August 16th, '06
Ceasefire - Why Don't I Feel Better

Our local refugees from the north have gone back home to pick up the pieces, thankful for the support they got here from volunteers in my hometown of Bet Shemesh. They go back to sweep up broken glass, open up their shops, and begin the long process of filling out national insurance forms (private insurance does not compensate for war damage). I wish them luck. And hope they can safely stay in their homes for many years to come.

But I am not encouraged. Like many others, I feel that the next war is only a matter of time, and am dismayed by the ceasefire arrangement that does not explicitly call for the return of our kidnapped soldiers (the cross-border event that started this thing off in the first place).

And of the things the ceasefire agreement does call for, Hizbullah has already announced its readiness to blow these little inconveniences off. Disarm? they say - you must be kidding. After all, we won.

Yossi Klein Halevi at the New Republice captures the Israeli mood:

With an unprecedented green light from Washington to do whatever necessary to uproot the Iranian front line against Israel, and with a level of national unity and willingness to sacrifice unseen here since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, our leaders squandered weeks restraining the army and fighting a pretend war. Only in the two days before the ceasefire was the army finally given the go-ahead to fight a real war.

But, by then, the U.N. resolution had codified the terms of Israel's defeat. The resolution doesn't require the immediate return of our kidnapped soldiers, but does urgently place the Shebaa Farms on the international agenda — as if the Lebanese jihadists fired some 4,000 rockets at the Israeli homefront over the fate of a bare mountain that the United Nations concluded in 1967 belonged not to Lebanon but Syria. Worst of all, it once again entrusts the security of Israel's northern border to the inept unifil. As one outraged TV anchor put it, Israeli towns were exposed to the worst attacks since the nation's founding, a million residents of the Galilee fled or sat in shelters for a month, more than 150 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed along with nearly a thousand Lebanese — all in order to ensure the return of U.N. peacekeepers to southern Lebanon.

Across the political spectrum, people are calling this mini-war a shameful debacle. Heads should roll, they say, and Ehud Olmert should step down.

But after the Sharon years, in which independent-minded politicians and military leaders were systematically culled from the system so that yes-men like Olmert could take their seats, there doesn't seem to be anyone left to take the place of our present leadership.

Hmmm. Despite the war, this has been a record-making summer for Aliya (immigration to Israel). Maybe these new citizens will infuse our weary country with some much-needed hope.

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