Israel Prepares Ground Offensive Into Lebanon

After a rocket attack on Haifa killed eight civilians and narrowly missed a fuel depot, the Israelis have decided to launch a ground offensive into Lebanon to take out Hezbollah rocket sites. They have mobilized a reserve infantry division for the new effort:

The IDF on Sunday mobilized a reserve infantry division in preparation for a possible ground incursion into south Lebanon, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The move was intended as the beginning of a new effort to push Katyusha rocket launching cells away from the Israel-Lebanon border.
The division was setting up command posts along the northern border, while tanks and armored personnel carriers were being transported northward.
A senior IAF officer revealed to the Post on Sunday afternoon that the IDF was using bunker-buster bombs to strike at senior Hizbullah officials in hiding throughout Beirut and Lebanon. According to the officer, several of the bunker hideouts were hidden under civilian parking lots.
The officer also said that the air force had encountered some resistance, including the firing of anti-aircraft shells at IAF aircraft.

The resistance comes from shoulder-launched SAMs, a not unexpected issue in this war. Israel has flown 2,000 sorties already and has not lost an airplane, at least not yet. Their sorties paid off overnight; five long-range rocket launch sites got hit and destroyed. Israel also killed “several” senior Hezbollah leaders in the region.
In Haifa, the news remained grim:

The names of two of the eight people killed in Haifa early Sunday by a Fajar rocket were released for publication on Sunday afternoon. Shlomi Mansora, 35, from Nahariya and Rafi Hazan, 30, from Haifa, died when the rocket hit a maintenance depot at the train station.
Hizbullah operatives fired a barrage of dozens of Katyushas and the more deadly Fajar missiles at the north, killing eight people. Just two hours later, a second barrage of rockets landed in Haifa’s port area and Nahariya.
A third barrage of rockets hit the Haifa area on Sunday afternoon. Nobody was wounded in the latest attack. Air raid sirens had sounded immediately before the Katyushas hit.

The IDF has to push the Hezbollah rocket launchers back in order to decrease the Israeli territory they can hit. Right now Hezbollah cannot easily get replacement rockets, but they obviously have a store from which they work. Israel cannot afford to wait until they run out of ammunition; they have to protect their citizens.
However, launching a ground offensive into Lebanon will get a response from Syria. The Jerusalem Post reports that Syria has also mobilized an infantry division and has moved them to the border. If Syria crosses over into Lebanon in support of Hezbollah, that will be a de facto declaration of war against Israel. Israel will have to decide whether to allow this escalation to occur or whether to back off.
Israel could beat Syria in a straight-up fight; even Damascus has to know that much. However, the question that Israel (and the US) has to answer is what Iran intends to do if that happens. Mahmoud Ahmandinejad has certainly made clear that he will support Syria if Syria is attacked. However, Iran has a big problem in delivering on that promise: 135,000 American troops between Iran and Syria. If Iran tries to resupply Syria, it has to do so through Iraq, and through the most hostile area of Iraq in the Kurdish regions of the north. For those who understand geography, this is why Iraq was such a strategic key to the region.
I doubt even the mullahcracy would be that crazy, and again it shows the recklessness of their actions in promoting these missions against Israel. They miscalculated the response from Israel and the response from the global community. The days when terrorists get sympathy have waned, and the terrorist-sponsoring states may finally have begun to realize this. The West will not shackle Israel from responding to a casus belli any longer. While the Lebanese have paid an unfair price for Hezbollah’s actions, the Israelis cannot stop until their soldiers have been returned unharmed from the terrorists that Lebanon shelters, however unwillingly. If Syria attempts to intercede, then the Lebanese will find themselves quickly off the hook.