Jenin Redux?--II
The death toll is declining in Israel's strike on a Lebanese town, Ha'aretz reports:
Additional questions arose yesterday about the Israel Air Force's strike on a building in Qana on Sunday, even as the number of fatalities in the incident appeared to be much lower than originally published.
The Red Cross announced yesterday that 28 bodies, including those of 19 children, had been found at the site. . . .
The survivors spoke of two bombings--one at 1 A.M., and the second some 10 minutes later. However, what appeared to the survivors as a second bombing may have been the sound of the building coming down.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post suggests that the Israel Defense Forces are making real progress in degrading Hezbollah's military capability:
The IDF also believes that it seriously damaged the long-range rocket array in the first night of air strikes almost three weeks ago and impaired Hizbullah's ability to fire the rockets.
Nevertheless, Hizbullah is still believed to have 10,000 short-range Katyusha rockets, after 1,500 were fired at Israel and another 1,500 were destroyed by the air force.
The longer-range Zelzal missiles, manufactured by Iran and capable of reaching Tel Aviv, have also not been fired at Israel, and the IDF believes this is because it destroyed almost two-thirds of these in the Hizbullah arsenal.
In addition, Israel has identified the bodies of 200 Hizbullah operatives killed in fighting, out of the organization's total number of fighters estimated to stand at 1,000. Hizbullah fighters were also found to be using special thermal suits that retained their body heat and curtailed IDF attempts to discover them at night.
It seems clear that prolonging the conflict is to Israel's military benefit (except, as Bret Stephens argues, to the extent to which the sense that it "can take its time" breeds complacency in Jerusalem). So why, after the Qana bombing, did the Lebanese--presumably now doing Hezbollah's bidding--break off cease-fire talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Perhaps because Hezbollah sees this is primarily a propaganda war, rather than a military one--and in that effort, the deaths of Arab civilians in a supposed Israeli "massacre" is a victory for Hezbollah.
opinionjournal.com
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