Yesterday I concluded with a statement that defense doesn’t win the war .Just what that means in the case of the current Israel-Hezbollah face-off is becoming clear. Both sides sent messages to each other affirming that they were not interested in an expanded conflict. Nasrallah made a speech stating that he views the response to the death of his deputy as being completed. He also made some absurd claims about the damage his attack had caused. He doesn’t normally embellish the truth, but in this case he really went overboard. He said the Israeli attacks hit empty buildings (video that includes secondary explosions argues otherwise) and that the Hezbollah rockets had inflicted serious harm (The only death I know of is an Israeli sailor killed by shrapnel from a drone that exploded in the sea some distance away,. It either missed, or the fragments came from the defending missile that brought it down. Here, .too. there is good film coverage).
But the end result is a return to the status quo ante. That means a continued exchange of lower lever fire between the two sides and the continued absence of civilian residents from their homes. That is certainly not a result that Israel can accept. There is no guarantee that Hezbollah will stop shooting if there is a cease-fire in Gaza. It was an excuse they offered soon after they started sending missiles into Israel. The initial act of firing into Israel is a violation of humanitarian law (they said they were shooting at military targets, which is allowed, but they were using ballistic munitions that cannot distinguish one target from another (The IDF uses more expensive weapons that can be aimed with considerable precision). Hezbollah does not have a track record of abiding by UN binding decisions. Their current presence in southern Lebanon is in direct violation of an earlier UN order.
To add insult to injury the Palestinian Authority (run by Fatah, whose charter reads very much like that of Hamas) is lobbying for a UN resolution (The PA has observer status there) requiring Israel to withdraw completely from Gaza AND all the West Bank AND East Jerusalem. It does provide work for the Israeli UN delegation and their friends.
Wetherhorn 