Analysis: A border a year after the war

CAMP BIRANIT, Israel, July 11 (UPI) -- Thick gray concrete slabs line the northern fence of this camp that overlooks southern Lebanon.

Camp Biranit is the headquarters of the 91st division that is responsible for that border, and the walls and metal nets erected in front of positions are there to protect soldiers from Hezbollah fire. Crossing them had been dangerous, but not any longer.

The division's chief of staff, Lt. Col. Guy Hazoot, Wednesday walked around them to show the Lebanese terrain and to casually talk to his visitors.

Hezbollah positions that were sometimes right across the border fence are no longer there. Instead, Hazoot pointed to a gray building a few miles away that looks like a school. That is where U.N. peacekeepers are based. A small clearing on a hill east of Biranit serves as a Lebanese army post. It is topped with sandbags, and the national flag -- not Hezbollah's yellow flag -- flutters over it.

"It was a peaceful year," observed Hazoot. It was the quietest year since the 1970s when Palestinian militants moved from Jordan to Lebanon.

The quiet atmosphere conceals the fact that Hezbollah, which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization, is still there. Most southern Lebanese are Shiite-Muslims, like Hezbollah, and support that organization.

Israeli intelligence estimates Hezbollah lost some 600 fighters during last year's war. "For a small guerrilla (force) it's a high price," said Hazoot, but it is training new recruits. It may not exercise in the south where UNIFIL and the Lebanese army patrol, but it does do so father north and in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Hezbollah militants in the south do not appear in uniforms nor bear arms, but Israelis believe they do try to gather intelligence. Officers suspected that new buildings constructed there, including a hospital, would include facilities for Hezbollah weapons. Syria is rearming the movement, but Hazoot declined to reveal details, maintaining they are classified.

The 34-day war that began after Hezbollah crossed the border, kidnapped two soldiers and killed eight, exposed many of the Israeli army's weaknesses. Some officers believed conventional-type wars were over, that Israel should let Hezbollah's arsenal of thousands of rockets rust.

In fact, Hezbollah kept a steady barrage of rockets, as many as 225 in one day. Israel police "touched" the scenes in which 2,951 rockets hit but with the army concluded Hezbollah might have fired as many at 6,000, said Police Brig. Gen. Nir Meri Esh, who commands its Galilee District.

It seemed the Israeli army, not Hezbollah, had rusted and in the past year the defense establishment tried to bring the army back into shape.

The military's "operational concept" has changed, reported Hazoot.

In the past Israel waited until Hezbollah initiated a fight. Not any longer. Israel would neither initiate attacks nor try to invade southern Lebanon, unless Hezbollah will "try to attack us," he said.

The military had thought it could stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks by using its air superiority but realized "it was a mistake not to send ground forces in first."

If fighting resumes, "Maybe we'll make other mistakes, not these," Hazoot said.

The new operational concept provides that Israel would exercise its sovereignty up to the last inch of its territory. Before the war there were border areas that soldiers did not enter in order to avoid friction with Hezbollah.

That, too, has changed. In some places the boundary line that the United Nations marked passes north of the security fence, so the 91st Division sent soldiers into those areas. Sometimes they entered in armored vehicles. One such move led to a firefight with Lebanese soldiers. Hazoot said Israel had told the Lebanese why it sent soldiers there -- it feared bombs were planted near its patrol road -- and the Lebanese "understood." Neither army wants a clash, he added.

The army stepped up the training of its Special Forces, regular and reserve units.

In Tel Aviv, Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski told Israeli defense correspondents that insufficient exercises were the main shortcoming discovered during the war. That is why this year all the standing army's combat troops and half the reserve units have trained, and he expected the training of all combat units to be completed by the end of December, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

Reservists returning from the war last year complained about their equipment issued them. Soldiers went and bought more suitable gear in civilian stores. That is changing too.

The army plans to give reserve combat units the same kind of equipment that the standing army's solders get. It will include M-16 guns whose butt can be pushed in to shorten it, lighter protective vests and water carriers with a mouthpiece instead of the old plastic canteens that sometimes smelled.

Infantry units will be the first to get the new gear, and by the end of 2008 all the reserve units' emergency stores should be updated, said Lt. Col. Rami Asulin who heads the Supply Department in the military's Logistics Branch.

The war demonstrated also the civilian population's vulnerability. Meri Esh estimated that 1,017 rockets hit the town of Kiryat Shmona and that a quarter of Haifa's residents left town during the war.

That war was "rather comfortable" because it was restricted to the north and Meri Esh was able to receive reinforcements. Moreover, the war happened during the summer when people go on leave anyway.

However, in a future war rockets might strike deeper into Israel, and Meri Esh said he was therefore preparing to make do with the forces he has at hand.

The government allocated some $140 million to build and repair shelters, but the director general of the prime minister's office, Raanan Dinur, indicated it would take years to meet the expected demand. He proposed upgrading secure rooms in homes and preparing underground parking lots to double up as shelters.

Meri Esh doubted the public shelters' effectiveness unless people live in them. When the sirens wail, people have 30 seconds to find cover, he said.