Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Israel invades Lebanon, Hezbollah attacks N. Israel

Xazy · 07-18-2006, 06:09 AM

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Middle East: Response and Responsibility
Hezbollah, along with its Syrian and Iranian backers, bear the blame for the Israel-Lebanon crisis.

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT: Responsibility for the escalating carnage in Lebanon and northern Israel lies with one side, and one side only. And that is Hezbollah, the Islamist militant party, along with its Syrian and Iranian backers. Reasonable minds can differ on the strategic wisdom of the Israeli response, but there can be no doubt about the blame for the mounting death toll on both sides of the border.

The international community has not been sufficiently forthright about this. A statement issued Sunday by the Group of 8 leaders meeting in Russia acknowledged that the crisis was triggered by cross-border raids on Israel by Hamas in Gaza and by Hezbollah in Lebanon. But reflecting Russian and French concerns, the statement shied away from pointing the finger at Damascus and Tehran. Instead, it merely condemned "the extremist elements and those that support them."
This is cynical diplomatese for "You know who you are." And it comes from a group stacked with ostensible U.S. allies (plus Russia); diplomatic efforts from other quarters are likely to be even more unsatisfying.

As the magnitude of the fighting becomes more horrifying — with Hezbollah and the Israeli military trading missiles and bombs, killing scores of civilians in the crossfire — it is important not only to bear in mind what triggered this crisis but the conflict's larger context. Ever since Israel unilaterally withdrew troops from southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza last year, radical Islamists have stepped up their war on the Israeli state. The Israeli pullout from Lebanon was supposed to be followed by the Lebanese army's occupation of the border region and the disarmament of Hezbollah. Instead, the Islamist group, a minority faction in Beirut's government, operates in southern Lebanon as a separate state-within-a-state.

In the Palestinian territories, meanwhile, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was followed by the triumph at the polls of Hamas. Both Hamas and Hezbollah, which have a pact to collaborate in attacking Israel, are backed by the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who himself has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

The danger now is that democratic political moderation across the Arab world will be another victim of this warfare. Moderate secular voices in Gaza and Lebanon are increasingly sidelined as fighting intensifies. And try selling the Israeli public now on the wisdom of a broad pullout from the West Bank.

So this latest conflagration in the Middle East presents a challenge for nations such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which have long paid lip service to the desirability of moderation in the region. It's fine for them to raise questions, as this page has done, about the proportionality of Israel's response. But these nations, and the international community, should be prepared to place blame for this crisis where it belongs: on Hezbollah, Hamas and their state sponsors. Only then can work begin, not only to secure a cease-fire but to weaken the radical fundamentalist groups that are intent on preventing Israelis and their Arab neighbors from living in peace.

The truth is the terrorists have won, this article states it very fairly the result of what happens when they get a response. Which is why I have been anti-response to a lot of the small attacks. But I now myself am pro everything that Israel has done, since a nation has to defends itself, and can only take so much before they MUST strike back.

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he also stated that most of the income is tourism related so their economic income for the year is bad.

since the infidada (sorry can not recall how you spell it), the Israeli tourism industry has been hit horribly. Imagine traveling there, and knowing that suicide bombers aim to strike at tourist sites, bars, restaurants etc… I can imagine now that lebannon would have a big problem with tourism, and I can only attempt to imagine how that hurts their economy (I know first hand how it struck some people I know in Israel).

UN's Idea

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Hezbollah's little helpers
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
July 18, 2006

As Israel fights to break the back of one of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has come up with a very bad idea. He wants to throw a lifeline to Hezbollah, dispatching U.N. peacekeepers to Lebanon. Perhaps Mr. Annan and other advocates of such a force can tell us how many peacekeepers would be necessary, whether Hezbollah would be required to disarm, and, if so, who would disarm them.
Mr. Annan must explain how his peacekeepers would differ from the current U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has failed miserably ever since it was dispatched in 1978. UNIFIL was created following the Coastal Road Massacre of March 11, 1978 -- when Palestinian terrorists based in Lebanon and affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization entered Israel along the Mediterranean coast and hijacked a bus. Thirty-six hostages died. In response, the Israel Defense Force invaded southern Lebanon to destroy terrorist bases there. The U.N. Security Council responded by adopting Resolution 425, calling on Israel to "immediately" withdraw from Lebanon and establishing UNIFIL for the purpose of "assisting the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority to the area."
In June 1982, UNIFIL failed to stop Palestinian terrorist groups from attacking Israel and forced an occupation of much of Lebanon, leading to the destruction of the Palestinian terrorist bases there. With substantial Syrian and Iranian complicity, Hezbollah supplanted the PLO as the dominant terrorist organization in Lebanon. In 1985, Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory but for a small security zone on Lebanon's southern border, required to prevent attacks on Israel. Over the next 15 years, UNIFIL was mostly worthless, unable to stop Hezbollah attacks but remarkably successful in getting in the way of Israelis defending themselves. Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, describes how this worked: "Hezbollah would launch military attacks 50 meters from a UNIFIL outpost, Israel would shoot back and UNIFIL would protest against the Israeli response."
When Israel withdrew from the security zone in May 2000, UNIFIL was worthless again, as Hezbollah rushed to the border to establish a terrorist presence the U.N. forces could only observe. On Oct. 7, 2000, Hezbollah operatives used cars disguised as U.N. vehicles to kidnap and kill three Israeli soldiers. When Israel asked UNIFIL for a videotape of the cars that Hezbollah used in the kidnapping, U.N. officials lied, telling them that no such tape existed. UNIFIL failed to prevent last week's Hezbollah raid, in which two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and eight others died. That set off the current mess.
Once Hezbollah is defeated, disarmed and forced to return the soldiers kidnapped last week, someone may find a useful role for the United Nations to play in helping the Lebanese Army extend its authority to the south. For now, however, the Israeli military is doing more to enhance the long-term prospects for peace in Lebanon than the United Nations has ever done. Kofi Annan can perform a great service by staying out of the way.

Amen, about sometime called a spade to this idea. I know when I heard it I joked about it with my family in Israel, since the 2000 peace soldiers there now, did so much...