Rubin on South Lebanon and Gaza

Barry Rubin notes the elephants in the room overlooked by UNSC 1701---Iran and Syria.

Anyone yesterday watching the CBS buffoon Mike Wallace interviewing the terrorist President of Iran had to listen to the Iranian note that all the US nuclear weapons are useless now that we live in an age of multicultural harmony[!?] Wallace, of course, let him get away with that and a lot more.

Rubin is correct when he notes the huge new development this war has brought about:

THE IDEA of a regime assaulting Israel via another country is not a new one. Egypt and Syria used Jordan and Lebanon for this purpose from the late 1960s onward. The whole history of the PLO (and more than a dozen Palestinian terrorist groups) is based on the principle of state sponsorship.

Events in Lebanon have taken this concept to a new level: the sponsorship of what might be called a well-armed semi-army against Israel. This kind of technique can also be applied to the Palestinians, and that is the most important potential development of all.

Consequently, the number one danger to Israeli security emerging from this crisis has nothing to do with Lebanon, but would be the large-scale arming of Hamas by Iran and Syria with rockets, advanced anti-tank weapons and high-quality explosives.

But as the aftershocks begin from this reversal of fortune on Israel's part, not only the Palestinians will be the worrisome non-partner in this fandango of proxy armies and proxy states.

It seems clear that the US and EU pressure to allow Hamas to participate in elections in PA parliamentary polls last January was a colossal miscalculation, putting a terrorist political party in charge of fuse boxes like Gaza and the West Bank. No one suspected, of course, that Hamas would win, only gain a minority and perhaps become "pacified" by process, that word that Democrats and fatuous political scientists and lawyers believe is the negotiated way to settle all disputes. Now we know better.

Instead, Hezbollah has become de facto ruler of Lebanon and Israel faces terrorism on two borders. Luckily, the Israelis have not withdrawn from the West Bank and will be able to suppress first-hand the cockroach-dens of terrorist plotters.

But Gaza and South Lebanon are just a rocket flight away.