With the second Bernadotte Report of September 1947, completed by Ralph Bunche following Bernadotte’s murder by Lehi terrorists, the State Department sought to use the UN Security Council to deprive Israel of the Negev desert and full control of the port of Haifa. Members of the Senate and House, again led by Emanuel Celler, urged lifting of the arms embargo but, as exchanges with under secretary of state Robert Lovett made clear, those efforts were not successful. Czechoslovakia remained the only government that sent weapons to the new Jewish state. Without any American military assistance, Israel repelled the Arab invasions, gained control of the Negev and the Galilee in northern Israel. As a result of its military victories, and with support from the Soviet bloc states, Israel successfully resisted American and British diplomatic efforts to use the Bernadotte Report as a basis for its boundaries.

In the Second Lebanon War the effectiveness of Israeli air operations at the operational level was minimal, with success limited to a subset of targets for which there was good intelligence and proved to be easy to find from the air, such as Hezbollah’s medium-range rocket launchers. However, Hezbollah’s rocket campaign against Israel, the IAF’s partial response to this challenge, and Israel’s unwillingness to end this military struggle without defeating Hezbollah developed into an attrition air campaign. In the short term it appears both Israel and Hezbollah achieved some of their political goals in the war – a mixed outcome in a war of limited political aims. Yet the cumulative damage to Hezbollah from Israeli air strikes ultimately generated significant, long-lasting effects. Although in this asymmetric conflict air power proved ineffective in stopping the war, it was effective in the long run by imposing costs that deterred further conflict.