Inside Hezbollah, Big Miscalculations - washingtonpost.com

Inside Hezbollah, Big Miscalculations - washingtonpost.com: "Inside Hezbollah, Big Miscalculations
Militia Leaders Caught Off Guard By Scope of Israel's Response in War

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 8, 2006; A01

BEIRUT -- The meeting on July 12 was tense, tinged with desperation. A few hours earlier, in a brazen raid, Hezbollah guerrillas had infiltrated across the heavily fortified border and captured two Israeli soldiers. Lebanon's prime minister summoned Hussein Khalil, an aide to Hezbollah's leader, to his office at the Serail, the palatial four-story government headquarters of red tile and colonnades in Beirut's downtown.

'What have you done?' Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked him.

Khalil reassured him, according to an account by two officials briefed by Siniora, one of whom later confirmed it with the prime minister. 'It will calm down in 24 to 48 hours.'

More technocrat than politician, Siniora was skeptical. He pointed to the Gaza Strip, which Israeli forces had stormed after Palestinian militants abducted a soldier less than three weeks earlier. Israeli warplanes had blasted bridges and Gaza's main power station.

Calmly, Khalil looked at him. 'Lebanon is not Gaza,' he answered."