Saturday, August 19, 2006

That did not take long



Charles Krauthammer will be happy to hear that Israel has not turned into France. I know he has been concerned about that.

From Fox News a story about an Israeli raid deep in Lebanon:

"If the Syrians and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah in violation of the (U.N. cease-fire) resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "Once the Lebanese army and the international forces are active... then such Israeli activity will become superfluous."

Lebanese security officials confirmed the initial report on Hezbollah TV of a drop of Israeli commandos by helicopter on a hill outside the village of Boudai west of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release information to the media, said the Israelis apparently were seeking a guerrilla target in a nearby school but had no other details.

The officials also reported heavy Israeli overflights.

Such a bold operation risked the cease-fire, and suggested Israel was going after a major target near Baalbek — perhaps to rescue two Israeli soldiers snatched by Hezbollah on July 12, or to try to capture a senior guerrilla official to trade for the soldiers.

Hezbollah has said it wants to exchange the two soldiers for Arab prisoners, but the U.N. cease-fire resolution demands Hezbollah unconditionally release the soldiers
Emphasis is mine. How hard is it understand this?

Could it be that the whole point to all this was to make it plain that the UN is either supposed to do its job or someone else will do it for them? I would think the invasion of Iraq would have brought that lesson home, but then again when dealing with French and the Jihadis one does have to repeat one's self.

2 comments:

ambisinistral said...

That's quite interesting. I also wonder if the message that, if UNIFIL sits around and does nothing, they're going to be in the middle of a shooting war regardless -- so they had best get serious about securing southern Lebanon.

Pastorius said...

Nothing demonstrates the pathetic situation we are in better than the fact that people like you and I keep wondering whether this or that meagre move our side has made was made to "send a message" or to "unmask our enemies."