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Trying to figure out what Israel is doing is becoming a full-time occupation. Israel's war aims are fairly clear: They involve stopping the current rocket attacks and assuring that these attacks will not resume. They involve doing so with a minimum of casualties. They involve not being put in a position of occupying any more hostile territory and conducting counterinsurgency operations. All of these are understandable goals; the problem is whether they are compatible.
Ending rocket attacks means pushing Hezbollah back, but given the range of some of Hezbollah's missiles, this means the Israelis would have to push it way back. Indeed, given the distance, Hezbollah would have to be destroyed as a fighting force. And since counterinsurgency operations are out of the question, it has to be destroyed as a fighting force without exposing the Israel Defense Forces to the rigors of occupation. That means, as they used to say, it has to be "destroyed in detail."
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