The Drums Of War

Is it safe to go to Lebanon next summer? Sure, unless you ask The Economist, The Washington Post or Haaretz.

More to come?
 
David Makovsky writes in “The Next Middle East War?” in the Washington Post:

The causes of last year’s war still exist — and may spark another conflagration.
The first underlying issue is the failure to enforce U.N. resolutions. [..] Second, in an eerie echo of the run-up to the 1967 war, U.S. and Israeli officials say Moscow is once again telling Damascus that Israel has plans to attack Syria. Israeli security officials say that Syria’s new military deployments reflect this Russian advice

The Economist, under the title “When’s the next war?”, writes:

UN forces supervising the present ceasefire in Lebanon have failed to prevent fresh Iranian weapons reaching Hizbullah via Syria. Iran, Israeli officials have begun to say publicly, is smuggling arms and advisers to the militants in Gaza via Egypt; Hamas spokesmen say they already have longer-range rockets than the standard Qassams. So all sides have an interest in keeping things quiet — for now. Yet there is always a risk that Gaza may blow up again, perhaps after a lethal Qassam strike, drawing Hizbullah in again too. And if war breaks out again and if this week’s Winograd report on the war in Lebanon is right, Israeli politicians look barely capable of handling it.

And finally, a chilling piece by Shuki Mairovich in Haaretz. In “Waiting for the next war” he writes:

The third Lebanon War will be declared as a correction of the Second Lebanon War. The ink on the Winograd report has not yet dried and the psychological preparations for the next war have already begun.

Quite a gloomy bunch don’t you think?