I find it dificult to believe
that Hezbollah expects the world to buy into this bullshit. While Isreal is trying to get their captured trooper back from the Palestinians, Hezbollah makes a raid from the north and captured two Isreali troppers of their own. With these actions, Isreal appears to be increasingly justified in whatever actions that take, despite what UN Secretary
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Hamas has been around over 35 years. They were primary antagonists when I was in the USAR. They are no longer new.
If Hezbollah is better organized and led than the Isreali army then the Isreali army has lost serious ground since I worked with them in the 70's and the days of Entebbe.
Surgical bombing can deny the enemy critical and difficult to hide resources. How that is considered "disarming" is largly a definition of "disarm". By using that term I meant to deny them tanks, large missles, and missle launchers. Of course, small arms cannot be denied them thus, unless one gets very lucky and hits a warehouse full of them. Evenso, AK47's and pistols, being small and dense pieces of steel, are remarkably durable.
Yes, "completely" disarming any group is almost impossible. However, they can be denied large scale conventional war material, which will keep the sorts of raid that they just pulled in check.
I agree that air and ground strikes will not pacify them, only occupying their land will do that. However, blasting them back into the stone-age will reduce their capacity for making much trouble against your borders.
It's considered a "Win" when they are no longer launching rockets at you.
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And this is just cold-blooded talk. Such policy would be stopped by the Israeli voters long before it hits the US voters. It's done so in the past. The former prime minister, Ehud Barak, was elected mainly on his promise to get Israel out of Lebanon. He did that - but as soon as he did, the Hizbollah regained every inch of land and power it had before - and before he did, they were still rocketing our northern border. None of our leaders would support mass murders - and the one who did was cast away for a long while from the high political ranks (though I must admit that he returned eventually).
And yes, the IDF has changed a lot since the '70s. Certainly since the days of Entebe. It lost every ounce of its credibility after it turned out that the public was lied to and deceived during the war. The IDF spokesman used to say "There is quiet in such-and-such area today", and the soldiers in that location were amazed to hear that while there was a bloodbath going on. Those soldiers returned home and told people about it, and the press found out, and this practice continues. Nowadays, for example, if the Hizbollah says that "we have abducted two soldiers" and the IDF says "we have not been aware of any abduction incident" - we believe the Hizbollah. In fact, I'm telling you exactly what happened two days ago. It turned out, of course, that the Hizbollah has not lied. They have a good reputation for honesty. The IDF does not. In addition, our military leaders walk the known paths - there are no surprises anymore, no innovations, so every time there is a skirmish with some enemy or the other, we end up shoveling artillery and air-bombs on their heads. It never goes further than that. We are no longer able to free abductees as we did in antebe. We don't have the military intelligence, and we don't have the, well, military intelligence. So I can sort of trust our military to contain the Palestinians and retaliate against the Hizbollah - but not to actually achieve any goals such as freeing people, trumping the enemy in a particular situation, or anything of the sort.
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