A Crack In the Cease-fire

Fire of Liberty

Well it seems that my predictions of the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah crashing and burning due to disagreements amongst member nations over the creation of a stronger UNIFIL or some squabble within the Lebanese government and army over the disarmament of Hezbollah is becoming a reality. According to this piece in the Jerusalem Post, the Lebanese government is shying away from fulfilling its core mission of disbanding/disarming Hezbollah by failing to deploy some 15,000 troops south of the Litani River as well as the fact that Lebanon's defense minister Elias Murr has noted that even though the army will be deployed to the region, they're not going to ask or even force the terrorists of Hezbollah to hand over their weapons. If you've got a government that doesn't take the threat of terrorists in their own nation more seriously by failing to send in forces with a clear mandate of taking down/disarming then you see why 1559 was never fulfilling. In fact this inaction on behalf of the Lebanese army is ruffling feathers within France, who dispatched their foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Beirut to state point-blankly to the Lebanese government that if they don't green light its soldiers to disarm Hezbollah then they won't send in their contingent to beef up UNIFIL. Now I don't know how much this threat on behalf of France is making the Lebanese government quake in its boots but it sure shows the great amount of problems that you have within a multi-national peacekeeping force and why most of the time things usually goes to pot and their objective is never achieved.

From the looks of it, this early dustup is a clear sign that the UNIFIL and Lebanese army coalition will more likely will turn into a complete flop much like 1559 thus allowing Hezbollah to live to fight another day. I think IDF could have saved a lot of time and hassle for the UN, Lebanon and Israel if they had initiated a full scale ground war but then again things don't work in the Middle East like people want it to go.