Hizbullah has achieved what Arab states only dreamed of

David Hirst
Thursday August 17, 2006
The Guardian

"What is new - and dramatically so - about this campaign is its outcome. Arabs soon dubbed this the sixth Arab-Israeli war, and for some of them - and indeed for some Israelis - it already ranks, in its strategic, psychological and political consequences, as perhaps the most significant since Israel's "war of independence" in 1948. For a state that relies for its survival not on the acceptance of its neighbours but on its repeatedly demonstrated ability to defeat and intimidate them by superior force of arms, it is vital to retain what it calls its "deterrent power". What, on July 12, made Hizbullah's seizure of two soldiers so unbearable was not that it was a "terrorist" act; it was that - allowed to pass without an appropriate response - it would have constituted a grievous blow to that "deterrent power". But with the extraordinary shortcomings of that response it has not only failed to repair its deterrent power, it has undermined it as never before.

Hizbullah achieved this in various ways. On the strictly military level, a small band of irregulars kept at bay one of the world's most powerful armies for over a month, and inflicted remarkable losses on it; the manner in which it did this - a combination of professional skills, ingenuity, intrepidity, meticulous preparation, masterful use of anti-tank missiles, brilliant organisation, labyrinthine underground defences - is only now fully coming to light. This was only possible because Hizbullah represented something else: the first non-state actor to single-handedly take on Israel in a full-scale war of this kind. "