Israel decides not to expand offensive
Top Israeli Cabinet ministers decided Thursday not to expand the country’s Lebanon offensive but ordered the call up of thousands of additional reserve soldiers to boost the campaign. The decision came as Israeli jets pounded across Lebanon on Thursday, extending their air campaign a day after suffering its highest one-day casualty toll in fighting with Hezbollah, with nine soldiers killed.
So far, 16 days of bombardment and intense ground fighting in recent days have been unable to stop the Hezbollah rocket attacks. On Wednesday, the guerrillas unleashed their biggest volley yet _ 151 rockets into northern Israel.
On Thursday, a Hezbollah rocket slammed into a laundry detergent plant in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona, setting a warehouse on fire, Israeli security officials said. Farej Fares, a local police commander in the northern town, said no one was in the building when it was hit, and that there was no threat of toxic materials being released into the air.
The Israeli military warned Lebanese in the south on Thursday that their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles are fired from them.
I am glad that Israel is not expanding their offensive, I think giving diplomatic solutions a chance to find an alternate means to disarm Hezbollah is wise. I am not so sure about totally destroying a villiage if a rocket is fired from it, that seems like collective punishment to me, and I don’t think it is either just or wise.
I have no problem with Israel destroying a building where a rocket is fired from, even if it is a civilian structure. One rockets are fired from a ‘civilian structure’ it is a military installation, and if there are civilians there and blame for their deaths should fall upon those who chose to turn a civilian structure into a miliary installation, putting those civilians at risk. However, that is a vastly different thing from wiping out an entire villiage because a rocket is fired from it.
Usually of course it isn’t quite that clear. Israel may not be able to determine which civilian building rockets are being fired from, and often more than one building in a locale may be used in this way. If Israel is viewing this warning as a huminitarian gesture to let locals know that if they see a rocket leaving their town they had best get out because they are in a targetted area, that is of course a good thing. If on the other hand, they are going to view any rocket as an excuse to destroy as much of the Lebanese infrastructure as possible, that is not something I can approve of.
Determining which it is can be quite difficult. I suspect that it has some elements of both.
