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the israeli cabinet has approved the cease fire deal but are the army is still operating until tomorrow apparently. we'll see how things unfold.
hopefully, the destruction of lebanon will actually end.
for the life of me, i can't figure out why this thread is framed as it is. hezbollah is a pure demonstration of the self-defeating nature of israeli actions: they are a product of the first invasion of lebanon...they are first and foremost a popular militia, something of a mass political movement--since the beginning, they have changed into more or less the organization that elphaba noted above.
hezbollah is absolutely not what american tv has been telling you it is since the beginning of the israeli action--it is not some iranian proxy, it is not a foreign body inflicted upon lebanon, and it is not a "terrorist" organization.
that assumes the term "terrorist" means something beyond "an organization that the present american administration does not like" of course.
if israel had not invaded lebanon in the 80s, there would be no hezbollah.
and the israeli actions over the past 2 weeks have been great recruiting tools for them.
in the period between the end of the first war and this one, BOTH sides were engaged in routine cross-border harrassment...there is abundant data about this that is readily available.
and if you think about it, a cease fire now serves hezbollah much more clearly than it does israel, from a tactical viewpoint---israeli has not accomplished its stated objectives, its actions have resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of civilians--the olmert government will undoubtedly pay for this politically.
the only bigger loser in this mess than the olmert government is the bush administration.
i see no reason to speculate yet as to whether this sease fire will hold and morph into anything like a lasting peace yet. but if there are parties whose interests are less than perfectly served by it, and if you think that this relation to the cease-fire will make those parties more likely to break it, then i would think you should be worriying far more about the israelis than hezbollah.
but we'll see.
for myself, i prefer to be cautiously optimistic at the moment.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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