THE LEBANESE WAR OF 2006: REASONS AND CONSEQUENCES

Year 2007, Volume: 12 Issue: 1, 109 - 122, 01.04.2007

Özlem Tür

Abstract

On 12 July 2006, Hizballah attacked an Israeli army convoy and killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, called the attack an ‘act of war’. The event was followed by a 33-day long war between Israel and Lebanon, called as the ‘July War’ Harb Tammuz , leaving 1,191 dead and several wounded in Lebanon and killing 119 soldiers and 43 civilians in Israel. The war left Lebanon devastated as the country was continuously bombed by Israeli aircraft, its vital infrastructure was destroyed and an air and sea blockade was imposed by Israel to stop any military deployments for Hizballah. The conflict ended on 14 August 2006, with the adoption of the UN Resolution 1701. This article aims at looking at the reasons of this war and analyzing its consequences. It argues how the two sides of the conflict both Hizballah by capturing the soldiers and Israel by such a heavy retaliation have misread each other’s domestic politics as well as the regional dynamics and miscalculated the consequences of their attacks.