The Lebanese do not possess SAM batteries, which would be dangerous to Israeli F-16, though low-altitude flights make the planes vulnerable to primitive missiles.

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.

Hariri is a dear friend of French President Sarkozy, who is a friend of Israel.

The statement is a major concession to Hezbollah by the Lebanese government, which has previously dissociated itself from Hezbollah’s military activities to avoid full-blown retaliation from Israel. The Lebanese policy of limited liability, under which the government declared itself not to be responsible for Hezbollah’s acts, allowed Lebanon to survive the 2006 war with Israel relatively unscathed.

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.

Hariri, an ultra-corrupt billionaire widely disliked in Lebanon, represents Saudi interests in the region. It seems that Saudi Arabia and Iran have reached some sort of power-sharing agreement regarding Lebanon.

The political truce in Lebanon won’t last long because Hezbollah can only realize its objectives in a totalitarian Muslim state. The flight of middle-class Christians from Lebanon eroded the power base of the moderate bloc, which is now represented by Hariri.

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.

The notion that PIJ acted without Hezbollah’s approval is absurd: both terrorist organizations are fully controlled by Iran, and PIJ wouldn’t risk upsetting its haven in Lebanon by violating Hezbollah’s policy.

Hezbollah is using periodic PIJ rocket attacks to test the common strategy of Arab terrorist movements: once a movement matures, it becomes mostly political, and sprouts militant wings. Thus, the PLO sprouted the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Muslim Brotherhood sprung from Hamas, and Hezbollah has relegated attacks to PIJ.

The State of Lebanon has failed to the extent that its militias openly trade SAM batteries between them, but the West refuses to permit the only solution: partitioning Lebanon between Israel and Syria, with a Christian enclave in between.

But Israeli agents in South Lebanon typically use Israeli cell phones, so the phone-scan scenario is also doubtful. In our opinion, the network fell apart because of human errors, as Lebanese Israeli agents are typically talkative. The increased level of spy activity in preparation for the Mughniye assassination likely exposed some of the agents, who led to the rest, as compartmentalization is notoriously bad in Lebanon.

We wonder, what would be the Pentagon’s reaction a to rocket attack on the United States from Mexico?

The Saudis and Iranians are competing for influence in Lebanon, and anti-Israeli politics makes the best common ground for them.

With or without Hezbollah, Hariri’s government is deadlocked and dysfunctional.

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.

His comments follow another round of bellicose rhetoric by Ehud Barak—the general who lost the first Lebanon war, was the only minister to oppose an Israeli attack on the Syrian reactor, and opposes the raid on Iran. Jumblatt has accused Barak of betraying the Lebanese Druze: Barak withdrew IDF overnight from Lebanon, leaving the Druze—Israel’s allies—to face the angry Hezbollah.

Now the Druze have sided with Hezbollah against Israel.

UNIFIL troops are generally very close to Arabs and even help them to search for Israeli spies.

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.

Unlike the humane Israeli police, the Arabs confronted each other with live bullets and explosives.

Ultra-corrupt Hariri and ultra-terrorist Hezbollah sent their supporters into the streets in a show of power.

But of course they would all unite to live in peace with Jews, as proponents of the peace fiction claim.

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

Mitchell announced that Obama will conduct an “aggressive policy” against Israel, relentlessly pushing it for capitulation to the Palestinians. Perhaps the President of the Occupied United States of America would return his country to the Native Indians first?

The only interest the Lebanese have in an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is getting rid of the hated residents of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The Lebanese dread the prospect of the antisocial Palestinians staying in their country permanently.

The West Bank Palestinians don’t want their brethren to return, either.

Mitchell’s commitment can only mean he plans to push Israel to accept the thugs.

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.

While nominally a victory for America, the vote actually marked a huge defeat. In only the second election following a major war in 2006, Hezbollah’s bloc retained almost 50 percent of the vote. With this dynamic, Hezbollah will form the government in the next elections. Nearly half of all Lebanese citizens showed strong support for the most aggressive policy, which will be spearheaded by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has controlled the Lebanese government before and will push for veto power again.

The less-than-majority results benefit Hezbollah. Had it won, Hezbollah would have to moderate in order to conduct Lebanese foreign relations. Formally a minority bloc, Hezbollah can continue its aggressive course unconcerned with international reaction.

The Lebanese constitution prevented Hezbollah from running alone. The Lebanese parliament has quotas for religious groups, and Shiite Hezbollah needs Christian and Druze allies to fill the slots. Hezbollah won as much as it was allowed to win under the Lebanese constitution.

More importantly, Hezbollah’s victory crushes the fragile decades-old arrangement in the Lebanese parliament by which each ethnic and religious group had its place and quota. The upheaval may leave several parties, including the Druze and some Christians, opting for another round of civil war.

America pumped from 400 million to two billion dollars into Lebanese elections, mostly to bribe the voters. For Obama, the US failure in Lebanon presents a huge opportunity: he will claim he has no choice now but to engage Hezbollah and Syria in negotiations. Obama’s only bargaining chip in the negotiations will be Israel.

Biden conditioned the aid on the outcome of Lebanese elections, but the elections will finish nicely: Hezbollah may increase its parliamentary representation from 11 to perhaps 15 percent only. The problem is Hezbollah’s allies, which form the parliamentary majority.

Thus, American military aid to Lebanon is assured despite the fact that Lebanon is dominated, if not officially ruled, by Hezbollah.

The Lebanese army’s only possible enemy is Israel.

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.

After Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, Hezbollah took over the town’s Lebanese part and used it for cross-border operations against Israel. In the open fields, the border is plowed, mined, and barb-wired, but in the town it’s just a barrier.

In 2006 Israel recaptured the Lebanese part and Olmert’s government dragged out the talks on returning it. Netanyahu suspended the talks, citing uncertainty over Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon, which is expected in a few weeks in the US-sponsored elections.

The speed of the arrest suggests that Hezbollah has long known about Adib. Spying is often an open secret in Lebanon, as neither spies nor security services take their jobs seriously.

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.

Olmert repeatedly asserted that, since Hezbollah is now a part of the Lebanese government and nothing happens in South Lebanon without Hezbollah’s approval, any attack from Lebanon would lead to unrestricted retaliation. Of course, he lied.

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.

When some terrorists from the sovereign state of Pakistan attacked India a month ago, India threatened with war and Pakistan promptly fought and arrested the perpetrators.
The Israel government expressed hope that the attack was an isolated incident. Indeed, why should the government care about a couple of rocket attack on its northern side? Hey, it’s only Jews who suffer there.

We don’t care whether Hezbollah or Palestinians fired the rockets. They were launched from the sovereign state of Lebanon, which is in a state of war with Israel, thus this deserves massive retaliation.

The Lebanese army searches for the perpetrators, but the search would have been easier if Israel had flattened a dozen government buildings in Beirut.

Hysterical brokers sent the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange down 2.4% on the news of a rocket attack in the North.

Operating the rockets with timers is unusual. Apparently, the rockets were meant as a warning, and the peacekeepers were warned to intercept them.

The Lebanese have many reasons to fire at Israel. Palestinian splinter terrorist groups seek to account for donors’ money, but at the same time avoid Israeli retaliation. Syria and Hezbollah don’t want to keep the border completely quiet; if the border is quiet, they are irrelevant. Syria has an additional reason: to jeopardize the Egyptian efforts at a ceasefire in Gaza by increasing the destabilization of the north.

After Shamir’s government allowed Palestinian elections, it was only logical to permit them a legislative council, a government that conducts foreign policy, as well as police, and practically an army.

Palestinians don’t rush to proclaim independence because it would stop much of the aid and refugee assistance, and subject them to the Israeli military rather than police-level reprisals for terrorist acts.