Here's what I don't get...

Isreali PM Olmert says that Israel's offensive against Hezbollah will stop only once a robust international peacekeeping force is in place in southern Lebanon. Obviously that means that Israel will keep bombing and shelling until such time as this force is already in place. Yet we've seen UN forces bombed and large numbers of civilians bombed thus far. I don't see how any rational person could think that with such poorly descriminate targeting on behalf of Israel that the new peacekeeping force wouldn't also sustain casualties. And that doesn't even begin to figure in whatever resistance Hezbollah might offer.

No, it seems to me that Olmert and Bush are deliberately crafting terms which will guarantee that the fighting will continue for the foreseeable future.

NY Sun columnist Amir Taheri points out a whole series of fundamental problems with a cease-fire. It's all nice sounding and all when Bush or Rice get in front of a teleprompter and demagogue about how they're working for "lasting peace." But Taheri points out that what's been floated thus far simply skips over reality.

Hezbollah has seen considerable success from its tactic of preserving armed militants by hiding them among civilians. Consider: Three weeks into the fighting, Hezbollah admits the loss of 10 fighters, against some 800 civilians killed. At that rate, to "eliminate" Hezbollah's estimated 8,000 fighters, Israel would have to kill almost a quarter of the Lebanese population. Hezbollah's losses in weapons? Easily and speedily replaced by Iran - as indicated by Adm. Ali Shamkhani, head of the newly created Defense Policy Board in Tehran.

Those who hope for a meaningful cease-fire will look to the example of Hervé de Charette, then France's foreign minister, who brokered the 1996 cease-fire after the first massacre at Qana.

The thing is, despite the obvious success of Charette (and Clinton) in producing the longest span of peace that the state of Israel has ever experienced, Olmert and Bush clearly aren't interested in pursuing past formulas. Which again begs the question of whether Olmert seriously wants peace.

Meanwhile as The Blind Beggar points out, "Martin Accad is the academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon and is angry at evangelical Christians, Israel, Hezbollah, the U.S., and the international community."

It is striking how normally highly reasonable and spiritually aware people can suddenly lose any sense of ethical, let alone Christian, balance when it comes to Middle East conflicts involving modern political Israel.

Well that's not really anything different from what Pat Buchanan said a couple weeks ago. Predictably enough the so-called American religious right dismissed him as sounding a lot like a liberal.