Hezbollah forces have taken over more than a hundred villages to store their heavy artillery, and their command posts are near schools and hospitals.

In an unprecedented move, the Israeli Defense Forces have released sensitive intelligence information about the situation in southern Lebanon (available at the IDF blog). Hezbollah forces have taken over more than a hundred villages to store their heavy artillery, and their command posts are near schools and hospitals.

This represents a major shift in strategy for Hezbollah since 2006, when they stored most of their weaponry away from habitations, as befits any army that claims to want to protect its own people. But the IDF hit most of their supply in the first days of hostilities.

Hezbollah improvised by hiding behind civilians in order to shield themselves from attack while they fired at civilian targets in Israel. In a notorious incident, when an Israeli missile hit the foundation of a building near Qana in early 2006, Israeli spokeswoman Miri Eisen apologized profusely for the incident -- which the media turned into a ghoulish production -- assuring the world that if Israel had known that there were children in the building, they never would have fired at it.

The unintended results of this open and overriding concern for the safety of Lebanese civilians, combined with the almost addictive need on the part of Hezbollah to target Israel at any cost, has produced the current situation in which Hezbollah has essentially taken the civilians of southern Lebanon hostage. Behind the shield of these civilians, any of whose deaths the media will lay at the feet of Israel, this fanatic Shia militia has assembled an army of some 20,000 soldiers and some 40,000 short-, medium-, and long-range missiles, some hundred of which can hit Tel Aviv. In the case of renewed hostilities, these encampments would be capable of sending over 700 rockets a day into Israel...