Israel Matzav

Livni warns Lebanon on Hezbullah

In an interview with the Washington Post today, Israeli foreign minister Tizppi Livni sent a warning to the Lebanese government:

The Lebanese government must fully implement a recent U.N. resolution requiring the disarming of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah or Israel will be less reluctant to attack the Lebanese state if Hezbollah resumes hostilities, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said yesterday.

Livni told the Post that during this past summer's war,

Israel heeded calls from world officials not to undermine the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora because the formation of the government and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops was an "achievement of the international community."

Israel launched attacks across southern Lebanon, Hezbollah's base, and it demolished bridges to Syria and bombed Beirut's airport. Livni said Israel's efforts to keep the military campaign limited made it more difficult to achieve its objectives.

"The result is it was more difficult to find these terrorists among civilians, compared to attacking a weak Lebanon," Livni said. "We could have done Lebanon in a few days, I think, if we had decided to attack Lebanon as a state."

...

If Israel is attacked again, "we are not looking again to find these terrorists among the civilian population," Livni added. "We are going to face a state which does not implement its responsibility or maybe does not exercise its sovereignty. And so in French, they say tant pis " -- which translates as "too bad."

I'm glad that Livni speaks French; her English is atrocious. More importantly, I don't see the point of what she is saying. Let's look at what we know right now:

1. Israel went after Lebanon's infrastructure in a restrained manner. For instance, it blew up the runways at Beirut International Airport, but it did not blow up the terminals. Is Livni saying that didn't undermine the Lebanese government? Or that the next time Israel will blow up the terminals? I would expect us to do that whether or not the Lebanese government makes a pretext of disarming Hezbullah.

2. Everyone knows that the Lebanese government is not going to disarm Hezbullah. In fact, it's probably not capable of disarming Hezbullah. If Livni were really smart, she would have figured that out before she negotiated UN Security Council Resolution 1701. So what is she threatening? That if Lebanon doesn't disarm Hezbullah and Hezbullah attacks us, we will have to disarm them? We didn't need Livni to tell us that. The problem is that Hezbullah is not going to be stupid enough to attack again until it has been able to use the non-existent supervision over the Syrian border to rearm itself fully. By then, we will be back where we were in July.

3. Her remarks about it being 'more difficult' to find the terrorists among the civilians are puzzling. Didn't Israel warn all the civilians to evacuate? Isn't the point of a warning like that to make it safe to assume that anyone who was left in the fire zones was a Hezbullah sympathizer if not an out-and-out terrorist? Is she trying to point out that the IDF fought this past summer with one arm tied behind its back? And if that is the case (which I believe it is), was that worth making a million Israelis wander around like hobos for a month?

Livni was a bit more intelligent in discussing Hamas and the 'Palestinian unity government':

Livni said it was a mistake to believe that elections would transform terrorist groups. "I believe deeply in democratization, but the question is what is the best way to implement it," she said. "The idea is not only voting, one vote for one person, but the acceptance of the values of democracy."

She said that some have argued that governing will transform militants into responsible parties, but she noted that she believes that "if you are political party which believes in an extreme Islamic ideology, when you have the power you will use it in order to force your ideology. It will look like something which is legitimate because it won the election."

Maybe she's been reading my blog?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:48 AM