So much for that ceasefire...

Via Reuters:

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese security and Hizbollah sources said Israeli aircraft and commandos raided a Hizbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon early on Saturday just hours after the U.N. appealed to European countries for peacekeepers.

The Lebanese security source said warplanes and helicopters attacked unidentified targets during an air drop of commandos at dawn around the village of Bodai, west of the ancient city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley.

An Israeli army spokesman said the army was checking the report. Repeated calls have not elicited a further response.

According to Resolution 1701, Israel is only allowed to participate in defensive actions. A Lebanese source cliams that 'Israeli aircraft fired several rockets at a target in a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon early on Saturday morning'. So, was this offensive action on Israel's part or not?

more to come on that...

And Israel apparently thinks it has the right to pick and choose which countries will send troops to Lebanon for peacekeeping duties. I don't remember seeing that in the UN resolution. They need all the soldiers they can get - quickly - and it's not like they'll be there to do battle with the IDF. Then agin, how often has the Israeli government actually complied with UN resolutions anyway?

Meanwhile, IDF forces arrested kidnapped the Palestinian deputy PM who will now join some 28 other members of the Palestinian parliament kidnapped and detained by Israel. I guess if you can't rig a Palestinian election, you just sneak in and scoop up all of the elected officials and imprison them. That's one way to take down a government. Isn't that called a military coup or something? Not when Israel does it, apparently.

And what right does the Bush administration have to decide the makeup of the Palestinian government considering their so-called 'road map' fell off the globe a long time ago?

The Islamic movement is also demanding that the establishment of a unity government would signal the end of the international community's policy of isolating the Hamas-led PA.

The U.S. rejected this demand out of hand, notifying Abbas that Washington would not agree to recognize a unity government unless it fulfilled three conditions: recognition of Israel, official acceptance of all previously signed agreements between Jerusalem and the Palestinians, and forswearing all forms of violence.

Who cares if Washington agrees? They've been as useless as tits on a boar as far as the Palestinian crisis has been concerned.

At his presidential retreat in Camp David, President George W Bush again condemned Hezbollah as a "force of instability".

"Sometimes it takes people awhile to come to the sober realisation of what forces create stability and what don't," he said.
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Like your coalition of the rapidly dying in Iraq, Bush? Who's the real 'force of instability' in the ME, Bush?

Do you detect a bit on anger in my tone? You'd be right to. Lebanon needs to get on with aiding its citizens to get home and rebuild. The humanitarian crisis didn't end with the UN resolution. And the Israeli government seems to be doing whatever it can to interfere - again - while it's still getting away with literal murder in Palestine. They can bitch and complain all they want to about the stalled so-called peace process. What would actually move it forward would be if the damn Israeli government would actually comply with all of the Security Council resolutions passed against it over the decades; leave Lebanon alone and get the hell out of the Palestinian territories. You want peace in the Middle East? Take some responsibility for your part in it Israel.