Summits and Realities

While the diplomats are busy with their summit in Jerusalem, the Israeli military is dealing with the reality of Palestinian terrorism.

The NY Times and AP would like you to think that this was a sudden outburst of violence, but if you've been reading my postings for the past month, you'd know that it is anything but a sudden outburst. Palestinian terrorists have been firing rockets into Israel on a daily basis. Those attacks apparently don't count and don't register in the minds of the journalists covering the story for the AP or the New York Times. It's only when the Israelis respond to the attacks on their civilians by going after the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza that hide behind civilians do they take notice.

The Israelis have finally managed to install a kassam rocket warning system in Sderot. We'll see if it does any good in saving lives; though it certainly will not stop the attacks. Eliminating the terrorists who fire them will.

The diplomats meanwhile, have realized that the situation in Lebanon needs to dealt with by strengthening Lebanon's border security. Hey, that's a novel idea - one that I noted last year during the Hizbullah war. Hizbullah and other groups were able to smuggle equipment, men, and weapons into Lebanon from Syria unimpeded, despite the presence of UNIFIL. I suggested that Israel's best hope to starve Hizbullah's weapons resupply routes would be to drive for the Syria/Lebanon border and seal it themselves. That didn't happen, and UNIFIL hasn't done the job since then. The Syria-Lebanon border is completely porous, which means that UNIFIL cannot claim to have demilitarized the border with Israel since it has no way of knowing what Hizbullah or Syria has been doing.

The border between Syria and Lebanon is highly porous, and there is no mechanism capable of preventing the smuggling of weapons and other materials, according to a special report by the United Nations' Lebanon Independent Border Assessment Team (LIBAT).

The UN team writes in its report - signed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon - that the means for border supervision are inadequate, including at the designated crossing points.

Israel has insisted for some time that Security Council Resolution 1701 - which brought an end to the Second Lebanon War - is not being implemented because the flow of arms into Lebanon from Syria is not being halted, as stipulated in the resolution.

In other words, the UN admits it hasn't been doing its job under UN SCR 1701, which is exactly what Israeli reports (and my postings) have been saying for months.

Meanwhile, the fighting between Fatah al Islam, its allied terrorist groups, and the Lebanese military continues. And captured terrorists have noted that they've been planning attacks against UNIFIL and UN personnel to further destabilize the situation in Lebanon.

The UN also says that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza isn't going to go away anytime soon. Food shortages are a possibility. Well, considering that Hamas is far more concerned with guns than butter, what do you expect? If you cut off humanitarian aid, it will force Hamas to either have to devote more resources to food and humanitarian aid, Gazans will get fed up with the situation and take out Hamas themselves, and/or the violence against Israel will lessen because Hamas will not be able to devote all of its energies to destroying Israel as per its mission statement and ideology. It certainly sounds harsh to reduce humanitarian aid to Gaza and it would harm those civilians living there, but we've repeatedly seen what happens when humanitarian aid is provided to failed states and regions - the thugs in charge monopolize the aid, and the fighting continues because money and aid enables the thugs to continue fighting. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Hamas is trying to create a humanitarian crisis. They know that the West and Israel will be pressured into taking action; action that enables Hamas to skip out on whatever culpability and responsibility it has for the situation.

Abbas supposedly claims to have outlawed unauthorized arms. Right, and who exactly is going to pry all those weapons from the hands of Fatah's thugs? Other Fatah thugs in freshly pressed uniforms? It's a joke. It's also something that Fatah and the PA were supposed to do years ago under Oslo and the follow-up agreements. It didn't happen then, and it is unlikely to happen now. However, it is entertaining to watch a terrorist group try to outlaw the carrying of explosives and weapons in public.

The terrorists holding Alan Johnston have once again renewed their threats to kill him. That shouldn't be surprising, and their calls to swap Johnston for three terrorists, including al Qaeda-types, is telling. Are the terrorists holding him trying to curry favor with al Qaeda?

UPDATE:
Meryl Yourish continues to slam the ongoing media bias against Israel. It's a daily battle, and she does as good a job at showing the Israeli double standard time that pervades the media reporting on the Middle East and Israel in particular. Sadly, you could take any of her postings and replay 'em any day of the week and they'll be accurate in their scathing criticism of how the media portrays Israel's self defense versus Palestinian terrorism (or even that of neighboring countries taking similar actions).

UPDATE:
This is along the lines of what I've been saying for some time now. The diplomats have been living in their own fantasy world and haven't learned from past mistakes, so they're making them over and over again. I've been calling the diplomats pushing this pseudorealists because there is nothing even remotely connected to reality in the choices behind their actions:

So far as it could have any merit at all, the idea appears to be "divide and conquer." This is the moment to embrace Fatah, against the outwardly more radical party the Palestinians actually voted into office, to have a "peace partner" who is scared enough by what Hamas has just achieved in Gaza, to welcome our embrace. Moreover, those "moderate" Arab "states," starting with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are themselves aware that Hamas is, like Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, now beholden to Iran, and that revolutionary Iran is quickly becoming a bigger worry for them than Israel could ever be. Surely, under these circumstances, hay can be made. Let's everybody who is frightened (and with cause) come to an arrangement that will subvert the ayatollahs.

It is one of those ideas, too clever by at least half, that has never worked in the Middle East, where all alliances are temporary, and no enemies are ever forgotten. The very concept of "national interest" does not exist among the Arabs. (I know that sounds strong, but it's true.) This is not only because pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism have successively kept an alternative to the nation-state alive, but because from the origin of modern Arab statehood, almost every Arab state has been almost constantly governed by a family clique. The Arab states remain today essentially dynastic, as well as essentially tyrannical. The interests being served are thus the interests of the clans -- whether Sauds, Assads, Hashemites, Mubaraks or the others. In each case the nation is perpetuated only as a kind of monstrous family business.

We nevertheless persist, in the West, in thinking that we are dealing with states. Israel is a state, and we can certainly deal with it; the Americans are attempting to create proper states in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the difficulties we are encountering in the latter cases are such as we would encounter anywhere in the region.

Read the whole thing.