The United States continues to send major aid to the Lebanese army.

Faced with the Iranian threat, Saudi Arabia had to improve its relations with Syria, and reduced its involvement in Lebanon. As part of the deal, Hariri paid homage to Assad, who ordered Hezbollah to murder his father. Since then, Hariri has continually given in to Hezbollah.

But the commander accused Israel of violating the ceasefire with IAF’s overfly of the Hezbollah-controlled territory.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah keeps installing Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rocket launchers throughout Lebanon. They are more numerous and dispersed than in Gaza, so Israel cannot strike them all down preemptively. Densely settled northern Israel is more vulnerable to attacks with 100-pound-warhead rockets than the south.

If the army expects a war, then it would be logical to destroy rocket launchers periodically, but Israel’s political leadership is too cowardly for that.

Israel is the only sucker in the region to care what the UN says.

Such a move would be stupid on Israel’s part. Hezbollah has firmly entered the political process in Lebanon, and wouldn’t invite a massive retaliation against its constituency. Iran’s hold on Hezbollah is insufficient to push it into a major war. The Lebanese slowly forgave Hezbollah for the 2006 war on the presumption that Israel acted unexpectedly, but a new, larger war would greatly damage Hezbollah’s electoral support.

If Hezbollah starts firing, Israel can react within hours, so there is no need to preempt. It is possible that these rumors are being disseminated by Israel to keep Hezbollah out of our quarrel with Iran; or Netanyahu and Barak might indeed be bent on proving themselves superior to Olmert and Peres.

In the highly successful first strike of the 2006 war, IAF eliminated about half of Hezbollah’s rockets. No doubt Hezbollah is digging deeper and expects the next score to be much lower. Thus, it is preparing to launch some 20–30 thousand missiles at Israel.

Such an attack would devastate Israel’s northern communities and prompt harsh retaliation against Lebanon. Even as Hezbollah is becoming an increasingly political force, Iran is preparing it for an apocalyptic war with Israel.

Dissatisfied with Hezbollah’s moderation, some of its members are developing their own plans of attack. They will eventually split the way Hezbollah split from Amal.

Certainly it was one of these splinter groups, rather than Hezbollah’s central command, which attempted the assassination of Israel’s Chief of Staff. A centrist Israeli government went to war over two soldiers, and a right-wing government would have no choice but to attack Lebanon over the death of the Israeli Chief of Staff. If Hezbollah had wanted such a major confrontation, it would have carried out a much more professional operation than just inciting a few hapless Israeli Arabs.

The Arab Israeli Balad party, from whose illegal camp Hezbollah recruited the would-be assassins, vowed to continue its anti-Israeli incitement.

This confirms that other villages welcome Hezbollah even though they can drive it out, and must be held fully responsible during a war.

UNIFIL troops did not interfere to help the Kfar Menasim villagers, though preventing Hezbollah’s rearmament in the border areas is what UNIFIL is there for.

The Israeli security establishment is less polite about Jewish children. They are routinely thrown out of their homes during outpost demolitions and arrested for praying on the Temple Mount.

The European position is not especially abnormal. Many groups that once were considered terrorist, such as Mandela’s African National Congress, eventually moved onto the political scene and enjoyed international recognition.

Hezbollah has rarely acted as a terrorist group in a sense of attacking enemy civilians in covert operations.
Rare examples to the contrary, such as its attacks on Jewish civilian targets abroad, were acts of retaliation. Hezbollah’s cooperation with Palestinian terrorists does not make the Lebanese group terrorist, just as Iran and Syria, who also cooperate with Hamas, remain political entities rather than terrorist organizations.
Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon nine years ago Hezbollah is almost exclusively a political organizations with a legally sanctioned militia, and as such will certainly enter the European political process.

As we had expected, Hezbollah retained its grip over the Lebanese political system despite the electoral loss.

The ruling bloc’s role is thus reduced to garbage collection and similar municipal projects.

It testifies to Hezbollah’s great appeal to the masses that its bloc suffered no losses despite having provoked a devastating war two years ago.

Besides arming itself despite UNIFIL’s presence, Hezbollah has enough time and weapons to aid its fellow terrorists.

Israel prefers not to regard the arms shipments to Hamas by Lebanon’s ruling party as a good enough reason to bomb Lebanon.

Britain decided to establish political contacts with Hezbollah.

After Mughniyeh’s death, Iran saturated Hezbollah with its instructors, and now the highly trained militia conduct weapons smuggling to Gaza much more efficiently than Hamas.

In a separate development, Egypt arrested forty-nine Hezbollah members hours before they were to conduct large-scale Pesach attacks on Israeli tourists in Sinai.

Two sovereign states, Iran and Lebanon, are openly waging a proxy war on Israel, yet the Jewish government is reluctant to bomb them.

Hamas’ policy on permissions is inconsistent. Sometimes, the terrorist group genuinely seeks to maintain ceasefire, and bans rocket launches. Other times, it only seeks to establish its military monopoly by demanding compliance from other terrorist organizations.

Salah was released soon afterward.

Earlier, Olmert had promised retaliation against Lebanon for Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. Meanwhile, Hezbollah attacks from Gaza, rather than Lebanon.
Britain has established a political dialogue with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah realizes that revenge for Mughniye will subject Lebanon to Israeli reprisals, since Hezbollah is the ruling party. Iran seeks to embroil Israel in ongoing conflicts in the South (Hamas) and North (Hezbollah) to keep IDF too busy for a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Hezbollah operation is also meant to give Israel and the United States a taste of things to come in case of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Nasrallah has publicly vowed revenge.