TEL AVIV, Israel — Meet Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, one of the architects of Israel’s successful campaigns against Palestinian Arab terror cells. He holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and is a graduate of the U.S.Army’s Advanced Infantry Officers’ course.

Israel’s man of the moment was called to the Lebanon border Tuesday after the Israel Defense Force chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, effectively sidelined Major General Udi Adam. In a surprising move, General Halutz named his deputy, General Kaplinsky, as his personal representative to oversee an Israeli military push to the Litani River.

General Adam came under heavy criticism for failing to stop the barrage of Katyusha rockets on northern Israel and taking too long to capture and hold the towns on the Israel-Lebanon border, where Israeli troops are still fighting today.

Emblematic of that failure were the heavy casualties Israel sustained in Bint Jbeil more than a week after General Adam announced the town had been captured.

But while General Kaplinsky will oversee Israel’s expanded ground operations in Lebanon, General Adam has not been relieved of all of his duties. On Tuesday Israeli television quoted General Adam as saying he was “shocked and insulted” by General Halutz’s decision.

With the Jewish state facing the unwelcome and unprecedented prospect of a defeat in Lebanon, General Kaplinsky’s promotion could be a morale boost for the Israeli people and its military.

Prime Minister Sharon appointed the general as his military secretary in 2001. That year he was a key architect, along with Mr. Sharon — a former general — of a successful counterterrorism strategy known as the “Defensive Shield,” which halted the rash of suicide bombings here by the end of 2002. The strategy involved placing troops around Palestinian Arab towns on the West Bank; the troops then quickly conducted raids and operations in the population centers without setting up a permanent presence.

In August 2002, Mr. Sharon promoted General Kaplinsky to head of the central command, the area that includes the heart of the country and the West Bank. In this role, General Kaplinsky oversaw the erection of the security barrier that separates most of Israel from the territory in the West Bank it won in the 1967 war.

In Lebanon, however, the soft-spoken general will face a different challenge. There, Israeli soldiers are encountering an enemy that hides among civilians but has the arsenal, training, and numbers of a hardened infantry.

“He is really bright. He is very skilled and experienced,” the former chairman of the Knesset’s military and foreign affairs committee, Yuval Steinitz, said in an interview. But Mr. Steinitz also said Hezbollah is a different kind of foe.

“Here we are fighting something closer to a conventional war than war against terrorist cells. Ultimately they have 10,000 people with the backing of their surroundings. They were well-equipped by the Iranians and Syrians. Here we are really fighting one division. You cannot compare this to Iraq. The insurgents there do not have thousands of the most advanced anti-tank rockets. You can’t compare this to the Palestinian terrorists. Hezbollah has bunkers and has had six years to prepare for this war,” Mr. Steinitz said.

While General Kaplinsky is replacing a man widely seen as a scapegoat, he is not without blame for the failures of the first weeks of the war. As deputy chief of staff, General Kaplinsky approved the air campaign that has failed to stop the rocket fire into Israel. In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio on July 17, he predicted that the operations in Lebanon would take a few more weeks, but not months.

The deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and an outspoken opponent of the disengagement from Gaza, Caroline Glick, said yesterday that she hoped General Kaplinsky would be an improvement.

“Israel has had a history of generals that have been historic figures, men like General Ariel Sharon. He became a historic military figure in the 1973 war. But I don’t see any people who can reach to that kind of greatness in the general staff today. The military has been harmed by this narrative of peace,” Ms. Glick said.