Stolen from Ben Heine:
1) Organizational Improvements
The central secret to Hezbollah‘s success is that it trained its guerrillas to make decisions autonomously at the small group level. (…) The result of this decentralization is that Hezbollah‘s aggregate decision cycles are faster and qualitatively better than those of their Israeli counterparts.
2) Hybrid Methods
Ancillary to the improvements in organizational design, Hezbollah also demonstrated its ability to supercharge antiquated conventional tactics with off-the-shelf technology to create weapons systems and hybrid tactics attuned to defeating Israeli military systems. We can expect to see this behaviour accelerate among non-state groups as readily available commercial technology continues its pace of radical improvement.
3)Extracting an Economic Toll
Hezbollah‘s success against Israel codifies two strategic methods that global guerrillas emulate. The first is the value of strategic coercion through economic attrition. Ongoing disruption of the Israeli economy through rocket attacks attaches a quantifiable strategic cost to the conflict. (…) Israel has been forced into an aggressive air campaign to accelerate progress on the ground against missile launch sites and interdict resupply of new missiles from Syria. This air campaign has backfired due to the asymmetry of targets, in that Israeli air strikes have alienated the Lebanese government and increased the moral cohesion of its foes.
4)Leveraging force protection and an aversion to casualties
A second strategic method is to trade territory for the blood of professional soldiers and delay. The intent is demonstrated by Hezbollah‘s dispersal of small units across a wide geographic area. This clearly shows Hezbollah‘s willingness to trade ground for the lives of Israeli soldiers and time. It succeeds by leveraging the aversion to casualties and dedication to force protection found in modern Western militaries (these men are professionally educated and therefore considered too valuable for use as cannon fodder).
Source : http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com
John Robb is the first Internet analyst at Forrester Research and a key architect in the rise of Web logs and RSS. He is writing a book on the logic of terrorism.
raincoaster 
If the recent war was a success for Hezbollah what were their objectives? The destruction of Lebanon?
They are Irans little gophers. I think we should make Iran pay for Lebanon then exterminate Hezbollah.
I’m not sure the economic toll on Israel is as much of a factor as Mr. Robb would have it. I feel strongly that Hizbullah is greatly aided by 1) their own provision of basic social services under the auspices of compassionate Islam and in the face of a weak and distant central Lebanese government, and 2) Israel’s recent predations, which did nothing to improve the situation for the general populace while also doing nothing to harm Hizbullah.
The victory for Hizbullah is that in thirty days of campaigning, Israel acheived none of the objectives they said they wanted to and had to hand back the territory they took. The far larger PR victory stems from having forced the enemy to adopt their tactics: systematic murder of civillians in the pursuit of the unattainable. The irony is that Israel acheived these things on a far greater scale than Hizbullah could normally dream of.
Whatever Hizbullah might hertofore have been, Israel has allowed them to become heros not only to their own local constituents, but to millions worldwide who, after a month of bloody images from CNN, see Israel playing the aggressor.
Olmert was out to prove his manhood. Not unlike Dubya. Has either of them acheived anything positive?
They’ve stemmed Hizbollah supply routes in the event of a NATO/Israel v Iran war in whcih Iran would attack Israel though Hezbollah.
But bombing Beirut was a mistake.
A mistake, Steven? A mistake is when you put your socks on inside out.
And if you really believe the supply routes from Iran have been cut off, I think you need to look carefully at a map.
And you should know by now that Israel doesn’t fight wars except on behalf of Israel. If somebody invades Iran it’s going to be NATO, the US, or nobody. When was the last time Israel was part of a coalition force?