Christian Chat Network

This version of the message boards has closed.
Please click below to go to the new Christian BBS website.

New Message Boards - Click Here

You can still search for the old message here.

Christian Message Boards


Post New Topic  New Poll  Post A Reply
| | search | faq | forum home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Christian Message Boards   » Bible Studies   » Israel the Promised Land   » Cease-fire with Hezbollah wouldn't bring Mideast peace

   
Author Topic: Cease-fire with Hezbollah wouldn't bring Mideast peace
helpforhomeschoolers
Advanced Member
Member # 15

Icon 1 posted      Profile for helpforhomeschoolers   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote 
Cease-fire with Hezbollah wouldn't bring Mideast peace

July 20, 2006

BY STEVE HUNTLEY

When I visited Israel nearly five years ago, I heard much about the perversity of suicide bombings, the treachery of Yasser Arafat and the threats of terrorism from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. But one Western diplomat turned my attention in another direction.

The Israel-Lebanon border, he told me, "could be a more serious flash point than the West Bank or Gaza Strip. What happens if Hezbollah, Syria, Iran or all three decide to stir the pot?"

A few days later as I toured the border region with its Israeli army outposts, Hezbollah encampments, electronic fences and barbed wire, an Israeli Defense Forces officer said that Hezbollah had 10,000 missiles in southern Lebanon. "To get escalation, all you need is for missiles to hit Haifa," he declared.

This reference to a story I wrote nearly five years ago is not just to note the prescience of the diplomat and soldier. It also suggests how intolerable a return to the status quo of just a couple of weeks ago -- when southern Lebanon was a ticking bomb waiting to explode into regional war -- would be. A quick, simple cease-fire -- as some are calling for now -- is not the answer to the war Israel is fighting. A sustained, effective Israeli offensive that at least drives Hezbollah from the border and takes down the missile threat is the only answer to the new Middle East war inflicted on the world by Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

Nor are U.N. peacekeepers the answer. U.N. peacekeepers have been on the ground in southern Lebanon for years, have failed to stop aggression across what is an internationally recognized border and have never been completely absolved of acquiescence in the kidnapping and deaths of three IDF soldiers six years ago.

The only international force that would be meaningful would have to be peace-enforcers, not peacekeepers. That means a fighting force committed to disarming Hezbollah even if that required, as it likely would, going village to village, house to house, garage to garage to drain the terrorist arsenal. Even though there already exists a U.N. resolution demanding the disarmament of Hezbollah, the United Nations that we know is incapable of mustering the will and troops to do that job, however vital it is to achieving actual peace.

No, blunting the missile threat must be left to the Israelis. That's why calls for restraint are also wrong. Worse than wrong when you consider the source of some of these demands. Russian President Vladimir Putin calls for balance, but what balance did Russian troops bring in turning Chechnya into a charnel house?

Israeli and Lebanese civilians are being killed. The difference is that Hezbollah is deliberately aiming to kill Israeli civilians -- women, children, the elderly. Israel targets Hezbollah strongholds and inadvertently kills civilians because the Hezbollah terrorists hide behind the people for whom they claim to fight.

Using noncombatants as shields is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. By any measure, authorities at the international criminal court in the Hague should be issuing an arrest warrant for war crimes against Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader. But who would arrest him? This tribunal is no more effective than the U.N. in coping with the deadly terrorist threat the world faces.

Lebanese civilians are dying, not because of Israel, but because of the aggression of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. To paraphrase something an Egyptian leader once said about Syria, rest assured that Syrian President Bashar Assad is willing to fight this battle to the last Lebanese. How long will the Lebanese people tolerate seeing their lives thrown away as cannon fodder for the half-century-old war against Israel? Certainly the Palestinians, when given the choice, have opted not to build a nation for their children but rather to feed them to the maw of the anti-Israeli war machine. It's starting to get hard to take as serious or sincere appeals from Palestinians for their own state.

Give peace a chance is the underlying message in the calls for a cease-fire. Well, Israel gave peace a chance, and it got war. It withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and got a Hezbollah terrorist state within the state of Lebanon firing missiles at towns in Israel. The Israelis pulled out of Gaza last year and got a Hamastan in the proto-state of Palestine shooting rockets at Israeli civilians.

Eliminating the Hezbollah missile threat from southern Lebanon won't mean an end to the implacable war that Middle East dictators foment to direct the masses of their people away from the failures of their governments. But given how the warnings I heard five years ago turned out, neither Israel nor the world can afford to return the border region to Nasrallah and his gang of terrorists.

Steve Huntley is editor of the Sun-Times editorial page.

Posts: 4684 | From: Southern Black Hills of South Dakota | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
Post New Topic  New Poll  Post A Reply Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | Christian Message Board | Privacy Statement



Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0

Christian Chat Network

New Message Boards - Click Here