ISRAEL UPDATE-JULY 30,2006
[ISRAELUPDATE] War Update July 30 - David Dolan - Jerusalem
Shalom from Jerusalem,
The prospect that a full-scale Muslim-Israeli Mideast conflict will soon break out seemed to increase dramatically today after a powerful Israeli bomb landed overnight right next to a four story building in a Shiite village in southern Lebanon. The blast caused the building to collapse upon scores of Lebanese civilians, including many children, who were reportedly instantly killed. The attack was labeled a "deliberate massacre of our innocent martyrs" by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora, who furiously called for his regional "Muslim brethren to stand united in the face of the Israeli war criminals"—an apparent call for military intervention.
Speaking on Israel radio in the past few hours, several Israeli analysts say the Sunni politician is apparently hoping, along with Hizbullah Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, that Syria might open up a second warfront on the disputed Golan Heights, which Israel cannot claim it has evacuated in fulfillment of longstanding UN demands (the issue was nearly resolved during US-brokered Syrian-Israeli peace talks in the 1990's, which collapsed when the Hizbullah-backed Palestinian Hamas group succeeded in crushing the peace process via a series of deadly terror attacks upon Israelis that began in 1994).
Al Jazeera and other Arab media outlets have been carrying similar calls for Muslim military intervention today, possibly giving the Syrian-Iranian axis the excuse it seems to be seeking to jump directly into the deepening conflict. Ironically PM Seniora's visceral war cry came just one day after another senior Lebanese politician, Walid Junblatt, warned in a newspaper interview published in Beirut that Sheik Nasrallah was "another Hitler" who was "dragging Lebanon to the same destructive fate" that befell Nazi-ruled Germany at the end of WWII.
QANA AGAIN
When it became clear early this morning that the targeted building in the village of Qana housed dozens of Lebanese civilians in its basement, Israeli government and military officials expressed immediate sorrow and condolences over the tragic deaths. They made clear that the Air Force had no idea that the building housed civilians in its basement. But they also noted that Hizbullah militiamen have been launching dozens of Katyusha rockets from Qana at eastern Galilee towns for over one week in an obvious attempt to kill and maim Israeli civilian men, women and children—firing their rockets and then running for cover in nearby buildings, including the one that collapsed, in order to avoid IDF return strikes aimed at destroying the rocket launchers. They added that Hizbullah forces had launched five powerful rockets at the town of Afula Friday evening carrying warheads some five times more explosive than those carried on Katyusha rockets that have themselves managed to kill19 Israelis, and wounded hundreds of others, so far. (One Katyusha landed directly on the Nahariya hospital Friday afternoon, collapsing part of the roof, but did not kill anyone since the patients had already been moved to lower floors). That the extremely deadly Syrian-built rockets which struck Afula did not kill scores of people in the town—landing right next to occupied buildings in most cases—was regarded as nothing short of miraculous. Israeli officials also pointed out that the army had been warning non-Hizbullah residents of south Lebanese villages to leave for over one week, and cannot be held responsible for the reported fact that the vile militia group has forcibly prevented some non-combatant residents of Qana from fleeing north, as they have done in other Shiite villages and towns.
With angry anti-Israel and anti-US demonstrations now taking place in Beirut (as they surely will in Damascus, Tehran and probably all around the world), the Lebanese government said that American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was not welcome to come to their capital city, as had been scheduled for later today. The American diplomat later announced that she would stay put for the time being here in Jerusalem to continue attempts to put together "an enduring ceasefire." This indicated that the US government had not immediately altered its support for Israel's difficult attempt to neutralize the longstanding Hizbullah threat to rain rockets down upon northern and central Israeli civilian centers.
However international pressure upon the US and UK to join the growing anti-Israel bandwagon was certainly bound to increase after the large Lebanese civilian death toll was announced. Rice noted that she "wanted a ceasefire yesterday, but it has to be one that will last." She also pointed out that an Israeli rocket had mistakenly struck a UN outpost near Qana in 1996 that killed some 100 Lebanese civilians taking shelter there, demonstrating that the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict has been going on for many years, and so needed a "lasting solution at this time." (That rocket strike also sparked an international outcry that contributed to Binyamin Netanyahu's narrow election victory over the dovish Shimon Peres one month later. Peres was acting Premier at the time of the IDF shelling, which followed a heavy Hizbullah rocket barrage upon northern Israel in April of that year).
DARK DAYS
As the regional furor grows over the Qana disaster, fierce ground clashes were again reported today at several other locations near the Lebanese border with Israel. Meanwhile over 80 Hizbullah rockets were fired into Israel by mid-day, after more than 100 crashed down on Saturday. Israeli officials are reportedly concerned that Hizbullah will use the "Qana massacre" as an excuse to unleash its longer-range Zelzal missiles against the Tel Aviv region. Indeed, Hizbullah TV has just warned that it will retaliate for the Qana attack, claiming that it's "stones can strike all portions of Israel." However analysts say that Sheik Nasrallah, who is believed to be hiding inside the Iranian embassy in Beirut, will probably wait a few days to unleash his largest guns in order to maximize the political capital he has apparently earned inside Lebanon and around the Muslim world for his successful policy of deliberately waging his jihad war against "the Zionist entity" from south Lebanese civilian centers.
We are only four days away from the darkest day on the annual Hebrew calendar, the fast of Tisha b'Av, which begins at sundown on Wednesday. It marks various disasters that have befallen the Jewish people on that very date, including the Babylonian and Roman destructions of the ancient Jewish temples and the expulsion of Spain's large Jewish community in 1492, ordered on that date. It seems to many of us here in Israel that this week could prove pivotal in determining whether or not we are heading toward a full-scale regional war, which could easily result in hundreds of thousands of causalities since both Syria and Iran, along with Israel, possess non-conventional chemical, biological and—at least in Israel's case, but also quite possibly with her declared adversaries as well—nuclear warheads. To say the least, your urgent prayers are greatly appreciated.
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Shalom from Jerusalem,
The prospect that a full-scale Muslim-Israeli Mideast conflict will soon break out seemed to increase dramatically today after a powerful Israeli bomb landed overnight right next to a four story building in a Shiite village in southern Lebanon. The blast caused the building to collapse upon scores of Lebanese civilians, including many children, who were reportedly instantly killed. The attack was labeled a "deliberate massacre of our innocent martyrs" by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora, who furiously called for his regional "Muslim brethren to stand united in the face of the Israeli war criminals"—an apparent call for military intervention.
Speaking on Israel radio in the past few hours, several Israeli analysts say the Sunni politician is apparently hoping, along with Hizbullah Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, that Syria might open up a second warfront on the disputed Golan Heights, which Israel cannot claim it has evacuated in fulfillment of longstanding UN demands (the issue was nearly resolved during US-brokered Syrian-Israeli peace talks in the 1990's, which collapsed when the Hizbullah-backed Palestinian Hamas group succeeded in crushing the peace process via a series of deadly terror attacks upon Israelis that began in 1994).
Al Jazeera and other Arab media outlets have been carrying similar calls for Muslim military intervention today, possibly giving the Syrian-Iranian axis the excuse it seems to be seeking to jump directly into the deepening conflict. Ironically PM Seniora's visceral war cry came just one day after another senior Lebanese politician, Walid Junblatt, warned in a newspaper interview published in Beirut that Sheik Nasrallah was "another Hitler" who was "dragging Lebanon to the same destructive fate" that befell Nazi-ruled Germany at the end of WWII.
QANA AGAIN
When it became clear early this morning that the targeted building in the village of Qana housed dozens of Lebanese civilians in its basement, Israeli government and military officials expressed immediate sorrow and condolences over the tragic deaths. They made clear that the Air Force had no idea that the building housed civilians in its basement. But they also noted that Hizbullah militiamen have been launching dozens of Katyusha rockets from Qana at eastern Galilee towns for over one week in an obvious attempt to kill and maim Israeli civilian men, women and children—firing their rockets and then running for cover in nearby buildings, including the one that collapsed, in order to avoid IDF return strikes aimed at destroying the rocket launchers. They added that Hizbullah forces had launched five powerful rockets at the town of Afula Friday evening carrying warheads some five times more explosive than those carried on Katyusha rockets that have themselves managed to kill19 Israelis, and wounded hundreds of others, so far. (One Katyusha landed directly on the Nahariya hospital Friday afternoon, collapsing part of the roof, but did not kill anyone since the patients had already been moved to lower floors). That the extremely deadly Syrian-built rockets which struck Afula did not kill scores of people in the town—landing right next to occupied buildings in most cases—was regarded as nothing short of miraculous. Israeli officials also pointed out that the army had been warning non-Hizbullah residents of south Lebanese villages to leave for over one week, and cannot be held responsible for the reported fact that the vile militia group has forcibly prevented some non-combatant residents of Qana from fleeing north, as they have done in other Shiite villages and towns.
With angry anti-Israel and anti-US demonstrations now taking place in Beirut (as they surely will in Damascus, Tehran and probably all around the world), the Lebanese government said that American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was not welcome to come to their capital city, as had been scheduled for later today. The American diplomat later announced that she would stay put for the time being here in Jerusalem to continue attempts to put together "an enduring ceasefire." This indicated that the US government had not immediately altered its support for Israel's difficult attempt to neutralize the longstanding Hizbullah threat to rain rockets down upon northern and central Israeli civilian centers.
However international pressure upon the US and UK to join the growing anti-Israel bandwagon was certainly bound to increase after the large Lebanese civilian death toll was announced. Rice noted that she "wanted a ceasefire yesterday, but it has to be one that will last." She also pointed out that an Israeli rocket had mistakenly struck a UN outpost near Qana in 1996 that killed some 100 Lebanese civilians taking shelter there, demonstrating that the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict has been going on for many years, and so needed a "lasting solution at this time." (That rocket strike also sparked an international outcry that contributed to Binyamin Netanyahu's narrow election victory over the dovish Shimon Peres one month later. Peres was acting Premier at the time of the IDF shelling, which followed a heavy Hizbullah rocket barrage upon northern Israel in April of that year).
DARK DAYS
As the regional furor grows over the Qana disaster, fierce ground clashes were again reported today at several other locations near the Lebanese border with Israel. Meanwhile over 80 Hizbullah rockets were fired into Israel by mid-day, after more than 100 crashed down on Saturday. Israeli officials are reportedly concerned that Hizbullah will use the "Qana massacre" as an excuse to unleash its longer-range Zelzal missiles against the Tel Aviv region. Indeed, Hizbullah TV has just warned that it will retaliate for the Qana attack, claiming that it's "stones can strike all portions of Israel." However analysts say that Sheik Nasrallah, who is believed to be hiding inside the Iranian embassy in Beirut, will probably wait a few days to unleash his largest guns in order to maximize the political capital he has apparently earned inside Lebanon and around the Muslim world for his successful policy of deliberately waging his jihad war against "the Zionist entity" from south Lebanese civilian centers.
We are only four days away from the darkest day on the annual Hebrew calendar, the fast of Tisha b'Av, which begins at sundown on Wednesday. It marks various disasters that have befallen the Jewish people on that very date, including the Babylonian and Roman destructions of the ancient Jewish temples and the expulsion of Spain's large Jewish community in 1492, ordered on that date. It seems to many of us here in Israel that this week could prove pivotal in determining whether or not we are heading toward a full-scale regional war, which could easily result in hundreds of thousands of causalities since both Syria and Iran, along with Israel, possess non-conventional chemical, biological and—at least in Israel's case, but also quite possibly with her declared adversaries as well—nuclear warheads. To say the least, your urgent prayers are greatly appreciated.
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