A Question

dayan

Open wrote:

Two frickin soldiers and all this death come on man....?!?!?! I'll keep saying it cant play the victim anymore...not after all this death.

It isn't only about the two kidnapped soldiers. It is also about the rain of rockets hitting Israel's north, and more importantly the fact that Israel is really fighting Iran. Hezbollah is simply their proxy. Iran had thought that they could use Hezbollah as a deterent against Israel. Israel is fighting to destroy that Iranian deterant and to show Iran that Israel will use force if necessary to defend itself. With Iran on the verge of getting nuclear weapons, and their leader speaking about wiping Israel off the map, this is an urgent and existential need.

shiraz

Open wrote:

Two frickin soldiers and all this death come on man....?!?!?! I'll keep saying it cant play the victim anymore...not after all this death.

Israeli & Lebanese civilians are the victims of Hizbullah - you can't blame just one side only because I'm not dead yet out of Hizbullah's missiles. The only thing which makes our casualties number "lower" is the fact we have shelters & that 50% of us northern Israeli civilians just ran away. If Hizbullah hadn't started this shit FOR NO REASON, both Lebanon & Northern Israel would have continued to blossom.

dayan

lgt wrote:

Is Israel's strategy (in its view, attacking Lebanon for reprisal of Hezbollah's kidnappings of 2 soldiers) effective? After 3 weeks of bombing, 10 times over the number of casualties in Lebanon, displacement of civilians, is Israel feeling more secure? Is it achieving its objectives? How long will it take?

I briefly caught Netanyahu on British TV the other morning talking of this conflict as "World War III", and I quote his words, uttered casually, as if it was normal to talk about World War III. That sent chills down my spine... No lessons learnt from Iraq? The regional implications of this conflict are scary.

Not to mention, so many kids growing up hating Israel....

I really struggle to see what the benefits are for Israel - the strategy of attacking Lebanon to get rid of Hizbullah. I think it's counterproductive, from an Israeli point of view, not to mention appalling from the Lebanese.

What do you guys think?

Laura

PS Sorry for slightly derailing the conversation off topic!

With regard to Netanyahu, Israelis have lived with war for as long as there has been a state. They are just casual about these things because they are used to them. It doesn't mean that we don't take such things deadly seriously, or that they don't scare us also.

I do think that Israel is making gains. They have seriously degraded Hezbollah, though they have not destroyed them utterly. This is good for Israel in that obviously it means that Hezbollah will be less able to further attack Israel, and that a weakened Hezbollah will be more easily dealt with (I hope) by those that should have dealt with them in the first place, and that is the Lebanese themselves. Israel has also sent a message to the real, and far more dangerous, of its enemies, which is Iran. They have shown them that Israel can absorb the worst that Hezbollah can throw at them, and that Israel will use terrible force to defend itself. Israel's actions have not been perfect, nor have they resulted in great gains, but I see few ways in which they could have acted differently.

sliverstain

dayan wrote:

You can believe what you want. However these are facts reported not only by the IDF, but by every reputable news agency in the world. AND, to speak about the IDF for a moment, you cannot simply say that what they report is false. I know many people in the IDF at various levels, and they are good and decent people who serve because they want to defend their country. I am amazed that people can hold such an anachronistic view of the IDF as this legion of cold-blooded killers goose stepping their way across the Middle East. The reality is far different. It is a true people's army made up of soldiers who are little more than children, and reservists who are husbands and fathers.

Defending a country is siting your border and repelling any attacks.

It is not bulldozing Palestinian houses, it is not carpet bombing a soveriegn nation, it is not economically blockading a nation and preventing aid supplies reaching the needy, it is not creating a refugee crisis by displacing nearly a million civilians.

That to me, is goose stepping all over the middle east. As will be the Sinai and the transjordan area in the coming months.

And yes, i really do know that people in armies are good people, are people like you and me, are young men sent of and ordered to do another's killing.

All reports that come from the IDF do not come from these people, they come from the bastards at the top of the tree, those who do the bidding of the bigger bastards in government. All military driven nations are the same.

Pawns in chess, somebody once said.

sliverstain

shiraz wrote:

Israeli & Lebanese civilians are the victims of Hizbullah - you can't blame just one side only because I'm not dead yet out of Hizbullah's missiles. The only thing which makes our casualties number "lower" is the fact we have shelters & that 50% of us northern Israeli civilians just ran away. If Hizbullah hadn't started this shit FOR NO REASON, both Lebanon & Northern Israel would have continued to blossom.

The only reason casualties are lower is because of shelters? Get the f*ck out of here!

The only reason is that the US doesn't provide $4billion a year to Hezbollah, half of which has to be spent on military hardware from the country in the world who has developed the most lethal killing apparatus known to man!!

shiraz

lgt wrote:

Is Israel's strategy (in its view, attacking Lebanon for reprisal of Hezbollah's kidnappings of 2 soldiers) effective? After 3 weeks of bombing, 10 times over the number of casualties in Lebanon, displacement of civilians, is Israel feeling more secure? Is it achieving its objectives? How long will it take?

I briefly caught Netanyahu on British TV the other morning talking of this conflict as "World War III", and I quote his words, uttered casually, as if it was normal to talk about World War III. That sent chills down my spine... No lessons learnt from Iraq? The regional implications of this conflict are scary.

Not to mention, so many kids growing up hating Israel....

I really struggle to see what the benefits are for Israel - the strategy of attacking Lebanon to get rid of Hizbullah. I think it's counterproductive, from an Israeli point of view, not to mention appalling from the Lebanese.

What do you guys think?

Laura

PS Sorry for slightly derailing the conversation off topic!

Hi Laura,

We had to react because Hizbullah had fired at 2 Israeli villages, crossed the Israeli border, kill & kidnapped soliders. I think our response was over-reacted, however it is too late and quite pointless to stop now without someone would assure me (an Israeli civilian) or ruud (a lebanese civilian) Hizbullah are under the control of Lebanon & some Int armed force, instaed of the opposite (which is the current situation). Please understand, Hizbullah is a terror organization who has been told to get rid of its arsenal back in 2000 (after Israel moved out of Lebanon). If they continue to have weapons & take over the Lebanese state by force, I can assure you the same conflict will erupt in about 3 years from now. Someone needs to stop them somehow, for the sake of Lebanon & Israel. Eventually, none of the countries across the world has helped Lebanon to get control on Hizbullah since 2000, Lebanon couldn't do it itself and now all of us here have the summer from hell.

shiraz

sliverstain wrote:

The only reason casualties are lower is because of shelters? Get the f*ck out of here!

The only reason is that the US doesn't provide $4billion a year to Hezbollah, half of which has to be spent on military hardware from the country in the world who has developed the most lethal killing apparatus known to man!!

I chose to stay in the shelter, 50% chose to run away, almoat all of Israeli casualties (jews & arabs) were outside/un-protected place when the missile hit them. But sure, keep on assuming things while I'm living the reality from hell.

sliverstain

shiraz wrote:

We had to react because Hizbullah had fired at 2 Israeli villages, crossed the Israeli border, kill & kidnapped soliders. .

WRONG

Hizbullah’s attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon By Anders Strindberg

Opinion from the August 01, 2006 edition

NEW YORK – As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. “Israel” is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.

Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of “Israel’s” silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, “Israel” has violated the United Nations-monitored “blue line” on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah’s military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into “Israel” only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah’s leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, “Israel” has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. “Israel” has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon’s Shibaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah’s capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of “Israel” and its allies, Hizbullah – easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East – unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.

Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, “Israel” has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be “manufactured” by the enemies of “Israel”; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which “Israel” was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN’s right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of “Israel” in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet “Israel” continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. “”Israel” must remain a Jewish state,” is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that “Israel” is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that “Israel’s” ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that “Israel” acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize “Israel’s” right to exist at the Palestinians’ expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians’ rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over themselves? That it is too much of a hassle to right the wrongs committed against them? That the front of the bus must remain ethnically pure?

When they refuse to recognize their occupier and embrace their racial inferiority, when desperation and frustration causes them to turn to violence, and when neighbors and allies come to their aid – some for reasons of power politics, others out of idealism – we are astonished that they are all such fanatics and extremists.

The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is “practical” and “realistic.” Yet reality is that “Israel” is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies.

A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in “Israel’s” foundational and persistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to “wipe out Jews,” as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.

These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they fulfill the need for someone – anyone – to stand up for Arab rights. “Israel” cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If “Israel”, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If “Israel” cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.

Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the late 1990s, primarily for European publications.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0801/p09s02-coop.html

Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. He has also covered Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories as a journalist since the late 1990s, primarily for European publications

lgt

dayan wrote:

I do think that Israel is making gains. They have seriously degraded Hezbollah, though they have not destroyed them utterly. This is good for Israel in that obviously it means that Hezbollah will be less able to further attack Israel, and that a weakened Hezbollah will be more easily dealt with (I hope) by those that should have dealt with them in the first place, and that is the Lebanese themselves. Israel has also sent a message to the real, and far more dangerous, of its enemies, which is Iran. They have shown them that Israel can absorb the worst that Hezbollah can throw at them, and that Israel will use terrible force to defend itself. Israel's actions have not been perfect, nor have they resulted in great gains, but I see few ways in which they could have acted differently.

I think my point is that after 3 weeks Israel is still fighting Hizbullah, despite the devastation of Lebanon's infrastructure and immense loss of civilian life. It is not a short war and it looks like it will continue. So I think Israel's miscalculated here. I also actually think that Hizbullah has raised its profile in the Middle East and will find more supporters than it had before this latest conflict started.

If you look at terrorist movements throughout history, just violence is not the means to defeat them.

shiraz

sliverstain wrote:

Defending a country is siting your border and repelling any attacks.

It is not bulldozing Palestinian houses, it is not carpet bombing a soveriegn nation, it is not economically blockading a nation and preventing aid supplies reaching the needy, it is not creating a refugee crisis by displacing nearly a million civilians.

That to me, is goose stepping all over the middle east. As will be the Sinai and the transjordan area in the coming months.

And yes, i really do know that people in armies are good people, are people like you and me, are young men sent of and ordered to do another's killing.

All reports that come from the IDF do not come from these people, they come from the bastards at the top of the tree, those who do the bidding of the bigger bastards in government. All military driven nations are the same.

Pawns in chess, somebody once said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict

none-biased info with references from all across the world. If you really would like to try and see the whole picture - check it out. If you only want to prove your narrow point of view=the whole picture without even bother to litsen to what the "other side" has to say, than there is no point for any of us have a discussion with you.

good day.

sliverstain

Wikipedia.

Ok. You. Win. Ya got me. That makes me wrong. Wiki knows ALL!!!!

Give me a f*cking break.

And I see that shelter of yours has internet connection...

shiraz

lgt wrote:

I think my point is that after 3 weeks Israel is still fighting Hizbullah, despite the devastation of Lebanon's infrastructure and immense loss of civilian life. It is not a short war and it looks like it will continue. So I think Israel's miscalculated here. I also actually think that Hizbullah has raised its profile in the Middle East and will find more supporters than it had before this latest conflict started.

If you look at terrorist movements throughout history, just violence is not the means to defeat them.

Again, I think now we can both agree on what you've just said, however it is too late to stop and one can't do it before Lebanon & the UN army will take control over a weakened Hizbullah. If we stop now and everyone will keep ignoring Hizbullah, the same story will repeate itself very soon. I can also tell you I can not trust Hizbullah for stop shooting at me, after they shot missiles at Kiryat Shmona & depper into Israeli areas DURING the 2-days cease-fire we had with them.

What are you suggesting we'll do now?

lgt

shiraz wrote:

Hi Laura,

We had to react because Hizbullah had fired at 2 Israeli villages, crossed the Israeli border, kill & kidnapped soliders. I think our response was over-reacted, however it is too late and quite pointless to stop now without someone would assure me (an Israeli civilian) or ruud (a lebanese civilian) Hizbullah are under the control of Lebanon & some Int armed force, instaed of the opposite (which is the current situation). Please understand, Hizbullah is a terror organization who has been told to get rid of its arsenal back in 2000 (after Israel moved out of Lebanon). If they continue to have weapons & take over the Lebanese state by force, I can assure you the same conflict will erupt in about 3 years from now. Someone needs to stop them somehow, for the sake of Lebanon & Israel. Eventually, none of the countries across the world has helped Lebanon to get control on Hizbullah since 2000, Lebanon couldn't do it itself and now all of us here have the summer from hell.

Hello Shiraz,

My argument is that Israel should have adopted a different strategy to deal with Hizbullah, as this is proving not effective, even without considering the human costs.

Also, with regard to the chronology of this latest conflict, there is dispute according to whose accounts you read.

But considering how things stand at the moment, I believe that dealing with the Hizbullah problem has been made much worse.

shiraz

sliverstain wrote:

Wikipedia.

Ok. You. Win. Ya got me. That makes me wrong. Wiki knows ALL!!!!

Give me a f*cking break.

And I see that shelter of yours has internet connection...

"references from all across the world". I see you missed that part. And yes, we have Internet in Israel, I'm using a cable modem. Should I apologize for that too or only for the fact me & my friends are not dead yet?

~end of any discussions with you~

shiraz

lgt wrote:

Hello Shiraz,

My argument is that Israel should have adopted a different strategy to deal with Hizbullah, as this is proving not effective, even without considering the human costs.

Also, with regard to the chronology of this latest conflict, there is dispute according to whose accounts you read.

But considering how things stand at the moment, I believe that dealing with the Hizbullah problem has been made much worse.

I've alreay replied you in another post, but I gotta say something regarding this one - There is no argument about the chronology of this latest conflict, even the arab media and Hizbullah itself (via their TV network - Al Manar) are claiming the same thing Israel is.

lgt

shiraz wrote:

Again, I think now we can both agree on what you've just said, however it is too late to stop and one can't do it before Lebanon & the UN army will take control over a weakened Hizbullah. If we stop now and everyone will keep ignoring Hizbullah, the same story will repeate itself very soon. I can also tell you I can not trust Hizbullah for stop shooting at me, after they shot missiles at Kiryat Shmona & depper into Israeli areas DURING the 2-days cease-fire we had with them.

What are you suggesting we'll do now?

I think there should be an immediate ceasefire, before things get out of control. Israel's image has definitely worsened in the Western world with this latest action, IMO.

The Palestinian issue must be tackled once and for all. Arafat is no longer on the scene. So, a deal must be reached, otherwise further conflicts will always be possible.

With regard to Hizbullah, more support for the Lebanese government from the Western powers (especially the US).

Also, any talks about Hizbullah include Iran and Syria. You cannot exclude them as it happened in the Rome meeting soon after this war started.

dayan

sliverstain wrote:

Defending a country is siting your border and repelling any attacks.

It is not bulldozing Palestinian houses, it is not carpet bombing a soveriegn nation, it is not economically blockading a nation and preventing aid supplies reaching the needy, it is not creating a refugee crisis by displacing nearly a million civilians.

That to me, is goose stepping all over the middle east. As will be the Sinai and the transjordan area in the coming months.

And yes, i really do know that people in armies are good people, are people like you and me, are young men sent of and ordered to do another's killing.

All reports that come from the IDF do not come from these people, they come from the bastards at the top of the tree, those who do the bidding of the bigger bastards in government. All military driven nations are the same.

Pawns in chess, somebody once said.

I have nothing to say but that your wrong and I'm simply fed up of repeating the same things over and over again. It never does any good. You're wedded to your illusions and nothing I can say will change your mind.

lgt

shiraz wrote:

I've alreay replied you in another post, but I gotta say something regarding this one - There is no argument about the chronology of this latest conflict, even the arab media and Hizbullah itself (via their TV network - Al Manar) are claiming the same thing Israel is.

This is an op-ed piece from the Guardian, a UK broadsheet. Just to give you an example that the media is not all in agreement with regard to the chronology of events.

---

Israel responded to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong

The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse. It was also unnecessary

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 8, 2006
The Guardian


Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.
Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

dayan

lgt wrote:

I think there should be an immediate ceasefire, before things get out of control. Israel's image has definitely worsened in the Western world with this latest action, IMO.

The Palestinian issue must be tackled once and for all. Arafat is no longer on the scene. So, a deal must be reached, otherwise further conflicts will always be possible.

With regard to Hizbullah, more support for the Lebanese government from the Western powers (especially the US).

Also, any talks about Hizbullah include Iran and Syria. You cannot exclude them as it happened in the Rome meeting soon after this war started.

I agree with all of this, except like Shiraz I have to point out that there really isn't any question as to the fact that Hezbollah holds responsibility for starting the current conflict.

lgt

dayan wrote:

I agree with all of this, except like Shiraz I have to point out that there really isn't any question as to the fact that Hezbollah holds responsibility for starting the current conflict.

I still think it is a matter of perspectives and how far back you go with the chain of events.

Hopefully, the French will succeed in their diplomatic effort and this conflict will end.

Peace.
Laura

PS Thanks for the debate!