Warriors of God

by Nicholas Blanford

  Given the relative safety of air combat missions and the enormous experience gained, it is small wonder that Israeli air commanders were loath to abandon the occupation zone. After the loss of the vast expanse of the Sinai peninsula following the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Lebanon became the main training ground for the air force and a “paradise” for its combat pilots, wrote Gal Luft, a former IDF battalion commander in south Lebanon.5 “More: for over fifteen years, Israeli pilots gained the experience of launching pinpoint air strikes against real targets with live munitions. As a result, Israeli pilots have been among the most well-trained pilots in the world.”

  “Combat Proven”

  Besides providing military training and combat experience, south Lebanon represented a free testing range for Israel’s flourishing arms industry to try out new weapons and equipment. It came with the added bonus that new military gear could be marked as “combat proven,” a valuable marketing asset and one that many competitors could not share.

  “South Lebanon was a free laboratory,” says Timur Goksel. “It was an arms manufacturing man’s dream to have a laboratory like this one. The Israeli military industry always had an advantage over rivals because they could always claim that their weapons had been combat proven, from tanks to radio sets.”

  One of Israel’s combat-proven weapons, thought to have been developed and tested in secret in south Lebanon, was the Spike-ER (Extended Range) antitank missile, designed by Israel’s state-owned Rafael armaments company.

  In early 1998, rumors began to surface in south Lebanon of the existence of a new “mini–cruise missile” that could dodge trees and skirt hills before hitting its target. The first recorded sighting of this mysterious missile was in late February, when Finnish UNIFIL peacekeepers saw a projectile fired from a hilltop Israeli position. The missile exploded beside a civilian car on the edge of a frontline village about five miles away.

  In the middle of May, two identical missiles were fired from the same Israeli position at a squad of Amal fighters attempting to infiltrate the occupation zone. Finnish UNIFIL soldiers reported that the missiles sounded like a “jet plane” as they flew through the air. The first missile veered off course and exploded harmlessly. The second exploded beside the startled Amal fighters. “It came as a complete surprise to us,” one of the Amal guerrillas later grumbled to me. “We were more angry at having been spotted than at being wounded.”

  Twelve days later, Hussein Moqalled, twenty, and his seventeen-year-old brother Mohammed were walking through a valley on the edge of the zone beside Arab Salim village when a missile flew up the length of the valley, swung toward them at the last moment, and exploded. Mohammed took the brunt of the blast and died instantly. His brother was badly burned on the back but survived.

  In early July, a Norwegian UNIFIL soldier manning a checkpoint in the eastern sector of the zone saw a missile fired from an Israeli position. The missile left a long trail of white smoke, “had an unstable course and moved with a loud whizzing sound,” according to an internal UNIFIL report. The missile crashed into a hillside. The Israeli army admitted to UNIFIL that the missile had gone out of control, and they instructed the peacekeepers to stay away from the crash site. Israeli troops later collected the vital components, leaving a few scraps of twisted metal for the curious peacekeepers to examine.

  It was known at the time in arms industry circles that Rafael was developing a long-range antitank missile then code-named the NTD Dandy, or Long Spike, the daddy of a family of antitank missiles that included the short-range Gill and the medium-range Spike. Of the three, only the Gill had been declassified and supplied to Israeli troops deployed in south Lebanon. But the Gill’s range was only a mile and a half, too short to have been responsible for the attacks and sightings in south Lebanon.

  In early August 1998, after several months of investigation, I wrote a story for The Daily Star claiming that the mystery missile spotted in south Lebanon was almost certainly the NTD Dandy. It was against Lebanese law for The Daily Star to contact the Israel-based Rafael directly for comment, but a wire agency that picked up the story was told by a spokesman for the arms company that no such missile existed. The only antitank missile being manufactured by Rafael was the Gill, the spokesman said.

  Yet it was public knowledge that Rafael had signed in October 1997—ten months before the Daily Star story—an $800 million contract with the Polish government to upgrade the Polish army’s Huzar helicopters and fit them with NTD missiles. In other words, Rafael had sold to Poland a missile that the company’s spokesman almost a year later denied even existed.

  In November 1999, NTD Dandy was declassified and renamed Spike-ER, with a range of almost five miles, by which time it was thought responsible for the death of one Lebanese civilian and the wounding of at least four more. A year earlier, Rafael had formed the EuroSpike consortium with the German companies STN Atlas, Diehl, and Rheinmetall to produce, market, and sell the Spike family of antitank missiles to foreign governments. By 2011, EuroSpike had sold its missiles to numerous countries worldwide, including NATO members—the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Finland, the latter sale somewhat ironic, given that it was Finnish UNIFIL soldiers who first spotted the missile in south Lebanon more than a decade earlier.

  “The Great Terrain Robbery”

  Yet not all aspects of Israel’s control of the south were as exploitative as training air crews or as sinister as test-firing secret missiles.

  Early one morning in late October 1998, a Norwegian UNIFIL soldier chauffeured me to his battalion headquarters outside Ibl es-Saqi in the eastern sector of the occupation zone. As the UN jeep headed north out of the Lebanese border village of Kfar Kila, the driver gestured to the flat, fertile plain lying below us and asked, “Do you see those holes down there?”

  One hundred yards north of the border fence separating Lebanon from the square red-roofed houses of Metulla, Israel’s most northerly town, were several deep pits dug into the soft chocolate-colored soil. Bulldozers and trucks were parked nearby. “The Israelis are stealing the topsoil and taking it across the border,” the driver said.

  Seriously?

  “Yes. They’re building agricultural terraces. You can see them near the border. I’ll show you on the way out.”

  On the return journey that afternoon, the Norwegian driver paused briefly to allow me to snap a couple of photographs of the excavation site. Minutes later, while driving up the hill beside the border south of Kfar Kila, he indicated a large, newly built terrace of familiar rich brown earth supporting rows of recently planted apple tree saplings. The terraces were inside Israel, just a hundred yards from the border fence.

  UNIFIL headquarters said it was unaware of the theft of topsoil but would check. Phone calls to contacts living inside the occupation zone confirmed that the Israelis had been trucking soil across the border for two weeks.

  The story was bereft of details, but a short article ran on the front page of The Daily Star the next day, accompanied by a photo of the excavation site. “The Israelis may not be able to stay in southern Lebanon forever, but it appears that they have decided to take part of it home with them,” it began.

  As expected, there was no reaction the next day to this mini-scoop. The Daily Star was not widely read in Lebanon, and a small tale of soil theft could easily pass unnoticed. The story clearly needed a little promotional shove. Jamil Mroue, The Daily Star’s publisher, was consulted, and he agreed that the paper should approach Nabih Berri, the parliamentary speaker, with an offer to write a letter on his behalf protesting the theft of the topsoil. The letter could then be sent to the Beirut embassies of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the European Union, and the Arab League. Once Berri’s permission had been secured by The Daily Star’s parliamentary correspondent, we wrote, in his name, a communiqué denouncing Israel’s “appallingly cynical policy” of stealing Lebanese soil.

  A copy was printed and duly
dispatched to Berri’s office, where it was translated into Arabic and in turn delivered to the top embassies in Beirut and circulated to the Lebanese media.

  With the release of Berri’s statement, the story quickly gained momentum. The energetic Lebanese media, sniffing a good yarn, gave it extensive coverage, in some cases exaggerating the scale of the theft as well as misidentifying the location. Lebanese MPs showered the press with condemnatory statements, calls for international pressure against Israel, and increased resistance operations.

  Not to be outdone by Berri, Fares Boueiz, the foreign minister, issued his own letter of complaint to the UN and the European Union, warning that the soil theft threatened an “ecological disaster.”

  By now the Israeli media was picking up on this bizarre story, spurring a denial from Uri Lubrani, Israel’s Lebanon coordinator. “I wonder where all that came from,” he said. “We are used to such accusations as Israel bringing the Litani River to Lake Kinneret [the Sea of Galilee]. Now it is soil. Tomorrow they will say we are stealing their air.”

  But ten days after the original story broke, UNIFIL confirmed that Israeli civilians were indeed excavating and trucking Lebanese soil across the border to build agricultural terraces. Lebanese officials hollered in triumphant vindication, while Israeli officials backpedaled furiously. Tzvi Mazel, the Israeli ambassador to Cairo, cornered by Egyptian journalists, said in some desperation, “No, no, no, we don’t take this accusation from Lebanon. But we discovered yesterday and the day before yesterday that there are private sector contractors who are working with the Lebanese and they take the soil, not fertile or anything, but soil for building purposes.”

  Of course, the Israeli army was aware of the theft, as the site was located in a clearly visible location in view of Israeli military positions on both sides of the border. Furthermore, the trucks carting the soil away had to pass through border gates manned by Israeli troops.

  By now, the story had gone international: THE GREAT TERRAIN ROBBERY, quipped a headline in The Economist. With UNIFIL and the Israelis confirming the soil theft, the United States was stirred into action and asked Israel to halt the operation.

  The soil was never returned. The excavation pits were left untouched—ponds in winter, dusty holes in summer—while two miles to the southwest, a small piece of Lebanon continues to provide a firm foundation for a flourishing apple orchard in northern Israel.

  “It’s Just Like the Real Thing”

  Following the disastrous second half of 1997, Israeli troops spent more time in their hilltop compounds, which had been newly fortified with large quantities of reinforced concrete to protect against Hezbollah rocket and mortar barrages. Open areas within the compounds were roofed over, and soldiers were ordered to wear flak jackets and helmets at all times. All infantry troops preparing to deploy for duty in Lebanon were now required to pass a three-week course at a guerrilla warfare training school.

  Yet the number of resistance attacks increased steadily, almost all of them by Hezbollah. In May 1998, 150 separate assaults were recorded, the highest tally in a single month since 1985. In November, the figure rose to 160, and the total for the year reached nearly 1,500, almost double the 855 attacks recorded in 1997.

  Despite the soaring rate of attacks, the defensive measures undertaken by the Israelis helped to lower the rate of troop casualties. Twenty-three soldiers were killed in 1998 compared to 39 the previous year. However, SLA casualties nearly doubled, totaling 45 killed in action in 1998 compared to around 23 in 1997. The increase was due to the militia shouldering more of the frontline duties as their Israeli allies hunkered down in fortified compounds. In an attempt to stem the SLA’s declining morale, the militiamen were given a pay raise of $75, bringing the basic salary to $575 a month, while time on duty was cut from fifteen to twelve hours a month.

  On March 14, 1998, the newly formed multifaith Lebanese Resistance Brigades, the Saraya, staged its first attack, six months after Nasrallah had announced that Hezbollah would create, train, and direct a new resistance force composed of Lebanese volunteers from all sects. The date for the Saraya’s first operation—a few mortar rounds lobbed into three SLA outposts—commemorated the twentieth anniversary of Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon. In the months that followed, the Saraya kept up a steady trickle of attacks, all of them long-range mortar bombardments. Skeptics questioned whether the attacks really were carried out by the multifaith volunteers or by Hezbollah’s regulars, with the media department simply attributing credit to the Saraya.

  Nasrallah responded to the speculation, saying that the group was new and its fighters relatively inexperienced. “I can’t assign them operations deep in the occupied area. I will be risking their lives,” he said. “Some say there are no martyrs for the Saraya. Am I supposed to send a group of fighters and get them killed just to say there are martyrs in the Saraya?”6

  Perhaps in an attempt to scuttle such rumors, Hezbollah in November 1999 arranged a one-time press trip to a Saraya training session in the barren ochre-hued mountains east of Baalbek. Jolting up a dirt track in a minibus with the windows covered by tightly drawn black curtains, the reporters were dropped off in a rocky valley. A short walk deeper into the mountains revealed twenty-four Saraya fighters squatting on the ground. They were dressed in plain green combat uniforms and helmets, their faces smeared in thick green and black camouflage paint that made them all but unrecognizable.

  Carefully observed by seasoned Hezbollah instructors wearing camouflage uniforms and forage caps, the fighters took turns obliterating cardboard targets at the end of a makeshift firing range with an assortment of small arms, including AK-47s and light machine guns. Others fired rocket-propelled grenades at targets farther up the hillside: a loud blast, a tiny ball of light flitting up the rocky slope, a puff of gray smoke marking the impact, and an instant later the report of the exploding warhead echoing from the surrounding crags.

  Tires were set alight and the fighters ran through dense clouds of black smoke and crawled beneath barbed wire as instructors fired live rounds above their heads.

  “We have people from all over Lebanon: Sunnis, Christians, Shias, Druze, even Armenians,” said Mohammed, a burly veteran Hezbollah fighter accompanying the reporters.

  One of the Saraya militants, whose ponytail dangled incongruously from beneath his helmet, said he was a twenty-three-year-old university student who had participated in ten operations. Asked his religion, he paused.

  “I’m Lebanese,” he said.

  An even unlikelier figure was a forty-four-year-old Maronite surgeon who admitted that his family had no idea he spent weekends in south Lebanon fighting Israelis. “I tell them I’m going to France on business when I’m called up for service,” he said.

  The climax of the military display was a simulated ambush of an Israeli patrol. Four cardboard cutout figures were placed to one side of a track at the foot of a steep hill. Hezbollah men buried a roadside bomb beside the cardboard patrol while the Saraya fighters moved into position. To the rear, a pair of jeeps fitted with 106 mm recoilless rifles provided fire support.

  When the order to attack was given, the IED exploded in a huge sheet of flame, the heat sweeping over us seventy yards away. As the din of the explosion died away, the fighters opened up with machine guns and RPGs, shredding the cardboard soldiers in seconds.

  “It’s just like the real thing,” Mohammed beamed.

  The fire support team behind us sent recoilless rifle rounds zipping across the wadi while the hills rumbled to the rhythmic staccato beat of the heavy machine guns.

  “A Contest of Technology”

  With the bulk of Israeli soldiers lying low in their fortified compounds, Hezbollah was able to penetrate deep into the zone more frequently to plant IEDs and stage ambushes. More worrying for the Israelis, it became evident by mid-1998 that Hezbollah had developed a new, more powerful roadside bomb incorporating a more sophisticated means of detonation.

  For much of the 1990s, Hezbo
llah had relied on antipersonnel Claymore-style directional IEDs packed with steel ball bearings. But in 1998, Hezbollah introduced a new shaped-charge IED—an explosively formed projectile (EFP)—that could cut through the sides of armored vehicles like a knife through soft butter. The concept had been around for decades and had been exploited by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s. The EFP works on the same principle as an antitank warhead. The bomb consists of a tube packed with explosive with a concave metal (usually copper) plate fitted at one end. When the bomb is detonated, the explosive force turns the copper plate into a molten slug traveling at a speed of more than seven miles per second, which can punch through 120 mm of tank armor. The EFP is a direct-fire device—more like a missile than an area weapon like the Claymore—and can be detonated as far as two hundred yards from the targeted vehicle. Given the distances involved and the need for split-second timing, EFPs are usually fitted with passive infrared firing switches to achieve accurate detonation. When the target approaches the IED, the operator switches on the invisible infrared beam, similar to those found on elevator doors, by remote control or a command wire. The beam shoots across to a receptor on the other side of the path traveled by the targeted vehicle. When the beam is broken, the bomb explodes. The method allowed for a far more precise detonation than an operator watching the ambush site from a distance of three hundred or four hundred yards with his finger on a button. Hezbollah fitted the bombs inside their battle-proven fiberglass rocks filled with insulation foam, leaving holes for the infrared beam, and often planted them in stone walls or on cuttings at head height beside the road.