Warriors of God

by Nicholas Blanford

  The blast had killed Mazen instantly and thrown his body several feet into the adjacent field, far enough that it took several minutes for the villagers to find him. Ibrahim, who had been standing just a yard or two behind his older brother, was knocked unconscious by the explosion. His clothes were shredded, his body soaked in blood, and his flesh peppered with shrapnel.

  “He looked like a sieve,” his mother later recalled.

  Mohammed was also seriously injured. The explosion tore open the seven-year-old boy’s stomach, spilling his intestines onto the ground.

  The local residents had no doubt who was responsible for the bombing. Some farmers who had been working in their fields at the southern edge of the village when the bomb exploded said they had heard the faint sound of cheering coming from the SLA position on the hill outside Braasheet. The militiamen in the compound were hidden from the bomb site by a ridge and could not have seen what happened. Nonetheless, it seemed they knew what the sound of the blast entailed.

  Ordnance officers from the Irish UNIFIL battalion discovered that the explosion was in fact caused by four bombs, not one—serially linked explosive charges packed with steel ball bearings and fitted with antitampering mechanisms, hidden beneath fiberglass “rocks.”1 The bombs were typical antipersonnel charges employed by both Hezbollah and the Israeli army.

  The Israelis denied responsibility for the bombing. A Hezbollah “explosives specialist” appeared on the group’s Al-Manar television channel the next day, displaying fragments of the four bombs. He said that the wiring, the Israeli-manufactured battery, and parts of an antenna proved the bomb was the handiwork of the Israelis.

  Shortly after seven o’clock the next morning, Hezbollah fired twenty-five Katyusha rockets across the border, striking the town of Kiryat Shemona. Seven Israeli civilians were wounded, one of them seriously. Hours later, an Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded when Hezbollah fighters pounded an IDF compound with mortar shells.

  “It’s Time to Stop All the Blah Blah”

  With northern Israel struck by Hezbollah rockets twice in two weeks, Peres’s attempts to boost his security credentials in the run-up to the Israeli election slated for the end of May were looking increasingly frail. The rival Likud Party seized upon his apparent inability to stem the cross-border rocket fire, hammering home the fact that the dovish prime minister was weak on security.

  “It’s time to stop all the blah blah,” said Yitzhak Mordechai, the former head of the IDF’s Northern Command who was running as a Likud candidate in the election. “Peres has no message for the Israelis in the north who have to hide in their bomb shelters.”

  Hezbollah insisted that if Israel would only abide by the July 1993 understanding, there would be no need for rocket attacks on northern Israel. “The civilians on both sides must be considered neutral,” Nasrallah said in an interview on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television channel hours after Mazen Farhat’s death. “Not once did we start anything against civilians in north Palestine [Israel]. We were always on the defensive and reacting to what the [Israelis] have done against the civilians of south Lebanon and western Bekaa.”

  While Hezbollah’s cross-border rocket barrages were deliberately aimed at civilians and were guaranteed to generate headlines, Israel’s daily military activities were responsible for far more breaches of the July 1993 agreement to refrain from firing on civilians. According to a researcher with Amnesty International, between 1993 and 1996, the agreement was breached thirteen times by Hezbollah and 231 times by Israel.2

  With the general election in Israel only six weeks away, Peres was initially hesitant to take drastic measures in Lebanon. But urged on by frustrated military commanders and feeling a compulsion to prove his martial resolve to a skeptical public, Peres gave the order for a massive air and artillery assault, the largest military operation against Lebanon since the 1982 invasion.

  Destroying Infrastructure

  At around 10:15 A.M. on April 11, four Apache helicopter gunships unleashed a volley of missiles toward two Hezbollah buildings in the Haret Hreik district of southern Beirut. The sudden clap of thunder from the exploding missiles shook west Beirut, startling Lebanese into scanning the brilliant blue sky for indications of inclement weather. The blast was followed seconds later by the earsplitting clatter of heavy machine gun fire as Lebanese troops shot at the insectlike helicopters flying high above the city. People scurried for cover, ducking into shops while panicked motorists sounded the horn as their cars jerked through the dense morning traffic.

  The helicopter attack was the first Israeli air raid on the Lebanese capital since 1982, but it was not the only target that bright sunny morning.

  Israeli warplanes flew up the Bekaa Valley and struck a Hezbollah weapons depot near Baalbek before swinging south and bombing frontline villages in the Iqlim al-Touffah hills east of Sidon. A Lebanese army tank was destroyed on the coastal road south of Beirut when its crew vainly opened fire at low-flying jets. The electricity plant at Jiyah on the coast midway between Beirut and Sidon was attacked by helicopters. Several civilians were killed and wounded when missiles smashed into a car and a crowded roadside café beside the electricity plant.

  Farther south, Israeli artillery gunners opened up along the entire front line, pounding areas facing the occupation zone, striking villages and remoter areas from which Hezbollah launched assaults on the occupation zone. Israeli gunboats imposed a blockade on Lebanon’s seaports, preventing docked ships from leaving and warning approaching vessels not to draw closer than fifteen miles from the coast.

  Hezbollah launched its counteroffensive shortly after 9:30 A.M. the next day, April 12, firing more than two dozen Katyusha rockets at Kiryat Shemona and at western Galilee in what the group said was just a “preliminary response.”

  The SLA-run Voice of the South radio station began issuing direct threats against towns and villages, initially warning residents of villages close to the sources of Katyusha fire that they had four hours to leave. By April 13, some ninety towns and villages, including Tyre and villages north of the Litani River, had been placed under threat.

  Hezbollah responded in similar fashion days later, broadcasting on its radio station in Arabic and Hebrew its own warnings to the Israelis to leave their homes in northern Israel or “face the consequences.”

  The SLA’s radioed warnings and Israeli bombardments spurred some four hundred thousand Lebanese civilians to flee their homes in the south for the relative safety of Beirut and other areas to the north. The coastal road north of Tyre, cutting through banana groves and orange orchards fragrant with spring blossom, was clogged with northbound traffic. Battered old Mercedes and rusting Volvos sagged on their suspensions beneath the weight of entire families squashed inside, roofs piled high with bundled household goods, suitcases, and bags. Some stopped in Sidon, midway between Beirut and Tyre, fanning out in the city, filling schools and empty houses.

  Yet many residents chose to remain in the south, either having nowhere else to go or refusing to flee the Israeli offensive. Thousands of people simply headed to the nearest UNIFIL position, hoping that the pale blue UN flag would afford them protection from the artillery shells and aerial bombs striking their villages. By the end of the first week of the so-called “Grapes of Wrath” offensive, UNIFIL was hosting some nine thousand civilians.

  Israeli jets and helicopters returned to Beirut for five days, bombing targets in the southern suburbs. The jets floated high above the city, sunlight glinting off their silver wings. On the seafront corniche, an armored personnel carrier raced up and down, its crew of soldiers taking turns to blast away with a heavy machine gun at helicopters hanging above the southern suburbs. A crowd of curious onlookers stood silently watching the scene as if it was nothing more threatening than street theater. The helicopters released some flares and disappeared into the blue sky.

  On day four, Israeli jets bombed the electricity switching station at Jamhour in the hills above Beirut. The next da
y, a power station in Bsalim, north of the capital, was struck, a dense black cloud of smoke casting a pall in the deep blue evening sky. The attacks on the power stations marked a qualitatively new step in Israeli actions against Lebanon. Grapes of Wrath initially appeared to be a rerun, albeit on a larger scale, of Operation Accountability three years earlier. But it was evident that destroying infrastructure was a key component of the 1996 operation. Dozens of roads and bridges were targeted throughout the south. The targeting of infrastructure sent a clear message to the Lebanese government: it could either resist or rebuild, but it could not do both.

  Running the Gauntlet

  On April 17, day six, the Israelis tightened their blockade on the south when navy gunboats stationed off Sidon began shelling the coastal road at the northern approach to the port town. The coastal road was the main route connecting the south to Beirut, used by northbound refugees to escape the fighting and by southbound emergency relief columns. While vehicles traveling north were generally left unmolested, the Israelis began firing at traffic moving south. Some motorists decided to risk the half-mile dash along the exposed stretch of road that ran alongside the sandy beach—the Israelis generally fired only one aimed round before the targeted vehicle reached the safety of the bridge over the Awali River at the entrance to Sidon.

  Running the gauntlet for the first time was a stomach-tightening experience. A Lebanese soldier at a checkpoint on the coastal road north of Sidon warned us that the Israelis were shelling the road ahead and that we would be proceeding at our own risk. We gingerly drove to an abandoned Syrian army checkpoint at the beginning of the open road. Three Israeli gunboats were clearly visible riding the swell a few miles offshore. A dilapidated red Mercedes taxi roared past, the driver’s body hunched over the steering wheel, a look of grim determination on his face. As the Mercedes rounded a wide bend and vanished from sight, a puff of black smoke blossomed from one of the gunboats squatting on the horizon. Moments later, we heard an explosion and saw a column of smoke rising beyond the corner where the taxi disappeared. There was no immediate way of knowing whether the driver had escaped unharmed.

  We decided to take our chances; the story, after all, lay ahead, not behind us. Gunning the engine of the Range Rover, the driver stamped down hard on the accelerator. Again we saw that silent, harmless-looking puff of smoke billow from a gunboat, and we stiffened for the arrival of the shell. I had counted to five when the shell exploded a few yards behind us on the side of the road, throwing up dust and stones, the sound of the blast muted by the racing engine of the Range Rover. A crowd of spectators awaited us at the Awali bridge, some sitting on plastic seats, munching on sandwiches or sipping tiny plastic cups of coffee, watching the drama along the seafront. A television crew filmed our approach. The crowd cheered and yelled thanks to God for our safety.

  “A Limited Operation”

  Every type of combat aircraft possessed by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) was employed during the operation, from F-16s to Apache helicopter gunships. UAVs hunted for sources of Katyusha fire, and F-16s, fitted with up to three external fuel tanks for lengthy loitering, circled in Lebanese skies awaiting intelligence on freshly discovered targets.

  The IAF enjoyed unhindered dominance of Lebanese airspace. Hezbollah’s limited numbers of SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles posed little threat to Israel’s well-protected, flare-spewing helicopters and jets. Indeed, for the Israeli aircrews, Grapes of Wrath represented a useful opportunity to gain combat experience at almost no risk. “As this was not a real war but a limited operation, we used all types of aircraft to give the younger pilots the chance to get some combat experience,” Major General Herzl Bodinger, the head of the IAF, said. The large number of sorties flown around the clock meant “most pilots have had the chance to drop ordnance.”3

  During the operation, the IAF carried out some 2,350 air sorties, including 600 raids, and artillery units fired around 25,000 shells into Lebanon, killing some 160 people and causing up to $700 million in direct damages. Yet, as in 1993, Israel underestimated the tolerance of the Lebanese for hardship and suffering, and failed to foresee that bombing villages and infrastructure and uprooting half a million people from their homes would turn the Lebanese against Israel, not Hezbollah. Indeed, Hezbollah’s popularity was never higher than during those two hot, bloody weeks. Even Christians, who tended to regard Hezbollah with unease, volunteered to help care for Shia refugees from the south in schools in east Beirut and openly donated money to the “resistance.”

  Hezbollah’s objective during Grapes of Wrath was to maintain a barrage of Katyushas into Israel regardless of Israeli efforts to counter the rocket attacks and to be ready for a possible ground invasion. The damage caused by the rocket salvos was limited, certainly in comparison to the devastation wreaked on Lebanon by the Israeli military. But the Israelis had stated that their goal was to end the cross-border rocket attacks; therefore, each Katyusha that struck a town in northern Israel helped create an impression that the operation was not succeeding. Hezbollah had learned from the experience of Operation Accountability three years earlier and was better prepared to deal with Israel’s latest offensive.

  “In fact, July 1993 was a very good lesson for us as far as confronting this kind of aggression is concerned,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, “because we pinpointed our strengths and weaknesses at the beginning of the war, and were therefore ready when the confrontation began.”4 The Israelis estimated that Hezbollah fired 746 Katyushas during the sixteen-day operation, around 80 percent of them striking northern Israel.

  “Too Soon to Negotiate”

  It was evident as the campaign progressed that the Israelis had once again woefully overestimated the ability of the Lebanese government to intercede against Hezbollah. Rafik Hariri, the prime minister, would have welcomed at the very least a respite in the bitter guerrilla war in the south that constantly threatened his reconstruction efforts. In a signal of their annoyance with Iran, Hariri and Fares Boueiz, the foreign minister, pointedly refused to meet Mohammed Kazem al-Khonsari, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, when he visited Beirut during the offensive.

  Yet, grumbling and diplomatic snubs aside, Hariri and his government were beholden to Damascus, the true authority in Lebanon, and were powerless to curb Hezbollah. Hariri could do little more than embark upon a diplomatic campaign, touring regional and foreign capitals to seek their support for bringing Israel’s assault to an end as soon as possible. And Assad, sitting in the safety of Damascus and quietly watching Israel’s punishing campaign unfold, had no intention of helping the Israelis by instructing Hezbollah to back down. Assad, perhaps more than the Israelis themselves, understood the limits of force, realizing that Israel’s offensive would founder if the Lebanese refused to succumb to Israeli bombs and diplomatic démarches from the Americans.

  In the opening week of Grapes of Wrath, the Israelis and the United States showed little inclination to reach a diplomatic solution. The Lebanese government said it was willing to return to the secret understandings of 1993. But Ehud Barak, the Israeli foreign minister, said negotiations could begin only if Beirut made it “impossible” for Katyushas to be fired into Israel.

  The French proposed formalizing the July 1993 understanding by putting it into writing. Beirut and Damascus were sympathetic to the idea, but the Israelis were dismissive—Peres said, “it’s too soon to negotiate.”

  The United States pitched a more ambitious initiative in which a cease-fire would herald a nine-month period of calm during which Hezbollah would be disarmed. If there were no attacks during the nine-month time frame, then negotiations would begin on an Israeli pullout from south Lebanon. However, the U.S. proposal was totally unacceptable to Syria, which relied on Hezbollah’s resistance campaign to gain leverage against the Israelis in the peace process. Assad chose to play for time and see what might yet unfold on the ground in south Lebanon.

  He would not have long to wait. For the turning point in the Grapes of Wra
th campaign came in the early afternoon of day eight, Thursday, April 18.

  1:50 P.M. APRIL 18, 1996

  Three Apache helicopter gunships were strung out in a line south of the Tyre peninsula, facing inland and hovering just below the thick gray mantle of cloud. The beat of their rotor blades was barely audible above the breeze as the helicopters hung motionless in the air, like patient yet malevolent insects awaiting prey.

  I was hoping to hitch a ride with the next UNIFIL relief convoy to visit the bombed villages south and east of the port town. While waiting for the latest convoy to return to base in Tyre, I passed the time by strolling over to the southern edge of the town, gazing southward along the coastline toward the gentle hills on the horizon that mark the border with Israel.

  There was a faint scent of orange blossom on the breeze from the coastal orchards south of Tyre. The Grapes of Wrath operation coincided with the last days of the spring blooming. The tiny cream-colored flowers perfumed the coastal road that cut through the belt of orchards between Sidon and Tyre, momentarily diverting our attention from the fraught drive. Since then, the scent of orange blossom in the spring has become, in my mind, indelibly linked to April 1996, the aroma wafting from the orchards triggering an olfactory memory of the violence and carnage of Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon that month.

  A tiny high-pitched whine from far above, like a distant scooter struggling up a hill, pierced the sigh of the sea breeze. It was an Israeli UAV, a reconnaissance drone, an ineluctable and sinister presence in the skies over south Lebanon. Generally, drones flew too high to be spotted with the naked eye, but this one was clearly visible, its wide wingspan lending it the appearance of a crucifix silhouetted against the cloud. It buzzed purposefully over Tyre’s high-rises and the Roman hippodrome and toward the low-lying hills to the southeast.