alternatehistory.com

The title is pretty self-explanatory; what does it take to accomplish it and what are the butterflies?

I don't see an Israeli victory as especially hard to bring about. IOTL, as good as they were, Hezbollah to a large extent had caught lightning in a bottle and had an awful lot of lucky breaks. They had a long string of spectacular intelligence successes that was unlikely to be repeated, managed to land a lot of lucky missile strikes, benefited from timely UN intervention (particularly in terms of reports on troop movements), and happened upon an egregiously unprepared IDF (i.e. the direct torpedo hit from a pocket sub on one of the Israeli navy's capitol ships because their radar system was turned off).

None of this doesn't mean that Hez didn't earn every bit of its victory in the summer of '06, because obviously it did (man for man it was certainly better than the IDF, with much better training, discipline, and motivation), but the odds were heavily against it. Israeli forces fought very hard and were better armed, their air force dropped tons of bombs, they significantly outnumbered the Shiite militia's regulars, and Israel had the moral and military support of the United States (and to a lesser extent the majority of the free world). It wouldn't have taken that much for Israel to defeat Hezbollah, for the Second Lebanon War to have ended in a bloody stalemate, or for Hez' victory to have been extremely Pyrrhic. If all else failed the IAF could simply have decided to carpet-bomb Lebanon back to the Cro-Magnon era a la Dresden or even nuked it (granted, that would provoke even more international outrage than actually happened, if not the third world war) if they decided to throw all concern for civilian casualties out the window (unlikely, but never impossible in total war).

Assuming Israel gets this victory, what are some possible butterflies?

--Riding a wave of popularity, PM Ehud Olmert finds it much easier domestically to expel the "settlements" and hand over large portions of the Disputed Territories to the Arabs.

--Hamas/Fatah/Islamic Jihad/Al Aqsa, having witnessed the vanquishing of their brothers in the struggle to the north, are seized with dejection and do not have the morale to mount significant attacks on the Jewish state for a while.

--A jubilant Israeli public and government go on an out-of-control spending spree, resulting in a Greece or Spain-like national bankruptcy and economic meltdown. The massive protests against the cost of living in Israel that took place last summer happen a lot earlier, and are much more violent. In some places there is a near civil-war.

--With Israeli society now being torn apart, the Arabs launch a Third Intifada.

Obviously this is all speculation but I wanted to see what you think.
Top