Nasrallah , the head of the Hezbollah promised to surprise Israel and indeed he presented it with some painful surprises. These surprises provide the Arabs with a reason to celebrate as victors. There are other surprises that most media will ignore but will register in the awareness of the intelligence organizations especially those of the Arabs and Iran.

 

Israel was considered as having a powerful military that can fight for a week or two and deliver a fatal blow to its rivals. Israel was not considered a nation that can stand a long war.

 

The war in Lebanon showed the IDF fighting for weeks at a very high intensity 24 hours seven days a week. The IDF suffered painful loses and its soldiers did not lose their desire to fight and win. The Israeli public suffered casualties and had to live in shelters for weeks and did not give up. The ability of Israel to stand the pressures of combat must have surprised Nasrallah and his operators in Teheran must have been surprised by the reserve soldiers respond to the call and their determination to rid Israel of the cancerous organization.

 

There is one thing Israel’s enemies were not surprised about. They knew that the Israeli government did not have the backbone to rise to the occasion and invest all that it takes to win decisively. They understood that the understanding of the international community to Israel’s needs had a short fuse and could reverse at any moment. The Israeli government allowed the opportunity to fizzle away and with it evaporated its deterrence factor.

 

The future will show that Olmert’s shortcomings will cost Israel dearly in the next round..

CNN's Richard Quest talked to the mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, on July 25 about the Hezbollah attack on his city. After a lengthy report of the damage and explaining his optimistic view regarding the everlasting good relations between the Jews and the Arabs in the city and repeatedly thanking God for not creating greater damage, he stated that he personally felt betrayed by Nassralah and “opened an account with him.”.

He told Quest that it was he and Beilin, as Israeli parliament (Knesset) members who convinced the Israeli parliament and the government to leave South Lebanon unconditionally. For that reason the current events are of greater disappointment to him than to others.

Quest asked the Israeli super liberal, “Do you regret pulling out of Lebanon?” “No” was the answer, Yona still thinks that regardless of consequences Israel should pool out of any territory deemed occupied. Next Quest asked, “Do you mean that now you will go after Nassralah?” “Not at all,” answered the liberal.

I must admit that this mindset is very challenging to my psyche. No one in his right mind, including the Israeli liberals, deny that the Israeli retreats caused enormous disasters to Israel. How can someone realize the cause and effect and not regret his actions are beyond me.

Annan blamed Israel for deliberately targeting the UNIFIL observation post killing two to four observers. While this accusation sound baseless since apparently Israel has nothing to gain by attacking this impartial organization, the confidence expressed by Annan in his accusation must indicate that he must know something we do not.

What does Mr. Annan know about the UNIFIL activities that caused Israel to attack an international team? Why does Annan think that Israel was willing to risk alienating the nations that suffered casualties in this incident?

To understand Annan it is important to go back to an event that occurred in Oct. 7 2000. A number of Hezbollah fighters wearing UN uniforms waved to an Israeli patrol to approach them. When the Israelis did the Hezbollah team opened fire on the Israeli patrol, abducted three Israeli soldiers and sped away in a UN vehicle.

Israel contacted the UNIFIL and requested information it had about this incident and requested access to the vehicle the Hezbollah abductors used. UNIFIL refused to help Israel determine the condition of its abducted soldiers and denied having any information regarding the incident.

Israel discovered that UNIFIL made a video of the incident and that it had pictures of the vehicle that was used in the abduction. Initially the UN denied having a video. Eventually it allowed Israeli representative to view the video only once after it edited the video in a way that Israel will not be able to derive any information to identify the Hezbollah abductors. From this material and the amount of blood found in the vehicle Israel concluded that the soldiers must have been dead.

See (consider the source): http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest/videorpt.htm

The questions we need to consider are:
What was UNIFIL doing while katyushas were raining over Haifa?
Why does Annan think that Israel wanted to stop this UNIFIL activity despite the risks and the expected international condemnation?