More links on Israel. The Middle East is exploding and things are happening very fast so I will be posting regular links on this. The potential for a complete disaster is too great. Israel's actions are extreme and if they get more extrmeme, such as bombing Syria or Iran, our soldiers in Iraq can kiss their collective ass goodbye. Something to watch and something to think about.

What Are They Fighting For

Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army’s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on 8 June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given by 12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day. The abduction of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began on 28 June with the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the mass detention of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank, which was also planned weeks in advance. In Israeli discourse, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza when it evacuated its settlers from the Strip, and the Palestinians’ behavior therefore constitutes ingratitude. But there is nothing further from reality than this description. In fact, as was already stipulated in the Disengagement Plan, Gaza remained under complete Israeli military control, operating from outside. Israel prevented any possibility of economic independence for the Strip and from the very beginning, Israel did not implement a single one of the clauses of the agreement on border-crossings of November 2005. Israel simply substituted the expensive occupation of Gaza with a cheap occupation, one which in Israel’s view exempts it from the occupier’s responsibility to maintain the Strip, and from concern for the welfare and the lives of its million and a half residents, as determined in the fourth Geneva convention. Israel does not need this piece of land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom, they would become the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free access to the Western and Arab world. To control the West Bank, Israel needs full control Gaza. The new form of control Israel has developed is turning the whole of the Strip into a prison camp completely sealed from the world.

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Here is a good collector of links for what is happening in the Middle East.

Middle East Crisis Open Thread

This is the Middle East Crisis open-thread. We all hope this doesn't turn into the July War, but these days? Please post all developments, news stories, comments, links, theories, ideas, etc. here in this thread.

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Lebanon pays for Hezbollah's sins
A report from Lebanon's south, ravaged by retaliatory Israeli strikes.

Beirutis expected the worst when word came Wednesday that Hezbollah, the militant group based in south Lebanon, had killed eight Israeli soldiers near the border and seized two more. The region was already on edge, with the Israeli siege of Gaza in its 18th day following the Palestinian kidnapping of an Israel Defense Forces soldier. Everyone knew that Israeli retaliation would be severe. The only question was whether Israel would confine itself to attacks on Hezbollah, or if it would hold Lebanon responsible and launch attacks across the board. Israel chose the latter course and has meted out savage punishment to this small country. On Wednesday, IDF strikes destroyed the bridges connecting south Lebanon to the rest of the country. By nightfall, Israeli fighters had blasted the major highways, essentially sealing off the southern third from the center of the country. Early morning Thursday, warplanes bombed Rafiq Hariri Beirut International Airport, knocking out the runways. Minutes later, an Israeli rocket struck Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, wounding one person and sending local media into a frenzy over access to the scene that dispersed only when an IDF fighter screamed overhead and people ran for cover. And so it continued all day.

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July 13, 2006

A source who runs a Beirut-based dialogue with groups including Hezbollah says that the timing of the abduction yesterday was not planned in advance, but was more a target of opportunity. "It is not as if they chose today to do it," emailed Mark Perry, of Conflicts Forum. "Hezballah continually monitors the Israeli border to determine Israeli vulnerabilities. This morning, Israel's guard was down, and Hezballah moved. Why this morning? It would be better to ask Israel. The internal Israeli debate on this is not about Hezballah, but why was it that this morning, of all mornings, they screwed up. It is just the way it turned out... If it had been the case four weeks ago, they would have done it four weeks ago." "God help us," he adds.

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Lebanon Seeks Cease-Fire; Bush Refuses to Press Israel

Israel extended punishing airstrikes deeper inside Lebanon today, as President Bush rebuffed a Lebanese request that he push Israel for a cease-fire.

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Beirut waits as Syrian masters send Hezbollah allies into battle
By Robert Fisk

It's about Syria. That was the frightening message delivered by Damascus yesterday when it allowed its Hizbollah allies to cross the UN Blue Line in southern Lebanon, kill three Israeli soldiers, capture two others and demand the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

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Middle East Moves Closer to Brink: Israel Postures for Potential Expansion of Conflict to Syria and Iran

ABC News is reporting that Palestinian Gunmen have blown a hole through an Egypt border wall and a flood of people crossed into Gaza. One can only speculate why anyone would rush into Gaza unless preparing to fight the Israeli incursion. My own speculation is that this may be a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood empathizers. Not good. Yesterday, Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon said that the "masterminds" behind the Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon are in Damascus and Tehran, but refused to provide details of potential Iranian or Syrian involvement. But the mention of these two capital cities may reflect posturing for a serious broadening of Israel's engagement against states in the region. Not good.

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It's war by any other name

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described what is happening in Lebanon as saying. "This is an act of war." Olmert is correct. This is war. It has been war, non-stop, since 1948. What is happening in Lebanon today is yet another chapter of bloody Middle East events that will last for generations to come, because it is impossible, after so many years of conflict, for the Israelis and Arabs to forgive and forget.

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Israel's monstrous legacy brings tumult a step closer
Overnight Lebanon has been plunged into a role it endured for 25 years - that of a hapless arena for other people's wars

The Lebanese people, habitues as few people are of the lethal, violent and unexpected, yesterday awoke to the kind of news they thought they had put behind them. Their brand-new airport, the pride of their postwar reconstruction, had been bombarded by Israeli war planes along with a host of other infrastructure projects, bringing death and devastation on a more than Gazan scale. For some it inevitably brought to mind a bleak winter day in 1968 when, out of the blue, helicopter-borne Israeli commandos landed on the old airport and blew up 13 passenger jets, almost the entire fleet of the national carrier. The pretext: of two Palestinians who killed an Israeli at Athens airport, one came from a refugee camp in Lebanon, then an entirely peaceable country. The significance of this most spectacularly disproportionate reprisal was something the Lebanese could hardly even have guessed at then. But it was a very early portent of the long nightmare to come: military conflict with Israel, eventually to be compounded with an atrocious civil war that it did much to engender.

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The Myth of Lebanon

Remember, the reason "Lebanon" hasn't disarmed Hezbollah, is that the Lebanese army would lose a confrontation against Hezbollah. If the other Lebanese factions cooperate with Israel in breaking Hezbollah, they'll start another 20 year internicine civil war in Lebanon. It's not possible to stop weapons from getting into Southern Lebanon from Syria (and thus Iran), the Shia are outbreeding the Lebanese Christians and Sunni, and they are poor and tough. They don't have nearly as much to lose as the northern Lebanese and they have no real liking for the rich Christians who abandoned them to Israel last time around. They know they won against Israel, they know it took a long time, and while weary, they probably think they can do it again. And they're probably right.

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The Neocons and Israel

The Neocons have strong Likud ties. Extremely strong. The Neocons want a war with Iran. They always have and they know time is running out for them. They have to create facts on the ground. The Neocons believe that the problem is that the US hasn't really taken the gloves off (ie. they haven't used their full power - like calling in carpet bombing by B52's and other such fun stuff). If Iran reacts to this, the US will be in full overreach - they will have no choice but to go to full air war to protect their troops in Iraq - it is the only way the US will be able to have a chance of winning the ensuing conflict.

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