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Mideast conflict escalates SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN / St Petersberg Times | July 13 2006 Israel and its major ally, the United States, have two of the world's most powerful armies. But as events in Iraq and the Middle East show, superior might is not always a match for determined guerrilla fighters. In a brazen attack, members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah crossed into Israel on Wednesday and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Eight more were killed in skirmishes and a tank explosion as Israel began a massive retaliation against Hezbollah's base in southern Lebanon. Wednesday's fighting came as the Palestinian group Hamas continued to hold yet another Israeli soldier captured in June near the Gaza Strip. Despite repeated missile strikes and tank forays that have killed dozens of Palestinians, the Israel Defense Forces have been unable to free him. "We know that powerful states have significant trouble confronting insurgency and low-intensity warfare," said Zeev Maoz of the University of California at Davis, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We see that in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we see that in the Mideast with regard to Israel. Israel has been fighting a low-intensity war since its inception" in 1948, he said. The worst-case scenario is that the latest violence will lead to all-out war with the two nations that support Hamas and Hezbollah - Syria and Iran. Both countries have used the militant groups as proxies, providing them with money, weapons and in Syria's case, a safe place for Hamas to base its operations. Full-scale war remains unlikely for now because neither Syria nor Iran is directly linked to Wednesday's kidnappings, which were launched from Lebanese territory. But experts predict Israel will continue strong displays of force in Gaza and Lebanon with three main goals: n To pressure the Lebanese government to disband Hezbollah's heavily armed militia and replace it with regular Lebanese soldiers who would keep terrorists from attacking or entering Israel. n To pressure Syria to expel Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and other Palestinian militants who live comfortably in Damascus while directing terror strikes against Israel. n To pressure both Syria and Iran to end all financial and logistical support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Syria could well decide Mashaal is too much trouble and kick him out. But neither Syria nor Iran is apt to stop behind-the-scenes support for the militant groups, whom most Arabs and other Muslims view as freedom fighters trying to oust Jewish "infidels" from Muslim land. Nonetheless, in hitting back hard on Wednesday, "Israel is about to change the rules of the game - what we have seen for two and half weeks in Gaza we might see in Lebanon," said Mordechai Kedar, an expert on Islamic groups at Israel's Bar-Ilan University. "The whole world is waiting for these weapons to evaporate in the Mideast heat, but it doesn't happen. When somebody has too many weapons and ammunition they use them, as we see in Iraq." After decades of occupation, Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000 and pulled thousands of Jewish soldiers and settlers out of the Gaza Strip last summer. Kedar said Israel's real mistake was not in withdrawing from those areas - as critics charge - but failing to anticipate the "chaos" that would ensue afterward. "In Gaza, we let Hamas establish a whole army and build a terrorist infrastructure," he said. "In Lebanon, Hezbollah established Hezbo-land in the southern part because the government was unwilling or unable to extend its governance to the south. It was an explosive situation and the only question was not if it would explode, but when." Lebanon's government has been reluctant to crack down on Hezbollah, which many Lebanese credit with driving Israel out their country six years ago. The organization holds several seats in the Lebanese Parliament and provides an array of social services to poor people in predominantly Shiite Muslim areas of Beirut and the south. Sunni Muslims - still the dominant sect in most Arab countries - have warily eyed the emergence of a "Shiite Crescent" extending from Iran through Iraq and clear to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. Growing tension between the two sects - aggravated by the war in Iraq, where Shiites now control the government - may have played a role in Wednesday's kidnappings, Kedar speculates. "Hamas is Sunni and Hezbollah is Shiite, and they compete as to who is the better warrior of jihad. After Hamas succeeded in kidnapping a soldier, Hezbollah had to prove they aren't less jihadi than Hamas." Maoz, of the University of California, thinks the latest kidnappings were less the result of impulsive one-upsmanship than of months of careful planning. Like Kedar, though, he thinks Israel feels the need to come down hard on Hezbollah and Lebanon, if not yet on Hezbollah's main supporter, Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth and has not responded to a six-nation proposal aimed at resolving the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. But "the Israelis right now are in a political quagmire as far as the Iranian situation because of the U.S.-European initiative," Maoz says. "Beyond the logistical and technical difficulties in launching a strike against (Iran's nuclear sites), they might face significant diplomatic repercussions." Still, Maoz suggests, Israel could send a strong warning to Iran, just as it did to Syrian President Bashar Assad two weeks ago when it buzzed his beachfront palace after he refused to expel the Hamas leadership from Damascus. "They could do a supersonic boom over Ahmadinejad's residence and send a message: 'We know where you live.' " ---------------------------------------------------
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