[Kabar-indonesia] 1: NYT Analysis: Israeli Air Power May Not Be Enough [+WP: U.S-Allies Split]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

Mideast-1 (4 reports): 

- NYT Military Analysis: Strategy: To Disarm 
  Shadowy Guerrilla Army, Israeli Air Power 
  May Not Be Enough 

- WP: U.S. at Odds With Allies on Mideast Conflict
  [Citing Civilian Casualties, European Nations and 
  U.N. Eager for Cease-Fire]

- WP: Deadliest Day Yet in Assault on Lebanon
  [Hezbollah Rockets Fired Into Israel Kill Two 
  Arab Boys]

- Guardian Comment: A protracted colonial war 
  [With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate 
  and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon] 

The New York Times
Thursday, July 20, 2006

Military Analysis: Strategy

To Disarm Shadowy Guerrilla Army, 
Israeli Air Power May Not Be Enough 

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, July 19 -- With its bombardment of Lebanon, Israel aims to 
accomplish the military goals of eliminating Hezbollah’s ability to fire missiles 
over the border, cutting its lines of resupply from Syria or Iran and 
demonstrating — under pain of chaos — the cost to the Lebanese government of allowing 
the militant group to operate freely from its territory. 

But recent combat history provides a chastening lesson that air power, 
regardless of its accuracy and punch, cannot defeat even a conventional adversary 
unless it is backed by ground forces. Thus, American military analysts 
monitoring the conflict caution that Israel may be unable to reach its goal of 
disarming a shadowy guerrilla army by missiles, bombs and long-range artillery alone.

To that end, small numbers of Israeli commandos already have entered Lebanon, 
senior Israeli officials acknowledged Wednesday, and more ground forces may 
be sent in.

The Israeli Defense Forces are “right now doing pinpointed entries into south 
Lebanon to deal with Hezbollah locations,” said one senior Israeli official, 
who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing his nation’s 
classified military planning.

Israel is wary of replicating its demoralizing, 18-year occupation of 
southern Lebanon, and there are no plans for “clear and hold” missions, these 
officials said. Instead, once their tactical objectives are reached in missions 
aimed at clearing the rocky, cavernous, bunker-laden terrain of militants and 
their arsenals, Israeli forces would return home.

Then it would be up to Lebanese troops, perhaps with assistance from an 
international force, to fill the security vacuum under the Israeli plan, the 
Israeli official said.

Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert who served on the staff of the National 
Security Council under President Reagan, said that while it may not be possible 
for the Israelis to destroy Hezbollah completely, especially through 
bombardment alone, “They can degrade that guerrilla army’s capacity to inflict 
unacceptable pain on Israeli civilians and Israeli cities with rockets.”

But even a successful conclusion of the current military effort in southern 
Lebanon cannot resolve Israel’s broader security problems, he cautioned.

“The Palestinian suicide bombers were much more effective than these rockets 
have ever been,” said Mr. Kemp, who is now director of regional strategic 
programs for the Nixon Center, a Washington policy institute.

Over the past week of fighting, after Hezbollah forces captured two Israeli 
soldiers, Israeli forces have carried out air and artillery strikes to degrade 
Hezbollah military capabilities in southern Lebanon. The attacks focused first 
on rockets and launchers.

“We are still working through our original targeting menus, but we are 
chasing these strategic missiles as we find them,” said the Israeli official. “This 
is our first priority — and it will take weeks, not days.”

American military officers who study the missile threat noted that Israel 
faced significant problems in countering Hezbollah’s arsenal. Even with perfect 
missile defenses — which do not exist — the short-range weapons that have 
struck northern Israel follow such a brief trajectory that they are nearly 
impossible to hit. For those short-range rockets, and the longer-range missiles that 
have struck Haifa, the Israeli tactic is not to defend by bringing them down 
in flight, but to hit their launchers in hiding or immediately as they are 
rolled into the open before firing, which requires persistent and detailed 
surveillance. 

More broadly, Israel also has sent its missiles and artillery shells into 
Hezbollah outposts, weapons depots and command posts, aiming at troops and 
ammunition buried in the rocky Lebanese terrain. The goal is to create less a cordon 
sanitaire than an empty zone to be refilled by forces, either Lebanese or 
international, capable of preventing Hezbollah from returning within striking 
range of Israel.

To destroy Hezbollah’s ability to plan and communicate, the neighborhood in 
southern Beirut that served as the unofficial Hezbollah capital has been 
pounded; Israeli officials acknowledge that this is part of an attempt to strike 
directly at the organization’s leadership, as well as to disarm its fighters and 
dismantle its support infrastructure.

In addition, to keep weapons from reaching Hezbollah, a number of road links 
and bridges to Syria, and Beirut’s airport, have been hit, as Israeli warships 
impose a quarantine of the Lebanese coast. To the same end, Israeli officials 
are demanding that a stringent monitoring regime be put into place along all 
entry points to Lebanon.

But the Israeli military campaign is intertwined with another goal aimed at 
the Lebanese government and civilian population, in the view of some American 
experts. “That is to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local 
political reaction to Hezbollah’s adventurism,” said Edward P. Djerejian, 
who formerly was the American ambassador to both Israel and Syria.

Mr. Djerejian, now director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public 
Policy, warned that, ultimately, there was no military solution to reduce the 
security threats to Israel — and that the Israeli leadership understood it had 
a limited time to achieve its current military goals. 

“There is only a certain window of time before the international community 
truly weighs in,” he said.

Until the United States and other nations decide to pressure Israel to rein 
in its attacks, Israel itself must weigh the impact of bombarding civilian 
infrastructure targets and even legitimate Hezbollah operations centers within 
residential areas. These attacks could quickly undermine any potential for the 
Lebanese government, and its population, to support actions to constrain 
Hezbollah.

“Everybody understands the Israelis want to degrade Hezbollah’s ability as a 
military fighting force and as an organization capable of launching missiles 
into Israel,” said Theodore H. Kattouf, a former American ambassador to Syria.

“I believe they want to turn the Lebanese people — those outside of the true 
believers within the Shia community — against Hezbollah,” he added. “I think 
they are quite misguided in the policy they are following. These attacks are, 
if anything, making people feel somewhat less hostile to Hezbollah and more 
convinced in their dislike of Israel.”

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The Washington Post 
Thursday, July 20, 2006

U.S. at Odds With Allies on Mideast Conflict

Citing Civilian Casualties, European Nations 
and U.N. Eager for Cease-Fire

By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers

The United States faces growing tensions with allies over its support of 
Israel's military campaign to cripple Hezbollah, amid calls for a cease-fire to 
help with 
the mounting humanitarian crisis.

European allies are particularly alarmed about the disproportionately high 
civilian death toll in Lebanon. They are also concerned that the U.S. position 
will increase tensions between the Islamic world and the West by fueling 
militants, playing into the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and adding to the problems 
of the U.S.-led coalition force in Iraq.

"What there needs to be now is a cessation of hostilities," U.N. Deputy 
Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown told reporters yesterday. "The Middle East is 
littered with the results of people believing there are military solutions to 
political problems in the region." He said civilians are "very unfairly 
bearing the greatest brunt of the conflict."

The fragile Lebanese government has pleaded for a cease-fire, and France has 
urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution calling for an end to 
hostilities, proposing political and security measures. France also has called 
for "humanitarian corridors" to guarantee safety for civilians fleeing areas 
under fire.

More than 500,000 people -- about one in eight in a country smaller than 
Connecticut -- have been displaced, according to the Lebanese government.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will head to the United Nations tonight 
to begin talks on the crisis and a possible stabilization force along the 
border. Few specifics have been developed about the goals, size, location and 
timing of such a force, U.N. and European officials said.

The United Nations has floated the idea of expanding a 2,000-strong U.N. 
force that has been in Lebanon since Israel's first incursion, in 1978. But Israel 
and the United States say that option is not viable.

Rice is now expected to travel to the Middle East as soon as this weekend, 
but with a limited listening mission in Israel and Egypt. The United States is 
still struggling to define the timing and purpose of her mission. She is 
tentatively expected to leave a team behind in Israel, head on to Malaysia for a 
conference of Southeast Asian nations, and possibly return to the Middle East for 
further negotiations if her team can put the right "building blocks" in 
place, a U.S. official said.

The United States is increasingly out of sync with key allies, however, 
because it remains content to allow Israel to pound Hezbollah, both to remove it as 
a threat and to undermine the region's extremist movements and hard-line 
regimes.

European nations and U.N. officials are eager for a cease-fire or "pause" to 
allow Lebanese civilians to move to safer areas and investigate diplomatic 
avenues, as well as prevent other Middle East hot spots from becoming inflamed, 
European envoys said.

"The one thing that is guaranteed to send the Arab world and the Persian 
world over the edge is for the U.S. to be seen ultimately to be doing what they 
always believed -- to be fully in cahoots with Israel," said a European official 
who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic relations. "The 
danger of allowing it to continue is that the United States is more and more 
despised. It's not like the U.S. had a good reputation within the region to 
start with."

The White House vehemently denied it is coordinating with Israel or "sitting 
around at the war map saying 'Do this, this and this,' " press secretary Tony 
Snow said. "We're not colluding, we're not cooperating, we're not conspiring, 
we're not doing any of that," he told reporters. "The Israelis are doing what 
they think is necessary to protect their borders."

The State Department also tried to stress the basic international agreement 
on Hezbollah as the cause of the conflict. "I don't think anybody disagrees on 
the desire to end the violence in the region, but let's remember what the root 
causes of the violence are," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

But underscoring the differences with Europeans and other allies, a senior 
administration official said yesterday that the time is not yet ripe for a 
diplomatic solution. "The conditions that the G-8 [Group of Eight industrialized 
nations] talked about are not in place to get a real and permanent cease-fire 
that addresses the fundamental problems of the region," he said.

The official said Washington is privately advising Israel to consider the 
dire humanitarian situation and avoid civilian casualties. He said the Israelis 
"have a terrible problem" because Hezbollah is placing a lot of equipment in 
civilian neighborhoods. "They make mistakes, and there are accidents," he said. 
"It is impossible for them to avoid all the collateral damage."

U.S. support for Israel is also taking a toll on close coordination between 
the United States and France, which has been critical in fostering stability in 
the former French mandate country. That cooperation included a joint 
resolution that called for and achieved an end to Syria's 29-year occupation of 
Lebanon.

The two countries now appear seriously divided over the next step in 
resolving the crisis.

France proposed that the Security Council adopt a resolution that could call 
on Israel and Hezbollah to show "utmost restraint" and begin consideration of 
a reinforced U.N. peacekeeping presence in the region. The resolution would 
condemn unnamed "extremist forces" who are threatening Israeli and Lebanese 
democracies, and call for the release of Israeli troops by Hezbollah and the 
negotiation of "comprehensive and lasting cease-fire." It also proposes the 
disarmament of Hezbollah and support for Lebanon to exercise authority throughout the 
southern part of the country.

U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton challenged France's proposal. "I am not sure 
that conventional thinking about a cease-fire makes any sense when you are 
dealing with a terrorist group that fires rockets at civilian populations and 
kidnaps innocent Israelis," he said.

Staff writer Michael Abramowitz contributed to this report.

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The Washington Post
Thursday, July 20, 2006

Deadliest Day Yet in Assault on Lebanon

Hezbollah Rockets Fired Into Israel Kill Two Arab Boys

By Edward Cody and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service

photo: Israeli soldiers advance toward Lebanon for what officials described 
as a short-term raid across the border. At least two soldiers and one 
Hezbollah militiaman were reported killed. (By Yaron Kaminsy -- Associated Press) 

BEIRUT, July 19 -- Israeli warplanes continued their punishing airstrikes 
across Lebanon on Wednesday, including for the first time striking Beirut's main 
Christian enclave and later bombing a bunker believed to be sheltering 
Hezbollah leaders. Ground troops meanwhile launched their most significant incursion 
so far into southern Lebanon, joining attacks that killed more than 50 
Lebanese on the deadliest day since hostilities erupted eight days ago.

Hezbollah in return fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel, hitting 
Haifa and, for the first time, Nazareth, where two Israeli Arab boys were 
killed.

Israeli troops punched across the border about 20 miles inland from the 
Mediterranean and clashed with fighters from the militant Shiite Muslim group 
Hezbollah, which Israel says it wants to uproot from southern Lebanon and disarm. 
Israeli officials qualified the incursion as a short-term raid, similar to 
those carried out over the last several days, but both sides suffered casualties 
after an Israeli squad came under fire and an Israeli tank hit a land mine, 
according to reports in Israel and Lebanon.

About 9 p.m., the Israeli military attacked a bunker used by senior members 
of Hezbollah, a military spokesman said. An Israeli military official who spoke 
on condition of anonymity said dozens of planes were involved, dropping about 
23 tons of explosives on the bunker. Hezbollah told news services that none 
of its leaders or members were killed in the strike.

The tempo of air attacks, along with the new ground operation, eclipsed 
diplomatic efforts to halt the bloodshed and prompted an emotional appeal from 
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora for international help in stopping the 
bombing on humanitarian grounds.

Israeli officials said they planned to pursue attacks on Hezbollah and 
Lebanese infrastructure for at least another week before making room for 
peacemaking. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to travel to Israel early 
next week to try to get a diplomatic solution started, U.S. officials said, 
but for the moment the armed conflict continued unabated.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and other international aid 
agencies cited growing concern over the number of Lebanese civilians being 
displaced by the Israeli air campaign, particularly in the hard-hit villages and 
towns of southern Lebanon. The number forced to leave their homes was estimated at 
500,000 in a country with a population of 4 million.

Hezbollah missiles, which have been fired regularly into northern Israel 
since hostilities erupted, on Wednesday landed in the Israeli Arab town of 
Nazareth. Two brothers -- Rabia Taluzeh, 3, and Mahmoud, 8 -- were killed around 5 
p.m. as they were walking to their uncle's house when two rockets landed in the 
center of a main street running through the Safrefeh neighborhood in Israel's 
largest Arab city.

Police officials said as many as eight others were wounded in the rocket 
strike, while scores more were treated in local hospitals for shock. A third 
rocket crashed into a nearby garage, police said, but no one was injured.

"When I came out, I started taking wounded into my apartment," said Hussam 
Saleh, 28, who owns a residential building along the street. "I saw the two kids 
lying in the street, dead on the spot. One had been hit in the head, the 
other in the body."

Nazareth, a city of 75,000 people, has no public bomb shelters or 
early-warning sirens commonplace in other Israeli cities across the north.

Another 10 missiles rained down on Haifa, hitting an apartment building. In 
all, more than 100 missiles and rockets were fired into northern Israel, 
causing dozens of light injuries in addition to the two deaths, Israeli officials 
reported.

The Israeli attack in Ashrafiyeh, the Lebanese capital's principal Maronite 
Christian neighborhood, targeted a pair of well-drilling trucks and was carried 
out with what appeared to be precision missiles carrying small explosive 
charges. The blasts caused no casualties and did little damage, even to the trucks 
sitting in a rocky vacant lot. But for the first time they brought Israel's 
air campaign against Hezbollah to that wealthy quarter of Beirut, populated by 
Christians who were Israel's allies during its 1982 invasion aimed at 
Palestinian guerrillas.

The attack took place a short distance from the main Beirut port, where U.S. 
citizens boarded a cruise ship chartered by the U.S. government for evacuation 
to the nearby island of Cyprus. Boarding operations were not endangered, 
however, and families filed aboard throughout the day until the Orient Queen 
steamed out to sea with 1,059 evacuees aboard, almost all of them Americans. [The 
ship and two others had docked in the Cypriot port of Larnaca by Thursday, 
according to the Reuters news agency, which also reported that about 40 U.S. 
Marines landed on a beach in Beirut at dawn to help with the evacuation.]

In the suburban hills south of Beirut, at Shwaifat, Israeli airstrikes hit a 
dozen dump trucks and container flatbeds parked in a freight marshaling yard, 
witnesses reported. Surrounding trees were stripped bare and several trucks 
were turned into twisted wrecks, they said, but there was no sign of military 
equipment.

The airstrikes in Shwaifat and Ashrafiyeh suggested Israeli military planners 
are seeking to paralyze truck traffic across Lebanon, depriving Hezbollah of 
a means of transporting munitions. In particular, Israeli officials have said, 
the air campaign is intended to prevent resupply of the missiles that 
Hezbollah has been firing into northern Israel.

Civilian trucks carrying cargo of all kinds, including food, have been hit. 
Three trucks carrying rice and sugar were blasted Tuesday near the Christian 
village of Zahleh in the mountains separating Beirut from the Bekaa Valley. 
Wednesday's air attacks also clearly hit civilian infrastructure and vehicles: 
drills to dig water wells and trucks to haul dirt and containers.

Farther south, in the border hills near Israel, the continuing air attacks 
appeared more widely targeted, striking at cars and buildings and emptying roads 
and villages, according to reports from witnesses. One strike, at the village 
of Srifa, near the frontier, tore apart several houses, killing at least 17 
Lebanese, including several children, Lebanese officials told local reporters.

More than 30 people were killed in other attacks across the southern border 
zone, Lebanese officials reported, raising the day's death toll above 50.

Aid officials in the southern city of Tyre said food stocks were dwindling 
and medicine was in short supply. For days, electricity and water have been cut. 
Many residents feared that roads leading out were too dangerous to travel. 
Others headed for Beirut, flying white flags from their car antennas or sunroofs.

"If you don't die of something from Israel, you're going to die of sickness, 
food or thirst," said Katya Taleb, 26.

Taleb gathered with hundreds of others at the beachfront Tyre Rest House, 
seeking shelter and hoping for evacuation. U.N. officials expressed hope that a 
ship might arrive Thursday but were reported having difficulty securing Israeli 
authorization for it to enter the port.

Siniora, in a televised appeal, said about 300 Lebanese had been killed by 
Israeli air raids over the past eight days. He called on foreign governments to 
come to Lebanon's aid, adding, "I hope you won't let us down."

Shortly after he spoke, Israeli jets attacked Beirut again and three blasts 
rang out in the downtown area of the capital, rattling glass and shaking the 
ground around the stately building overlooking Martyrs' Square that Siniora uses 
as government headquarters.

Chaim Biton, a farmer in the Israeli village of Avivim, just across the 
border about 22 miles east of the Mediterranean, said the ground fighting broke out 
when an Israeli tank and a bulldozer crossed into Lebanon to assist a patrol 
searching for Hezbollah bunkers. The tank hit a land mine, he said, but 
Israeli military officials said it was hit by mortar fire.

The attack set off exchanges of artillery, mortar and light-weapons fire 
throughout the day, Biton said. Bursts of machine-gun fire and the thump of 
outgoing artillery could be heard in Avivim.

Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, said militia fighters destroyed 
three Israeli tanks and killed a half-dozen Israeli soldiers in that clash and 
several others along the border hills. One of its militiamen was killed, 
Hezbollah announced. Israeli military officials said two soldiers were killed and 
seven were injured.

On Israel's other front, soldiers reentered the central Gaza Strip near the 
Mughazi refugee camp, setting off intense clashes with Palestinian militants. 
Six Palestinians, including two civilians, were killed and 30 fighters and 
civilians were wounded, according to local hospital officials. Most of the dead 
and wounded were hit by a missile fired from an Israeli drone, they said.

Five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clashes, a military spokeswoman 
said. In a statement, the military said its forces "carried out aerial attacks 
against three cells of armed gunmen and a cell carrying antitank missile 
launchers in the central Gaza Strip."

About 12 miles south, around the Sufa border crossing between Israel and 
Gaza, Israeli engineering units searched for tunnels into Israel, the spokeswoman 
reported. An Israeli soldier being held prisoner in Gaza was captured by 
Palestinian militants who had tunneled into Israel in a June 25 attack. Since then, 
according to a report Wednesday by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs, 100 Palestinians, including 16 children, have been killed 
and 300 have been injured in Israeli attacks. One Israeli soldier has been 
killed and 12 Israeli civilians have been injured in the same period, the report 
said.

Three Palestinians were killed and about 20 people were injured when the 
Israeli army moved into the West Bank city of Nablus on a mission to arrest 
Palestinian militants, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials. Palestinian 
security officials said about 150 Palestinian security officers were detained 
by Israeli forces during the operation.

The Israeli security cabinet, meanwhile, reiterated its demand for the 
unconditional release of two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah and the Israeli 
soldier held in Gaza by Palestinian militants, including some from the Islamic 
Resistance Movement, known as Hamas. The cabinet, in a statement, said there 
would be "no negotiations on a release of prisoners" held by Israel, as demanded 
by Hezbollah and Hamas in exchange for releasing the Israeli soldiers.

The cabinet said the "principles of a diplomatic solution" to the Lebanese 
crisis were its soldiers' release, a halt in Hezbollah rocket and missile fire 
into Israel, extension of Lebanese government authority into border zones 
controlled by Hezbollah, deployment of the Lebanese army along the border and 
disarmament of all militias in Lebanon.

"The intensive fighting against Hezbollah will continue, including strikes 
against its infrastructure and command centers, its operational capabilities, 
its war materiel and its leaders," with the aim of achieving these goals, the 
cabinet declared.

Anderson reported from Jerusalem. Correspondents Anthony Shadid in Tyre and 
Jonathan Finer in Nazareth and Avivim contributed to this report.

-------------------------------------------

The Guardian (UK)
Thursday, July 20, 2006

Comment

A protracted colonial war 

With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate 
and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon 

by Tariq Ali

In his last interview - after the 1967 six-day war - the historian Isaac 
Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving 
relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the 
Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term 
interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The 
Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich 
totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'."

In Israel's actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an 
imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military 
superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure 
of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many 
civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a 
single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US.

The offensive against Gaza is designed to destroy Hamas for daring to win an 
election. The "international community" stood by as Gaza suffered collective 
punishment. Dozens of innocents continue to die. This meant nothing to the G8 
leaders. Nothing was done.

Israeli recklessness is always green-lighted by Washington. In this case, 
their interests coincide. They want to isolate and topple the Syrian regime by 
securing Lebanon as an Israeli-American protectorate on the Jordanian model. 
They argue this was the original design of the country. Contemporary Lebanon, it 
is true, still remains in large measure the artificial creation of French 
colonialism it was at the outset - a coastal band of Greater Syria sliced off from 
its hinterland by Paris to form a regional client dominated by a Maronite 
minority.

The country's confessional chequerboard has never allowed an accurate census, 
for fear of revealing that a substantial Muslim - today perhaps even a Shia - 
majority is denied due representation in the political system. Sectarian 
tensions, over-determined by the plight of refugees from Palestine, exploded into 
civil war in the 1970s, providing for the entry of Syrian troops, with tacit 
US approval, and their establishment there - ostensibly as a buffer between the 
warring factions, and deterrent to an Israeli takeover, on the cards with the 
invasions of 1978 and 1982 (when Hizbullah did not exist).

The killing of Rafik Hariri provoked vast demonstrations by the middle class, 
demanding the expulsion of the Syrians, while western organisations arrived 
to assist the progress of a Cedar Revolution. Backed by threats from Washington 
and Paris, the momentum was sufficient to force a Syrian withdrawal and 
produce a weak government in Beirut.

But Lebanon's factions remained spread-eagled. Hizbullah had not disarmed, 
and Syria has not fallen. Washington had taken a pawn, but the castle had still 
to be captured. I was in Beirut in May, when the Israeli army entered and 
killed two "terrorists" from a Palestinian splinter group. The latter responded 
with rockets. Israeli warplanes punished Hizbullah by dropping over 50 bombs on 
its villages and headquarters near the border. The latest Israeli offensive is 
designed to take the castle. Will it succeed? A protracted colonial war lies 
ahead, since Hizbullah, like Hamas, has mass support. It cannot be written off 
as a "terrorist" organisation. The Arab world sees its forces as freedom 
fighters resisting colonial occupation.

There are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli gulags. That is 
why Israeli soldiers are captured. Prisoner exchanges have occurred as a result. 
To blame Syria and Iran for Israel's latest offensive is frivolous. Until the 
question of Palestine is resolved and Iraq's occupation ended, there will be 
no peace in the region. A "UN" force to deter Hizbullah, but not Israel, is a 
nonsensical notion.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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