This post is a small roundup on Hezbollah’s Wednesday cross-border, summarizing some of the more salient themes that were blogged (or missed) earlier this morning. The earlier posts have deeper analysis on each of these angles, but updates were getting lost because they were being added to various posts according to topic (Syria, Hamas, etc). Future updates will just be blogged bottom-up in update posts.
Hezbollah Attack: On Wednesday, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia launched a coordinated rocket attack and ground assault on Israeli positions across the internationally recognized Israeli-Lebanese border. This naked act of war was a tactical success, and they managed to kidnap 2 Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah also launched rockets and bombs at Israeli civilian targets, resulting in numerous injuries. That this strategy is a near-replica of what the Hamas government has more or less gotten away with for the last few weeks has not been lost on commentators – or on Israeli military officials.
Israeli response: IDF ground troops and aircraft were sent into Lebanon to recover the soldiers. Rumors are circulating that a general callup of reservists is immanent, Halutz having legally established the preparation for a callup earlier in the day.
Syria: We place ourselves within what appears to be the wide consensus that Israel will hold Syria responsible for the Syrian made and Syrian transported weapons used in the Hezbollah attack. There’s also a quote from a Syrian official that we don’t think has made it into English yet. He states that the attack and kidnapping causes “every Arab wakes up in the morning and feels lost respect returning to him”.
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