah cease-fire would not halt those air sorties.
Israel is also interested in minimizing its use of ground forces as it seeks to destroy Hizbullah's missile capability; it is relying on the IAF to do the lion's share of the work. It also has no intention of carving out a semi-permanent new security zone, occupied by the IDF, on the other side of the border where Hizbullah had made itself so comfortable; instead, again, it is relying overwhelmingly on the IAF to clear a strip a kilometer deep into Lebanon - a zone that it will continue to patrol by air and to which it will not allow entry.
The idea is to ensure that there be no repeat of the situation that prevailed until last week, whereby Hizbullah gunmen could eyeball Israeli soldiers meters away across the fence, and in which those same gunmen could lay an explosive charge so colossal just 70 meters across the border as to rip apart the Israeli tank that crossed the border in the immediate aftermath of last Wednesday's attack near Moshav Zar'it.
But Israel remains determined, so far as it is able, not to have this conflict escalate to include those two enemy states. Indeed there is a concern in the defense establishment that Hizbullah, isolated and struggling for survival amid the intensifying IAF strikes, may resort to desperate measures to try and draw in the Syrians - including even firing itself on a Syrian target, an attack that would be misrepresented as Israeli fire in the hope of prompting the already jumpy Syrians into injudicious action.
From the Israeli point of view, Lebanon is the sovereign power from whose territory Hizbullah has been allowed to operate and in whose territory it has established its military infrastructure. That's where the quarrel is, and that's where it is playing out.
In terms of the parameters of this conflict, Israel has its register of targets, and intends to strike at them until, it hopes, it reaches the stage where Hizbullah can no longer be counted a significant threat to Israeli territory. Even a unilateral Hizbullah cease-fire would not halt those air sorties.
Israel is also interested in minimizing its use of ground forces as it seeks to destroy Hizbullah's missile capability; it is relying on the IAF to do the lion's share of the work. It also has no intention of carving out a semi-permanent new security zone, occupied by the IDF, on the other side of the border where Hizbullah had made itself so comfortable; instead, again, it is relying overwhelmingly on the IAF to clear a strip a kilometer deep into Lebanon - a zone that it will continue to patrol by air and to which it will not allow entry.
The idea is to ensure that there be no repeat of the situation that prevailed until last week, whereby Hizbullah gunmen could eyeball Israeli soldiers meters away across the fence, and in which those same gunmen could lay an explosive charge so colossal just 70 meters across the border as to rip apart the Israeli tank that crossed the border in the immediate aftermath of last Wednesday's attack near Moshav Zar'it.
