An Unfinished War

This withdrawal is, admittedly, planned to take up to ten days and is dependent on Lebanese army units being available. In turn, however, it means "that the IDF will not be conducting searches for Hezbollah fighters or arms caches in the areas that it has captured over the last few days, which the army defined as 'the heart of the operational campaign' against Hezbollah" (see Amos Harel & Aluf Benn, "Tense calm across Lebanon as UN-brokered truce takes effect", Ha'aretz, 14 August 2006). Israel's belief in the value of an early withdrawal is underpinned by knowledge that Hizbollah remains highly effective; if the ceasefire were to break down with up to 20,000 IDF personnel embedded across much of southern Lebanon, the result would be a situation where the IDF would suffer heavy casualties while Hizbollah would still retain most of its missiles. This is just one more indicator of the problems facing the Olmert government, now that calls for Olmert's resignation are increasing. http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/unfinished_war_3820.jsp#

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