There will be no clear victor when the fighting stops

WHEN the fighting is over, both Israel and Hezbollah are likely to declare victory, but the truth will be far more complicated.

Hezbollah looks certain to be pushed back from Israel’s border, but its standing in the Arab world will remain high. Israel looks set to achieve its goal of getting Hezbollah off its doorstep, but the guerrillas can say they stood up to Israel and lived to tell the tale.

Because of each side’s need to appear victorious, a thunderous show of force is not unlikely before a ceasefire deal is arranged — perhaps a Hezbollah rocket hitting Tel Aviv, or a massive Israeli ground offensive pushing northward toward the Litani River.

Israel hopes its offensive in Lebanon will serve as a warning to Iran, Syria and all Islamic radicals in the Middle East that the price to be paid for attacking the Jewish State is too high to even contemplate.

And it hopes its ability to withstand an onslaught of over 2,400 Hezbollah rockets during the 24-day conflict will send a strong message of defiance to its enemies.

However, Israel has not achieved the deterrence it had hoped for — and it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Hezbollah will feel defeated. The Shi’ite group, which sparked the current crisis by crossing into Israel and capturing two Israeli soldiers on July 12, has kept up its rocket barrage against Israel despite the Israeli Defence Forces’ punishing assault.

Hezbollah has made good on its threat to strike deeper and deeper inside Israel, hitting the town of Hadera for the first time on Saturday, about 75 kilometres south of the border.

Israel’s initial condition for a ceasefire — the disarming of Hezbollah — has been replaced by the far more modest goal of pushing Hezbollah away from the border to make room for a new multinational peacekeeping force.

The group has proven itself to be a more formidable foe than expected.

“In their minds they [Hezbollah] won this one,” said Timur Goksel, an American University of Beirut professor who spent more than two decades as a senior UN adviser in south Lebanon.

“And their credibility within their own community is very high. Their credibility in the Muslim world is very high. They fought the Israelis for three weeks without buckling under.”

For Israel, the victory narrative is a matter of life and death.

The conflict in Lebanon has reinforced Israelis’ deeply ingrained feeling that they are surrounded by enemies who want them dead, bringing a rare sense of clarity to a national psyche blurred by the moral murkiness of the conflict with the Palestinians.

Most Israelis believe winning the war — and being perceived as winning it — is essential for the Jewish state’s long-term security.

That helps explain why popular support for the Lebanon campaign remains extremely high despite a growing chorus of media commentators complaining that the war has been poorly conceived and executed.

Israel’s Channel 10 TV released a poll showing that 84% of Israelis are satisfied with the army’s performance, with only 8% dissatisfied. No margin of error was given.

Most Middle East observers agree that to be seen as winning, Hezbollah needs only to emerge from the conflict with its war machine still functioning — an outcome that now appears very likely.