Israel's Second Lebanon War Reconsidered

Operation Change of Direction, the code name given to Israel’s war against Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006 by the Operations Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was the most inconclusive performance by far in the IDF’s many trials by re since 1948, in that it represented the rst time that a major regional confrontation ended without a clear cut victory on Israel’s part. The campaign’s uneven course and outcome did not emanate from any particular single point failure but rather, in the words of two informed commentators, from “an overall accumulation of circumstances.” More speci cally, it did not re ect any failure of Israel’s well endowed air arm to perform to the fullest extent of its considerable but not unlimited capabilities, as many were quick to complain. Rather, it resulted from a more overarching de ciency in strategy choice, whose most awed elements were inconsistency between avowed goals and the available means and will to pursue them, and the Israeli government’s initial placement of friendly casualty avoidance above mission accomplishment in its ranking of campaign priorities.