Warriors of God by Nicholas Blanford

Author:Nicholas Blanford [Blanford, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60516-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

“The Lebanese Valley of the Dead”

Two days later, on February 6, a Hezbollah Special Forces unit ambushed an Israeli patrol six hundred yards from the border, on a track near the prominent Jabal Blat outpost in the western sector. A bomb-sniffing dog accompanying the patrol detected the IED just before it detonated. The dog disappeared in the blast, but the last-second warning ensured that only three soldiers were wounded. As the casualties were being treated on the spot, the Hezbollah fighters observing from nearby directed accurate mortar and rocket fire onto the patrol. One soldier was killed and another four wounded as rockets and mortar rounds fell among them. The intense fire prevented helicopters from touching down to evacuate the casualties, forcing medics to treat them on the main road beside the border with Israel. At that moment, cameramen from two Israeli television channels arrived and filmed through the border fence the screaming, blood-soaked soldiers being treated just a few yards away. The grim reality of the south Lebanon quagmire was broadcast into Israeli homes that night to a stunned audience. It was the first time that the Israeli public had been presented with such shocking and graphic footage of the war in Lebanon.

PICTURES FROM HELL, ran a banner headline in Israel’s Maariv newspaper the next morning. “The Lebanese valley of the dead penetrated the living room of Mr. Israel after 18 years of avoidance.”

Barak was caught in a dilemma. He knew that a heavy retaliation to the spate of military fatalities in south Lebanon could jeopardize prospects of further talks with Syria. But the upsetting television images of the wounded soldiers and the inability to stop Hezbollah’s deadly missile attacks could not be ignored. With his top military commanders screaming for action, Barak gave the order for air strikes against Lebanese infrastructure targets. That night, three electricity plants were bombed, including the Jamhour electricity switching station in the hills above Beirut, the third time the facility had been blown up in four years. Seventeen civilians were wounded in the air raids.

In south Lebanon, the Katyusha rockets were on the launchers hidden in wadis and olive groves and the Hezbollah operators were waiting for the order to fire. But the order never came. Hezbollah stayed its hand, choosing instead to respond in the most appropriate manner possible.

At 2:50 P.M. the next day, thirteen hours after the Israeli jets finished smashing the electricity plants, a Hezbollah antitank squad shot yet another TOW missile into an Israeli outpost, killing one more soldier.

Israel had expected Hezbollah to retaliate with a Katyusha barrage on Galilee and was prepared to counterrespond with an even more damaging bombing campaign against Lebanese infrastructure. But Hezbollah did not take the bait. How much influence Syria had in the decision to refrain from launching rockets is unclear, but either way it was a smart move. The mere threat to retaliate with Katyushas was sufficient to achieve paralysis in northern Israel. Barak ordered a 48-hour state of emergency in the north, forcing some three hundred thousand people to flee or sit in bomb shelters.

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