Cease-fire Apparently Holds As IDF Source Says: 'IDF Can Withdraw From Lebanon Within Days If Foreign Troops & Lebanese Army Take Control' In One Incident Israeli Soldiers Opened Fire On Hezbollah Fighters After Feeling Threatened
Except for one isolated incident, the ceasefire in Lebanon appears to be holding. Israeli soldiers did open fire at approaching Hezbollah guerrillas. On the first day of the cease-fire, civilians on both side of the border are starting to return to their homes.
With the cease-fire apparently holding, Israelis hope for the best but are wary of the worst.
In northern Israel, the birds are chirping again after 33 days of bitter warfare with Hezbollah. The roar of incoming Katyusha rockets and outgoing IDF artillery has ended. A tense silence reigns over Galilee and southern Lebanon up to the capital of Beirut. It was shattered once, when IDF soldiers opened fire on approaching Hezbollah guerrillas.
In northern Israel, hundreds of thousands of children, women and men have emerged from their bomb shelters in Kiryat Shemonah, Nahariya, Safed and the rest of Galilee. The port of Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, has sprung back to life with people heading back to work and dockers to the waterfront. Hundreds of thousands of other civilians who fled south under the deluge of Katyushas are starting to drive back to their homes in the north. Many will find their homes were demolished. The devastation is immense throughout Galilee. The estimated 4,000 rockets that hit towns and villages have wreaked huge damage. Police have warned people that another 4,000 Katyushas landed in open fields and forests. Civil defense teams have begun searching for those rockets that may have not exploded on impact.
But above all the casualties – one hundred and fifty-eight Israelis have been killed 117 IDF soldiers and 41 civilians. Several thousand more were wounded; many will be maimed for life. Some of the critically wounded will die. It is a similar picture on the other side of the border. Huge caravans of Lebanese civilians have crowded the roads to the south.
Was the war worth it? Was there an alternative? Even stolid left- wingers say there can be no question that Israel was justified in retaliating after Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets into Israel and then launched a cross border raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others. At that time in Beirut there was dancing in the streets, firecrackers and a crowd singing: ‘ We are all Hezbollah, we are all terrorists’. For the record: Lebanese and Arab spokesmen portrayed that attack as an isolated incident.
The fact is that Hezbollah, unhampered by the Lebanese government in Beirut, has conducted an unbridled campaign of aggression against Israel ever since the IDF withdrawal six years ago. In fact, Hezbollah killed and kidnapped three IDF soldiers in October 2000 shortly after Israel withdrew to the international border. It was a sign of things to come. There have been similar kidnapping raids since then sparking periodic flare-ups along the frontier. During these incidents Israel did respond proportionately.
Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in 1982 – the IDF launched the ‘Peace for Galilee’ operation in order to quell the PLO shelling of the north of Israel. Again the Lebanese authorities did nothing to halt the very same Palestinian provocations. Israel has always declared before, during and after the occupation that it has no territorial demands of Lebanon. On the contrary, Jerusalem has always expressed a desire to make peace with its northern neighbor. The Lebanese leadership is now getting another chance but first and foremost it must get serious and take charge instead of wailing that it is too weak. Is Israel to pay the price for Lebanese impotence? All the Jewish state has ever asked from Lebanon is to live in peace. Instead it has been repeatedly attacked from Lebanese territory. Which of the countries that accuse the Jewish State of acting ‘disproportionately’ would turn the other cheek to repeated cross border raids and the bombarding of its civilians with Katyusha rockets? Certainly not Russia, China, France or Ghana the homeland of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
A senior IDF source now says the Israeli army is ready to withdraw from Lebanon ‘within days’. It depends of the Lebanese army and the foreign troops moving in to take control.
As for Israelis, was the war worth it? That depends on whether the political outcome, U.N. cease-fire resolution 1701 will be implemented. Some believe it has a fair chance, others believe it’s doomed to failure.
Now that the military hostilities may be over, at least temporarily, Israel’s political war at home has begun. Knesset members from both the right and the left have called on PM Ehud Olmert to resign. They charge that he proved to be ‘totally inept’ at conducting the war with Hezbollah.