Israel faces many hard questions

There will be many in the upper echelons of the United States and Israeli military elites this weekend who will be pondering the implications of the recent war in Lebanon. At the outset, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were intending to deliver a ‘‘short, sharp shock to the Hezbollah terrorists’’ and ‘‘smash their military capacity’’, according to one leading Israeli general.

From the moment Israel opened the campaign with the bombing of the ...