Memo to Israel

Memo to Israel.
From: Hizbullah and Nasrallah
Re: Lebanon and weapons transfers.

We love what you've enabled the UN and UNIFIL to do with South Lebanon. It's so much easier to bring in new and upgraded missiles and rockets for the resumption of hostilities when the infidel UN operates on the free nights and weekends plans and all you can do is watch overhead and worry about starting an international incident with peacekeepers training their anti-aircraft missiles at your fighters. Already, we've more than made up for our expended rockets and missiles, and you can't even lift a finger to stop us.

Much thanks. Allah Akbar!

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Now, who exactly is to blame for a situation where the UN doesn't even bother with trying to enforce its own Security Council resolutions? All four of them actually. UN SCR 425, 426, 1559, and 1701. All deal with the territorial integrity of Lebanon and the disarmament and elimination of all militias in Lebanon. Annan and the Secretariat aren't enforcing the resolutions. Heck, Annan doesn't even understand cause and effect:

"As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dance halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed," Annan said.

Israel provided civil administrative control of Gaza and West Bank to the PA in 1993 under Oslo, and a full deal would have been reached in 2000 if Arafat accepted a deal offered by Barak. Instead of taking the deal, Arafat permitted and/or caused another intifada, repleat with suicide bombings and unending violence against Israel. That spurred the Israelis to clamp down on security, including the construction of a security barrier that has limited the terrorists' capability to send suicide bombers into Israel. That would not have been necessary had the Palestinians policed their own extremists. Instead, the Israelis have had to put their own security ahead of the nihlistic needs of the Palestinian terrorists. That it has inconvenienced the Palestinian people is something that the Palestinians themselves need to take up with their elected leaders.

Of course, that's not the full extent of the cluelessness at Turtle Bay. Where does Annan think Hizbullah, Hamas, and the jihadis are getting their weapons from, if not from other countries in the region that are not only opportunistic but pushing their Islamist agenda at the same time? The weapons fairy? As if.

Annan also thinks that solving the Arab Israeli conflict would do much to stop the conflict between the West and Islam. Three words: Not.Gonna.Happen. The jihadis are not simply content with eliminating Israel from the map. They want to recreate and expand the ummah. Submission to their version of Islam is paramount, and violence will ensue if you do not comply. But don't take my word for it, that's what the jihadis themselves keep saying - along with the likes of Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, the French and Germans are more likely to try and pick off Israeli aircraft flying over Lebanon and its coastal waters to keep tabs on the Hizbullah arms shipments coming into the country via Syria than to actually disarm Hizbullah. Lebanon wants the overflights to stop as well, but they're no better in disarming Hizbullah than UNIFIL is. And US Secretary of State Rice saying that the US wants Hizbullah to disarm isn't going to make them. Hizbullah will need to be forced to disarm, and that can only mean a resumption of hostilities because Hizbullah will not willingly disarm on its own. They'd rather watch Lebanon crash and burn than disarm.

The US and Israelis agreed to this arrangement despite knowing that the UN wouldn't do anything to actually disarm Hizbullah. Those at the State Department wanted to get a cessation of hostilities, the consequences be damned. Hizbullah got a propaganda victory, but managed to not only get disbanded, but is now in the driver's seat in Lebanese politics. They're going to determine what happens there because the Lebanese were feckless in letting the Islamists stick around and create their own little feifdom in South Lebanon and the Bek'aa Valley. Hizbullah ministers resigning and threats of a coup don't help matters either. Al Qaeda's threats against Lebanon don't help matters either.

Hizbullah's masters in Iran are again claiming that Israel's destruction is soon at hand, (and the same kind of rhetoric has flowed by Hizbullah's leaders and Hamas) but no one appears willing to do what must be done to prevent that eventuality. Israel says that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, but Olmert appears incapable of dealing with any threats these days. Israel now tolerates daily rocket attacks from Gaza and the rearmament of Hizbullah in South Lebanon. Neither situation is good for Israel's national security, and yet Israel's actions are extremely limited. They are limited because of Israel's reluctance to use all appropriate force to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure, up to and including Hamas and Fatah leadership, despite the fact that both continue to call for Israel's destruction (Hamas overtly, and Fatah via subversion and death by thousands of papercuts). Shackling the IDF and IAF to limited actions, telegraphing their moves only compounded the problems. Trying to fight a war humanely put not only more Israelis at risk, but increases the danger for a reprise of the conflict.

The war in Lebanon was only the latest round in an ongoing conflict, and the UN is simply a placeholder until Hizbullah can determine the time and place of the next round.

The US, for its part, has been caught up in the domestic political scene, and the focus on Israel, the situation in Lebanon and the Palestinians appears to be rejoining the Bush 41 view. With Bush Senior's people taking a more prominent and aggressive stance in Dubya's Administration complete with change in strategy on Iraq, Israel, and the peace process, this doesn't bode well for US foreign policy or Israel's national security for that matter.

Peace in the Middle East will not come when Israel is at peace with its neighbors. For the Islamists, peace will come when Israel is in pieces and no longer exists.

The nations that support the jihadis and Islamic terrorists know that they cannot destroy Israel directly via their own military forces, but can bide their time with their proxy forces. Getting out of Iraq will hand the Islamists significant victories that will provide a springboard to additional terrorism in the region - directed at not only US interests, but those of our allies and Israel.

The US policy aids and abets that strategy by handcuffing Israel to resume a peace process that doesn't reflect a mutual desire to end the conflict with peace between two nation states. This shift in policy reflects the reassertion of State Department Arabists - the Scowcroft realists, whose realpolik views are flawed.

Many of the current problems in the region are traceable back to decisions made by Bush 41. The failure to go to Baghdad during the first Gulf War and eliminate Saddam's regime meant that he was free to continue with the WMD programs, drain US military resources during the no-fly zones that had to be instituted following the Shi'ite and Kurdish uprisings that were harshly put down by Saddam. The US had supported the uprisings but withdrew that support, leaving our potential allies hanging. Those potential allies still haven't forgotten, nor have they forgiven. I understand that the limitations on the US at that point in 1991 were diplomatic in nature - the UN mandate was to only liberate Kuwait, and not depose Saddam Hussein, and any move on Hussein would have fractured the alliance of nations that was involved in the First Gulf War.

Bush 41 also let Israel hang out to dry - by telling Israel to basically absorb the Scud missile attacks by Saddam without reprisals. Sure, Israel got Patriot missile batteries in response to the threat, but Israel's security was undermined by this arrangement, and Iran and others took note.

Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and the rest of the terrorist groups know that they can inflict a certain amount of damage to Israel on a daily and ongoing basis without feeling the full wrath of the Israeli military. They now know that the Israelis are not totally capable of dealing with an entrenched guerilla proxy military because the media and world opinion constrains the Israelis from unleashing their full military power on those targets - primarily because the targets are massed in civilian and residential areas to maximize collateral civilian casualties. Hiding in plain sight, Hizbullah can fire their rockets into Israel, surrounded by men, women, and children, who will be added to the body count if Israel fires back at the rocket launchers. Hizbullah puts its command and control bunkers in hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Hizbullah used UNIFIL positions as shields against Israeli fire, and knew that UNIFIL representatives would complain loudly against Israel returning fire in such close proximity to their own positions.

Hamas and Fatah have both been paying close attention to those developments and is trying to turn Gaza into South Lebanon - complete with underground bunkers and tunnels that are difficult to assault from air operations. Hamas has already shown itself more than willing to turn unarmed women into human shields - urging them to surround their armed terrorists in mosques so that they can fire on Israeli forces unimpeded. All these moves are designed to make Israel's vaunted military dismount and fight in close quarters with the infliction of maximum casualties as the goal.

So, what can Israel do in this situation? Well, for starters they must do more to police the arms smuggling routes. That means retaking the Philadelpi corridor along the Gaza/Egypt border, and putting pressure on the UN and US to stop the inflow of weapons to Hizbullah via the Syrian border.

Those steps will only lessen the flow of new weapons into the territories; they do nothing to stop the terrorists from using them on Israel. Israel has been lucky that the terrorists have not had better aim - but if the terrorists have gotten their hands on guided missiles, the situation can quickly change. A resumption of the siege of Northern Israel is not impossible, and much of the rest of Israel could come under fire from Gaza should Hamas obtain longer range missiles as well.

UPDATE:
This article has more on Iran's nuclear intentions and this one has more on the free flow of Islamists and jihadi fighters from one theater of operations to another. This isn't good at all.

The jihadis are at the gates of Israel.

Technorati: terrorism, nasrallah, fatah, Gilad, Shalit, Olmert, Abbas, Regev, Goldwasser, PRC, Hamas, Gaza, palestinian, Israel, hizbullah, hezbullah, hezbollah, lebanon, syria