[nicky g]

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As the news reports, Israel in response to Hezbollah attacks on Israeli soil has attacked not only Hezbollah positions, but also the Beirut international airport. Of course Lebanon is protesting mightlily and spouting threats of retaliation that it can't back up.

Lebanon purports to be a sovereign country, and of course only recently has rid itself of Syrian troops. But it cannot maintain that Israel's attacks are wrong when it fails to act against Hezbollah itself. When Israel invaded in 1982 it was during the middle of the Lebanese civil war when there wasn't an effective central government. But now there is. So that means they are responsible for attacks launched from their soil.

If they tacitly support such attacks on Israel, then of course they have to expect to pay the price. But even if they don't, it is their responsibility to deal with stopping those attacks and if they are unable or unwilling, then again they have to expect Israeli reprisals. And that is going to include the logistical pipeline Hezbollah uses which includes the airport.

So either Lebanon needs to take responsiblity if it supports the Hezbollah attacks on Israel, or take action against Hezbollah itself to stop them. And if it lacks the military means to do so, then then Israel is going to do it for them, with more loss of civilian lives than if the Lebanese government took responsiblity for setting its own house in order.

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It is dumb that Hizb Allah decided to get involved in this. While I sympathise with their desire to take a stand on the disgraceful plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and unresolved grivances with Israel, they are simply giving Israel justification to take the fight to them knowing that Lebanese civilians will suffer for it.

Never fear about Israel losing an opportunity to jump down from the moral high ground though. As usual it responds with utterly disproportionate force to the kidnapping and killing of a hand full of Israeli soldiers by launching attacks that have already killed 30 or so Lebanese civilians , promises to destroy Lebanese cvilian infrastructure, bomb Lebanon back decades and so on. No surprises there.

The problem with insisting that the Lebanese governemnt clean house is that Lebanon does not have a political system comparable to the typical nation state. It's government and politics consists of numerous ethno-clientelist groups that don't represent any sort of political project or majoritarian popular will, whose purpose is more to give official posts to representatives of various groups rather than carry out serious political projects; it is made up of a finely balanced mixture of community-based parties, and the government going after Hizb Allah would be perceived as some of these groups going after/interfering in the affairs of another one. They neither have the will nor the means to forcibly disarm Hizb Allah, and I doubt other regional players would permit such action anyway. At any rate, it is not the Lebanese government that Israel will make suffer for this, but Lebanese civilians.