Crisis in the Middle East - Early early morning update

Israeli Forces to Occupy Parts of Lebanon

 

AP A Lebanese army officer wears a mask in Bint Jbail, Lebanon.

Troops go deeper into south Israeli officials say military will hold Lebanese territory until international force can be deployed to region Related Stories • Israeli Offensive to Widen in Lebanon • Bush: 'Sustainable' Cease-Fire • U.N. Extends Peacekeeping Mission Video  • Is Book of Revelation a Blueprint?   • Bint Jbail: A Ghost Town Photo Essays  • Israel, Hezbollah Trade Attacks

ANALYSIS: Giving the war an image of victory, not a draw

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

Borrowing from the world of soccer beloved to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Israel Defense Forces operation in Lebanon went into overtime on Monday.

Olmert wants to take another stab at a decisive conclusion before the UN Security Council blows the final whistle. That's why he convened the cabinet on Monday to approve a wide-scale ground operation targeting villages used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

IT'S ANOTHER HEZBOLLAH ATROCITY

John Podhoretz

Given the amount of coverage these past months of the Geneva Convention and its applicability to the War on Terror and the war in Iraq, you'd have expected the U.S. and European elites who profess their great love for the convention to rush to Israel's defense: The Geneva Convention makes clear that the moral responsibility for the deaths at Qana belongs entirely to Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah has violated the most basic laws of war in its behavior.

Here's the relevant language. It comes from Article 37 of Protocol 1, ratified in 1979: "It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy." It lists three types of perfidy; the third is "the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status." And, by hiding in and launching missiles from Qana, Hezbollah was feigning civilian status and therefore resorting to perfidy.