FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Hezbollah’s strike on Tuesday totally paralyzed the capital and resulted in five deaths. There’s no doubt that Nasrallah can topple the government whenever he wants. Either some external force dissuaded him, or — now that he’s shown what he can do — he prefers to get control by means of threats. You can read the details in the Lebanon Daily Star.

A Lebanon under Hezbollah control is an even greater threat to Israel than a weak Lebanon which can’t control it. Remember that the Lebanese army is supposed to prevent Hezbollah guerrillas from deploying on the border and even disarm them (according to UN resolution 1701)!

If Lebanon becomes Hezbollastan, it will be a piece of the Shiite crescent being established by Iran in the heart of the Mideast — Iran, Iraq (after the US leaves), Syria, and Lebanon. This is more or less exactly the opposite of what US policy was supposed to achieve.

Will the US and Israel permit this to happen? Can they do anything about it?

Update [25 Jan 1114 PST]: Lebanese students fight it out, two more dead.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, Israel

“The main issue is the nationality issue. No matter what we do in the area of equality, Israel will not be legitimate.”

I think this is the second most serious (after Iran) issue faced by Israel today. I’m reproducing in full the remarks made Tuesday at the Herzliya conference by Dr. Schueftan, Deputy Director, National Security Studies Center, University of Haifa. Unfortunately, the difficulties he describes will not go away by themselves. — Editor.

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Barry Rubin had a very good column in the Jerusalem Post yesterday: Weakness and bad strategy. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but what struck me appears at the end, almost as an afterthought:

Partly due to its insolubility and partly to the many regional crises elsewhere, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to decline in regional importance.

As for the Arab-Israeli conflict (as distinct from the Israeli-Islamist or Israeli-Iran conflicts), it exists only in demagogic speeches and the illusions of Westerners who know little about the region.

The real threats to Israel come from the soon-to-be nuclear Iran, as well as the Islamist Hamas and Hezbollah, funded and supported by Iran. So making an agreement with the Palestinians, as Peretz would like to do, can only increase the threat as long as the Palestinians are dominated by Hamas. And the same goes for Syria, where Hezbollah’s influence grows from moment to moment.

For us in the United States, there’s a lesson as well. The line of reasoning so beloved by James Baker and his Saudi patrons that says that the Israel-Palestinian dispute is at the root of the conflict in the Middle East has got it backwards. Trying to fix the region by forcing Israel to make concessions is actually strengthening the enemies of the United States — radical Shiite Iran and Sunni Islamists, solidifying their control of the area rather than cooling the conflict down.

Technorati Tags: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel, Iran