BEIRUT: Confronting one of the world’s strongest armies, Hezbollah fighters are still battling Israel’s tanks and raining rockets over the border, denying Israeli hopes of a swift victory in its 17-day-old war in Lebanon.

Israel, wary of getting sucked into a new occupation of south Lebanon only six years after pulling out under Hezbollah fire, has decided against a full-scale invasion, sticking with a strategy of air raids and limited ground attacks.

Its reluctance to sweep into Lebanon, as it did in 1982 to expel PLO guerrillas — killing some 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians in the process — is a back-handed compliment to the prowess of the fighters backed by Iran and Syria.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a recorded speech this week, said the further Israel’s army pushed into Lebanon, the more it would expose itself to guerrilla warfare.

“It will give us a wider and bigger chance for direct confrontation and to bleed the forces of this enemy,” he said.

Renewed Israeli occupation is “Hezbollah’s dream”, said Timur Goksel, former adviser to UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.

“They don’t want to take on Israel’s military might head-on near the border, but to draw them in, extend their supply lines and then start hitting them,” Goksel said.

Israel lost about 1,000 soldiers, many of them to Hezbollah attacks, in its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon after 1982.

Ronny Daniel, defence correspondent for Israel’s Channel Two television, points out that Israeli troops fighting Hezbollah inside Lebanon number less than a quarter of those flung at PLO guerrillas and Syrian army forces deployed there in 1982.

But in that war, the Syrians were in military bases and the Palestinians in fixed positions and refugee camps. PLO offices in towns and villages across Lebanon were also easy targets.

Hezbollah does not fight like that. “These guys operate in groups of no more than 20,” said Goksel. “They can put their guns away, but you can’t destroy their military organisation.”

Israel has flattened Hezbollah’s main compound in Beirut, but the group does not maintain offices elsewhere. Its leaders and commanders vacated their homes at the start of the conflict.

Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, announcing the call-up of 15,000 reserve soldiers, said on Thursday the army had inflicted “huge” damage on Hezbollah and would press on until told to stop or their mission was complete.

Hezbollah has kept up a tenacious resistance in the mainly Shia south that has made Nasrallah a popular Arab hero, even if some Lebanese are furious that his actions have brought so much bloodshed and havoc on their country.

Hezbollah has managed to kill 33 Israeli soldiers since it provoked the war by seizing two soldiers and killing eight others in a cross-border raid on July 12 — nine were killed in clashes inside Lebanon on Wednesday in Israel’s worst single-day loss of the campaign.

Fierce Israeli bombardment has failed to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes that have put Israeli civilians in the firing line.

And Hezbollah rockets have landed deeper inside Israel, hitting Haifa city, and killing 18 civilians.

In 1982, Israeli troops sliced through Palestinian defences in south Lebanon, but met much stiffer resistance as they tried to break into West Beirut, where 6,000 fighters were holed up.

“Hezbollah is a world away from the Palestinian ‘RPG kids’,” said Alon Ben-David, Israel analyst for Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“It is no rag-tag Fatah militia, but, in effect, a branch of the Iranian special forces.”

Hezbollah has received rockets, training and ideological inspiration from Iran, which helped form the Islamist group to fight Israeli occupation after 1982, as well as weaponry and political support from neighbouring Syria.

But as a home-grown Lebanese movement that is part militia, part political party and part welfare network, Hezbollah’s interests do not always mirror those of its allies.

Hezbollah’s local roots give it a significant advantage over Yasser Arafat’s fighters who once called the shots in the south.

“Back in 1982, southern Lebanese couldn’t stand the Palestinian guerrillas, seeing them as violent interlopers. By contrast, south Lebanon is the Hezbollah heartland, and it draws men and support from the locals,” Ben-David said.

“It enjoys a native knowledge of the territory, which has allowed it, so far in this campaign, to successfully elude and ambush the Israeli Defence Forces.”—Reuters