Israeli Security Zone - Conflict

Conflict

Hezbollah fighters engaged in steady low-level confrontations with the IDF. Operations included attacks on convoys and routine patrols; placement of roadside bombs and remote control activated devices; occasional attempts to storm IDF outposts (most famously the attack on the D'lat outpost, in which a Hezbollah fighter succeeded in breaching the walls of the outpost and planting a Hezbollah flag before the attack was repelled); launching ground-to-ground missiles, particularly AT-3 Sagger missiles at IDF tanks and outposts; and occasional shelling of Israeli border towns with Katyusha rockets.

Over the course of the conflict a set of unwritten but widely recognized "Rules of engagement" developed between the sides. It was broadly understood that any Israeli killing of a Lebanese civilians in pro-active anti-Hezbollah operations would be met with a Katyusha barrage on the northern towns of Israel. It was understood that Katyusha fire would be met with proportional if unequal responses, including the use of IDF war planes and heavy artillery. Both sides also captured and exchanged prisoners.

Strategically, the conflict was a long-standing stalemate. Hezbollah was unable to inflict sufficient damage on either the IDF presence in Lebanon or on the quality of life in Israel's northern towns to force Israeli concessions. Israel was unwilling to either expand its control of Lebanon or to take the war to those countries that armed, funded and trained Hezbollah.

By the late 1990s a change in the political dynamic of the conflict was becoming more apparent. While Israel was strategically able to sustain its losses (normally around two to three soldiers killed each month), the will of the Israeli public to accept what were seen as pointless deaths began to fade. The security zone eventually failed to provide security as Hezbollah teams could still fire rockets into Northern Israel. With each loss, Hezbollah assumed ever more heroic proportions in the eyes of the Lebanese public and the rest of the Arab world as one of the first Arab armed forces to ever successfully match swords with the Jewish State. Through constant low-level combat, Hezbollah became an ever more effective and better trained force.

A number of other questionable activities occurred within the zone. For example, Israel cooperated with right-wing American Christian personality Pat Robertson in setting up a television network inside the security zone called Middle East Television that broadcast Christian religious programming to both Lebanon and northern Israel. The security zone also played host to the so-called Government of Free Lebanon which claimed to be the true government of Lebanon. Also in the security zone, Lebanese militias ran prisons with very bad reputations and conscripted the local population. While Israel ran the zone, it said it had no control over the actions of Lebanese militias within the zone.