BULLETIN No.147

Ha’aretz – What will happen next? Can Israel take advantage of this window of opportunity to break the back of Hezbollah and eradicate the mythic cult surrounding its leader, Hassan Nasrallah?
Guardian Israel gears up for ground war Troops mass on border in preparation for new phase of the crisis. 'We'll make this place a graveyard'
Al Hayat WHY IS ISRAEL DESTROYING LEBANON? Patrick Seale –
Washington Post Israel Calls Up Reserves, Reinforces Border
Troop movements, warnings to Lebanese to flee northward, add to indications that Israel is planning a large-scale ground operation against Hezbollah
CSIS CORDESMAN: ROAD TO NOWHERE: STRATEGIC FAILURES IN LEBANON
CORDESMAN: LEBANESE SECURITY AND HEZBOLLAH
CORDESMAN: IRAN'S SUPPORT OF HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON
Financial Times COMMENT: A strategy for resolving the conflict in Lebanon By Martin Indyk
Viewpoint: George Shultz on how to disarm Hizballah
Yedioth Ahronoth America's honey trap US has no strategic pact with Israel, but still it acts like Israel is its proxy, Yossi Ben-Ari says
NYT Magazine Ballots and Bullets By NOAH FELDMAN We wanted to use both elections and force to transform the Middle East. Hamas and Hezbollah, it turns out, had the same idea.
Debka Washington Expected an IDF Grand Slam to Dispose of Hizballah Print
Rice: Poor Syria Relationship Overstated
Ehsan Ahrari Hezbollah’s Strategy: Creating “Perpetual Revolution” Through “Fourth Generation War”
Diplomacy: U.S. Must Deal With Damascus and Hezbollah to Ease Mideast Crisis, Syrian Says
Newsweek Q&A: What's Israel's Next Step?
Tony Karon Six Fallacies of the US Hezbollah Campaign
Lebanon: The Battle of Maroun al-Ras and Israel's Strategy Stratfor
Special Report: Why Hezbollah Fights Stratfor
Foreign Policy Seven Questions: The Fight for Lebanon
An End to Unilateralism
The List: Clerics of Consequence
Christian Science Monitor Israel looks ahead to buffer-zone troops Israel's defense minister said Sunday that NATO forces could help stabilize the country's border with Lebanon.
Can Syria really rein in Hizbullah?
Syria offers to talk but warns it may join conflict As the US Secretary of State prepared to set out the American plan for ending the fighting, Israel said that it would agree to the deployment of a Nato force
Syria wants to have its say, but US is determined not to listen Syria, the main Arab backer of Hezbollah, has not been invited to the emergency talks, but has made it made clear that it has plenty to say
Syria wants dialogue with Washingtonon Mideast peace
Financial Times COMMENT: A strategy for resolving the conflict in Lebanon The Bush administration needs to send a clear message to Iran and Syria: if they do not stop supporting Hizbollah, they will be held responsible, writes Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel
Syrian Minister: Major Invasion of Lebanon Would Draw Syria Into War
Syria Wants Cease-Fire Within Framework
Hezbollah's Apocalypse Now By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
Israel Fights To Secure Key Region In Lebanon
Limited Ground Invasion May Suffice, Officials Say
MEMRI Jul 21 IA# 288 - The Middle East Crisis – Local, Regional, and Global; Conventional and Nuclear
Jul 24 IA# 289 - The Middle East Crisis – Local, Regional, and Global; Conventional and Nuclear (2): The War in the Perception of Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah
Israel Will Accept a Disarmed Hezbollah
Envoy Talks of Future As a 'Political Group'
Ha’aretz – IDF expanding presence in south Lebanon, says Hezbollah capable of firing rockets for a month
ANALYSIS: A road map for Lebanon studded with mines
Eldar Between Katzrin and Nahariya Israel has been asking Syria to stop Hezbollah. But what incentive has Damascus to comply with Jerusalem's request as long as the Golan Heights remains in Israeli hands?
A voluntary 'putsch' In Israel the military plan is the only plan. Diplomats tend to take commands from the soldiers.
Proportionality in the war As long as Israel upholds its first responsibility to provide security for its citizens then it has not blown the war out of proportion.
Editorial Separate PA from Lebanon
The prying game
Schiff ANALYSIS: Hezbollah cell based in Tyre wreaking havoc on Haifa
Yedioth A hronoth America's honey trap US has no strategic pact with Israel, but still it acts like Israel is its proxy, Yossi Ben-Ari says
Are we doing the wise thing?/ Golan
Israeli Troops: Hezbollah a Tough Enemy
FPIF Congress and the Israeli Attack on Lebanon: A Critical Reading
New York Times A First Step Back From the Brink The Op-Ed editors asked Paul Salem, Richard Perle, Avishai Margalit, Judith Kipper, Chibi Mallat, Rashid Khalidi and Robert Malley what the first step in defusing the crisis in the Middle East should be.
New York Times Weighing Foreign Forces: Sea Change for Israel After decades of resisting foreign intervention, Israel is embracing the idea of having an international force on its northern border with Lebanon.
U.S. Plan Seeks to Wedge Syria From Iran
NRO VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: We’re more grateful to Israel than we’ll ever admit. “A Strange War”
Financial Times Editorial Israel is on the way to defeating its aims
WSJ No Ceasefire in the War on Terror Hezbollah must be disarmed. By BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
No quick fix on Rice crisis mission Doubt attends Rice's Mideast test
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS: In Beirut it - almost - feels like the 1980s all over again
Weekly Standard Letting Israel Be IsraelBush's consistent approach to war and peace in the Middle East. by Fred Barnes
IHT Middle East: The revenge of the spider YOSSI ALPHER It is striking to note how well Israel's first entirely civilian leadership team has read and indeed led the public.
The failure of Israeli unilateralism MANUEL HASSASSIAN Ten months after Israel's disengagement from Gaza, the escalating crisis throughout the Middle East demonstrates the resounding failure of this policy.
Washington Realist Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel
What Now for the Lebanese Army? Stratfor
Lebanon or Palestine: Israel is after the wrong addresses By Paul Scham
Ha’aretz – What will happen next? Can Israel take advantage of this window of opportunity to break the back of Hezbollah and eradicate the mythic cult surrounding its leader, Hassan Nasrallah? Four experts on Lebanon think this can and must be done, while a fifth, Dr. Reuven Erlich, believes 'there are no solutions to the Lebanon tangle.'
Segev Osher's first war
Halutz: Ground operations will be limited in scope, we need weeks to complete military plan
Envoy: Israel will not hold talks with Hezbollah via third party
Rice: Truce must also address root cause of Lebanon violence
Siniora's Hezbollah nightmare
Support groups Shultz and not Weinberger, Olmert and not Begin, Rice and not Albright: Thus do leaders shape history.
IDF chief: Close to 100 Hezbollah gunmen killed
Report: U.S. rushes precision-guided bombs to Israel
Lebanon, and on, and on In spite of the expectation of a turning point, the recipe for solving the current crisis has not yet been found. There may be more weeks of mutual pounding.
DEBKAfile Special ActiveMap: Hizballah Rocket and Missile Ranges against Israeli Targets Click HERE for the full-size map!
Der Spiegel Hezbollah's Dead Neighborhood
Daily Star The time to to prepare for Lebanon's uncertain future is now
Lebanese army no match for Israel, experts say
Let's You and Him Fight The Syrians cheer on Hezbollah.by Lee Smith
Hezbollah's Arsenal It's more lethal than everyone thought.by Dan Darling
Slate
The Middle East Buddy List:
Does Hezbollah get along with Egypt? What about Hamas and Iran?
This Isn't World War III:
The war in Lebanon is a limited, local conflict.
Shmuel Rosner
assessment
Ehud Olmert:
Israel's prime minister had one epiphany. He needs another. Gershom Gorenberg
Europe Meets Israel What a week for a journalists' junket.by Jeffrey Gedmin
The Times Israel calls up troops to clear out 'sterile' buffer zone
WSJ Israel Draws Little U.S. Ire
When Condoleezza Rice heads to the Middle East next week, she'll be coping with a lot of pressures. Most surprising, though, is one kind of pressure she won't be feeling: There is little public outcry back home.
The Nation Nasrallah's Game
OpenDemocracy Hit Beirut, target Tehran Washington's support for Israel in Lebanon is part of its Iran strategy, says Paul Rogers
The New Republic Casus Belli The question of where Israel ends up setting its permanent borders can no longer be seen as the underlying cause of regional mayhem. That distinction belongs to Syria, Iran, and their radical Islamist proxies. Hemming their power is the best chance Israel and the West have of cutting off terrorism at its real roots.
Washington Institute Hizballah’s Global Terror Option
Israel Planned Attack on Lebanon Over a Year Ago
Ha’aretz Shavit The war of 2006: Report of the commission of inquiry
Sectarian Divide: On Web, a Sunni-Shiite Split on Hezbollah
Lobe Backing for Israel Stymies Larger US Aims in Region

Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria meets US officials, Syrian pressure continues
USIP Weak Viability: The Iraqi Federal State and the Constitutional Amendment Process Special Report
Asia Times BOOK REVIEWOn the ground in Iraq In the Belly of the Green Bird by Nir Rosen
Heritage Foundation Is Iraq Another Vietnam? Not for U.S. Troop Levels
It’s Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq By NICHOLAS SAMBANIS How we know the conflict in Iraq is no longer just an insurgency.
Los Angeles Times U.S. Plans Shift in Iraq Strategy
Rebuilding and Reforming the Iraqi Security Sector View Full Paper (PDF—696kb)
Video What are the U.S. Policy Choices in Iraq Now? Leslie Gelb Center For American Progress
U.S. Policy: Hypocrisy, Principles, and Reform in the Middle East Steven A. Cook