En intressant analys från Guardian UK.
Why did Hizbollah do it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1823549,00.html#article_continue
/.../
"Several analysts have pointed to the sophistication of Hizbullah's military response as evidence that this conflict was planned months in advance, and both Iran and Syria have been named as possible puppet-masters in the conflict.
Rami Khouri, a Jordanian political analyst and editor-at-large of Beirut's Daily Star newspaper, points to the low death toll of Hizbullah members as evidence that the group expected and planned for the attacks. "All these buildings blown up [by the Israelis] were empty buildings," he says.
He sees Hizbullah's political aims as being bound up with the wider pan-Arab stance against Israel. "Nasrallah has been very open about Hizbullah's aims for many years: they want to get the prisoners held in Israel free; they want to stop the Israeli aggression; they want to stop the deterioration that's been going on for the past 30 or 40 years.
"One of the things they're fighting for is Arab honour and dignity. They succeeded in driving the Israelis out of southern Lebanon and they see themselves as part of a battle that's ongoing."
Hizbullah's military action over the past week - raining missiles on major towns deep inside northern Israel and crippling an Israeli ship off the Lebanese coast - has certainly delivered a bloody nose to an Israeli army that all parties in the Middle East are used to thinking of as almost invincible.
Experts estimate that Hizbullah is the third most powerful military force in the region, after Israel and Iran, and, while coalitions of Arab nations were comprehensively defeated by Israel in the three Arab-Israeli wars of 1948-49, 1967 and 1973, Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 was widely regarded as a unique Arab military victory for Hizbullah.
/.../
