TEL AVIV, Israel — As prime minister, Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000, ending a protracted occupation that lasted nearly two decades and was a source of fierce debate inside Israel.
In an interview with NPR, Barak said he knew it was the right decision many years earlier when he was still a soldier who had experienced fighting in Lebanon.
"I'm sometimes asked, 'Why did you pull out the soldiers from the (Lebanon) security zone in 2000?' I say the right question is not why I did it in 2000, why was it not done 15 years earlier," Barak, now 84, said at his home in a Tel Aviv high-rise with a commanding view of the Mediterranean.
"For me, it was a stretched-out tragedy that had no explanation in a rational way as to why we were there," he said.
Today, a large Israeli military force is once again in southern Lebanon as part of its most expansive operation since the pullout 26 years ago. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli troops are there to quell Hezbollah fire on Israeli civilians in northern Israel.
"We will not allow fire to be directed at our territory," Netanyahu told his Cabinet this week. "We are striking them very forcefully, and we know that Hezbollah is in retreat."
The Hezbollah attacks began in early March as a show of support for its patron, Iran, which had just come under a joint attack from the United States and Israel.
The wars in Lebanon and Iran are closely linked. Iran cited the Israeli attacks in Lebanon as the reason it fired ballistic missiles at Israel on Sunday and Monday. Israel responded with airstrikes on Iran.
All of this is part of increased fighting in recent days despite officially declared ceasefires in both wars. President Trump has told Netanyahu to stop, or at least scale back attacks in Lebanon, because it's making it harder to reach a deal with Iran.
There's no indication of how long the Israelis may stay in Lebanon this time. The country has already lost nearly 30 soldiers and has committed a large force that appears to be 15 miles or so inside Lebanon.
Barak says he understands Israel's need to stop Hezbollah attacks, but argues it would again be a mistake for Israeli forces to stay for long.
"There is no way to completely (defeat Hezbollah) without conquering the whole of Lebanon, which is totally impractical," Barak said.
He argues that a limited military operation should be tied to a "political process coordinated with the government of Lebanon and others, in order to change the situation."
Israeli and Lebanese government delegations met in Washington last week and announced the renewal of an April ceasefire that had completely collapsed. However, the new deal shows no signs of taking hold.
In a further complication, Iran says there must be a ceasefire in both Lebanon and Iran before it will make any agreements with the U.S.
The recurring debate over Lebanon
Barak's withdrawal from Lebanon 26 years ago had universal support outside of Israel, but was part of a bitter debate at home.
Some Israelis strongly supported the pullout, saying Israel needed to extract itself from a quagmire. A group called the Four Mothers — led by the mothers of Israeli soldiers — organized mass rallies calling for a pullout.
However, hawkish Israelis said a withdrawal would only boost Hezbollah's stature and lead to additional cross-border attacks in the future.
"There was huge resistance in the (Israeli) army to the pullout," recalled Barak, who is Israel's most decorated soldier, a distinction he shares with two others. "I was the commander of these generals just a few years earlier. I knew most of them for decades. But I knew that I was doing the right thing."
That debate over a military presence in Lebanon carries on to this day. Ongoing polls show a solid majority support the Israeli military presence in Lebanon.
Opponents of the Israeli operation include journalist Haim Har-Zahav, author of the book Lebanon: The Lost War and a military veteran who fought in Lebanon.
Now his teenage daughter is joining the Israeli military as part of the mandatory two-year service required of most women (men serve three years).
"The soldiers — our sons and daughters — will not ask their commanders 'why,' just as we didn't," he wrote in the Haaretz newspaper last week. "We are the ones who must save our children from a fate similar to that of our generation."
Har-Zahav said the Israeli public needs to be more demanding of the country's political and military leaders for the reason troops are again in Lebanon.
"Here's a spoiler: they don't know the rationale, because there is none," he wrote. "And when there is no rationale, even they must admit that the occupation of southern Lebanon is complete folly that contributes nothing to Israel's security."
Hezbollah rejects ceasefire
Hezbollah has been weakened by repeated Israeli blows the past few years, but it is still able to fight. The group was not included in the recent Washington talks and says the agreement is tantamount to surrender because it calls on the militant group to halt attacks and withdraw from southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem called the deal "absurd, humiliating and insulting."
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says the military will remain in southern Lebanon, part of Israeli operations on multiple fronts.
Israeli troops hold more than 60% of the territory in Gaza and carry out frequent strikes against Hamas. Israeli forces also clash regularly with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli troops are still holding territory they seized in Syria last year. Also, the Israeli military has closely coordinated attacks with the U.S. in the war in Iran.
Meanwhile, Barak noted that keeping troops on extended missions is always risky because conditions change rapidly in combat.
When Israel first battled Hezbollah in the 1980s, the militant group was new and inexperienced. It didn't understand Israeli capabilities, like night-vision equipment that allowed Israeli troops to see Hezbollah fighters in the dark.
"We were killing them because we had infrared light and they couldn't understand this," he said.
But Hezbollah quickly caught on and learned many other lessons as well. The group figured out how to make roadside bombs that mimicked Israeli devices and were extremely hard to detect.
"Within two years, they were producing [roadside bombs] that looked exactly like ours," Barak said. "If you fight against an effective force, you improve."
In the latest round of combat, Hezbollah is employing fiber-optic drones that Israel has struggled to defend against.
When a Hezbollah militant launches these drones, they are attached to a fiber-optic cable that can stretch for several miles.
As the cable unspools, the drone operator gives commands to the drone via the cable, according to the Israeli military.
This is an older technology, akin to a landline telephone rather than a cellphone. But the Israelis cannot electronically jam the signal between the operator and the fiber-optic drones, as is the case with other drones. Several Israeli soldiers have been killed with these weapons.
Barak said some Israeli leaders may want to hold part of Lebanon indefinitely. He called this "a total delusion."
More than 3,600 Lebanese have been killed in the recent fighting, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. When the fighting is over, the United Nations will demand that Israel leave Lebanon, Barak said. More than 1 million people in Lebanon — a country of fewer than 6 million people — have fled the recent fighting and want to return home as soon as possible.
"These pictures of people fleeing, and then trying to come back, will be hard to explain," he said.
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