Druze

Most IDF companies sat on the border waiting for the full advance into Lebanon for days, then they'd finally get their orders only to have them rescinded minutes before deploying. This indescision and back and forth lasted until the last 48 hours till Israel made a smalll symbolic push to the Litani with a very limited amount of soldiers.

When I came across the border back into Israel after the war I was deeply suprised that many full regiments never went in and spent the whole war pretty much throwing pebbles at one another and didn't even cross north.

The political leadership and its Air Force oriented Chief of Staff made horrible mistakes.

Rather then awe Lebanon with immediate airstrikes on their National airport, bridges, and power facilities, an immediate force could have pushed straight to the Litani and clean up crews could have followed immediately to locate tunnels, weapons caches, and secure the area which would have stopped nearly all of the rocket attacks on Israel. But Top command decided they could stop the rockets from the air instead of from the ground so Hezbollah was able to launch their crude rockets up until the third to last day of the war. Big mistake.

The fact that IDF soldiers deep behind enemy lines had to actually hydrate themselves by taking water canteens from Dead Hezbollah fighters shows clearly that the top commanders knew all along the political leadership was not willing and did not plan for a full scale assault. It was also a source of humour among many soldiers returning with Hezbollah flags and jokingly saying that if it hadn't been for those twenty Hezbollah fighters that they got into a firefight with they would have died of thirst!!!!

I have some video from my unit as we crossed back that I am still trying to get back from military censors. It is pretty much a twenty minute collage of clips of joke on the government, some very funny such as one commander saying that if Ariel Sharon had woken up today and saw how Olmert had handled the war he'd force his doctor to re-induce his coma at gunpoint. Because mention was made in the video of the tunnel system my battalion discovered those bastards took my memory card away and I'm still waiting to get it back.