Lesson One: Western militaries are in active denial concerning the limitations of precision weapons...
Well I would certainly agree with that one. I saw a report yesterday on use two precision 155mm rounds against an AQ safehouse. The officer discussing the strike was an artilleryman and he was of course enthusiastic. The report did not however offer an assessment on collateral effects. To the FA guy's credit he pointed out that the real benefit from precision munitions was their efficiency in destroying the target, not the "surgical" capability that is often associated with such weapons. But back to the Israeli report..

Between Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 and the morning of July 12, 2006, when a cross-border attack by Hezbollah militants left three Israeli soldiers dead and two kidnapped, Israel’s policy towards the terrorist organization was, in its own words, one of “containment.” In practice, “containment” meant extreme restraint in response to acts of provocation. This restraint was justified by a simple calculus: in the IDF’s official estimation, Israel’s precision air and artillery forces could not suppress Hezbollah’s offensive rocket forces, which meant that any military action against Hezbollah was likely to provoke sustained rocket fire into Israel’s interior which could be suppressed in turn only with a costly invasion of the Hezbollah heartland.
This really gets back to longstanding issues with the IDF and its use of artillery and air in conventional combat. 1956 when the IDF attacked Egypt to threaten the Suez Canal so the British and French would have an excuse to seize it to "protect it" was the IDF's first attempt at sweeping maneuver warfare. They ran into problems at Abu Agheila and in the Mitla Pass. They lacked artillery and the IAF was not sufficiently oriented to ground support to offset it. 1967 of course the IAF lead the way and then ruled the skies over the battlefield after eleimnating the Arab air forces. Israeli tactical thinking saw fixed wing air as flying artillery, used against point targets. In 1973 that cost them because the IAF had to abandon the air space over the canal and the Golan at times due to the SAM threat. Without that CAS, Israeli ground commanders had difficulty suppressing AT systems; IDF armor carried HEAT and SABOT rounds, not HE. Sagger and RPG gunners in the hundreds were difficult targets. Some of these faults were readdressed before the 82 Invasion of Lebanon; the IDF got 155mm SP and rotary wing attack aircraft from us and elsewhere. The IAF of course unraveled the SAM issue as well. In consequence, the 82 invasion even with the Syrian entry did not see artillery used as massed fires etc. During my tour in Lebanon in 87, I saw the same thing. The IDF FA units would practice hipshoots and actually fire missions but they were selectively used. There was still very much reliance on air--including rotary air--to hit select targets.

With Hizballah's ability to use low tech launch systems, the calculus cited in this report sound very much like the conundrum facing the Israellis on the conventional battlefield in 1973 and in the unconventional battlefield I observed in 1987.

Best

Tom