Israel’s problem is not on the ground, it is in the air.
Israel confronts “broken windows” in Lebanon

Austin Bay expands on his earlier thoughts about Hezbollah’s rockets in his syndicated column of today. I have always admired Austin’s ability to take complex topics and present them in terms readily accessible to lay readers without “dumbing down” the subject. Read the whole thing.

Israeli vice prime minister Shimon Peres says that Israel will not invade Lebanon in an interview conducted before this morning’s ground incursion by IDF forces into the country. So far, I would not count the incursion as an “invasion” since the ground forces are punitively directed against Hezbollah - the operation is a force-on-force mission not intended to establish Israeli units as an occupying force. Speaking perhaps prospectively, Peres said,

Is Israel’s objective now to destroy Hezbollah militarily?
Our objective is to stop the missile attacks by Hezbollah and enable the Lebanese military to take over and prevent Hezbollah from ever again returning to the border of Israel — as the U.N. resolution stipulates. Our objective also remains the release of our soldiers.

What will determine when Israel stops?
When the attacks stop, Israel will stop.

Will there be a ground invasion of Lebanon by Israel?
No. The problem is not in the ground. It is in the air. If we create a buffer zone, will they get longer range missiles to fire from behind that line? What will then stop Hezbollah from getting longer range missiles from Iran or Syria?

Here is a key point: asked about the utility of an international force in southern Lebanon to stand between Israel and Hezbollah, peres replied,

They are mistaken. The confrontation is not on the ground. It is in the air. If these U.N. forces can stop Hezbollah from firing missiles and rockets, that is one thing. If they are going to fight Hezbollah, fine. But there is no point to have people on the ground to observe the missiles flying overhead. That is useless.

That is why Israel must press on to the bitter end in destroying Hezbollah as a highly lethal threat to Israel’s hme territory. Hezbollah itself, as an organization, will survive and recontitute to some level after Israel’s offensive actions cease. But a defanged Hezbollah that is incapable of launching increasingly long-ranged, increasingly deadly rockets at Israel’s cities is infinitely preferable to what Israel faces today.

This means, of course, that the war cannot be ended on the basis of the status quo ante bellum. If the status quo had been tolerable to Israel, it would not have counter-struck last week. Besides, the status quo was changed by Hezbollah when it raided across the border, killed several Israeli soldiers and kidnaped two. It may be allowable, as some have observed, that hitting Israeli troops is a military, not terrorist, operation, but so what? It only means that Israel’s military response is even more justifiable.

What Hezbollah’s cross-border raid did was evoke Israel to adopt a military version of law enforcement’s “broken window” theory of deterrence.

First expressed by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George Kelling in an article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, the theory holds that if someone breaks a window in a building and it is not quickly repaired, others will be emboldened to break more windows. Eventually, the broken windows create a sense of disorder that attracts criminals, who thrive in conditions of public apathy and neglect.

The theory was based on an experiment conducted 26 years ago by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He took two identical cars, placing one on a street in a middle-class Palo Alto neighborhood and the other in a tougher neighborhood in the Bronx. The car in the Bronx, which had no license plate on it and was parked with its hood up, was stripped within a day. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for a week, until Zimbardo smashed one of its windows with a sledgehammer.

Within a few hours, it was stripped.

According to Wilson, a professor of public policy at UCLA, “There are two sources of disorder: offenders and physical disorder. [Both] lead people to believe the neighborhood is run down. The central problem for police is to take the small signs of disorder seriously and deal with them.

Bad enough it was that Hezbollah had been launching Katyushas into Israel for several years at the rate of a dozen or so per week. Evidently, Israel even under Ariel Sharon had decided it could endure that. (But, as Peres pointed out in his interview, the concessions it made under Sharon under the “road map for peace” plan were supposed to bring such attacks to and end. They did not.)

When Hezbollah turned up the violence by a ground-action raid into Israel, Israel’s political and military commanders and general population knew that Hezbollah had started to break windows.

Hence, Israel struck. There was neither time nor reason to delay. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed the Knesset on July 17, explaining that the actions against both Hezbollah and Hamas was intended to “terminate their activity,” “remove this threat of the Middle East” and “conduct a tireless battle until terror ceases.” There are four national obvjectives, Olmert said:

* The return of the hostages, Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev;
* A complete cease fire;
* Deployment of the Lebanese army in all of southern Lebanon;
* Expulsion of Hizbullah from the area, and fulfillment of United Nations Resolution 1559.

Hezbollah’s raid was a moment of near-blinding clarity for Israel’s leaders: if Hezbollah is not reduced now, its violence would only intensify and its attacks become ever-more bolder and deadier. Olmert said as much:

We are at a national moment of truth. Will we consent to living under the threat of this Axis of Evil or will we mobilize our inner strength and show determination and equanimity?

Our answer is clear to every Israeli, and it echoes today throughout the entire region.

We will search every compound, target every terrorist who assists in attacking the citizens of Israel, and destroy every terrorist infrastructure, everywhere. We will persist until Hizbullah and Hamas comply with those basic and decent things required of them by every civilized person. Israel will not agree to live in the shadow of missiles or rockets against its residents.

Whether Israel will succeed we cannot yet say. But if they fail it will not be their fault. Failure will spring from the lack of nerve and moral sense of the European and American governments. In no way is freedom’s cause served by allowing Hezbollah or Hamas to remain armed and capable of striking Israel.