"Israel: We'll Take NATO" Contributed by Bill Faith
Israel: We'll Take NATO Ed Morrissey
Israel has indicated that it will accept a new multinational screening force in Lebanon to keep Hezbollah off of Israel's border, but wants for the task. Whether or not NATO -- and by extension the United States -- decides to take job is another question entirely:
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday that Israel would accept a temporary international force, preferably headed by NATO, deployed along the Lebanese border to keep Hizbullah guerrillas away from Israel, according to officials in Peretz's office.
"Israel's goal is to see the Lebanese army deployed along the border with Israel, but we understand that we are taking about a weak army and that in the midterm period Israel will have to accept a multinational force," he said according to his office.
[...]
Israel cannot hope to completely destroy Hezbollah, and really wants a solution that keeps them from sitting within rocket range of Israel. UNIFIL turned out to be a complete disaster, enabling terrorism instead of stopping it and creating the conditions on the ground that started this war. Any new multinational force would have to pledge to attack Hezbollah positions and disarm Hezbollah terrorists in the buffer zone, or else its worth will be the same as UNIFIL.
[Read the whole thing .]
Contributed by Bill Faith on July 23, 2006 at 12:40 PM in , |