Israeli military brass lose confidence in Barak, fear loss of deterrence

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Prime Minister Ehud Baraks's withdrawal from Lebanon will be tested by the first Hizbullah rocket attack on Israel.

Military sources said senior commanders will be closely watching Barak's reaction to renewed attacks from Lebanon. They said this will be the key to whether Barak succeeds in achieving quiet along its northern border or merely brings the war in Lebanon into Israel.

Barak and many ministers have warned with increasing stridency that retaliatory strikes against Lebanon and Syria will result from any attack on Israel. They said they will no longer seek to identify who is actually shooting at the Jewish state.

As the government sees it, Syria will be dissuaded from encouraging its allies from attacking Israel -- either by international pressure or through fear of Israel's military's power. Another factor, officials said, will be the prospect of renewed U.S. efforts to achieve a peace agreement.

"We will change this, either by the persuasion of the international community, or by force, much force," deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said.

The question is what if Syria does not follow this scenario and attacks resume on Israeli border posts and communities? Military sources raise the prospect that Hizbullah will focus its attacks on the Shebaa plateau, claimed by the Beirut government. At the same time, Palestinian fighters could rally around a call for the return of refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.

"We are worried about the recruitment of Palestinians," Brig. Gen. Amos Gilead, head of military intelligence's research division, said. "We see an effort to organize them to launch initially limited attacks on Israel."

At that point, Barak will be in a dilemma. If he orders massive attacks on Lebanon or Syria, tension in the Middle East will escalate. Israel will come under increasing pressure by the United States and other Western nations to halt the attacks. Military intelligence assessments have warned that the international community will have little tolerance for another mini-war in Lebanon.

"When the Hizbullah continues to fire what will we do?" Likud parliamentarian Sylvan Shalom, a key member of the Knesset Foreign Relations and Defense Committee, asked. "So when you speak to those who advocate unilateral withdrawal they say, 'We'll set Lebanon ablaze.' This is possible? So, then they say, 'We will go back into Lebanon.' So, what's the point?"

So far, Arab leaders don't appear impressed by Barak's warnings. Lebanese Information Minister Anwar Khalil told the Cairo-based Sawt Al Arab radio on Wednesday that the warnings are meant for domestic consumption and to cover up what he termed the humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon.

Military sources said the international community has already disappointed Israel. The United Nations has moved slowly and peacekeeping troops in Lebanon stood by as Hizbullah fighters swarmed into villages and bases abandoned by Israel and the South Lebanese Army. The result is that even an expanded UN presence in Lebanon will not maintain quiet along the border.

The sources said that, if anything, the expanded UN force will impede on Israeli strikes against Hizbullah. Israeli artillery fire toward suspected Hizbullah targets in southern Lebanon will prompt complaints that UN troops and villagers are being endangered.

Already, French and other Western diplomats are preparing the groundwork for the continuation of the 1996 understandings that ban the use of civilians as either a target or shield in fighting along the Lebanese border.

Military sources said they expect Barak to talk tough but refrain from anything more than symbolic responses to renewed attacks from Lebanon. They said this will exact a different price -- the abandonment of northern Israel. Already, 50 percent of Kiryat Shmona's population has left and a similar percentage of residents have taken their children to schools in other towns deemed as safer from Hizbullah rocket attacks.

"There could be more difficult weeks," Sneh said.

Lurking in the background is a crisis of confidence by the military in Barak. Military sources said Barak and most of the Cabinet dismissed the warnings of Mofaz and senior intelligence officers of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. They said Barak often kept the military in the dark regarding withdrawal plans from Lebanon. This included an order that prevented the military from drafting plans for a unilateral withdrawal.

The result, the sources said, was a hasty withdrawal that left millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition in the hand of Hizbullah. In some cases, the sources said, troops were ordered to leave everything behind and run for the border.

The most damaging part of the withdrawal is the message it sent to Israel's enemies, particularly the Palestinians. Military intelligence sources said they are concerned that military deterrence has been eroded. They point to calls by Palestinian leaders to copy Hizbullah's methods.

"Without deterrence, they won't stop firing at us," [Res.] Maj. Gen. Yoram Yair said.

The anger in the military brass is compounded by disappointment in Barak, a war hero and former chief of staff. Military sources said Barak's allies in the Cabinet will continue to blame the army for any failure to stop Hizbullah attacks.

"In his [Barak's] house, a bitter and disappointed army has parked," military analyst Amir Oren writes in the Israeli Haaretz daily on Wednesday. "And it is not the SLA."