2006 Israeli campaign in Lebanon

In the summer of 2006, Israeli Defense Forces entered Lebanon and conducted a 34-day military campaign. The precipitating event was the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of 8, on July 12, by Hezbollah forces; the Cabinet committed to military operations on July 17. Hezbollah also had been firing rockets into Israel, and, according to Human Rights Watch, not discriminating between military and civilian targets.

Military performance did not meet expectations of Israel, and, in September, the Winogrand Commission was appointed to investigate it. The Commission, led by former Justice Dr. Eliyahu Winograd, described its mandate as driven by a "strong sense of a crisis and deep disappointment with the consequences of the campaign and the way it was conducted." Human Rights Watch and other organizations, however, accused Israel of indiscriminate targeting that affected civilians and also may have been war crimes. Israel also found Hezbollah to be far more militarily effective, in combat on their own territory, than had been expected; the IDF was overconfident. Western military analysts, however, observed that the tactics attempted with Hezbollah were those expected of a sophisticated conventional military; their execution was flawed but the use by a presumably irregular force requires major militaries to reexamine their planning.