According to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel intends to hold the parts of southern Lebanon that it captures until their transfer to a new international peacekeeping force. Two central questions must be asked: When can this force become operative, and what sort of mandate will it be given? Hezbollah has already taken this option into consideration, and plans guerrilla warfare in southern Lebanon to inflict losses on the IDF and to be able to claim that it is again fighting to banish Israeli occupation forces from Lebanese soil. The IDF must therefore do everything possible to avoid the modus operandi it used during its protracted stay in Lebanon after the 1982 Lebanon War. Israel must not remain in southern Lebanon. It must not base its operations and deployment there on supply convoys, or on transporting soldiers for furloughs in Israel and then back to their bases in Lebanon, or even on permanent military bases in Lebanon, even if they are fortified. These are convenient targets for guerrilla fighters, and this is the kind of situation that Hezbollah anticipates. A problem will arise if no international peacekeeping force can be found to which the IDF can hand over the territory that it now occupies in southern Lebanon. In such a scenario, Israel will be faced with a dilemma: Stay in southern Lebanon, or withdraw, even if Hezbollah returns to set up bases there? If confronted with this question, Israel must choose withdrawal – in order to avoid again finding itself waist-deep in the Lebanese quagmire.
Good advice.