Israeli Soldiers Find a Tenacious Foe in Hezbollah

Moving at the front of an advancing infantry platoon, he is always on the lookout for traps and hiding places, he said during an interview at a base in Shomera, near the border, hours after leaving a village in southern Lebanon. He described one bunker near the Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras that was more than 25 feet deep and contained a network of tunnels linking several large storage rooms and multiple entrances and exits. He said it was equipped with a camera at the entrance, linked to a monitor below to help Hezbollah fighters ambush Israeli soldiers.

Israeli soldiers and commanders are quick to point out that Israel is winning by most traditional measures, such as equipment destroyed, territory seized and casualties -- 61 Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting, along with about 450 Hezbollah fighters, by Israel's count. But in comments that echo those of earlier guerrilla conflicts, they also acknowledge that the two sides have different standards of success. "All they have to do is survive and some people will say they won," one soldier said in a recent interview near the Israeli border town of Avivim.

First Sgt. Dekel Peled, who suffered cuts to his head and hands in a Lebanese village 10 days ago when a mortar shell struck a house in which he was waiting, said he is fighting in a "a war that no one can be mentally prepared for."

He was interviewed at an army-run hotel in Kiryat Shemona this week as he returned to his unit, though he still can't fight because he lost feeling in his trigger finger.

"Some days it seems like it is going to be over tomorrow, and on other days I get the impression it can last another month," he said.

Few said they had experienced sustained firefights. Rather, they said, there were long hours of edgy anticipation, and short bursts of intense combat. The most feared weapons in Hezbollah's arsenal, they said, are the antitank missiles that have been responsible for dozens of Israeli casualties, blasting through the armor of the most advanced Merkava tanks or at infantry soldiers maneuvering on foot.

Cpl. Eviatar Shalev, 19, described spotting a Hezbollah fighter standing 200 yards away and aiming a shoulder-fired missile at the house where he was posted. "He was already in the firing position, so we called up a combat helicopter," Shalev said. "We entered the inner-most part of the house. We put on all of our defensive gear and we prayed. When you are in there, you can't stop imagining a red spot on your window."

The fighter was killed by an Israeli airstrike before he could shoot the missile, Shalev said in an interview at the hotel in Kiryat Shemona.

Israeli commanders say Hezbollah has obtained its sophisticated weaponry from its main backers, Syria and Iran. "Some have Arabic inscriptions on them, some Iranian, some Russian," said Maj. Gen Udi Adam, commander of Israel's northern forces, in a recent briefing for reporters. "The ones with Russian on them come from Syria," he added.

Several soldiers said they felt the army should be striking harder at Hezbollah but was being held back by concern for civilian casualties. Lt. Col. Svika Nezer, the commander of an artillery battery a few miles outside Kiryat Shemona, said his unit was operating at about 20 percent of its firepower.

"We could do much, much more. But the orders we get are limited," said Nezer, a reservist who is a lawyer in civilian life.

Among the main challenges facing Israeli soldiers, they say, is that Hezbollah chooses to fight in and among civilian centers, making it difficult to target its fighters without killing bystanders. Lebanese officials and human rights organizations have criticized Israel for what they term indiscriminate bombing, but commanders say that, if anything, they err on the side of caution when deciding whom to shoot.

"There have been many times when we let go someone whom we knew was a terrorist because we are not sure we could take them down safely," Adam said. "Meanwhile, they try to kill as many of our civilians as they can."

Lt. Itamar Abo, 20, on his way back to the front after a weekend at home in the northern town of Tzfat, said his friends and family grilled him throughout his time off about when the fighting would end and the rocket barrage would stop.

"When a Katyusha falls on somebody's house, it's hard to tell them this is going well. They keep saying, Please get it over with. I don't know what to tell them," he said. "We have to do what we are doing, and I think it is helping, but I also think that no matter what, when this war is over, the threat will still be there, right on our border."

Seated nearby, Cpl. Shai Kaplan, 19, was blunt. "They are experts at deception. Everyone will think they won no matter what. That's how you win when there's a few thousand of you and 50,000 of us," he said. "The more of them we kill, the more of them who are generated. Unfortunately, this is a lost war."

Special correspondent Tal Zipper contributed to this report.