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JERUSALEM - The war in Lebanon has badly bruised the Israeli government and boosted Hezbollah's standing
By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 14, 4:47 PM ET

JERUSALEM - The war in Lebanon has badly bruised the Israeli government and boosted Hezbollah's standing in the Arab world. Israel says it has made some gains — the Lebanese army, backed by international troops, is to take control of south Lebanon.

But as the guns fall silent, an ominous question lingers over the Jewish state: Is another war with Hezbollah or even its sponsor Iran just around the corner?

A cease-fire that took effect Monday seeks to end the 34-day conflict in which the mightiest army in the Middle East was fought to a virtual draw by a small band of Shiite guerrillas.

Developments on the ground will determine the war's ultimate winners and losers — whether Hezbollah will be pushed back from Israel's border and eventually disarmed, whether Israel will be able to prevent Iran and Syria from funneling weapons to Lebanese guerrillas, whether Islamic radicals everywhere will be propped up by Hezbollah's successes.

For now, neither side can truly declare victory. Hezbollah's ability to withstand more than a month of Israel's punishing assaults while firing an uninterrupted stream of more than 4,000 rockets has given its fighters heroic status on Arab and Muslim streets.

"The biggest thing here is that Hezbollah and their small force has been able to restore the dignity of the Arabs. That is the bottom line," said Timur Goksel, an American University of Beirut professor who spent more than two decades as a senior U.N. adviser in south Lebanon.

But having joined the Lebanese government, the guerrillas are likely to pay a steep political price for provoking Israel's wrath. On July 12, they captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others in a daring cross-border raid, sparking a war that killed more than 790 Lebanese and left much of that country in shambles.

And even if Israel achieves its goal of pushing Hezbollah away from its border, it, too, has suffered great losses, with 155 dead and hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes or seek refuge in bomb shelters.

Israel failed to achieve its original goal of destroying Hezbollah or the group's fearsome array of Iranian- and Syrian-provided rockets.

Israeli critics are warning that Israel's deterrence may have suffered a life-threatening blow, giving archenemy Iran an opening to pursue its stated goal of destroying Israel.

"A couple thousand Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters kept Israel at bay for over a month," said Chuck Freilich, Israel's former deputy National Security Adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. "This now shows that irregular forces with Iranian support can be effective against a large and sophisticated conventional army."

If Israel can't deal effectively with Hezbollah now, some Israelis ask, what's going to happen down the road when Iran sends even more lethal weapons? For many, the future looks scary.

Hezbollah's rocket barrage, threatening the entire northern third of Israel, shattered taboos and seemed to signal that the Jewish state's survival is no longer a given.

In a speech Monday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the cease-fire deal had eliminated Hezbollah's "state within a state" in Lebanon, and restored the Lebanese government's sovereignty in the south.

That's no small achievement for Israel, which has been trying in vain for six years — ever since it withdrew from south Lebanon following an 18-year occupation — to get Lebanon to implement a U.N. resolution calling for the central government to take control of the whole country.

During his speech, however, Olmert acknowledged "deficiencies" in the way the war was conducted, and promised to "do better" in the next war. His government is coming under intense criticism for failing to break Hezbollah or secure the release of the two kidnapped soldiers — and for holding off on a massive land invasion that many Israelis believed was necessary to win the war.

That invasion finally came last weekend in the war's 11th hour, when the U.N. Security Council was about to approve a cease-fire deal.

In the two days between the council's vote and the start of the cease-fire on Monday, 31 Israeli soldiers, including the son of famed Israeli novelist David Grossman, were killed in Lebanon. The last-minute push failed to achieve its goal of securing the territory up to the Litani River, about 18 miles north of the Israeli border.

Officials said the push was necessary to place troops in a better position in case the cease-fire collapsed. But Aluf Benn, political correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper, said the government was trying "to correct some of the bad impression" it made from previous military failures.

The war has called the survival of Olmert's government into question. And Israel's experience with unilateral withdrawals — from Lebanon in 2000 and from the Gaza Strip last year — has all but ended Olmert's plans to leave the West Bank as a way of securing a long-term Jewish majority for Israel.

Lebanon was Israel's second front in its battle against Islamic militants. The army has been pounding Gaza since June 25, when Hamas-linked militants seized an Israeli soldier in a separate cross-border raid.

For now, the main goal of Israel, Lebanon and the international community is to make the Lebanon cease-fire stick — a huge challenge because Hezbollah insists Israeli soldiers are legitimate targets until they leave, but Israel says it won't leave until the Lebanese army deploys.
___ Steven Gutkin is AP's bureau chief in Jerusalem.