I’ve, er, borrowed this excellent graphic (click to enlarge) from Stratfor since it illustrates a point that I’ve been making for some time so well. The yellow track represents the effective range of the Fajr-5 missile, the red track that of the longer-range Zelzal-2. Note that the Fajr-5 is capable of hitting Haifa from north of the Litani River while the Zelzal-2 is capable of hitting Tel Aviv or Jerusalem from north of the Litani River and, indeed, of hitting Haifa from the northern border of Lebanon.
Donald Sensing comments on the emerging Israeli strategic plan:
Israel has said repeatedly it does not want to “occupy” any part of Lebanon. I am sure Israel does not want a long stay in southern Lebanon. But its tactics indicate an operational link between goals and methods. Israel is trying to make the entire civilian population of southern Lebanon, perhaps the 20 miles to the Litani rover, refugee elsewhere. Perversely, Israel’s bombing of a shelter in Qana, killing a new, lowered estimate of 40 or so women and children, is making Lebanese civilians take the threat with renewed urgency.
Yesterday CNN reported at least 880,000 Lebanese civilians and 300,000 Israeli civilians have been displaced from their homes. The difference is that almost all Israel’s people will have homes to return to. The people of southern Lebanon won’t. Israel is trying to create not merely a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon, but also a depopulated zone. An IDF officer said in an interview yesterday that after they clear villages of Hezbollah, they bulldoze or blow up every structure that artillery and F-16s spared.
The Litani river forms a natural barrier that Israel can easily defend if need be. Southern Lebanese will be compelled to vacate the area by what we can only say is Israel’s deliberate dehousing campaign.
If Hezbollah are fish that swim in a sea of the people, using Mao Tse Tung’s analogy, then Israel has determined to drain the sea. Certainly Hezbollahis will also move northward, but in doing so they will be pushed further and further out of rocket range, especially the Katyusha rockets, which comprise at least 90 percent of what they have fired into Israel.
Eventually Israel will want a multinational force to take over the depopulated zone. Expect a sizable Israeli “liaison” presence there for quite awhile. PM Olmert has insisted repeatedly that any MNF must be “robust,” meaning it must be capable and authorized to resist by force Hezbollah’s attempts to remilitarize southern Lebanon as civilians are allowed to return. Whether any such MNF will actually be formed has yet to be seen but it doesn’t appear very likely right now.
As the graphic indicates while a buffer zone south of the Litani River would protect Israeli cities from short range Katyusha rockets it would have little impact on securing them against attack from longer-range missiles.
Where would the buffer zone need to begin to protect Israel against attack by Zelzal-2 missiles?
David — Great map! A picture really is worth a thousand words sometimes.
We often forget how small Israel is. They have no strategic depth and only limited operational depth. If they give up the West Bank, they will not even have tactical depth in the central region near Tel Aviv.
Two questions:
1) Can any small state really be secure in a hostile region as missile and rocket technology improves? (This technology appears to be on an upward curve in range, gudance systems, and warheads. It is also becoming increasingly easy to “shoot and scoot”).
2) What does this imply for the viability of the proposed two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians? The BM-21 rockets in Katyusha launchers have ranges of 20 to 30 kilometers (12 – 18 miles). It appears that Katyusha rockets based in the Palestinian territories could hit most of Israel. (See extract from Wikipedia report on the BM-21, below).
“The BM-21 122 mm multiple rocket launcher (MRL) system entered service with the Soviet Army in 1963 to replace the aging 140 mm BM-14 system. It consists of a Ural-375D six-by-six truck chassis fitted with a bank of forty launch tubes arranged in a rectangular shape. The vehicle is powered by a V-8 180 hp gasoline engine, has a maximum road speed of 75 km/h and road range of up to 750 kilometers. In 1976, the BM-21 was mounted on the newer Ural-4320 six-by-six army truck.
The crew of five men can emplace the system and have it ready to fire in three minutes. Before firing, two rear jacks are lowered to help support the vehicle and the rockets are turned away from the unprotected cab. The crew can choose to fire the rockets from the cab or from a remote initiating device at the end of a 64 m-long cable. All forty rockets can be away in as little as twenty seconds, but can also be fired individually or in small groups in several second intervals should the situation necessitate such fire. A PG-1M panoramic telescope can be used for sighting. The BM-21 can be packed up and ready to move in two minutes, which can be necessary when engaged by counter battery fire. Reloading is done manually and takes about ten minutes.
Each 2.87 meter long, 122 mm rocket is slowly spun by rifling in its tube as it exits, which along with its primary fin stabilization keeps it on course. Rockets armed with HE-Frag, incendiary, or chemical warheads can be fired out to a range of twenty kilometers. Newer HE and cargo (used to deliver AP or AT mines) rockets have a range of thirty kilometers. Warheads weigh around twenty kilograms depending on the type.
The relative accuracy of this system and the number of rockets each vehicle is able to quickly bring to bear on an enemy target make it a very effective system especially at shorter ranges. One battalion of eighteen launchers is able to deliver 720 rockets in a single volley. However, the system cannot be used in situations that call for pinpoint precision.
Used by over fifty countries, Grad is the most widely distributed MRL system in the world.”
Thanks, Jim. In answer to your questions, I think the answer to the first lies in its statement: the region must be rendered non-hostile. Today Israel is embarked on a military-only strategy which I think only exacerbates the hostility. That’s why my posts over the last week or so have emphasized the search for other solutions.
As to your second question, I’ve never believed that a Palestinian state was viable. In my view the proper solution is for Israel to enter into negotiations with Jordan and Egypt to re-access the West Bank and Gaza, respectively.
Dave, your answer to my first question leads to two followup question:
1) What does Israel do if the region cannot be rendered non-hostile by peaceful methods?
2) What does Israel do if the price of peace by non-military methods is the defacto dissolution of the State of Israel? (I’m thinking here about acceptance of the right of return for the Palestinians).
There may be no good answer here without a huge change in either the world view or the power of Islamic civilization in the Middle East.
I think that the problem is not just a problem for the Israelis but a world problem.
Israel presents certain problems for the Israelis, for us, and for the rest of the world. The so-called “right of return†highlights this. Are the Israelis attempting to maintain cultural coherence within Israel? What should the U. S. posture be with respect to that objective?
What rights do groups (as opposed to individuals) have? It’s unclear to me that anybody is owed compensation for the loss of something he or she never owned or has a right to return to a place he or she has never seen.
But, ultimately and one way or another, these questions must be resolved. And I don’t think that the Israelis can do that alone.
The third paragraph in this comment may be somewhat cryptic. Assuming that the present Palestinians are, indeed, the descendants of people who lived there, say, 60 years ago, there’s little way that those people who lived there actually had title to the land based on Ottoman property law. The claim is, presumably, a group claim rather than an individual claim.
Afraid this isn’t going to fly:
As to your second question, I’ve never believed that a Palestinian state was viable. In my view the proper solution is for Israel to enter into negotiations with Jordan and Egypt to re-access the West Bank and Gaza, respectively
Whether one likes it or not, the divorce between Palestinians and Jordan and Egypt is final.
What’s left is simply the Palestinian State solution, or total integration (one state) solution.
Obviously Israelis are not going to go for No.2.
To make the Palestinian state viable means, of course, it effectively has to become appendage(s) of the larger neighbours. However, for political reasons, re-integration on a formal, political level isn’t going to happen – period. Above all w Jordan – Black September and subsequent history have poisoned that well irretrievably.
Suggesting a solution around this poisoned well is, at best, naive.
Rather clearly, however, the issue of rockets and the like means that a solution has to properly incentivise both sides to keep the peace. On the Palestinian side, for there to be a willingness to actually dissuade the hot-heads from playing rocket games, there has to be a sense of a proper deal. Having been in region long-enough, what’s clear is that the big settlements in the West Bank highlands have to go, like Maal Adumime. Israel doesn’t like this, but there is no other deal that is going to work. None.
As maps are useful, this one re settlements seems reasonably good; the same site has a hydrological map as well which will illustrate part of the issue of why some bits of land are more important than others.
Thanks for directing me to the site. Excellent resource both for the settlements and water resources maps.
As I’ve said a number of times before I’m grasping at straws. I don’t see any way of dissuading those you refer to as “the hot-heads†other than enforcement. When I heard Mahmoud Abbas quoted as being unwilling to restrain them because he didn’t want to risk civil war (this was, what, two years ago?) I thought that, basically, what has occurred in the last month was inevitable.
As you may have noticed I have a somewhat different position on Israel than many of my countrymen—my view is not nearly as rosy. I’ve thought the settlements were very, very bad news for as long as there have been settlements on any numbers of counts including raising unreasonable expectations among Israelis and poisoning the well.