Israel’s war with Hezbollah ended much like the way it was waged — unpredictably, and with a good deal of self-doubt. “It’s over, mom,” muttered one soldier into his cell phone as he crossed back from Lebanese territory at the Israeli border village of Zarit before dawn Sunday. One of his comrades jauntily clutched an Israeli flag. The rest abstained from ceremony, boarding buses ahead of the sleepy ride back home or to their bases.
The lack of fanfare was a departure from Israel’s last Lebanon withdrawal, in 2000, and its 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip. Then, journalists were encouraged to turn out en masse for the departing tanks and troops and the locking of border fences. This time around, the maneuvers seemed almost furtive.
“Our priority is security for our forces, of course, but I won’t deny that no one felt a great need to trumpet this withdrawal,” said one Jerusalem source. “There is a sense that the war began and ended, somehow, out of our control.”
The observation appeared to be confirmed by Sunday afternoon, when the United Nations announced — contrary to Israeli declarations — that the withdrawal had not been quite completed. Some soldiers remained in the northern half of Ghajar, a village bisected by the Israeli-Lebanese border but whose residents claim allegiance to neighboring Syria.
“I expect that they will leave this area in the course of the week, thus completing the withdrawal in line with Resolution 1701,” said Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini, commander of the UNIFIL peacekeeper force in southern Lebanon.
He was referring to the U.N. Security Council resolution of Aug. 14, which halted Israel’s monthlong war with Hezbollah on the promise that peacekeepers and Lebanese troops would take over and police the Iranian-backed militia’s former strongholds.
Israel later confirmed the report.
As daybreak broke above the orchards and hillocks of the green border, that promise looked like it might be kept. The Hezbollah flags and armed patrols that had kept a menacing six-year presence were gone. Instead, a Lebanese army helicopter buzzed overhead, and blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers could be seen taking up positions.
“Finally, I can go out with my children without feeling we are being tracked by Hezbollah gunmen,” said Eitan Davidi, chairman of the Fence Communities Forum. “We won the war.”
But there was little Israeli jubilation at the pullout, which coincided with the somber run-up to Yom Kippur. Israel went to war after Hezbollah killed eight of its soldiers and abducted two in a July 12 raid. The fact that Hezbollah was purged from the border fell far short of early Israeli promises to crush the militia and retrieve the two hostage. The loss of 157 Israelis, some of them to thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired across the border, undermined the sense of national security.
In a round of press interviews, military chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz described Israel’s performance during the Lebanon offensive as “mediocre.”
The country’s biggest newspaper, Yediot Achronot, mentioned the withdrawal on its front page, alongside an expansive analysis of how well Israel could expect to fare in an exchange of ballistic missiles with its archfoe, Iran.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been at pains to highlight the strategic gains of the war, noting the U.N. intervention in southern Lebanon and arguing that Israel has boosted its deterrence in the face of Iran and Syria, another Hezbollah patron.
But dissent has reached as deep as Olmert’s own Cabinet. According to a Ha’aretz expose, one of his closest colleagues, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, campaigned for an “exit strategy” early on in the war. Another Cabinet member, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, predicted that the calm on the Israel-Lebanon border would not last.
“Whoever is banking on us gaining security from the Lebanese army’s presence in the south is delusional,” Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, told Army Radio. “I believe we’ll be seeing all the usual sights of a Hezbollah presence very soon.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
