Israel softens conditions for cease-fire

[gatorboy]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060717/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_israel_165;_ylt=AiBoIMSRvKq_iE8SuOpVZp4UvioA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that the fighting in Lebanon would end when two Israeli soldiers were freed, rocket attacks stopped and the Lebanese army deployed along the border. But he appeared to scale back from previous demands for Hezbollah to be dismantled.

Delivering an impassioned speech to Israel's parliament after six days of fierce fighting, Olmert said Israel would have no mercy on militants who attacked its cities with rockets.

"We shall seek out every installation, hit every terrorist helping to attack Israeli citizens, destroy all the terrorist infrastructure, in every place. We shall continue this until Hezbollah does the basic and fair things required of it by every civilized person," he said. "Israel will not agree to live in the shadow of the threat of missiles or rockets against its residents."

[theanarch]

1. SOFTENS HIS STAND?!?

As i read it, Olmert is actually hardening official policy, by expanding the acceptable target list to include "terrorist" "installation"(s)and "infrastructure (presumably electrical grids, water/sewer systems, communication networks, airports and bridges); expanding targetable people to include those "helping" terrorists (and it goes without saying that the IDF and Mossad have the exclusive right to decide who is guilty thereof); and expand the target area ("We shall seek out...IN EVERY PLACE."; emphasis added), starting with the entire Middle East and the US Congress.

The crux of the problem would seem to be the last sentence of Olmert's reported remarks, "Israel will not agree to live in the shadow of the threat of missiles or rockets against its residents." Even as a rhetorically clumsy restatement of the "right to self-defense" principle, so far, so good. It's when the flip side of this arguement is invoked--Palestinians not agreeing to live in squalid bantustans, being starved and abused by an arrogant, trigger-happy, occupying army stealing their government's tax revenues, and the people's water and best farmland for the benefit of ILLEGAL "settlers", under the threat of tanks, attack helicopters, heavy artillery, cruise missiles and oh, 200 or so ILLEGAL nukes--that concensus breaks down. Rather quickly.

I merely suggest this is 'the hump' in the discussion we'll all have to get over, before any tangible progress can be made towards resolving this six-decade-old crisis. Penultimately, the decision to intervene here (if only by expressing one's opinions in posts) is a 'moral' decision: to confront those who are wrong by standing up for what is right. Ultimately, a consensus will have to be reached as to who/which side was right, and who was wrong. Wrong and right should NOT be understood as being black and white; the color of truth is usually several shades of gray.

("The American people always do the right thing, but only after they've tried everything else first" H.L. Menkin)