Hezbollah flags wave in the Raya field during the 6th annual celebration of the July war. (Photo: Marwan Bu Haidar)
There were many reasons that prompted Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to go public about one of the biggest intelligence ruses Israel ever faced in its wars with the Arabs, which snared it in a trap at the start of its June 2006 assault on Lebanon. The timing of his revelation was intended to make a number of points, and several messages were implicit in his brief recollection of the affair. All relate to the essence of the conflict currently underway in the region.
The crisis in Syria has been turned into one facet of Israeli-Arab conflict, due to the direct involvement of the US and Israel along with their Arab acolytes. This crisis has also become a central factor in determining the fate of other countries, such as Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Palestinian cause. It may be some time before the Israelis stop being the only ones giving this serious consideration, and everyone else starts noticing the consequences.
During the months that followed the June war, the resistance dropped several hints about its foiling of what the enemy had termed “Operation Qualitative Weight.” But it provided no solid information. The Israelis who picked up these hints treated them with derision. They remained convinced that those pre-dawn air-strikes had been a real achievement.
Despite the Winograd Commission, the subsequent recrimination and buck-passing between Israeli politicians and generals, and the quarrels between agencies over who was to blame for the failures of the war, everyone continued to refer to this operation in glowing terms. Great efforts were made to trumpet it as the great triumph of the otherwise botched Second Lebanon war.
Virtually every account of the war portrayed the operation in such terms. It was the ace of spades which Israeli military and security chiefs had up their sleeves to trump Hezbollah. One Israeli military commentator described it as “an astonishing feat of intelligence-gathering and operational capability,” and several said that the morale-boost it gave to Israel’s political and military leaders encouraged them to press on with the war, despite their target-list having been exhausted from day four.
The operation, as portrayed by the Israelis, was the culmination of an elaborate long-term effort to gather accurate intelligence about the location of the resistance’s medium- and long- range missile platforms. Using this information, the air force supposedly succeeded in wiping out between 70 to 80 percent of the resistance’s missile capability in a single night of airstrikes. It was reputedly dubbed “Fajr Night,” a reference to the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 missiles the Israelis believe they took out.
More information about this plan was leaked by military intelligence after the war. In their book Captives in Lebanon, authors Ofer Shelach (security affairs analyst of Yediot Aharanot newspaper) and Yoav Limor (Channel One television’s military correspondent) provided some details. They wrote that it took six years, and a massive intelligence effort costing hundreds of millions of dollars, to collect all the intelligence on scores of sites – mostly Hezbollah arms depots and missile platforms – so they could be attacked simultaneously. The subsequent airstrikes were described as devastating, likened to those of 5 June 1967, the destruction of the Syrian surface-to-air missiles in the Bekaa valley in 1982, or the shock-and-awe American bombing of Iraq in 1991 and 2003.
In his speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah did not discuss the deception operation itself. He simply declared that it had succeeded. One can imagine that as of yesterday, a whole host of questions are being asked by everyone concerned in Israeli intelligence circles.
They may start with an obvious one:
Q: Was Nasrallah telling the truth?
A: We can’t be sure. But he’s never lied before, or risked his or his organization’s credibility, over something like this. And the way the war turned out showed that he either had more missiles than we thought, or he really did mislead us. He has a record of that. In the past, his game of double agents forced us to mistrust many of our agents in Lebanon. And more recently he showed he has intelligence capabilities which left a lot of us speechless. And there’s also the Ansariya operation, which remained a mystery for 13 years until Nasrallah decided to say what happened, for reasons of his own. And it turned out be right. They really had been waiting for us in those orchards.
Q: How did he manage to uncover our intelligence operation, and when?
A.That’s what we should be trying to find out, in an inquiry that re-examines all the data and methods and questions all the people involved.
Q. But how did they carry out the deception, by using double agents, or technology, or what?
A.The same inquiry might be able to point out weaknesses, and provide us with appraisals and assessments which, even if they do not give us definitive answers, will help us build up an approximate picture. But we’ll have to wait until Nasrallah decides to say more before we know the full story.
Q. So if what he said was true, did he sacrifice one missile arsenal to safeguard another, or did he have a special way of removing the missiles without us seeing? How could he, when the sites were under permanent surveillance? Could he have moved them before they captured the soldiers on June 12, or right afterwards, or what?
A. Hezbollah is full of surprises. So while it is necessary to find the answer to this question, it does not change the fact that we were deceived. This means we should question what we believe or think is correct today, and re-examine it in order to confirm it – especially as he accompanied his story with a threat to spring a surprise on us.
Q. What kind of surprise is he talking about?
A. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we knew what it was. But we don’t, so we won’t know until it happens – unless he changes it and replaces it with a different surprise.
It may be helpful to remember that the all-out intelligence war between the resistance and the enemy is going through an extremely intense and complex phase. Neither side talks about its ongoing activities. But they have expanded in scope over the course of the last six years, and both sides devote far more of their capabilities and resources to the effort than many might think.
Nasrallah also alerted all concerned (if only by way of a warning) that the deception operation could still be underway.
This means that the first strike with which Israel plans to surprise the resistance in the next war may be misconceived. And just as Israel has its first strike, one could reasonably assume that the resistance has a first strike of its own in mind – whether it launches war itself, or leaves the enemy to enjoy the first few hours of another “qualitative” opening move. One could think of dozens, if not hundreds, of strategic military and civilian targets that could come under a devastating and intensive missile barrage within minutes, for starters.
The connection between all this and current developments is that there are growing signs that Israel – in a climate that is increasingly coming to resemble that of 2006 – could entangle the world in a crazy military operation in Syria, or on its borders.
Attempts to depose the regime in Syria by political means have failed. The focus has shifted to intelligence operations as part of an open war, as evidenced by developments on the ground, including the assassination of the security chiefs in Damascus. But that is still not enough to radically tip the balance of power or change the rules of the game. After yesterday’s Russo-Chinese veto of a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning further foreign intervention, the enemies of Syria and the resistance have only Israel and its thuggery to turn to.
It has been sending out signals, whether by voicing fears that the Golan Heights could turn into another Sinai, or by talking of the grave threat posed by the transfer of sophisticated Syrian weaponry, including chemical weapons, to Lebanon.
If Israel is considering such a step, it now knows, for sure, that Hezbollah is not neutral, but in the heart of a battle that is liable to redraw the entire map of the region.
Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
The crisis in Syria has been turned into one facet of Israeli-Arab conflict, due to the direct involvement of the US and Israel along with their Arab acolytes. This crisis has also become a central factor in determining the fate of other countries, such as Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Palestinian cause. It may be some time before the Israelis stop being the only ones giving this serious consideration, and everyone else starts noticing the consequences.
During the months that followed the June war, the resistance dropped several hints about its foiling of what the enemy had termed “Operation Qualitative Weight.” But it provided no solid information. The Israelis who picked up these hints treated them with derision. They remained convinced that those pre-dawn air-strikes had been a real achievement.
Despite the Winograd Commission, the subsequent recrimination and buck-passing between Israeli politicians and generals, and the quarrels between agencies over who was to blame for the failures of the war, everyone continued to refer to this operation in glowing terms. Great efforts were made to trumpet it as the great triumph of the otherwise botched Second Lebanon war.
Virtually every account of the war portrayed the operation in such terms. It was the ace of spades which Israeli military and security chiefs had up their sleeves to trump Hezbollah. One Israeli military commentator described it as “an astonishing feat of intelligence-gathering and operational capability,” and several said that the morale-boost it gave to Israel’s political and military leaders encouraged them to press on with the war, despite their target-list having been exhausted from day four.
The operation, as portrayed by the Israelis, was the culmination of an elaborate long-term effort to gather accurate intelligence about the location of the resistance’s medium- and long- range missile platforms. Using this information, the air force supposedly succeeded in wiping out between 70 to 80 percent of the resistance’s missile capability in a single night of airstrikes. It was reputedly dubbed “Fajr Night,” a reference to the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 missiles the Israelis believe they took out.
More information about this plan was leaked by military intelligence after the war. In their book Captives in Lebanon, authors Ofer Shelach (security affairs analyst of Yediot Aharanot newspaper) and Yoav Limor (Channel One television’s military correspondent) provided some details. They wrote that it took six years, and a massive intelligence effort costing hundreds of millions of dollars, to collect all the intelligence on scores of sites – mostly Hezbollah arms depots and missile platforms – so they could be attacked simultaneously. The subsequent airstrikes were described as devastating, likened to those of 5 June 1967, the destruction of the Syrian surface-to-air missiles in the Bekaa valley in 1982, or the shock-and-awe American bombing of Iraq in 1991 and 2003.
In his speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah did not discuss the deception operation itself. He simply declared that it had succeeded. One can imagine that as of yesterday, a whole host of questions are being asked by everyone concerned in Israeli intelligence circles.
They may start with an obvious one:
Q: Was Nasrallah telling the truth?
A: We can’t be sure. But he’s never lied before, or risked his or his organization’s credibility, over something like this. And the way the war turned out showed that he either had more missiles than we thought, or he really did mislead us. He has a record of that. In the past, his game of double agents forced us to mistrust many of our agents in Lebanon. And more recently he showed he has intelligence capabilities which left a lot of us speechless. And there’s also the Ansariya operation, which remained a mystery for 13 years until Nasrallah decided to say what happened, for reasons of his own. And it turned out be right. They really had been waiting for us in those orchards.
Q: How did he manage to uncover our intelligence operation, and when?
A.That’s what we should be trying to find out, in an inquiry that re-examines all the data and methods and questions all the people involved.
Q. But how did they carry out the deception, by using double agents, or technology, or what?
A.The same inquiry might be able to point out weaknesses, and provide us with appraisals and assessments which, even if they do not give us definitive answers, will help us build up an approximate picture. But we’ll have to wait until Nasrallah decides to say more before we know the full story.
Q. So if what he said was true, did he sacrifice one missile arsenal to safeguard another, or did he have a special way of removing the missiles without us seeing? How could he, when the sites were under permanent surveillance? Could he have moved them before they captured the soldiers on June 12, or right afterwards, or what?
A. Hezbollah is full of surprises. So while it is necessary to find the answer to this question, it does not change the fact that we were deceived. This means we should question what we believe or think is correct today, and re-examine it in order to confirm it – especially as he accompanied his story with a threat to spring a surprise on us.
Q. What kind of surprise is he talking about?
A. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we knew what it was. But we don’t, so we won’t know until it happens – unless he changes it and replaces it with a different surprise.
It may be helpful to remember that the all-out intelligence war between the resistance and the enemy is going through an extremely intense and complex phase. Neither side talks about its ongoing activities. But they have expanded in scope over the course of the last six years, and both sides devote far more of their capabilities and resources to the effort than many might think.
Nasrallah also alerted all concerned (if only by way of a warning) that the deception operation could still be underway.
This means that the first strike with which Israel plans to surprise the resistance in the next war may be misconceived. And just as Israel has its first strike, one could reasonably assume that the resistance has a first strike of its own in mind – whether it launches war itself, or leaves the enemy to enjoy the first few hours of another “qualitative” opening move. One could think of dozens, if not hundreds, of strategic military and civilian targets that could come under a devastating and intensive missile barrage within minutes, for starters.
The connection between all this and current developments is that there are growing signs that Israel – in a climate that is increasingly coming to resemble that of 2006 – could entangle the world in a crazy military operation in Syria, or on its borders.
Attempts to depose the regime in Syria by political means have failed. The focus has shifted to intelligence operations as part of an open war, as evidenced by developments on the ground, including the assassination of the security chiefs in Damascus. But that is still not enough to radically tip the balance of power or change the rules of the game. After yesterday’s Russo-Chinese veto of a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning further foreign intervention, the enemies of Syria and the resistance have only Israel and its thuggery to turn to.
It has been sending out signals, whether by voicing fears that the Golan Heights could turn into another Sinai, or by talking of the grave threat posed by the transfer of sophisticated Syrian weaponry, including chemical weapons, to Lebanon.
If Israel is considering such a step, it now knows, for sure, that Hezbollah is not neutral, but in the heart of a battle that is liable to redraw the entire map of the region.
Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Uprooted Palestinian 
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