Why should the world pay for Israeli outrage?

The US President George W. Bush and his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, seemed concerned about the escalation of violence in the Middle East.

Their short conversation over lunch at the G-8 meeting in St Petersburg, recorded without their consent, shows their keenness to end Hezbollah's attacks against Israel!

More than a week has passed since Hezbollah's fighters attacked an Israeli army unit in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured.

Hezbollah used the captured prisoners as a bargaining chip for the release of a number of Lebanese imprisoned in Israel.

Since the July 12 incident, the Israeli retaliation that followed has claimed the lives of more than 250 Lebanese and injured more than 1,000 people.

The full scale war has also left 25 Israelis dead and half-a-million Lebanese displaced in their own land, with an equal number of Israelis living in bunkers in Israel.
 
The indications coming from the G-8 summit and the debates at the UN Security Council suggest that the world shares the concerns of Bush and Blair over the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East.

However, Bush, during his "classy" conversation with Blair, expressed his dissatisfaction with the solution proposed by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to end the conflict. Instead, the American president suggested that Hezbollah should be forced to stop its "shit", hand over the two captured soldiers to Israel, dismantle its arsenal and disappear.

Bush and Blair are determined to go till the end of the road to protect Israel from the attacks of Hezbollah, even if it means asking Syria and Iran, of the axis of evil, to use their influence over the militant party.

The strangest part of the Bush-Blair conversation is not the way the two leaders were discussing an issue that involves the lives of millions of people in two of the most volatile countries in the Middle East, and not even the language that was used to describe Hezbollah's attacks against Israel.

The surprising part was their willingness to send their citizens to protect the Jewish state as part of the UN Stabilisation Force, proposed at the end of their meeting. The two leaders failed to explain to each other, and to the rest of the world, the reason for their concern over the fate of the two Israeli soldiers.

Neither were able to explain the reason for the need to jeopardise the lives of UN forces in south Lebanon, while an easier solution can be found to end the crisis.

After listening to the conversation between the two leaders, two basic questions arise. Why should the world pay for the outrage of Israel? And is it feasible to end a guerilla war by deploying more soldiers on the ground?

Heavy losses

The two leaders, whose forces have suffered heavy losses in Iraq in the past 40 months, know the answer better than anyone else.

First of all, why did they not react the way they are acting now when their own soldiers were attacked, kidnapped and slaughtered by Iraqi insurgents?

Just two weeks ago, an unknown Iraqi group kidnapped and slaughtered three American soldiers for what they said was a revenge against the rape of a 16-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her entire four-member family.

Bush, who is the commander-in-chief of the US Army, did not launch a war against all Iraqis for kidnappings of his own soldiers.

Blair too did not do what the Israelis are doing right now.

Kidnapping of two soldiers is just a small incident in war zones which has been blown out of proportion by Israel.
 
Securing the lives of the two Israeli soldiers definitely does not require the world's institutions, including the UN, the G-8 and the leader of the world's super power and his closest ally to be deeply involved with this crisis.

The incident of the two soldiers could have been resolved by asking Israel to halt its war against Lebanon and secure the release of the two men through diplomatic means.

Deploying UN Stabilisation Forces in south Lebanon will not solve the problem. In any future conflict, they can become the targets of either Hezbollah or other guerilla fighters who may emerge if the problems causing the conflict are not uprooted.

The scene will be similar to the situation in Iraq where Bush and Blair face much bigger problems than the one faced by Israel.