Israel Matzav

'A terrorist organization with a state of its own'

Jeff Jacoby takes the opportunity of Israel's 'terrorists for corpses exchange' with Hezbullah to sum up the damage that Israel has incurred and continues to incur as a result of the July 2006 Second Lebanon War (Hat Tip: Norman F.).

With every such deal, Jerusalem erodes what little remains of its once-legendary reputation for avenging the deaths of Israelis killed by terrorists. The Israel that in 1976 flew a team of commandos 2,000 miles to rescue Jewish hostages being held in Uganda's Entebbe airport inspired respect and fear in its enemies. Israel today inspires their scorn. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that despite Israel's nuclear power and military prowess, it "is weaker than a spider's web." Last week's swap of live terrorists for dead soldiers can only have reinforced that opinion.

For months after Hezbollah's war with Israel ended, there were those who minimized the significance of its victory. Thomas Friedman argued in The New York Times, for example, that Hezbollah had "diminished its capability and Syria's and Iran's" and had failed to achieve "a single strategic gain." Under Resolution 1701, a new UN peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, was to patrol southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah from rearming or threatening Israel - "a huge strategic loss for Hezbollah," in Friedman's words.

But UNIFIL has prevented nothing and 1701 is more or less a dead letter. Far from preventing the flow of new weapons to Hezbollah, the UN peacekeepers have routinely looked the other way as Iran has massively re-supplied its Lebanese proxy. Hezbollah is now far better armed than it was in July 2006, with an estimated 40,000 rockets deployed north of the border, and the ability to strike 97 percent of Israel's population. Israeli military intelligence reports that some 2,500 Hezbollah terrorists are in southern Lebanon, and have built a series of elaborate underground bunkers equipped with rocket launchers and mortar guns that can be fired by remote control.

Most alarming of all is Hezbollah's effective takeover of Lebanon's government, which it intimidated into submission through violent rampages in Beirut in May. Hezbollah extorted the right to name 11 cabinet ministers, giving it veto power over every government decision. Which means that Hezbollah is no longer a state-sponsored terrorist organization. Now it is something far more dangerous: a terrorist organization with a state of its own.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:54 PM