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Since the ceasefire was implemented in Lebanon, we have heard scattered reports indicating that a prisoner swap with the Palestinians may be in the works. In exchange for hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian terrorists now held in Israeli prisons, IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists for nearly two months may be released from captivity. These reports lend weight to the view that things are back to normal. Terrorists kidnap Israelis and hold them hostage and Israel releases terrorists in order to free them. It is a comforting thought for people like Prime Minister...

Israel is 'preparing for more fighting' By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem (Filed: 21/08/2006) Any chance of long-term peace between Lebanon and Israel all but vanished last night after Amir Peretz, the Israeli defence minister, said his country was preparing for another round of fighting. Mr Peretz spoke only hours after Israeli commandos mounted a raid deep inside Lebanon. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said it was a violation of the week-old UN ceasefire. With talks on a beefed-up peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon apparently stalled, Mr Annan's senior envoy for the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, said there was...

An Israeli Cabinet meeting has authorised a commission of inquiry into the failures of the war with Hezbollah. Defence Minister Amir Peretz says Israel will examine the mistakes it made during the month-long offensive. A government official briefing reporters on the weekly Cabinet meeting quoted Mr Peretz as saying everything would be put on the table at the inquiry because it was a duty to prepare for the next round. He said Israel would prevent the Lebanese Army from deploying within two kilometres of the border before the multinational peacekeeping force was in place. The Lebanese Army has already deployed...

BRITAIN’S attempts to counter heroin traffickers may have provided Iran with the opportunity to supply Hezbollah with British military equipment. Around 250 sets of military night vision equipment sent to Tehran from Britain appear to have been passed on to the Lebanon-based militia group which it funds and supports. They were sold under an export licence in 2003 to help the Iranians to monitor the desert and mountainous border regions with Afghanistan. Despite the British Government’s current confrontation with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons programme, the longstanding co-operative arrangement between Tehran and London over countering the heroin trade has...

Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed.The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime. Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams.The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which...

French is the traditional language of diplomacy. Diplomacy is the art of saying one thing while doing another. In recent weeks, France stepped forward to act as a broker of peace in Lebanon. “Act” is the key verb in that last sentence, as it now would seem that the only other verifiable part of the sentence is “in recent weeks.” To correctly parse that sentence, one must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or “peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is...

FATIMA HUSSEIN waited on a plastic chair next to the bombed-out remains of her Beirut apartment block. With Hezbollah's clean-up operation of the city's blitzed southern suburbs under way, the pediatrician was hoping to salvage her medical certificate when bulldozers began shifting the rubble. Surrounded by towering mounds of concrete and the overpowering stink of garbage, Dr Hussein was upbeat about her losses. "It doesn't matter because everyone who has had their house destroyed … we get an amount of money from Hezbollah for one year to rent a place," she said of assistance now being offered by the Shiite...

The Hezbullah Terrorists' Manual 1) Make sure your kids are in the target so they could be sacrificed in the altar of demonizing the Zionists. 2) 'Good' Muslim husbands, put your wives and kids in the launchers location number 1, or in any other attacking point so they could go to heaven right away, you "brave men" -- however keep firing bombs from location number 2, you are not that fortunate to be ready just yet. 3) After you members fire directly at Israeli civilians and during the entire "resistance" to Zionists civilians in northern Israel, learn your tongue the...

With United Nations signaling that nationhood is passé, other countries will need proxy militias. -- snip -- There are good reasons for a cease-fire: the innocent lives lost, the destruction of towns and infrastructure, the fragility of the democratic experiment in Lebanon. And there's a slight - believe it when you see it - possibility of a disarmed Hezbollah if the beefed-up U.N. presence in southern Lebanon materializes. But here are the main messages to Israel from 1701: Defend yourself against the terrorists of Hezbollah and the world will blame you for the violence. Strike too hard - disproportionately -...

Kiryat Shemona, Israel -- Israeli intelligence officials have complained to Britain and the United States that sensitive night-vision equipment recovered from Hezbollah fighters during the war in Lebanon had been exported by Britain to Iran. British officials said the equipment had been intended for use in a U.N. anti-narcotics campaign. Israeli officials say they believe the state-of-the-art equipment, found in Hezbollah command-and-control headquarters in southern Lebanon during the just-concluded war, was part of a British government-approved shipment of 250 pieces of night-vision equipment sent to Iran in 2003. Israeli military intelligence confirmed that one of the pieces of equipment is...

IN the wake of Israel's strategic setback in Lebanon, where's the Middle East headed? (Hint: The road sign doesn't read "Age of Aquarius"). Powerful emotions intoxicate all sides. In the Middle East, only the Israelis have intellectual and moral integrity. Arabs and Persians rely on a culture of blame. The media obscure as much as they illumine. So what should truly concern us? Bad news first. Within the forces of terror, the balance of power has shifted. Sunni fanatics, such as al Qaeda's supporters, have suffered severe losses in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. Still capable of doing serious...

The Middle East 'conflict' boils down to this guiding principle: Jewish/Israeli lives are simply worth less than Muslim/Arab lives As we witnessed the incessant calls and declarations for “an immediate cease-fire" from Israel's detractors – whether politicians, journalists, religious and community leaders, or the United Nations with its resolution mandating a “cessation of hostilities” – I couldn't help but conclude that for all of these addressing the Middle East “conflict” boils down to this guiding principle: Jewish/Israeli lives are simply worth less than Muslim/Arab lives. When missiles are blasted into Israel by Muslim/Arab terrorists living in their non-disputed Muslim/Arab territory,...

The knives for the next war - the War of the Jews - have already been sharpened. Our latest Lebanese War has turned our entire region upside down. We in Israel are, of course, preparing for the next war, the War of the Jews. The long knives have already been sharpened. Some of the shriller correspondents in the daily press share the view of the propagandists across the border that Hizbullah achieved a resounding victory, and they loudly proclaim that the government, therefore, must be sent packing. To those bemoaning our terrible defeat, I suggest they read an article in...

IT’S been a bitter month or so. Mighty Israel, the redeemer of faith in what free men and women can do with arid desert if they are motivated, redeemer of faith that maybe there is a place for the Jews as a sovereign people and technological superpower, has been fought to a standstill by Hezbollah.

For their own good By Uzi Benziman What does Ehud Olmert mean when he says the state does not have the luxury of wallowing in internal investigations and reciprocal recrimination? What does Amir Peretz mean when he stresses that the internal examination committee he was so quick to appoint will not search for failures but instead study the army to prevent problems in the future? What does Dan Halutz mean when he declares that the entire Israel Defense Forces should undergo review but that for now it must focus on preparing for the next round, which is imminent? All three...

Since the cease-fire was implemented in Lebanon, we have heard scattered reports indicating that a prisoner swap with the Palestinians may be in the works. In exchange for hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian terrorists now held in Israeli prisons, IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists for nearly two months, may be released from captivity. These reports lend weight to the view that things are back to normal. Terrorists kidnap Israelis and hold them hostage and Israel releases terrorists in order to free them. It is a comforting thought for people like Prime Minister...

The future soon will tell whether the 33-day war on the Israeli-Lebanese border -- now grinding to a halt -- becomes nothing less than a mere rehearsal for an even wider and more devastating future Middle Eastern Armageddon or serves as a prologue to a restorative and sustainable peace. It is incumbent, therefore, that serious and fair-minded world leaders and their negotiators not succumb to the temptation and simplistic hope posed by President Woodrow Wilson in his 1917 Senate plea for "a peace without victory." World leaders must not be satisfied and settle for a quick, narrow and short-lived cease-fire,...

Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday, setting off a fierce gun battle. Lebanon called the attack a "flagrant violation" of a fragile six-day-old cease-fire and threatened to halt troop deployments in protest. Hezbollah, which battled the Israeli military for 33 days until the truce took hold Monday, said its fighters encountered the Israeli commandos in a field near the town of Boudai, about 20 miles from the Syrian border.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep in Lebanon on Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle, and the Lebanese government threatened to halt further troop deployments to protest what U.N. officials called a violation of the 6-day-old cease-fire. Israel said the raid was launched to stop arms smuggling from Iran and Syria to the militant Shiite fighters. An Israeli officer was killed during the raid, and two soldiers were wounded, one seriously. There were no signs of further clashes, but the flare-up underlined worries about the fragility of the cease-fire as the U.N. pleaded for nations to...

The lessons of Lebanon - I By AMNON RUBINSTEIN The trauma we've undergone must serve as a driving force to bring about fundamental societal change. We've only begun debating the war with Hizbullah, how it was handled and the implications of how it ended. It's a debate that will continue to preoccupy the media, academia and the public for a long time to come. A long litany of mistakes on the military, media and diplomatic fronts have already come to light and others are yet be revealed and argued about. One shudders, for instance, at the prospect of hearing what...