Bangladesh, June 4 -- Twenty years after Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon, it is worth considering basic questions about its experience over years of warfare in a campaign that did not aim for victory. Those questions include what was going on, what Israel was fighting for, and what ultimately impelled it to withdraw. Such considerations have immediate significance in terms of clarifying the tenets of Israel's security concept.

With the caveat that twenty years give the advantage of hindsight, my personal experience in south Lebanon in the late 1980s and well into the 1990s might have some value in terms of assessing basic and immediately relevant questions about Israel's campaign there.

As a battalion commander in the security zo...