[Conslusion of the Sixth War] Both sides in Mideast war agree to plan

In a prisoner exchange, yes.

Anyways, the Israelis have said that they will bring their operations to an end Monday morning (their time), we shall see if they keep their word. They have been hit with large casulaties in the past few days. Just today, they had at least 19 soldiers killed with nearly a hundred injured, along with at least a dozen tanks destroyed in very heavy fighting throughout southern Lebanon.

 

Some Arab perspective on the conflict...

Heroic Resistance Energizes Arab Street

http://arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=76354&d=15&m=8&y=2006&pix=kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom

JEDDAH, 15 August 2006 — The Lebanese resistance’s month-long stand against the region’s mightiest army has earned it praise in the Arab world and raised hopes of a possible change in pro-Israeli Western policies. It has energized the Arab street and is being viewed as a cause for celebration despite the incredible toll the war has taken on Lebanon.

“An army that was freely supplied by the United States with Apache gunship helicopters, armored personnel carriers and laser-guided missiles still couldn’t vanquish Hezbollah,” wrote an Egyptian newspaper in its editorial yesterday. “None of the Israeli war aims were achieved,” pointed out a Saudi newspaper. “The soldiers that Hezbollah captured last month are still in Hezbollah hands,” it said.

“Hezbollah still retains the capability to fire as many Katyushas as they want into northern Israel (it fired more than 250 rockets on Sunday, the highest since the fighting started July 12). Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief, whom Israel had publicly threatened to liquidate, is alive and kicking and appears regularly on his Al-Manar TV channel mocking the Israelis. This is nothing short of a miracle. Naturally the Arab street is energized,” said the newspaper.

“From Indonesia to Morocco, people stood behind Lebanon and Hezbollah fighters in their fight against Israeli aggression,” said a top Saudi journalist. “There is a lesson here for the United States — that it cannot win against the will of the people,” he said. “Israel can and did bomb Lebanon to smithereens, but that will not stop the struggle for freedom. Hezbollah has demonstrated that Israel is not invincible despite all the support it gets from the world’s only superpower.”

The Israelis, say Saudi liberals, must learn from history and not be blinded by arrogance. “Hong Kong was ceded to China after 150 years of colonial rule. The day came when apartheid was cast out of South Africa. India won its freedom after a heroic struggle and the Berlin Wall did come down,” said a Jeddah-based Saudi columnist. “The Israelis have created their own apartheid. They have built a wall and made conditions for Palestinians and the Lebanese as bad or worse as any that existed under colonialism anywhere in the world. There is no way they can win. The occupation has to end.”

As writer Ahmed S. Al-Shatea pointed out nobody in the Arab world expected Hezbollah to win the war. “After all, it is a local militia with the support of one section of one community in Lebanon. It was pitted against the regional superpower that has full military and political support of the world’s only superpower. And the United States, by delaying the UN cease-fire resolution, gave one full month to Israel to finish off Hezbollah. Still Israel could not win, nor could Hezbollah be defeated,” Al-Shatea said.

Longtime Jeddah resident Manzar J. Siddiqui said if the Lebanon war was a dress rehearsal, as so many here believe, for an American-Israeli strike on Iran, any such adventure is doomed to fail unless the United States and Israel use the weapons of last resort. “Nobody here believes that either of the two will be restrained by moral or humanitarian considerations from using such weapons,” he said.

In Lebanon itself the political landscape may have changed unalterably. This is the least Israeli-hostile and the most democratic Middle Eastern country and also one with sizable and influential Christian population. “If the US would not lift a finger to save human life in Lebanon or to stop the physical destruction of the country, this means that the US has lost the last residue of Arab support in the Middle East,” said one analyst.

On the Web too there was fulsome praise for Hezbollah and the Lebanese people. “The victory of Hezbollah is worth applauding. It has exploded the myth that Israel is an invincible force,” said Muhammad S. Nimr in his post on an Arabic website. “It’s the victory of faith and truth,” said another writer on another website.

According to one blogger, “the Hezbollah-Israel fight has exposed the West, especially the US and the UK, as being one-sided and has shown that the War on Terror is a War on Islam.” “Are the so-called Muslim/Arab fanatics really out to deny the West their freedoms? Seeing a puny militia group such as Hezbollah hold off one of the world’s most brutal armies gives hope to all justice-loving people across the world.” In response, a visitor to the blog wrote: “The United States and the West in general need to realize that in order to defeat terrorism, they need to address the root causes of terror.”

Yet another blogger quoted well-known columnist M.J. Akbar, who wrote on his blog on The Washington Post website, that “Israel’s military action has turned Lebanon’s infrastructure into rubble while reducing (US President) George W. Bush to an even more fragile state. Architects will likely rebuild Lebanon in time, but do any of them have a coherent idea about how to fix the White House rubble?”

 

Some Israeli perspective...

OPINION: Olmert cannot remain in the prime minister's office

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749484.html

Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That's legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate.

However, one thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake. That was not the intention. Pass me a cigar, please.

There is no mistake Ehud Olmert did not make this past month. He went to war hastily, without properly gauging the outcome. He blindly followed the military without asking the necessary questions. He mistakenly gambled on air operations, was strangely late with the ground operation, and failed to implement the army's original plan, much more daring and sophisticated than that which was implemented. And after arrogantly and hastily bursting into war, Olmert managed it hesitantly, unfocused and limp. He neglected the home front and abandoned the residents of the north. He also failed shamefully on the diplomatic front.

Still, if Olmert had come to his senses as Golda Meir did during the Yom Kippur War, if he had become a leader, established a war cabinet and called the nation to a supreme effort that would change the face of the battle, a penetrating discussion of his failures could be postponed. But in blinking first over the past 24 hours, he has become an incorrigible political personality. Therefore, the day Nasrallah comes out of his bunker and declares victory to the whole world, Olmert must not be in the prime minister's office. Post-war battered and bleeding Israel needs a new start and a new leader. It needs a real prime minister.

 

Peretz: Prepare for negotiations with Syria

Defense minister says that 'every war creates opportunities for wide-scale diplomatic process'; calls on Israel to renew talks with Palestinians, prepare for contacts with Damascus

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3291636,00.html

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that "every war creates opportunities for an extensive diplomatic process," and that "we need to hold negotiations with Lebanon and lay the groundwork for negotiations with Syria."

Peretz made the statements during a Bar Mitzvah party for 65 IDF orphans that was held in Tel Aviv.

Peretz said: "I'm certain that our enemies understand they cannot defeat us. I plan to do whatever I can to restore the diplomatic support for Israel. We need to resume negotiations with the Palestinians." Peretz added that the State of Israel never intended to get dragged into the "Lebanese mud," and that it does not plan to do so now.

He stressed that IDF forces were deployed across southern Lebanon, and that they will respond to any attempt to strike them.

"We will act with all our might if there's an attempt to hurt soldiers on the ground. Up until now the ceasefire has been stable, and we insist that the UNIFIL troops will be able to enforce order in south Lebanon. In the coming days a deployment will be carried out that would allow for the return of the reserve soldiers to Israel," Peretz stated.

Peretz expressed his appreciation for the residents of the north, but said that a "thank you" was not sufficient and that it did not constitute a substitution for the state's commitment to northerners, that should be expressed through setting up an economic-social body that would rehabilitate Israel's north and make the families of the region feel as if the entire country was hugging them.

At the conclusion of his speech, Peretz told the orphans that he knew each and every one of them was missing the father that should have been there for them on the day of their Bar Mitzvah. He said that the loss of their fathers was the common ground on which the IDF was founded and on which the State of Israel will march on.

 

Some reactions from the region (I will edit this post to add to it)...

Assad: Hizbullah won, Israel is the enemy

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3291525,00.html

 

Israel humbled by arms from Iran

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/15/wmid15.xml

Abandoned Hizbollah positions in Lebanon yesterday revealed conclusive evidence that Syria - and almost certainly Iran - provided the anti-tank missiles that have blunted the power of Israel's once invincible armour.

After one of the fiercest confrontations of the war, Israeli forces took the small town of Ghandouriyeh, east of the southern city of Tyre, on Sunday evening, hours before a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations took effect.

At least 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in the advance on the strategic hilltop town as Hizbollah fighters were pushed back to its outskirts, abandoning many weapons.

The discovery helped to explain the slow progress made by Israeli ground forces in nearly five weeks of a war which Hizbollah last night claimed as "a historic victory." Israeli political and military leaders are facing mounting criticism over the conduct of the offensive, which was intended to smash the Iranian-backed Shia militia.

Outside one of the town's two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.

Beyond no-man's land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as "some of the best in the world".

Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: "Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia."

Brig Edelstein said: "If they tell you that Syria knew nothing about this, just look. This is the evidence. Proof, not just talk."

The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East. The Kornet was unveiled by Russia in 1994. It is laser-guided, has a range of three miles and carries a double warhead capable of penetrating the reactive armour on Israeli Merkava tanks. Russia started supplying them to Syria in 1998.

Israeli forces were taken by surprise by the sophistication of the anti-tank weapons they faced. They are believed to have accounted for many of the 116 deaths the army suffered. Dozens of tanks were hit and an unknown number destroyed.

The missiles were also used against infantry, in one case bringing down a house and killing nine soldiers. They played an important part in Hizbollah's tactics of using a network of concealed positions to set up ambushes for the Israelis as they inched in. Last night, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, said his men had achieved "a strategic, historic victory" over "a confused, cowardly and defea-ted" enemy. He said the militia would not disarm, as Israel and the UN Security Council were demanding. It would be "immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is the wrong timing on a pyschological and moral level."

As the militia leader was claiming victory, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, defended his handling of the crisis and said that the massive air, ground and sea attack had changed the face of the Middle East. But he admitted that the military and political leadership was guilty of "shortcomings", not least in underestimating the threat from anti-tank weapons.

Critics say that he placed too much faith in the ability of the air force to break the back of Hizbollah and delayed launching a major ground offensive until it was too late.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader and a rival, said: "There were many failures - failures on identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."

Last night, President George W. Bush blamed Iran and Syria for fomenting the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah. "We can only imagine how much more dangerous this conflict would be if Iran had the nuclear weapon it seeks," he said.

 

Minister Rafi Eitan: Impossible to Uproot Hizbullah

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=110196

(IsraelNN.com) Cabinet Minister Rafi Eitan, former head of the Mossad security agency, said Wednesday that "it is a mistake to think that Israel can uproot Hizbullah from Lebanon."

Speaking on Voice of Israel government radio, Minister Eitan said that the only way Israel could accomplish this would be to conquer the entire country. He emphasized that Iran is behind Hizbullah and that Tehran wants to provoke an attack on its nuclear facilities so it will have an excuse to try to destroy Israel.