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OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR - NEW YORK TIMES

Ground to a Haltby ROBERT PAPE

Published: August 3, 2006

ISRAEL has finally conceded that air power alone will not

defeat Hezbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that

ground power wont work either. The problem is not that the

Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they

misunderstand the nature of the enemy.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is

principally neither a political party nor an Islamist

militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to

Israels invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it

consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran.

But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israels

occupation, Hezbollah never tight-knit expanded into an

umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the

resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with

a variety of religious and secular aims.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable

to, say, a religious cult like the Taliban than to the

multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the

1960s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it

impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international

support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientationof pre-existing Lebanese social groups.

Evidence of the broad nature of Hezbollahs resistance to

Israeli occupation can be seen in the identity of its

suicide attackers. Hezbollah conducted a broad campaign of

suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli

targets from 1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks

which included the infamous bombing of the Marine barracks

in 1983 involved 41 suicide terrorists.

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchersscour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures

and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah

bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places

and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were

Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist

political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the

Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a

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female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were

born in Lebanon.

What these suicide attackers and their heirs today

shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply

a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly twodecades of Israeli military presence did not root out

Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide

attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the

occupying force.

Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and

destroy weapons, but it has little chance of destroying the

Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the bombings of

civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollahs

recruiting.

Equally important, Israels incursion is also squandering

the good will it had initially earned from so-called

moderate Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The

countries are the court of opinion that matters because,

while Israel cannot crush Hezbollah, it could achieve a

more limited goal: ending Hezbollahs acquisition of more

missiles through Syria.

Given Syrias total control of its border with Lebanon,

stemming the flow of weapons is a job for diplomacy, not

force. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, Sunni-led nations

that want stability in the region, are motivated to stop

the rise of Hezbollah. Under the right conditions, the

United States might be able to help assemble an ad hoc

coalition of Syrias neighbors to entice and bully it to

prevent Iranian, Chinese or other foreign missiles from

entering Lebanon. It could also offer to begin talks over

the future of the Golan Heights.

But Israel must take the initiative. Unless it calls off

the offensive and accepts a genuine cease-fire, there are

likely to be many, many dead Israelis in the coming weeks

and a much stronger Hezbollah.

Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of Dying to Win: The StrategicLogic of Suicide Terrorism.