Little Green Footballs

Monday, August 21, 2006

The biggest failure

Remember Eldad Regev, Ehud Goldwasser and Gilad Shalit? Nope? You'd be excused for forgetting the names because the MSM and especially the 'wingnutosphere' have curiously not mentioned them in a while. They were the reason Israel went to war. They are still captive.

The brother of captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Eldad Regev said Sunday that the war had failed in its main objective, that of bringing about the release of kidnapped troops, adding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had promised last week to enter into negotiations over the release of the captive men.

In an interview on Sunday morning, Regev said Olmert did not specify how the negotiations would take shape.

Last week Olmert appointed his friend and former deputy head of the Shin Bet security service Ofer Dekel to coordinate the safe return of three captured IDF soldiers - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were captured July 12 in Lebanon by Hezbollah, and Gilad Shalit, who was captured June 25 in Gaza by Palestinian militants.
So there you have it. The Israelis who had 'had enough of Hezbollah' provocation and were not willing to negotiate with terrorists for their release are now doing just that. A whole war was built on the premise of releasing these men and stopping terrorist rocket attacks. The Israelis failed in both objectives. They are now negotiating. If they had done that to begin with the Lebanon death toll wouldn't be exceeding 900, there wouldn't have been 30,000 ruined homes, there wouldn't have been Qana or any other site of wholesale slaughter.

Shame on them.

Source: Haaretz

5 comments:

unaha-closp said...

I am pretty sure the rocket attacks on Israel have stopped.

unaha-closp said...

Comparing the lethality of a fired Katushya with the complete non-lethality of threatening to fire a Katushya, stopping the attacks can be considered a good outcome for this war.

unaha-closp said...

Cease-fires happen after wars, not before. This is an international backed ceasefire that involves the UN & EU as robust, neutral parties to try sort out the Shia place in Lebanon and to try protecting Lebanon from Israel. Before the war there was a low grade conflict under a non-enforced ceasefire, now there is a real chance at peace under an enforced ceasefire.

Every participant is displeased with their aims not being fufilled, but their aims were mutually exclusive & to achieve them there would have been destruction of the other party. I feel that right, left, centrists, Islamists, Christians, Lebanese, Jews, Iranians, Syrians, Israelis all been dissatified is a much preferable option to any of these parties being satisfied and the other parties being dead.

unaha-closp said...

...point out how Israel stopped the rocket attacks militarily.

Rocket attacks occured prior to the war and were one of the causes. The war resulted in the ceasefire, the ceasefire resulted in stopping the rocket attacks. QED - making war stopped rocket attacks.

The war is not over yet, let's see how the cease-fire keeps.

Okay, but until such time as ceasefire breaks I shall consider myself to be correct. Long may it last.

unaha-closp said...

International pressure that wouldn't have been needed if the Israelis had negotiated for the release of their kidnapped soldiers (as they have done many times in the past and are doing now).

And many times in the past negotiations have failed to stop rocket attacks and cross border raids. They have stopped now, after the war and during this ceasefire.

This could've been achieved without the invasion and blitz the Lebanese endured.

Yes. If international pressure had been brougt to bear on the tit for tat shelling v. rocket strikes across the border it would have gone a long way towards solving the problem. Unfortunately it required one side to much escalate the conflict before any effective international pressure was brought to bear. Attracting this international pressure has gone a long way towards ending the prior violence.

Also solution by negotiation requires both sides being able to provide something the other wants. For Hezbollah stopping rocket attacks is an offer worth making to end the war, without the war occuring Israel is in no position to make a counter offer of sufficient value to stop the rocket attacks.