Monday, August 14. 2006
From The Jerusalem Post -- Editorial:
Shimon Peres, who has been through a war or two in his lifetime, said yesterday that now is not the time for either a "war of the generals" or a "war of the Jews" - as the post-war recriminations within the military and in the political sphere are called. He is right.
Yesterday, some two dozen of our soldiers were buried. Tens of thousands of our soldiers remain in Lebanon, not to mention those who continue to fight against terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere. Yesterday, Hezbollah missiles continued to hit our northern towns and cities, and the wounded - soldiers and civilians - lay in our hospitals.
With all this going on, the IDF is already claiming that it was ready to launch a ground offensive 10 days before it was authorized, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is claiming that he could not approve plans that were not presented to him.
This needs to be sorted out, but now is not the time. Now is the time for our leaders to take full responsibility for their actions and what the public expected of them: the IDF to be prepared and the government to make the right decisions and to stick with them.
The international community needs to understand that Israel will not repeat the mistake of standing by as Hezbollah rebuilds an arsenal of missiles and other sophisticated weaponry that can threaten us. If the Syrian-Lebanese border is too porous to seal, then either Israel has to do its best to fill the gap by force, or the UN Security Council has to enforce its resolution with sanctions against Syria and, if Teheran is also involved, Iran.
In general, now is the time for Israel to make clear, through both words and actions, that it has no intention of standing by as Resolution 1701, like Resolution 1559 before it, becomes a dead letter - or worse, applies only to Israel and not to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
It is exactly such a process that led to the current war, and that will lead to war again if it is allowed to happen again.
Accordingly, it should not just be Israel that is announcing that the embargo against Hezbollah will be enforced, but the United States and France. Such demonstrations of seriousness will also bolster the hand of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who stated today that there would be no arms besides those of his army and UNIFIL south of the Litani.
We stand to gain more by holding the international community to a standard of success than if we assume it will repeat a discredited pattern of failure. If we succeed in changing the pattern, that would be the best outcome; if we do not, we will have laid the groundwork to take action ourselves.
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