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Comparative Strategy
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Military Strategy and the Conduct of the

2006 Israel–Hezbollah War
a
Iver Gabrielsen
a
Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo , Oslo , Norway
Published online: 08 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Iver Gabrielsen (2013) Military Strategy and the Conduct of the 2006
Israel–Hezbollah War, Comparative Strategy, 32:5, 435-442, DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2013.840206

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 Military Strategy and the Conduct of the 2006
Israel–Hezbollah War

IVER GABRIELSEN
Faculty of Humanities
University of Oslo
Oslo, Norway

This article examines the military strategies employed during the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah
War and assesses the political war aims based on the outcome of the war. The assessment
argues that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)’s strategy could not realistically attain
Israel’s strategic aims because the IDF struggled to translate tactical successes into
strategic gains. Hezbollah’s strategy more effectively matched the war’s conduct and
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enabled it to attain more, albeit limited, war aims.

Introduction
The 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War, referred to as the “Second Lebanon War” in Israel and as
the “July War” in Lebanon, began on July 12, 2006 after Hezbollah launched a successful
operation across the disputed Israeli-Lebanese border to capture two Israeli soldiers. The
war lasted for 34 days and cost the lives of 161 Israelis and more than 1,000 Lebanese.1 Is-
raeli air strikes and ground fighting in Lebanon cost several billion U.S. dollars. Hezbollah’s
rocket attacks in northern Israel paralyzed economic life.2
This article assesses the effectiveness of Israel’s and Hezbollah’s military strategies
based on strategic war aims. I argue that all three of Israel’s military strategies employed
during the war stood little chance of achieving their desired political ends versus Hezbollah’s
strategy. Hezbollah was arguably more successful in achieving desired political ends than
was Israel.

Israel’s Political Aims in the Second Lebanon War

In what was described as a Churchillian speech before the Knesset, Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert stated Israel’s goals for the war: to retrieve the two Israeli soldiers captured
by Hezbollah, end the threat of rocket attacks on northern Israel, remove Hezbollah from
southern Lebanon, and pressure the Lebanese government to deploy its army in the southern
portion of the country.3 An Israeli official stated that reestablishing the deterrence effect
of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) was another Israeli war aim.4 Israel had withdrawn
unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000 and from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Additionally, Hamas
had successfully kidnapped an IDF soldier just a few weeks before Hezbollah’s raid. Some
serving Israeli officials and officers argued that a stronger image against Hezbollah and
Hamas was needed to strengthen Israel’s deterrence posture.5
It is worth noting that this was a “war of choice” for Israel, unlike the “wars of no
choice” in 1948 or 1973, when Israel faced invasion from neighboring states. Israel escalated
the conflict after Hezbollah’s initial limited raid across the border.6 The Israeli aims for this
war of choice were arguably very ambitious; they would be almost impossible to achieve
based on the maxim to avoid large casualties among one’s own troops and collateral damage
to civilians.7 These ambitious war aims created huge expectations among the Israeli public
for what the war would accomplish.
435
Comparative Strategy, 32:435–442, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
0149-5933 print / 1521-0448 online
DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2013.840206
 436 I. Gabrielsen

Israel’s Military Strategy in the Second Lebanon War

The initial Israeli strategy relied solely on air power to target Hezbollah’s arsenal of long-
range rockets. Tactically, the attacks were a huge success for Israel. Most of Hezbollah’s
long-range rockets were destroyed in a 36-minute air strike on July 13.8 Olmert’s aides
compared the attacks to the destruction of the Arab air forces on the first day of the
1967 War.9 The air strikes escalated the next days, with attacks on Hezbollah’s infrastruc-
ture throughout Lebanon. The air strikes focused on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut’s
southern suburbs of Dahiya.10
Strategically, the air strikes stood little chance of achieving the aim of ending the threat
of rocket fire. Hezbollah’s possessed at least 12,000 short-range Katyusha rockets that were
very difficult to locate and destroy from the air.11 In fact, a military exercise conducted three
months prior to the war estimated that only one to three percent of Hezbollah’s Katyusha
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rockets could be destroyed by air strikes.12 By the third day of the war, Israeli intelligence
concluded that air power alone could not realistically reduce the rocket attacks to fewer
than 100 a day.13 Arguably, these estimates illustrate a clear disconnect between the initial
strategy that solely relied on air power and Israel’s strategic aim of halting rocket fire into
northern Israel.
Still, the pressure on Hezbollah mounted during the first week of the war, as demon-
strated by the willingness to accept a cease-fire.14 The cease-fire at this stage included a
political deal in which most of Israel’s war aims would have been secured. In Clausewitzian
terms, this was “the culmination of victory.”15 While it was becoming apparent that Israel’s
war aims could not be achieved through air strikes alone, the Israeli military-political lead-
ership did not accept a political deal that could accomplish the goals its military strategy
could not attain.16 Arguably, the initial tactical successes lead to Israeli hubris, with Israeli
officials telling the United Nations (UN) delegation to forget the cease-fire, because Israel
was “going to win.”17
The air-power strategy faced a serious challenge after the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had
bombed all its predetermined targets by the fourth day of the war.18 This was illustrated by
the IAF resorting to launch air strikes against the targets that had already previously been
hit.19 The strategic solution to this challenge was to launch battalion- and brigade-sized
raids by ground forces into southern Lebanon. This resulted in the first major advance on
the sixth day of the war.20
Arguably, the size of these raids was inadequate to achieve Israel’s strategic war aims.21
The new strategy’s drawback: occupying 10 kilometers (km) of Lebanese territory could
not halt the rocket fire if the standard range of a Katyusha rocket is 20 km. Limited
forces with a limited mission could not realistically remove a deeply entrenched Hezbollah
from southern Lebanon. As for retrieving the two captured IDF soldiers, the likelihood of
Hezbollah holding them captive in one of the border villages was very low. According to
an American observer of the war, the strategy of limited raids made no sense at all. The
IDF would suffer casualties, but stood no chance of reaching Israel’s war aims. It was a
“risk without reward.”22
The strategy of limited raids was heavily based on the American concept of effects-
based operations, which can be summed up as “make the enemy perceive that he is losing,
and he will have lost.”23 This led the IDF to try to achieve symbolic victories. The number
of killed Hezbollah fighters was used to measure success and the IDF hoped to capture or
kill senior members of Hezbollah. Moreover, a ground offensive was launched to capture
the symbolic Lebanese village of Bint Jibeil, where Hassan Nasrallah had held his victory
speech after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000.24
 Military Strategy in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War 437

Israel was denied this symbolic victory when the IDF failed to capture Bint Jibeil
and suffered 9 casualties and 27 wounded. After the failed operation, the Israeli media
created “a cognitive perception of defeat” among the Israeli public instead of Hezbollah.25
Furthermore, even if the symbolic attack had succeeded, it would not have led to the strategic
aim of returning the captured IDF soldiers, nor removing Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.
Israeli momentum and international support evaporated further after an air strike in Qana
killed 28 civilians, including 17 children. This village had also been the scene of a deadly
Israeli artillery attack on a UN compound sheltering refugees in 1996.26 Israel now lost
the tacit support of the moderate Sunni Arab regimes, which initially had supported Israeli
military actions as a way of weakening Iran in the regional power struggle.27
The third and last Israeli military strategy of the war was a large-scale ground invasion
launched on day 31 of the war. With a UN Security Council resolution to end the war
imminent, the IDF had only 60 hours to reach Israel’s objectives.28 This third strategy was
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arguably the one with the most realistic chance of reaching Israel’s desired ends of the war.
Still, Israel had fought Hezbollah for 18 years in Southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000
without reaching a successful outcome. The notion that very ambitious war aims could be
achieved with a 60-hour ground offensive should therefore have been deemed unrealistic. It
is unclear if the Israeli leadership saw the last-ditch ground offensive as a tool to achieve its
war aims through military means or if it was merely intended to strengthen its position in
the UN negotiations.29 In the end, a UN-brokered ceasefire quickly stopped the large-scale
invasion in its tracks.30
The Winograd commission, Israel’s official inquiry into the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah
War, concluded that the Israeli political and military leadership had struggled to define a
realistic relationship between political aims and the military means used.31 Moreover, some
units of the ground forces were poorly prepared for a full-scale war after having spent
the last six years conducting counterinsurgency missions during the second Intifada.32 An
Israeli writer described the Israeli strategy and IDF tactical performance as a “witches
brew between high-tech fantasies and basic unpreparedness.”33 Overall, the Israeli strategy
during the war was flawed, and in retrospect the decision not to opt for a cease-fire at the
beginning of conflict was a strategic misjudgement.

Hezbollah’s Political Aims in the July War

One interpretation argues that Hezbollah’s war aims were to deny Israel its goals.34 Hezbol-
lah’s desired ends were generally quite limited; the survival of the organization’s status
was the central short-term aim.35 Strengthening its domestic position was another crucial
war aim. After Israel had withdrawn from southern Lebanon in spring, 2000, calls for the
disarmament of Hezbollah among other Lebanese factions had increased. Struggling to
legitimize its continuous existence, Hezbollah risked becoming “a rebel without a cause.”36
The cross-border raid was therefore intended to display Hezbollah’s capabilities and to
silence its domestic critics.37
The secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, declared that an aim of the
kidnapping operation was to secure the release of five Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli
jails. Among them was Samir Quntar, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization fighter
who had been part of a terror attack in Israel in 1979, which among the Israeli pub-
lic was viewed as one of the most brutal in its history.38 On April 28, 2006, Nasrallah
had shown his intentions to kidnap IDF soldiers by stating that the Lebanese prisoners
would be freed “very soon”.39 Hezbollah had earlier secured the release of 23 Lebanese
and 400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captured IDF reserve lieutenant colonel
 438 I. Gabrielsen

and the remains of three IDF soldiers.40 Freeing more prisoners in a similar trade would
help Hezbollah justify keeping its armed units and restore its national prestige as well.41
Hezbollah did have a more ambitious long-term aim of shattering the image of the
IDF’s invincibility.42 Hezbollah wanted to weaken the Israeli deterrence posture. This aim,
along with its main aims of surviving, strengthening its domestic position, and securing the
release of prisoners in Israeli jails were comparatively less ambitious and more achievable
than Israel’s war aims.

Hezbollah’s Strategy in the July War

Nasrallah claimed that if Hezbollah had thought there was a one percent chance of the
kidnap operation leading to war, it would have been aborted.43 Arguably, Hezbollah was
strategically surprised by Israel’s response to the cross-border raid, leaving little time for
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strategic adaptation when war broke out. Hezbollah therefore employed a military strategy
that had been meticulously prepared between 2000 and 2006.
A crucial part of the strategy to ensure the survival of Hezbollah’s status relied on a
massive network of nearly 600 strategically placed bunkers in southern Lebanon. Some
were built as deep as 30 to 50 m underground.44 Hezbollah had spent six years building
its extensive network.45 Additionally, Hezbollah had stockpiled enough ammunition and
supplies for several weeks of fighting, leaving it less vulnerable to Israeli air strikes on supply
lines.46 Denying Israel the opportunity to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, and
refusing to give up the two captured IDF soldiers, could likewise have provided Hezbollah
a future bargaining chip to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah was not surprised by Israel’s military manoeuvres on a tactical level.47 It
had correctly predicted the axis of the Israeli advance and had mined crucial roads in
southern Lebanon, forcing the Israelis to advance at a much slower pace than in 1982.48
The anticipation of Israeli military moves was aided greatly by Hezbollah’s use of signal
intelligence, which included tapping the cell phones of Israeli officers.49 The Israelis were
tactically surprised when encountering Hezbollah’s bunker complexes. An Israeli front-line
officer revealed that “we expected a tent and three Kalashnikovs, that was the intelligence
we were given.”50
Hezbollah’s main coercive capability was to launch rockets into northern Israel to
make daily life unbearable for the Israeli civilian population and improve Hezbollah’s
domestic status by demonstrating its relevance as a military force.51 Additionally, Hezbollah
calculated that the rocket attacks would lead to retaliatory Israeli air strikes, which could
turn international opinion in Hezbollah’s favor and create international pressure on Israel
to end the war.52 Hezbollah’s rocket fire continued through the entire war. It launched an
average of 130 rockets each day, and 250 rockets hit Israel on the last day of the war.53
Nearing the end of the war, the rocket attacks started to achieve strategic effects. After
a rocket hit Haifa on August 8 and killed three civilians, Olmert’s 70 percent popularity
rating started to drop drastically.54 Still, the psychological effect of the rockets on the Israeli
population should not be overstated.55 Similar to the London blitz, bombing civilian areas
can bolster the resolve of the civilian population rather than weaken it.
Hezbollah thought symbolic victories on the battlefield would shatter Israel’s image
of invincibility and decrease Israel’s deterrence posture. Already on the third day of the
war, Hezbollah enjoyed a big success in this “war of symbols.” During a speech, Nasrallah
was handed a note confirming that a C-802 antiship missile of Chinese origin had hit an
Israeli corvette west of Beirut. He urged his listeners to go to their balconies and look to the
west, where a burning Israeli warship could be seen on the horizon.56 Furthermore, in what
 Military Strategy in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War 439

one observer dubbed “the war of the anti-tank missile”, Hezbollah succeeded in destroying
the image of the Merkava tank’s invincibility after destroying several tanks with advanced
Russian antitank missiles.57
Hezbollah set out to win the information war with its propaganda apparatus playing an
important role during the war. Israel restricted the information provided to the media. This
permitted Hezbollah to control the information battlefield.58 This control was exploited by
Hezbollah when air strikes caused civilian casualties in order to erode Israel’s international
support.59
To sum up Hezbollah’s strategy, some observers have argued that the leaders em-
ployed a classic guerrilla-style approach that intended to cause as many IDF casualties
as possible, which would lead to declining support for the war among the casualty-weary
Israeli public.60 Others argue that Hezbollah’s strategy was based on a more conventional
approach, where ground was to be defended to protect the rocket launchers used to co-
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erce the Israeli population into demanding an end to the war.61 According to Nasrallah,
Hezbollah fought neither like a regular army nor as a guerrilla group, but as “something in
between.”62 Arguably, to differentiate between the guerrilla and the conventional strategy
is not necessarily important. They were not mutually exclusive, and both strategies had
identified the Achilles heel of the enemy: The Israeli home front and public support for
the war.63 Overall, Hezbollah’s military strategy arguably had a more realistic chance of
securing the war aims than did Israel’s military strategy.

A Brief Assessment of the Outcome of the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War

The balance sheet of the war arguably shows mixed results for both Israel and Hezbollah,
despite both sides declaring victory in the war’s aftermath. The Israeli Chief of Staff
Dan Halutz talked of a “strategic blow” being dealt to Hezbollah. Nasrallah claimed that
Hezbollah’s survival and its ability to launch rockets as far into Israel as Haifa constituted
a “divine and strategic victory.”64 A Shia Mufti from southern Lebanon responded to
Nasrallah’s claim with the question of whether the Gulf War constituted a strategic victory
for Saddam Hussein too, since Iraqi SCUD missiles had hit Tel Aviv.65
Israel clearly achieved some tactical successes against Hezbollah during the war. The
destruction of a majority of Hezbollah’s long-range rocket launchers at the start of the
war probably saved Tel Aviv from being hit and represented a loss for Hezbollah of a
capability that it had spent years building up. Moreover, Israel inflicted heavy losses on
Hezbollah. Estimates range from 200 to 700 Hezbollah fighters killed, including members
of its most experienced special forces.66 Israel also inflicted severe damage to Hezbollah’s
infrastructure and social service programs.67 Still, it is important to note that these tactical
successes were not translated into strategic gains. Hezbollah launched a recruitment drive
after the war; the number of new fighters in its ranks surpassed even the maximum estimates
of war losses and it restocked its rockets arsenal to an estimated 40,000.68
When assessing the outcome of the war by the criteria of achieving war aims, the
picture arguably looks quite bleak for Israel. It could not return the captured IDF soldiers
by military means nor end Hezbollah’s rocket fire. Israel did not achieve the strategic aim
of removing Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, either. Instead, an enlarged UN force and
the redeployment of the Lebanese army did at least end Hezbollah’s presence along the
border with Israel. Still, the strategic significance of the Lebanese Army expanding its
control to southern Lebanon may not be positive for Israel in the long term. Around half of
the rank and file in the Lebanese Army are Shias and many have a positive attitude toward
 440 I. Gabrielsen

Hezbollah. Several Lebanese generals have even claimed that the army deployed to work
alongside Hezbollah.69
Arguably, Israel’s most successful strategic aim was the reestablishment of its deter-
rence posture. While the Sheeba Farms and the border area saw frequent clashes between
2000 and 2006, calm has prevailed since the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war. The question of
how long this deterrence will last, though, is unclear.
While Hezbollah did manage to deny most of Israel’s war aims, its success regarding its
own strategic aims was a mixed bag. Clearly, Hezbollah’s aim of surviving as an important
actor in Lebanon was achieved. The aim of exchanging the two captured IDF soldiers for
the five Lebanese prisoners remaining in Israeli jails, including the notorious Samir Quntar,
was accomplished when a prisoner swap deal was struck in July 2008.70
When it comes to the crucial aim of strengthening their national esteem, the outcome
of the war was less favorable for Hezbollah. While Hezbollah’s popularity skyrocketed in
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the Arab world after the war, the domestic criticism of Hezbollah’s decision to launch the
kidnapping operation was fierce because of the human and economic losses suffered by
Lebanon during the war.71 Today, Sunni, Christian, and Druze politicians often call for the
disarmament of Hezbollah. Therefore, even though Hezbollah achieved most of its war
aims, the vulnerable domestic position implies that the war was not a clear strategic success
for Hezbollah.

Conclusions
When assessing whether Israel and Hezbollah employed military strategies that could
realistically achieve their political aims, this article concludes that there was a clear dis-
connect between Israel’s very ambitious strategic aims and the strategies employed to
accomplish them. Hezbollah, on the other hand, was better prepared for how a potential
Israel–Hezbollah war would unfold because it had developed a military strategy that stood
a better chance of reaching its desired political ends. It is important to note that Hezbollah’s
strategic aims were comparatively a lot less ambitious than Israel’s aims, clearly a big factor
behind Hezbollah reaching more of its political goals of the conflict than Israel. As for the
outcome of the war, it resembled a draw on the battlefield, but Israel struggled to translate
tactical successes into strategic gains. Therefore, judging by the criteria of accomplishing
political aims, the war’s outcome was more favorable for Hezbollah.

Notes
1. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), vii.
2. David Makovsky and Jeffrey White, “Lessons and Implications of the Israel–Hizbollah
War,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, policy focus 60 (2006): 47.
3. Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars: A History since 1947 (London: Routledge, 2009), 278.
4. Anthony Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War (Center for Strategic &
International Studies, 2007), 6.
5. William M. Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War (Maxwell
Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2007), 40.
6. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 4.
7. Avi Kober, “The Second Lebanon War,” The Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies,
Bar-Ilan University, Perspectives, vol. 22 (2006): 1.
8. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 276.
 Military Strategy in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War 441

9. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 91–92.

10. Ibid., 100.
11. Ibid., 48.
12. Uri Bar-Joseph, ‘The Hubris of Initial Victory’ in Clive Jones and Sergio Catignani, eds.,
Israel and Hizbollah: An Asymmetric Conflict in a Historical and Comparative Perspective (New
York: Routledge, 2012), 153.
13. Matt M. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War,”
Washington: Combat Studies Institute, The Long War Series, occasional paper 26 (2008): 38–39.
14. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 157.
15. Bar-Joseph, “The Hubris of Initial Victory,” 151.
16. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 56.
17. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days,116.
18. Bar-Joseph, The Hubris of Initial Victory, 153.
19. Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God (New York: Random House, 2011), 398.
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20. Arkin, Divining Victory, 47.

21. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 279.
22. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 43.
23. Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege to Die (New York: Free Press, 2011), 64.
24. Bar-Joseph, The Hubris of Initial Victory, 154.
25. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 48.
26. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 282.
27. Rashid Khalidi, “Forward,” in Nubar Hovsepian, ed., The War on Lebanon: A Reader (New
York, Olive Branch Press, 2007), xviii.
28. Harel & Issacharoff, 34 Days, 212.
29. Kober, “The Second Lebanon War,” 4.
30. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 290.
31. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 8.
32. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 84.
33. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 37.
34. Andrew Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy
Focus, no. 63 (2006): 8.
35. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizbollah’s Outlook in the Current Conflict: Motives, Strategy and
Objectives,” Carnegie Policy Outlook (2006): 3.
36. Reinoud Leenders, “How the Rebel Regained His Cause: Hizbullah & the Sixth Arab-Israeli
War,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 6 (2006): 38.
37. Richard Augustus Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2007), 135.
38. Cambanis, A Privilege to Die, 17.
39. Daniel Sobelman, “Hizbollah–from Terror to Resistance: Towards a National Defence
Strategy,” in Clive Jones and Sergio Catignani, eds., Israel and Hizbollah (New York, NY: Routledge,
2009), 63.
40. Norton, Hezbollah, 116.
41. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 10.
42. Saad-Ghorayeb, “Hizbollah’s Outlook,” 3–4.
43. Nicholas Noe, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah (London:
Verso, 2007), 394.
44. Harel & Issacharoff, 34 Days, 46.
45. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 19.
46. Arkin, Divining Victory, 136.
47. Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” 9.
48. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 47.
49. Blanford, Warriors of God, 344.
50. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 44.
 442 I. Gabrielsen

51. Uzi Rubin, “The Rocket Campaign against Israel During the 2006 Lebanon War,” The
Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Bar-Illan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies,
no. 71 (2007): 4.
52. Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of
Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S.
Army War College, September, 2008), 50.
53. Rubin, “The Rocket Campaign,” 10.
54. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 189.
55. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 47.
56. Blanford, Warriors of God, 381.
57. Exum, “Hezbollah at War,” 5.
58. Arkin, Divining Victory, 18.
59. Makovsky and White, Lessons and Implications, 16.
60. Biddle and Friedman, “The 2006 Lebanon Campaign,” 52.
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61. Ibid., 52–54.

62. Matthews, “We Were Caught Unprepared,” 22.
63. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, 276.
64. Arkin, Divining Victory, 206 and 242.
65. Ibid., iv.
66. Norton, Hezbollah, 142.
67. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days, 249.
68. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War, 17.
69. Norton, Hezbollah,142.
70. The Telegraph, “Israel and Hezbollah Sign Prisoner Exchange Deal,” March 22,
2013, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/2264757/Israel-and-
Hizbollah-sign-prisoner-exchange-deal.html.
71. Amir Kulick, “The Next War with Hizbollah,” Strategic Assessment, vol. 10, no. 3 (2007): 2.

Iver Gabrielsen (iver.gabrielsen@gmail.com) is a Norwegian analyst of armed conflicts

in the Middle East focusing on Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. He is currently researching the
evolution of Hezbollah’s strategy and tactics from 1982 to 2006. Gabrielsen was educated
at the University of Oslo and the War Studies Department at King’s College London.