Today's Situation

Rice turns the green light to yellow Monday, July 31, 2006

Referring to the international force as a 'stabilizing force' she said the UN decision could come as soon as this week -- but nobody expects any international force (and Israel and the Lebanese both are speaking of a force of at least 10,000 troops) to be ready to move into position very quickly.

And she announced that Israel -- meaning Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- had decided it would suspend its air offensive against Hizbollah targets for 48 hours, with a 24-hour period specifically devoted to enabling the UN help south Lebanese get out of the area that Israel has declared it will 'cleanse' of Hizbollah. But Israel, meaning Olmert, said that the temporary ceasefire, which as of noon was being respected by both Israel and Hizbollah, was not an end to the Israeli campaign against the Iranian-backed and Syrian-supported Shiite guerrilla group. And pointedly, Rice made no mention of the return of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah on July 12, prompting an army operation to retrieve them that quickly deteriorated into Hizbollah rocket launches into Israel and implementation of long-standing Israeli plans to rout the Hizbollah.

For the last 20 days, Israelis have essentially ignored the 3-1 ratio of Lebanese civilians to Hizbollah killed in the fighting, according the best of the IDF's assessments. But the deaths of some 55 people -- more than half of them children -- when an apartment building collapsed in Qana, was impossible to ignore, especially since almost exactly a decade ago, in 1996, an Israeli artillery shell killed some 120 Lebanese who were seeking shelter in a UN camp in the very same village during an Israeli operation against Hizbollah forces in south Lebanon.

'Only those who neutralize terror can make peace,' said Defense Minister Amir Peretz this morning in the Knesset, reiterating Israel's position that the 48-hour ceasefire was a humanitarian gesture, but that it would not end the Israeli operations against Hizbollah. Israel would reserve the right to fire on any place where rockets are launched at Israel, on Hizbollah fighters who challenge Israeli troops, and Israeli troops would continue the gradual process of eliminating any vestiges of the Hizbollah fortifications built on the border with Israel over the last six years since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. If Israel were to accept an immediate ceasefire now, he said, 'we'll be right back in the same situation in another few months,' because Hizbollah will not have been disarmed, removed from the border, and it will have been rearmed by Iran, through Syria.

There was something familiar in the Israeli rhetoric yesterday and this morning in the press, but it was not in reference to the events a decade ago in Qana. Instead, it was the same 'we're sorry but not apologizing' that was heard after an explosion on a Gaza beach that had been targeted by Israeli warplanes killed seven members of a Gazan family, earlier this summer. Israel's basic argument when charged with causing civilian deaths in its combat against guerrilla and terrorist groups, is that when Israeli fire harms civilians, it is by accident, or because the terrorists hide behind the civilians, while the terrorists deliberately target Israeli civilians. The IDF had plenty of footage yesterday showing Kayusha-launcher mounted pickup trucks in Qana firing rockets into Israel and then being driven into residential areas, hiding inside garages. According to Peretz, when ever possible, Israeli intelligence calls the civilian residents of such buildings, to warn the non-combatants to get out of the building, 'two hours in advance.'

Indeed, south Lebanon villages and towns were covered with leaflets over the last two weeks, warning people to get out of the area. But Israel had bombed roads leading in and out of south Lebanon, trying to prevent Hizbollah from smuggling the kidnapped soldiers out of south Lebanon. And just as tens of thousands of people in northern Israel are unable to get out of the area that is being targeted by Hizbollah rockets because they cannot afford to go anywhere else, there might be tens of thousands of south Lebanese trapped in the area.

Rice's prediction that the UN could reach an agreement this week worries military planners -- and their political masters in Jerusalem, who, riding a national consensus in favor of the Israeli campaign against Hizbollah, have promised that the army will indeed cripple the guerrilla group.

But defeating a guerrilla group requires a political adroitness that neither Israel nor the Americans have successfully demonstrated in the last few years. For example, Israel could easily have cornered Syria, Lebanon and Hizbollah by simply announcing its plan to withdraw from the Shaba Farms area, captured from Syria in the 1967 war, but laid claim to by Hizbollah -- and lately Lebanon -- as Lebanese. True, the area has some strategic importance but of no less strategic importance is neutralizing Hizbollah's claims to Shaba, or at the very least pitting Hizbollah against Syria by forcing Syria to accept responsibility for Shaba. Israel has been refusing to discuss Shaba as part of the political deal Rice is trying to hammer out -- indeed, Rice has encountered more Israeli resistance to American entreaties than the Bush administration has ever faced from either Ariel Sharon or Olmert -- but Jerusalem could find Shaba in the UN resolution that Rice is supposedly packaging. Indeed, Israeli commentators were quick to note that Rice made no mention of returning the soldiers, no mention of Shaba, and in fact no mention of Hizbollah, per se, during her six minute announcement, though she did refer to UN Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon -- and the removal of foreign forces.

Israel, in any case, says it will not accept a ceasefire until the 'stabilization' force is in place -- and until then it presumably will hold onto the narrow 1-2 kilometer strip it is gradually occupying north of the border fence with Lebanon. How long it will be able to do so in peace remains to be seen. Hizbollah's cachet in Lebanon was its resistance to Israeli occupation of the 'security zone' that then-premier Ehud Barak evacuated in 2000. Since then, even as the Hizbollah built up its strength in south Lebanon, its relevance in Lebanese politics began to subside. Now, with mounting civilian casualties, Lebanon is unified against the Israeli presence and Israeli assumptions about the Western world agreeing with its campaign against the Hizbollah have been shattered. Rice's statement this morning was clearly meant as a change in the traffic light for Israel, from a green light to the yellow one. A red one is coming up soon, especially if Hizbollah stops launching its rockets. A Hizbollah spokesman rejected Rice's statement this morning. But right now, actions speak louder than words and not acting speaks even louder than that.

And Gazans kept launching Qassams at the Negev this morning, prompting IDF artillery fire at the launching zones. As of noon, no casualties were reported on either side.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation