Webloggin » Israeli Forces Cross Into Lebanon for the First Time in Six Years

IDAF The AP just released a news bulletin on the escalation of fighting between Israel and Lebanon.

Israel bombed and shelled southern Lebanon and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years Wednesday after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers. The fighting killed eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese.

The AP calls the Hezbollah terrorist act a “brazen cross-border raid”.

Let’s call it what it is. Hezbollah launched an unprovoked attack on Israel hoping to take advantage of the Gaza situation.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would free the Israeli soldiers only in a prisoner swap, adding that he was open to a package deal that would include the release of the soldier held in Gaza.

“The capture of the two soldiers could provide a solution to the Gaza crisis,” he told reporters in Beirut.

But wait, I thought that Hezbollah and Hamas were two independent organizations? How can a Hezbollah prisoner swap solve the Gaza crisis if the two groups are unrelated?

But of course the groups do have a common goal in the annihilation of Israel.

“People are cheering this attack … because they view it as a kind of revenge and reprisal against what Israel has been doing in Gaza,” said Salah Bardawil, a spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament.

“Militarily, by opening a new front against Israel, it would ease the pressure on us. Israel is using a huge force in Gaza now. It will have to use part of its military capacity in Lebanon.”

So the end goal isn’t really an attempt to solve the crisis in the Gaza strip. Rather it is an attempt to weaken the IDF by making them fight a war on 2 fronts.

Egypt has a different take on how Hezbollah is helping solve the crisis in Gaza and on the Lebanese border.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak implicitly accused Damascus of wrecking his attempts to mediate a deal for the release of Cpt. Cpl. Gilad Shalit, snatched by Hamas-linked militants on June 25.
…
Hamas was subjected to “counter-pressures by other parties, which I don’t want to name but which cut the road in front of the Egyptian mediation and led to the failure of the deal after it was about to be concluded,” Mubarak told Cairo’s Al-Ahram Al-Massai newspaper

In other words, Syria is pulling the strings on Hezbollah and Hamas; both of whom have headquarters in Damascus.

The AP fills in the rest of the picture for those who are still sitting on the fence with their blame Israel attitudes.

Israel and Lebanon have a history of conflict, punctuated by a full-scale Israeli invasion in 1982, and its 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that was intended to prevent attacks on Israel. The United Nations certified that Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon was complete, but Lebanon laid claim to a sliver of border territory, still held by Israel, that the U.N. said was actually part of Syria.

Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria and branded a terror group by the U.S. and Israel, used the dispute to justify cross-border attacks. But the fighting Wednesday was by far the worst since Israel withdrew six years ago, and it threatened to escalate.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones hit the nail on the head.

This is a terrorist attack and it is clearly timed to exacerbate already high tensions in the region and sow further violence. We also hold Syria and Iran — which directly support Hezbollah — responsible for this attack and for the ensuing violence.

So everyone should be very clear on the players here, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Ed over at Captains Quarters states it in very clear terms:

Both Hamas and Hezbollah take order from Syria and Iran, and both have headquarters in Damascus. The Israelis and the Egyptians have both said that the Palestinian chapter of Hamas has never controlled the Shalit abduction, but that the terrorists responsible took orders from Khaled Mashaal. Mashaal himself has taken responsibility for the operation by setting forth the demands under which Shalit would be released. Mashaal is no more than Bashar Assad’s sock puppet, and neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would dare take action against Israel without coordination from the Assad regime. – Egypt Blames Syria For Escalating Violence

Others Covering this Latest Escalation: