Israel and it enemies

Aljazeera.Net - Lebanon divided over Hezbollah raid

Aljazeera explains the conflict within Lebanon on the role of Hezbollah in that country:

Dalia Salaam, a Lebanese Middle East analyst, says, "Hezbollah is currently the only political party in Lebanon fighting to save the country."

"The US and Europe should ask Israel to restrain itself. After all, no one, not even President George Bush or the Israeli government, can afford to escalate the situation."

But Ramzi Salha, a travel agent, says: "Whatever the agenda of Hezbollah is, it is not necessarily the agenda of the Lebanese people.

"They have not been designated by the Lebanese people to decide what is best for the country."

With the 22-year Israeli occupation over, many Lebanese say it is time for Hezbollah to lay down its weapons as demanded by UN Security Council resolution 1559.

Few are suggesting a return to war is coming, but Hezbollah's rivals are increasingly complaining that the only Lebanese group that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war has become more powerful than the state.

As you may expect, I also like Charles Krauthammer's article on the current situation. He highlights a point that has bothered me a lot over the years: the media's seeming amnesia about the fact that Israel only ended up with the occupied territories because it won the wars that attempted to eradicate it as a nation:

For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.

The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.

Finally, this Lebanese issue of having a heavily armed militia force that is separate from the government armed forces seems to be the same problem facing Iraq, Gaza, and probably other countries, for all I know. How do the people of these countries think that they can ever be properly governed when private armies are allowed to retain arms? Until this fundamental problem is rectified, unrest in the region will surely continue indefinitely.