The Army is balancing the need to minimize civilian casualties with the need to aggressively assert its authority. Let’s all hope it can pull that off successfully.

Shock and Awe ( Photo: New York Times)

You don’t have to be the soft-hearted type to cringe when an organized army bombs away at a refugee camp cramped with civilians. It begs your creativity to find another, more peaceful solution. After all, the civilians don’t have anything to do with it.

Alas, a clear moral situation this is not.

Neither the army nor the Lebanese people can afford letting the terrorists get away with slaughtering soldiers in daylight for just being that: Lebanese soldiers. It is obvious that the attacks were aimed at the army’s authority. If the army shows signs of weakness, it will invite further attacks on it and we will lose the very institution that holds the peace and keeps this divided country together.

All “peaceful” and political solutions, including intermediary negotiations with Palestinian factions to hand over the perpetrators to justice, have failed. Ample time was given to the civilians to leave, but now, it is time for an overwhelming, swift and precise operation.

The faster this ends the better. The militants have no other option but to surrender. The faster they do it, the less innocent Palestinians will die.