Mideast crisis--Blog from Jerusalem
What worries them is that if Hezbollah exits the conflict as a winner,"it will give credit to many voices calling for armed resistance against Israel," said the Arab diplomat. "But if Hezbollah is totally crushed that will silence the voices that say destroying the Zionist state is feasible."
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, whose country is a major U.S. ally and has low-level ties with Israel, slammed Arab states for their support of the Israeli mission to dismantle Hezbollah. "I am surprised at the Arab agreement ... for Israel to end this issue and end the presence of Hezbollah in this region," he told Al-Jazeera television Tuesday, noting that some Arab states agreed that Israel complete its mission before a cease-fire.
The continuing war is particularly painful for the Jordanian and Egyptian governments, because they have diplomatic relations with Israel and encourage other states to do the same. "The Israelis have embarrassed us," the Arab diplomat told me. "We want this to end as soon as possible."
As I type, I hear Israeli fighter jets thundering overhead. I'm not sure if they are going to or coming from Lebanon. It doesn't sound as if the war is anywhere near over, but the "face of the Middle East" has definitely changed: It's much more ugly.
July 28
JERUSALEM--You can call it the 'Forgotten Front'.
A month ago today, the world watched without blinking as Israeli troops entered Gaza in an effort to retrieve a captured soldier and destroy Hamas's terror infrastructure used to build Kassam rockets, which were being lobbed on nearby Israeli cities. Then, two weeks ago, all eyes turned north toward Lebanon, where if things get out of hand they could snowball into a regional war.
But the fighting in the Gaza Strip did not stop. Israeli soldiers battling with Palestinian gunmen have occupied parts of northern and southern Gaza. On Wednesday, 22 Palestinians were killed, including three girls and 14 gunmen--more than on any other day since the fighting began in Gaza. Since the start of the military offensive, the Israeli military has conducted 202 air strikes and fired between 200 and 250 artillery shells into the strip every day. Palestinian militants have fired, on average, nine homemade rockets daily at Israel.
Of the 150 Palestinians that have been killed since the Israeli military incursion began in Gaza, approximately 31 of them have been reported to be children. About 100 families (703 people) in the southern Gaza Strip and 747 people from the northern Gaza Strip were forced to abandon their homes because of a rise in shelling by the Israeli Defense Forces. One soldier was killed in the initial invasion of the northern Gaza Strip.
The Egyptians have been trying hard to make a deal to get the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, freed. So far, they have failed to find an agreement acceptable to both sides. But Israeli military sources say that Hamas's military-wing (which is holding the soldier along with the Popular Resistance Committees) is more willing to compromise now because it can't hold the soldier forever in the strip without being discovered.
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