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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (191522)	7/12/2006 7:22:56 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "The Arabs have given up on winning conventional wars with Israel. Certainly neither Egypt nor Jordan intends to be dragged into war for the sake of Hamas and Hizbullah. The Lebanese don't love the Israelis but don't want to be dragged into another war with them on behalf of Syria and Iran." None of them have to. You're the one who is calling the mild actions of the present "war". I'm the one comparing it to a riot after a bad hockey match. Israel has two problems. The first is that she can't win the "peace" that prevails at the moment. The second is that she can't win a true war of attrition, and therefore cannot profit from converting peace into war. With each passing year, the ability of the Arabs to defend land against Israeli land forces increases, as the debacle in Lebanon shows. The US is not doing Israel a favor by training Arabs to destroy modern armor in Iraq. I see that Israel lost another tank in the fight at the Lebanon border, though the Lebanese claim two. None of this is good news for Israel. Losing a dozen soldiers is no big deal for a country of 7 million, but that's not the point. The point is that all this military activity is not good for the Israeli economy, and it is their economy that attracts what few immigrants they are able to lure. The Israeli stock market plunged on word that two more soldiers were captured and that Israel was getting entangled in a second front against Lebanese guerrillas. The exchange’s TA-25 blue chip index sank as much as 4.9 percent in exceptionally heavy trading. It rose slightly in afternoon trading to close down 4.2 percent. msnbc.msn.com Israel is claiming to think that a show of force will get its soldiers released, but all their enemies have done so far is hand out sweets to strangers and capture two more Israeli soldiers. The population supports these things, Israel's hopes for a prisoner release (without the simultaneous release of captives Israel is holding) is unlikely to get anywhere. Just as I pointed out in Iraq, it is impossible to cow a civilian population by bombing them in the manner that the US and Israel do. All that happens is that the locals get very angry and swear vengeance. For years, Israel has been slowly retreating from lands it took over in 1967. This has not been accompanied by a reduction in actions against Israel. It has been a one-sided retreat driven by the simple fact that the territories given up were ungovernable for Israel and too expensive to occupy. Israel does not have a viable solution. Instead, the situation will continue to fester, making Israel that much less attractive as a place to move to, or do business in, or visit. All these things contribute to the demographic time bomb that will eventually make Israel an Arab state. -- Carl