Q. One year after the war in Lebanon, how do you assess the security benefits and drawbacks of the outcome from Israel's standpoint?

A. On the ground in southern Lebanon, there are some encouraging signs that generate a little more optimism today than a year ago, when the war ended and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 created UNIFIL II. That force is in place and functioning, and the situation in South Lebanon is relatively stable. The leaders of Hezbollah, pushed north of the Litani River and beyond direct border contact with Israel, currently indicate by word and deed that they are not interested in provoking another round of fighting with Israel. The Israel Defense Forces' much advertised military reforms and "learning of lessons" from the war have contributed to some degree toward restoring Israel's deterrent profile vis-a-vis Hezbollah.

There are troublesome signs as well. Syria and Iran have been free during the past year to rearm Hezbollah across the wide-open Syrian-Lebanese border. Hezbollah has dug in north of the Litani, reportedly even purchasing land from local Druze and Christian Lebanese in order to rebuild its "nature preserves" or clusters of fortified rocket-launch positions. Here and there a few Hezbollah guerillas have also returned south of the Litani, where new arms caches have been reported. Sunni Islamist groups have attacked UNIFIL in the South and the Lebanese Army in northern Lebanon. No doubt, both Shi'ite and Sunni extremists would like, through attrition, to degrade UNIFIL II to the status of UNIFIL I that preceded it: coexisting with Islamist militants and doing nothing to impede them.

Perhaps most disturbing are the implications for southern Lebanon of the broader political and military developments in the region. The coming months will indicate whether the Lebanese confessional political system can survive the year-long boycott by Hezbollah and Michel Aoun's Christian forces and still elect a new president. In parallel, persistent reports point to the possibility that the Asad regime in Damascus, egged on by Iran, will launch guerilla and rocket attacks on the Israeli Golan in an effort to divert international attention from the looming international court proceedings over high-level Syrian involvement in the Hariri assassination of March 2005. The relative stability imposed on southern Lebanon after last summer's inconclusive war cannot be sustained for long if Lebanese politics continue to deteriorate and/or Syria initiates violence on the Golan.

Were renewed fighting to break out between Israel and Hezbollah, many of the operational conditions would be different. With the exception of the far northern tip of the finger of Galilee (the Metulla area) where the Litani runs barely two km. from Israeli territory, Hezbollah rockets would be launched from well north of the border, thereby neutralizing the efficiency of the shorter range rockets. Yet we must assume that the new rockets supplied over the past year by Iran and Syria take this constraint into account and have longer ranges, and that Hezbollah would still be able at least to hit all of northern Israel.

As for the IDF, air force attacks on Hezbollah emplacements north of the Litani would not be impeded by UNIFIL II. But IDF ground units would presumably have to be airlifted in or landed from the sea, raising heavy logistical problems. Unless, of course, Israel declared the UNIFIL II arrangements null and void as a consequence of attack by Hezbollah, demanded that UNIFIL II units withdraw to barracks, and invaded Lebanese territory in order to cross the Litani from the south. Obviously, such a move could engender serious diplomatic consequences.

This points to the paradox of Israel's active solicitation, last summer, of the introduction into southern Lebanon of a robust international force. UNIFIL II was, in effect, the IDF's exit strategy. It undoubtedly provides northern Israel with an extra layer of security. But if it fails to keep the peace and fighting does break out, its presence in southern Lebanon will constitute a diplomatic and possibly even military impediment to IDF operations against Hezbollah.

Q. Two years after Israel's unilateral redeployment from the Gaza Strip, what is the likelihood of another unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank?

A. Very low. In the eyes of the Israeli public as well as at least part of the security establishment, the overall cost-benefit assessment of the Gaza withdrawal is negative.

Indeed, the only solid accomplishment of the redeployment that can be pointed to is in the realm of demography, where Israel divested itself of direct control over some 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. While many Palestinians would argue that Israel still controls their lives ("Gaza is one big prison"), Israel can respond that there are neither Israeli soldiers nor settlers inside the Strip and that Palestinians have only themselves to blame for not exploiting the potential economic benefits of the withdrawal and not maintaining sufficient security to keep open the passages to Egypt and Israel.

On the other hand, the withdrawal must be held at least partly responsible for degrading Israel's deterrent profile in the eyes of its enemies in Gaza and southern Lebanon--to the extent that they dared to abduct IDF soldiers from Israeli territory, thereby triggering last summer's war. Indeed, Israel did precious little immediately after the withdrawal to dispel the Hamas and Hezbollah assessment that it had redeployed unilaterally (including in May 2000, from southern Lebanon) out of military and national weakness. Had the IDF responded far more strongly to the very first Qassam rocket fired from the Strip after withdrawal, it might have restored that lost deterrent and avoided a worse situation last summer.

Thus the withdrawal has to be seen as one of the triggers of the Second Lebanon War. This security damage is partly balanced by the improved security situation around the Gaza Strip now that there are no Israelis to protect inside the Strip. Only six soldiers and six Israeli civilians have been killed around the Strip, and one soldier abducted, in the last two years. Nationally, there have been fewer suicide bombings and fewer casualties from terrorism, a statistic that can be attributed in part to the fact that since the withdrawal the IDF needs less manpower and a smaller budget to maintain security around Gaza, thereby freeing up troops and funds for improving security in the West Bank. But Qassam rocket attacks rose nearly fourfold in 2006 compared to 2005, reflecting the fighting on the Gaza front last summer.

If we can assert with a high degree of certainty that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza of summer 2005 contributed to degrading Israel's deterrent profile, it is more difficult to assess the connection, if any, between the redeployment and the subsequent Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. It seems likely that Hamas won the Palestinian Authority's January 2006 parliamentary elections, then took over the Strip by force in June of this year, due to Fateh corruption and inefficiency (including inside Gaza in the aftermath of the Gaza withdrawal) rather than because Hamas had forced Israel to withdraw. Nevertheless, the changes in Palestinian rule inside the Strip render a clean cost-benefit assessment of the withdrawal that much more difficult.

For example, Israel is today losing some two million dollars a day in revenues from facilitating Gaza imports and exports and joint textile production. Is this because Hamas took over Gaza by force and Gaza is now totally cut off from the outside world--or because of a chain of events set off by the withdrawal two years ago?

If all these factors tend to persuade the Israeli public to avoid any further unilateral withdrawals on the West Bank or at least to leave the IDF in place in the event that settlements are dismantled, the government's abject failure over the past two years to resettle the bulk of the 8,000 Gaza settlers sends the public the message that any future effort to remove and resettle, say, 70,000 West Bank settlers is beyond Israel's capabilities. True, the Gaza settlers have not been cooperative with the government, as if to ensure when they are interviewed and photographed in their crowded temporary homes that they be the last and only ones evacuated. But government inefficiency is undeniable.

Moreover, the government's readiness, in the name of national unity, to pardon nearly all those settlers who used violence to oppose the dismantling of the Gaza settlements two years ago has sent the overall settler population a counterproductive message. Police and soldiers who have been dispatched (only twice since Ehud Olmert began serving as prime minister some 19 months ago) to remove settlers from "illegal" West Bank outposts or to destroy buildings in those outposts, have become fair game for the settlers' physical aggression, trumped up abuse charges in court and attempts to dissuade soldiers from following orders. And why not? In the end, all will be forgiven.

Taken together, the Sharon and Olmert governments' post-disengagement mistakes have rendered it more difficult for Israel to dismantle additional settlements. And that makes it more difficult to persuade skeptical Palestinians that Israel can be trusted to enter into and implement new peace agreements that involve withdrawal from West Bank territory.