The violence in response to the abduction of now three of Israel’s soldiers has ratcheted up another notch:
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut’s international airport and the southern part of the country in its heaviest air campaign against its neighbor in 24 years. Nearly three dozen civilians were killed, officials said.
The shockwaves from the fighting began to be felt a day after Hezbollah snatched two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. The escalation of violence in the Middle East pushed crude oil prices to a new intraday record of $75.88 a barrel. Western countries, Russia and the United Nations called for restraint and demanded the soldiers be released.
Israel said it was seeking to end once and for all Hezbollah’s presence on Lebanon’s southern border, while the guerrillas insisted they would only release the soldiers in exchange for Israel freeing Arab prisoners.
The airport, located in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, was closed after the attacks and flights were diverted to nearby Cyprus. It was the first time since Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut that the airport was hit by Israel.
Israel also fired a missile at the building housing the studios of Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday morning, the channel’s press officer Ibrahim Farhat told The Associated Press. One person was hurt, but the station continued to broadcast.
These attacks are clearly intended to hurt: the attack on the airport, the blockade, and the attack on the television station are attacks on Lebanon’s economic infrastructure but they have military significance as well. The Israelis seem to be cutting off avenues of supply and escape. All that is left now is Syria.
And a terrorist leader has apparently been injured in one of Israel’s attacks:
A Hamas militant leader who has topped Israel’s most-wanted list for a decade was badly wounded and underwent four hours of spinal surgery Wednesday after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike, security officials said.
The top fugitive, Mohammed Deif, could end up paralyzed, Palestinian security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his condition. Wednesday’s blast marked the army’s fourth attempt to kill Deif, held responsible for suicide bombings in Israel. In a 2002 missile strike, he lost an eye.
This is a game of “Chicken†and the Israelis seemed determined not to be the ones to swerve aside.
What else is Israel to do?
I’ve read suggestions that the problem would be solved if the Israelis were to return to their pre-1967 borders.
While pious and benignant this seems to me to be insufficient and oddly ahistorical. It’s insufficient because if we take the opponents of Israel at their word their ambitions don’t end at Israel’s pre-1967 border but at the Mediterranean.
It’s ahistorical because the array of “shouldn’t haves†that have brought things to this pass is staggering. The Israelis shouldn’t have put settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians shouldn’t have sent terrorists against Israeli civilians. The Israelis shouldn’t have invaded Lebanon. Lebanese-based terrorists shouldn’t have occupied bases in southern Lebanon.
Israel shouldn’t have occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Israel’s neighbors shouldn’t have mobilized to attack Israel.
European countries shouldn’t have murdered and expelled their Jews.
Christians shouldn’t have invaded Muslim lands. Muslims shouldn’t have invaded Christian lands. And back and back to the dawn of time.
There seems to be a new development in the conflict and this development is a “shouldâ€: states have an affirmative responsibility to maintain their monopoly on the use of force. They should enforce it.
The reasons that countries including Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Pakistan have allowed themselves to be used as safe havens for non-state actors perpertrating violence and war are legion. In some cases they’re tacitly or openly in agreement with the objectives of the non-state actors. In others they are themselves threatened by the non-state actors and allow them to operate to mollify them.
The reason that Mahmoud Abbas gave for not putting down the Palestinian militias is that he didn’t want to risk a civil war. It now begins to appear that dodge is unacceptable: states or pretenders to the status of states must maintain their monopoly on force even at the risk of civil war or be subject to actual war.
Winds of Change has a good roundup of reaction from Egyptian, Lebanese, and Syrian bloggers and suggests that it reveals a new divergence of opinion. As was pointed out in the comments, bloggers are by no means a representative sample. And I suspect that what it reveals is that the divergence of opinion has existed for some time; the Internet has merely made it visible.
UPDATE: There’s a very interesting analysis of what’s behind Israel’s response to the second kidnapping from TimesOnline. This bit tends to support my speculation from this morning:
“As to where this is going: at the moment, Israel does not seem to be thinking about an exit strategy. I think Israel’s calculation is that this is a sufficiently large crisis to prompt the international community to step in and get tough with Syria for its support of Hezbollah and to make the Lebanese Government accountable for actions that take place within its borders.
“I think we can expect a day or two more of the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon. The Israeli military justified today’s bombing of Beirut airport because they said it was used freely to channel arms from Iran to Hezbollah. Despite pressure from hawkish elements in the Israeli military establishment, there is no plan at present to take military action against Syria.”
There’s also a comment in the WoC thread cited above that I found very much to the point:
I don’t think the IDF has any intention of reoccupying southern Lebanon. I think that they intend to get Lebanon to reoccupy southern Lebanon.
I continue to wonder if there’s a specific intent to call Syria’s hand.
YET ANOTHER UDPATE:Â Tigerhawk has some intriguing speculations about the involvement of Iran in the crisis.
