While it is certainly true that Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, has long called for Israel’s “disappearance,” it is important to remember, especially now as the wheels of international diplomacy finally seem to turn, that Nasrallah and leading Hizbullah figures at one point accepted that a regional peace agreement involving Syria, Lebanon and Israel would end Hezbollah’s state of belligerency in the region. In 1997, Iran’s Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Ayatollah Mohajerani had proclaimed in 1998 that, “if Israel withdraws from South Lebanon with guarantees for fixed and secure borders, there will be no further need for Hizbullah’s resistance operation there.” Read more about Peace Between Hizbullah and Israel? It Almost Happened 

If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel’s war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “cessation of major hostilities” published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, noted the Hebrew-language media, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton at the UN building in New York. In a cynical ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes, Israel submitted to the US a list of requests for amendments to the resolution. Read more about US/Israeli traps set for Lebanese resistance 

All generalizations are wrong, except this one: Israeli liberal intellectuals are against war. They have always been against it, and they even suffered greatly for their critical views, as they stress proudly. They were against the previous war, they will be against the next war, they are against all wars. There is just one minor exception, though: the present war, every present war, which they always support. Because the present war - well, that’s something totally different from all those other wars! How can you even compare?! The present war is always inevitable, and necessary, and just, and worthy of support. Read more about Israeli Intellectuals Love the War 

Neither the horror of history nor the arrogance of power can justify Israel in what it is doing in both Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. The political leadership in Israel has miserably failed in seeking a long lasting political solution to the conflict that is based on justice and respect for human rights. Instead it has relied on military strategists with a formidable and merciless military machine to prepare the ground for an eventual political solution that would impose a Pax Israeleana in the region. But the prospects of Pax Israeleana cannot be realized without the weight of the US Administration. Read more about Arrogance of Power 

In the narrative which has transpired following the escalation of events the past three weeks, Israel has continued to make the claim to its domestic audience that they would be safer as a result of the IDF military response. In a country which has mandatory military service, its citizens have largely supported the war effort. Except for a few demonstrations in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the broader public largely endorsed the actions of the Israeli government. Many in Israel were saying things like, “Hezbollah started this, now we will finish it. We have lived like this for too long.” Read more about Is Israel any safer now? 

It had always taken my breath away, cresting the ridge from the Beka’a Valley, and descending toward the sea, when I caught the first glimpse of the city of Beirut, framed like a cluster of lustrous pearls against the stunning blue of the Mediterranean. I had traveled that route many times, while studying at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in the early seventies, before the madness of the Lebanese civil war made travel there imprudent. Anything seemed possible in the Beirut of the seventies - one could meet people from all over the world, buy books in any language, swim in the sea in the morning, escape to the mountains and ski in the afternoon. Read more about Beauty and Destruction in Beirut 

Here are some interesting points raised this week by a leading commentator and published in a respected daily newspaper: “The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embeds his soldiers in Israeli communities, next to schools, beside hospitals, close to welfare centres, ensuring that any Israeli target is also a civilian target. This is the practice the UN’s Jan Egeland had in mind when he lambasted Israel’s ‘cowardly blending … among women and children’.” You probably did not read far before realising that I have switched “Israel” for “Hizbullah” and “Ehud Olmert” for “Hassan Nasrallah”. Read more about Israel, not Hizbullah, is putting civilians in danger on both sides of the border 

In response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah has launched daily rocket strikes at Israel. On Wednesday, July 19, a Katyusha rocket struck the Arab city of Nazareth, killing two brothers, Mahmoud and Rabie Talussi, ages 4 and 7. This was not the first time a Palestinian Arab town had been hit by a Katyusha rocket. Immediately following the deaths, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz initially reported that two ‘Israeli’s’ had been killed, as opposed to two ‘Israeli Arabs’. Referring to Palestinians living within Israel as ‘Israelis’ may not seem out of the ordinary to most people; however, the mainstream has rarely ever done so. The media, state officials, and the average Israeli citizen only refer to Palestinians within Israel as ‘Israeli Arabs’. Read more about Katyusha rockets don't discriminate, but Israel does 

The crowds in Beirut last year demanding a Cedar Revolution, “the first shoots of democracy” supposedly planted by the United States, are a distant memory. Yesterday we saw in their place the fury of Lebanon directed against the capital’s United Nations building — an early “birth pang” in Condoleeza Rice’s new Middle East If Israel wanted to widen its war, it could not have chosen a better way to achieve it than by sending its war planes back to the mixed Muslim and Christian village of Qana in south Lebanon to massacre civilians there, as if marking a morbid anniversary. A decade ago, Israeli shelling on the village killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering in a local UN post. Read more about The reason they hate us lies buried in Qana