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During the 2006 Lebanon War, Operation Sharp and Smooth (Template:Lang-he), also known as the Baalbek operation, was an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid on hospital in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley which was also a Hezbollah headquarter. According to inquiries by Human Rights Watch and Lebanese authorities 16 Lebanese residents, most of them "civilians", were killed. According to IDF 10 Hezbollah "terrorists" were killed. All of them were armed and wearing bulletproof vests. Five Lebanese civilians were abducted to Israel but released after three weeks. HRW acknowledged that some civilians killed in the operation were "collateral casualties to a legitimate Israeli military strike."

The operation

The operation began with at least five rapid air strikes. Approximately 200 elite commandos fast-roped from helicopters which previously refuelled over the Mediterranean Sea. The operation involved two commando units: Shaldag of the Israeli Air Force, and Sayeret Matkal of the IDF Branch of Intelligence (Aman).

According to the IDF ten "terrorists" were killed and five captured during a "precise surgical raid", that claimed no IDF or civilian casualties. The IDF claimed at first that the captives "were known Hizbullah gunmen." They were later identified as civilians and were released by IDF after 3 weeks.. According to Human Rights Watch and Lebanese authorities most of the fatalities were civilians.

Upon landing, the two units split up. The Sayeret Matkal unit proceeded to the Dar al-Hikma hospital, known for its connections to Hezbollah, in the Jamaliyah suburb of Ba'albek. The hospital was empty at the time. The patients had been transferred to other hospitals, or sent home four days earlier, in anticipation of an Israeli attack.

The Israeli force occupied the hospital. According to HRW one male nurse was killed and two security guards were wounded during the take-over. Two armed Hezbollah fighters were killed outside the hospital while engaging the Israelis.

A group of local residents were alarmed by the sound of fighting and assembled at the house of the local mukhtar. Two of the men were armed members of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) and a third was an unarmed member of the group. An Israeli helicopter fired a number of missiles at the group, killing all three LCP militants as well as three unarmed men. According to an assessment by Human Rights Watch the two armed militants were to be considered combatants and therefore legitimate targets. HRW further noted that the two combatants endangered the lives of the civilians by mixing with them. The unarmed men killed in the attack were faulted for mixing with combatants during an Israeli military operation. HRW thus considered them to be collateral casualties to a legitimate Israeli military strike.

A Syrian Kurdish family, working as agricultural workers, were hit by a missile, killing the parents and four children, aged 4 to 14. Surviving relatives denied any relationship with Hezbollah.

According to the investigation by Human Rights Watch 16 Lebanese residents were killed in the raid, of whom four were deemed combatants and a further two civilian members of Hezbollah or the Communist party. An official report by the Lebanese Interior Security Forces (ISF) confirm these numbers, although the names do not always match those supplied by HRW. Two of the victims were identified as belonging to Hezbollah but the Communist party members were not mentioned in the report. The report also contained the names of the 14 Lebanese wounded in the fighting.

The second Israeli unit swept through the al-Usaira neighborhood of Ba'albek, some five kilometers from the hospital. Apparently they were looking for persons related to Hassan Nasrallah, the General-Secretary of Hezbollah. The Israeli soldiers entered a house in the neighborhood and asked a shopkeeper if he was Hassan Nasrallah, which was his name, although he was unrelated to the Hezbollah leader. Nasrallah, his 14 year old son and five other civilians were kidnapped. The prisoners were allegedly beaten and threatened by IDF soldiers. The soldiers threatened to kill 14 year old Muhammad Nasrallah together with his father unless he told them who was in the resistance. The boy was released but the five adults were brought to Israel. The prisoners, two of whom were seniors, were detained for four days inside a bus.

The prisoners were subjected to repeated interrogations about their relationship to Hezbollah and its leader. On August 16, they were finally allowed to see a lawyer who brought a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to obtain their release. Instead of answering the petition the IDF released the five to UNIFIL, three weeks after being abducted. "We captured five people we thought were involved with Hezbollah," explained an Israeli official to New York Times. "Under questioning it turned out we were wrong. So we turned them over to the U.N." Haaretz wrote that "the release of the captives again raises questions about the real value of the operations of the special units". The IDF and the government had been quick to announce significant achievements immediately after the operations.

The precise target of the operation remains a mystery. The Jerusalem Post suggests that the IDF believed that the two captured soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were being treated there after their abduction and that raid’s purpose was to collect intelligence about their fate. Lebanese sources claimed that the target of the raid was Muhammad Yazbek, a well-known Hezbollah leader living in the area who had been accused by Israel of involvement in the capture of IDF Colonel (res.) Elhanan Tannenbaum in 2000. Yazbek however escaped unhurt. A spokesman for the IDF denied that the operation had a "specific target". Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz claimed that "the main goal" was to deliver a message to Hizbullah that the IDF "can operate deep inside Lebanon and wherever else we want to." According to Ami Pedahzur the raid was an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Hezbollah activists for "bargaining" purposes.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah mockingly commented the raid in Baalbek: "There were two landings near Baalbek and not in the heart of Baalbek. They stormed a hospital and threw a grenade. Pay attention to the great gain, to search for injured fighters who they didn’t capture during the battle. They weren't there, they kidnapped five civilians and they are hostages. This is intelligence, this is the Mossad?".Despite this the operation had a great psychological influence on Hezbollah leadership as attack was in the heart of their stronghold. As a consequence of the operation local commander of Bekaa area was dismissed. The movement on the roads was minimized and more energy was put on self defense.

According to an account published in Maariv a month after the war the IDF had learnt beforehand that the intended target of the operation would not be in place. The IDF however decided to go ahead with it for "propaganda purposes". The aim had been to obtain information about the fate of the abducted soldiers but in fact none was obtained. In spite of this it was marketed as a success story. The report was denied by the IDF.

Stratfor concluded in an analysis of the raid that Israel took large risks and allotted huge military resources in carrying out the raid "well in excess of its achievements." Former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon, a sharp critic of IDF conduct during the Lebanon war, questioned whether the raid was "justified in terms of risk, cost and benefit" and whether it was not simply "an adventure."

External Links

Video of the operation by IAF,

Sources

• Human Rights Watch (HRW), "Why They Died", Civilian Casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 War, September 2007
• Amnesty International (AI), Israel/Lebanon Deliberate destruction or "collateral damage"?, Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure, August 2006

References

1. HRW, pp.124-129
2. "כך התנהל מבצע הקומנדו בבעלבק". Retrieved February 19, 2012.
3. ^ "The Israeli secret services and the struggle against terrorism". p. 132. Retrieved February 19, 2012. Cite error: The named reference "peda" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
4. "כך התנהל מבצע הקומנדו בבעלבק". Retrieved February 19, 2012.
5. Avi Cohen (2 August 2006). "IDF: We'll control security zone by Thursday". Ynet.
6. HRW, pp. 126-127
7. ^ "Raid 'sends message' to Hizbullah". Jerusalem Post. 2006-08-02.
8. "Special Forces Raid in Baal-bek". ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES. 03/08/2006. Retrieved Dec 4 2011. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help) (Original link dead)
9. HRW, p. 124 and AI, p. 14
10. ^ HRW, pp. 192-193
11. ^ "تقرير أمني يقدّم المعلومات الرسمية عن إنزال بعلبك (A security report presents official information on the Ba'lbak landing)". al-Mustaqbal. Aug 3 2006. Retrieved Dec 28 2011. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
12. Andrew Lee Butters (Aug. 02, 2006). "Behind the Battle for Baalbek". Time. Retrieved June 1, 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. HRW, pp. 125-126
14. HRW, pp. 126-127
15. HRW, pp. 126-127
16. HRW, pp. 127-128
17. ^ Nir Hasson and Amos Harel (22/08/2006). "שלושה אנשי חיזבאללה נפגעו בהיתקלות עם כוח צה"ל בגזרה המערבית בלבנון (Three Hezbollah men were injured in clashes with IDF troops in the western sector in Lebanon)". Haaretz. Retrieved June 1, 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
18. KIFNER, John (August 23, 2006). "What's in a Name? Not, It Seems, a Leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-08-23.
19. HRW, pp. 128-130
20. Roee Nahmias (08.03.06). "Nasrallah: We'll bomb Tel Aviv if Beirut attacked". Yedioth Ahronoth. Retrieved Feb 9, 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
21. Ofer Shelach,Yoav Limor,Itay Katz (2007). שבויים בלבנון-Captive in Lebanon. Yediot Ahronot. p. 257.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
22. Amir Rappaport (15/09/2006). "הפעולה בבעל בק - לצרכי תעמולה (The operation in Baalbek – for propaganda purposes)". Ma'ariv. Retrieved Jan 23 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
23. "Lebanon: Israel's Strategic Raid on Baalbek". Stratfor. Aug 2, 2006. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
24. Ari Shavit (14.09.2006). "No way to go to war". Haaretz. Retrieved Jun 4 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

• 2006 Lebanon War