Bad week for Hizbullah

Analysis from Jerusalem Post Nov. 25, 2005 0:39 Updated Nov. 25, 2005 9:20 By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN ...

It was condemned by the United Nations, dozens of its fighters were killed or wounded in a botched assault on Galilee, a chance to nab an Israeli hostage slipped through its fingers and a local spy was captured. All in all it was a bad week for Hizbullah... it suffered one of its most significant military defeats in its history of daring clashes with the IDF.

Military sources said that Hizbullah had been planning Monday's assault for months with the aim of a highly visible victory - either killing many Israeli soldiers or more likely kidnapping them and parading them in Beirut. For this purpose it ...struck at 20 IDF outposts nearly simultaneously with scores of mortar shells and anti-tank rounds.

The result? A few wounded Israeli soldiers. ...Seven Hizbullah fighters dead and dozens wounded.... It abandoned all of its border outposts in southern Lebanon, and the IDF...destroyed 13 of them, including its brigade-level headquarters, military sources said.

...What was Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah thinking he could gain by launching this attack? "They wanted to show there was still Israeli aggression that requires defense on the border and that they were the defenders of the border. They wanted to quash talk of disarming them," said Lt.-Col. (res.) Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk in IDF intelligence.

"But ...Not only did the UN Security Council condemn them for starting the attack, but so did Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora," said Marzuk, a researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

...Military sources note there is increasing support in Lebanon to take on Hizbullah's armed militia. They noted that Saniora has asked the Europeans to help him strengthen his army to face Hizbullah....