
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeps on vowing that Iran will not be allowed to establish an outpost on Israel's borders, but he has not lifted a finger to stop this menace ensconcing itself in the north. He cannot realistically expect feeble UN reprimands and the puny French contingent of UNIFIL to blow away the 20,000 Hezbollah troops dug in in 160 new positions in South Lebanon, backed by a vast rocket arsenal - even though this is a gross violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701.
Iran's proxy has therefore won the first round of its drive to recover the forward positions lost in the 2006 war and stands ready for the next. Israel has reinforced its border defenses against this massed Hezbollah strength just a few hundreds meters away.
How could Jerusalem let this to happen?
The answer is by a misguided policy of misdirected reliance on international players and diplomacy, as though the military menace existed only in documentary form, instead of real armies led by single-minded terrorists with utter contempt for the rules of international diplomacy.
The guns Israel invoked for dealing with the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza - President Obama and the European Union - were too big for their target and the Middle East Quartet's envoy former British premier Tony Blair had to be roped in. The guns Israel relied on to deal with Hezbollah - the UN and France - are too small and ineffective for the job.
Following a French complaint, the UN Security Council convened Friday, July 9 and passed a resolution "strongly deploring the recent incidents involving UNIFIL peacekeepers which took place in southern Lebanon on June 29, July 3 and July 4." All parties in Lebanon were urged "to respect the safety of UNIFIL and United Nations personnel."
The UN was not even asked to address Hezbollah's illegal redeployment in new positions in the South - only the harassment of peacekeepers - nor did it do so. In one instance last week, French troops on patrol were pulled out of their armed vehicles, their weapons snatched and they were beaten with sticks, rocks and eggs.
http://www.debka.com/article/8905/