Israel Update

Continued updates (more than I can do) from Pajamas Media here. I'll excerpt this stuff as I have the opportunity to do so. I'll also try and hunt down more "on the ground" blogs so we can get a sense of how the locals on all sides perceive this conflict developing.

Things are continuing to get tenser, the most striking provocation to date being Hizbullah launching rockets at the Israeli port of Haifa, 18 miles inside Israeli territory. Hizbullah surprisingly denies the attack while the Israelis report no casualites (thankfully). Unfortunately what we've seen here is a cycle of action and reaction - Israeli invasion provoked by Hizbullah kidnappings first, now on a more dangerous level, strikes on the Beirut airport greeted by rockets over Haifa. According to JPost, one civilian died in the rocket barrage on Safed, near Haifa.

Israeli ambassador to the US is also quoted by the BBC as saying

international community should make it clear to Iran and Syria - who both have links with Hezbollah - that they were "playing with fire".

Whether or not the international community, especially the UN, can be persuaded to do just that, and get past blaming Israel for the violence, remains to be seen. It seems that Egypt may be getting the message, blaming primarily Syria - but here again I suspect that Syria is merely doing Tehran's bidding. Also worth noting here - that NYC tunnel plot exposed last week had a Lebanese connection; in light of recent developments that seems even more ominous.

AP reports that Israel is warning Lebanese civilians to stay clear of Hizbullah-infested neighborhoods in Beirut, while simultaneously announcing that "nothing is safe" - no target is off limits. No doubt the precursor to the sort of targeted killings we've witnessed against the Hamas leadership lately. Also, the latest barrage of Hizbullah missiles appears to be a more advanced type?

From the Counterterrorism Blog, a profile of Hizbullah military chief Imad Mugniyah suspected to be behind the kidnappings, as well as the '83 Beirut bombings, the '96 Khobar Towers attack, and a string of anti-Israeli strikes around the world. Clearly this guy's a bad character; hopefully the Israelis can put an end to his rampage in the near future.

In reports I haven't seen confirmed, an Israeli extremist group calling itself the “Gilad Shalhevet Brigades” claims it has kidnapped two Palestinians from the Jerusalem area to use as bartering chips for the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. In a show of sanity, Israeli police say they are investigating the claims rather than letting the only rational side in this conflict be hijacked by extremists.

The US also scuttled a UN resolution that would have called for what sounds like a unilateral cessation of military action by Israel...such unilateral pullback is clearly unacceptable and would only serve to embolden Hamas and Hizbullah.

Shaken by all of this, oil closed at nearly $77 a barrel, with the DOW down 168.