Olmert Pursuing Precisely the Right Path

Dual Crises Test Olmert as Leader
Tactics Differ From Those of Sharon

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page A01

JERUSALEM, July 14 -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, elected just months ago on a promise to ease Israel's grip on the occupied Palestinian territories, now is fighting a two-front war on battlefields the Jewish state has occupied and abandoned before in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The outcome will determine not only the fate of three captured Israeli soldiers and the northern Israeli towns under rocket fire, but also his own goal of defining Israel's permanent borders.

Over the past three days, Olmert has ordered one of the largest Israeli military operations in Lebanon since the 1982 invasion, bombing roads, bridges and Beirut's international airport in response to a cross-border raid by the militant group Hezbollah that resulted in eight Israeli soldiers being killed and two others captured. Coupled with Israel's operation in Gaza, Olmert's offensive has killed more than 120 people and drawn criticism from European countries that he is using disproportionate military force.

Olmert has refrained from a large-scale ground operation in Lebanon, despite continuing rocket attacks that have killed four Israeli civilians and injured scores more. In doing so, he has charted a different course from his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, the former general who engineered Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Moreover, soon after the June 25 raid by Hamas's military wing and two smaller armed Palestinian groups killed two Israeli soldiers and captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Olmert rejected plans for a large tank invasion into northern Gaza presented by his generals, favoring short ground incursions and airstrikes instead, Israeli officials said.

The choices underscore what Israeli officials say is Olmert's desire to wage the fight with the radical Islamic groups Hamas and Hezbollah not through major ground operations that have turned world opinion against Israel in the past, but through punitive airstrikes and artillery fire, coupled with indirect diplomacy involving Israel's allies such as the United States and countries in Europe.

By striking at the Lebanese infrastructure, and limiting his nation's response to air strikes and artillery fire (combined with a limited incursion into Lebanese territory) he is putting the onus of controlling Hezbollah back where it belongs, on the Lebanese people. The solution to this crisis is very simple, the Lebanese people need to take back control nation and if they can't, then only then should Israel attack in force.

This crisis and the troubles in Gaza are the fault of the residents who voted to empower these terrorist organizations. Until the Islamists cease their war against Israel once and for all, until they fully acknowledge the right of the nation of Israel to exist and respect it's borders and the rights and lives of the Israeli people, they need to understand that their choices have consequences and that those consequences can be quite severe.

Frankly, I don't care that the "civilians" are being injured or killed, because it is due to their tolerance and encouragement that the terrorist groups are able to function. Only they have the power to stop violence, by putting pressure on the terrorists.

Full Story: Only the Lebanese Can Save the Lebanese

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