The Rocket Campaign Against Israel During the 2006 Lebanon War
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THE BEGIN-SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 71 The Rocket Campaign against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War Uzi Rubin © The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel http://www.besacenter.org ISSN 0793-1042 June 2007 The Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies The BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University was founded by Dr. Thomas O. Hecht, a Canadian Jewish community leader. The Center is dedicated to the memory of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who concluded the first Arab-Israel peace agreement. The Center, a non-partisan and independent institute, seeks to contribute to the advancement of Middle East peace and security by conducting policy-relevant research on strategic subjects, particularly as they relate to the national security and foreign policy of Israel. Mideast Security and Policy Studies serve as a forum for publication or re-publication of research conducted by BESA associates. Publication of a work by BESA signifies that it is deemed worthy of public consideration but does not imply endorsement of the author's views or conclusions. BESA Colloquia on Strategy and Diplomacy summarize the papers delivered at conferences and seminars held by the Center, for the academic, military, official and general publics. In sponsoring these discussions, the BESA Center aims to stimulate public debate on, and consideration of, contending approaches to problems of peace and war in the Middle East. A listing of recent BESA publications can be found at the end of this booklet. International Advisory Board Founder of the Center and Chairman of the Advisory Board: Dr. Thomas O. Hecht Members: Prof. Moshe Arens, Mrs. Neri Bloomfield, Mrs. Madeleine Feher, Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Ms. Judy Ann Hecht, Ms. Marion Hecht, Mr. Robert Hecht, Prof. Riva Heft-Hecht, Hon. Shlomo Hillel, Mr. Isi Leibler, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Mr. Robert K. Lifton, Maj. Gen. (res.) Daniel Matt, Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney, Maj. Gen. (res.) Ori Orr, Mr. Seymour D. Reich, Amb. Meir Rosenne, Hon. Yitzhak Shamir, Lt. Gen. (res.) Dan Shomron, Amb. Zalman Shoval, Amb. Norman Spector, Mr. Muzi Wertheim International Academic Advisory Board Desmond Ball Australian National University , Ian Beckett University of Northampton , Irwin Cotler McGill University , Steven R. David Johns Hopkins University , Yehezkel Dror Hebrew University, Lawrence Freedman King's College, Patrick James University of Southern California , Efraim Karsh King's College , Robert J. Lieber Georgetown University , Barry Posen Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Jasjit Singh Centre for Strategic and International Studies Research Staff BESA Center Director : Prof. Efraim Inbar Senior Research Associates: Dr. Zeev Bonen, Prof. Stuart A. Cohen, Dr. Gil Feiler, Dr. Jonathan Fox, Dr. Hillel Frisch, Prof. Eytan Gilboa, Dr. Rami Ginat, Eng. Aby Har- Even, Prof. Arye L. Hillman, Dr. Avi Kober, Dr. Ze’ev Maghen, Prof. Amikam Nachmani, Amb. Itzhak Oren, Maj. Gen. (res.) Emanuel Sakal, Prof. Shmuel Sandler, Dr. Dany Shoham, Dr. Shlomo Shpiro, Dr. Max Singer, Prof. Gerald Steinberg Research Associates: Dr. Tsilla Hershco, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Dr. Jonathan Rynhold, Dr. Ron Schleifer Director of Public Affairs: David Weinberg Program Coordinator : Hava Waxman Koen Production Editor (English) : Tamara Sternlieb Production Editor (Hebrew) : Alona Briner Rozenman Introduction When the Israeli government decided on the night of July 12, 2006, to exercise force in response to the Hizbullah’s provocative raid of that morning - a raid that resulted in the capture of two and the death of eight more Israeli soldiers - it recognized and accepted the risk of a massive retaliatory rocket attack on northern Israel by the Hizbullah. At the onset of what was to later to be officially dubbed the “Second Lebanon War,” the head of the IDF’s operation branch, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, remarked that Israelis had already experienced major missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf War, with minimal loss of lives. 1 Neither were there any illusions about the extent of the threat. In the same interview, Eisenkot conceded that the Hizbullah’s rockets could reach Haifa as well as points further south and called upon Israeli civilians to show fortitude and perseverance. Evidently, Israel’s top echelons, both civilian and military, considered the risk of a rocket attack on Israel’s northern districts when debating their response to the Hizbullah’s latest challenge. Indeed, Israel’s North has suffered intermittent rocket attacks from Southern Lebanon, consisting of salvoes of unguided Katyusha type rockets, for almost a quarter of a century. Before and during the 1982 Uzi Rubin was the first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization in the Israel Ministry of Defense, where he was the national program manager for the Arrow missile defense system. He managed the Arrow system program from its inception in 1991 to the first delivery of operational missiles in 1999. Rubin worked in other missile programs in Israel Aircraft Industries and the Israel Ministry of Defense, and codirected a major study on missile proliferation at the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control. He now heads his own consulting company, Rubincon Ltd. This review is based entirely on open sources whose copiousness, quantity and quality are truly characteristic of the present age of the internet. The conclusions and recommendations are the author’s own. The author wishes to thank all of the colleagues and friends who supplied him with material on the rocket campaign. In particular, the author wishes to thank Mr. Tal Inbar of the Fisher Institute for his invaluable assistance regarding the heavier types of rockets used in the campaign. The contributions of the rocket experts of the defense consultancy company Aerodan Systems were astute and useful. Special thanks go to Avia Trachtingot for her priceless help in researching the vast pool of media reports from the war period. MIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES Lebanon War, the rockets were fired by Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Subsequent to the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon, the attacks came from the Iranian-inspired, locally manned militia of the Hizbullah. Israel launched the First Lebanon War in 1982 in order to silence the PLO rocket launchers that had been terrorizing northern Israel and disrupting its economy. With the Hizbullah occupying the military vacuum left after the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon, Israel’s northern districts were again subjected to recurring rocket attacks. During Operation Accountability in 1993 and again in 1996 during Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel’s military used massive firepower against Southern Lebanon in an effort to bring about a cessation of such attacks on Israel. On both occasions, Israel’s military action elicited massive and continuous rocket attacks on Israel’s northern border districts to a depth of about 12 km, resulting in loss of lives and considerable damage to the cities of Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona. On both occasions, Israel’s military actions failed to suppress the rocket fire. The attacks continued unabated during the fighting, terminating only when political arrangements brought the fighting to a stop. In 1996, Operation Grapes of Wrath established a precarious “balance of terror” between Israel’s air power and the Hizbullah’s rocket artillery. According to the unwritten “understandings” that brought that campaign to an end, the Hizbullah pledged to refrain from rocket attacks on Israeli territory as long as Israel refrained from attacking Lebanese towns and villages. Since the Hizbullah was entrenched among the villages of Southern Lebanon, this apparent quid pro quo was really a clear achievement for the militia, providing it with the essential freedom to mount a growingly sanguine guerilla campaign against Israel’s military presence in Southern Lebanon that eventually led to Israel’s unilateral retreat from Southern Lebanon in May 2000. The lessons to be learned from the rockets’ key role in chasing Israel out of Lebanon did not escape the Hizbullah. In the ten years between Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 and the 2006 Lebanon War, almost no Hizbullah rockets fell in northern Israel, yet this quiescence was misleading. The Hizbullah exploited the pause in order to build up a massive infrastructure of rocket power, unprecedented in its size and lethality. This development did not escape Israel’s attention – 2 THE ROCKET CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAEL indeed, the Hizbullah took pains to make its rocket threat as plain to Israel as it could. In his May 2005 “Resistance and Liberation Day” speech, Sheikh Nasrallah, the Hizbullah’s charismatic leader, bragged about possessing “more than 12,000” rockets and extolled their potential to deter Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Neither were Israel’s public and leadership uninformed about the growing peril. The Israeli media frequently reported on the increasing threat to northern Israel, and Israel’s leaders were repeatedly and thoroughly briefed by its intelligence agencies on the deteriorating security situation along the Lebanese border. Yet, when the outbreak of Second Lebanon War on July 12, 2006 elicited the anticipated reaction, Israel’s efforts to block the attack, or even to lessen the severity of the damage incurred, proved, on the whole, almost as futile as in the 1980s and 1990s. The 33 day long rocket attack in the summer of 2006 was more extensive, more lethal and reached deeper into Israel than any of its predecessors. Yet, as before, it proved impervious to Israel’s response measures, terminating only when a general ceasefire brought the fighting to a halt. The rockets caused suffering, death and destruction in cities, towns and villages hitherto spared from the Hizbullah’s rockets, including Israel’s third largest city, Haifa. It left scores of people dead and hundreds severely wounded. It damaged and destroyed thousands of homes, triggered massive displacement of the local population and constituted a major disruption to economic activity in Israel’s highly industrialized northern districts.