Extract from ABC News
Analysis
The neighbourhood of Dahiyeh, believed to be a Hezbollah stronghold in the south of Beirut, has been targetted by Israeli air strikes. (AP: Bilal Hussein)
One thing you notice upon arriving in Beirut is the ever-present sound of Israeli drones.
One of the first things I saw when I walked out of Beirut airport recently was a drone hovering above the airport — I could see it glinting in the late-afternoon sun.
This means Israeli army officers sitting in Tel Aviv or Haifa can watch every plane arriving and taking off from Beirut airport. With the extraordinary capability of the cameras on these drones, they can study the identities of every person walking from the terminal. They can use facial recognition to try to spot anybody of interest arriving in Beirut.
And if it's a senior Iranian or Hezbollah person, they could assassinate that person before they have even had a chance put their luggage into a car.
The newest war in the Middle East is an asymmetric one — and Israel is winning.
Beirut's southern suburbs have been repeatedly struck by Israeli forces. (Reuters: Mohamed Azakir)
Both sides learnt lessons from the brutal 34-day war of 2006 and have been preparing for this new confrontation. Hezbollah learnt that for all Israel's US-provided weapons and funding, it was not good at fighting a guerilla war amid the mountains, caves and tunnels of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah learnt that the IDF was vulnerable. Even Israel's own official inquiry into its performance in that war, the Winograd commission, found that Israel performed badly.
The Israeli Defense Forces learnt that it didn't matter how much it trained, southern Lebanon was the home of Hezbollah fighters who knew every metre of terrain and could lie in wait for Israeli soldiers. It was a quagmire waiting to happen.
What the past three weeks of this new war have shown is that Israel learnt more significantly from 2006 than did Hezbollah.
Beirut is hit by further Israeli bombings as more Australians flee the intensifying conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah's strategic mistake
This time Israel has not fallen into the trap of a ground war set by Hezbollah. Fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is much more difficult than fighting Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah has made a major strategic mistake assuming that Israel would do the same thing again — send large numbers of ground troops into southern Lebanon to try to destroy Hezbollah missile launching pads, weapons storage facilities and tunnels.
The death of eight Israeli soldiers last week highlighted again that fighting Hezbollah with ground troops on their terms is a losing proposition for Israel. Hezbollah has a military advantage in guerilla warfare in southern Lebanon.
Which is why Israeli soldiers are making only short-term incursions into Lebanon. It appears they are engaging in four-pronged attacks: firstly, they make aerial attacks on an area they want to push into, then pound the area with artillery. The combination of these two forces Hezbollah fighters to retreat from the area.
Then, once Hezbollah fighters have left in the face of this aerial assault, Israeli ground troops are moving into the area to try to find and destroy what their intelligence has indicated are Hezbollah weapons storages and tunnels.
Once they have destroyed these weapons, the Israeli army are quickly retreating to Israel, minimising their exposure to Hezbollah attacks and ambushes.
Drones have been a persistent presence in the skies over parts of Lebanon. (Reuters: Jim Urquhart)
No defence against Israel's drones
Along with this rapid incursion approach, Israel is using one of its clear advantages: complete aerial dominance.
Hezbollah has no air capability — it has no jets, few land-to-air missiles to shoot down Israeli jets and no apparent weapons to shoot down Israeli drones.
Right now, Israel is using drones to destroy the leadership of Hezbollah. They have killed as many as 25 of Hezbollah's senior command.
All of this has wreaked chaos on Hezbollah. To begin with, Israel's use of explosive devices in pagers killed some of Hezbollah's senior command.
This has made it almost impossible for Hezbollah's military command to communicate.
Now, Israel is picking off one Hezbollah leader, or weapons facility, after another. At nights here you hear the constant low-level hum of drones. Sometimes, when it appears two or three drones hover over a target, the sound reaches a crescendo.
That usually means that Israel has decided on a target — a massive explosion often follows.
Against this, Hezbollah has no defence. It is unable to shoot down any of these drones which are therefore presenting a round-the-clock threat.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN general assembly last month. (Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)
Netanyahu's power grows
Added to this is the political element underwriting all of this. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now all-powerful, perhaps the most powerful and emboldened Israeli leader ever.
The view in Israel is that given the atrocities Hamas committed on a year ago today that Israel can cite that as authority to do whatever it wants in the name of "self defence." Perhaps the most common phrase among many world leaders wanting to support Israel at the moment is that "Israel has a right to self defence."
But Israel, and these leaders, are certainly taking "self defence" to a new level and well beyond the borders of Israel — in recent days Israel has been bombing Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, northern Lebanon, the Bek'aa Valley, parts of central Beirut and the southern suburbs of Lebanon.
Israel has ordered people from about 135 towns in Lebanon to evacuate.
Added to this list may soon be Iran — many people in Israel and the Arab world expect Israel will respond shortly to Iran's missile attack on Israel last week with a direct attack on Iran.
Hezbollah's new leader 'lost contact'
Another crisis for Hezbollah is that its leadership is uncertain — Hassan Nasrallah had towered over Hezbollah, building it from a Shia militia into the strongest non-state army in the world.
After he was killed in an Israeli air strike, Hashem Safieddine emerged as the likely successor.
Within two days he, too, was targeted by Israel in another air strike. Now he's missing — Hezbollah says it has "lost contact" with him.
Hezbollah says it has "lost contact" with new leader Hashem Safieddine, pictured in June. (AP: Bilal Hussein)
He may well be dead — perhaps he's buried under rubble. Perhaps Hezbollah knows he's dead and does not want to admit that at a time when they are suffering so many losses.
Or perhaps he is alive but does not want Israel to know that so he doesn't continue to be hunted.
Rarely has the world seen such a sustained bombing campaign as Israel is executing now. And Netanyahu knows that the major supplier of the bombs, the United States, may give lip service to the need for moderation, or a ceasefire, but will not cut supplies of bombs.
Israel has military supremacy in the Middle East at the moment and clearly wants to push ahead with its attacks as it senses that its enemies are on the run.
But Israel needs to ask itself a longer term question: having reduced Gaza to essentially an unliveable enclave, destroyed significant parts of Beirut and southern Lebanon, displaced 1.2 million Lebanese and now on the verge of a war with Iran, how does it see its role in this neighbourhood in years to come?
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