Subcontracting Terrorism

The following are excerpts from and comments about an article Lebanese Army, UNIFIL on full alert after rocket fire into Israel published in full in The Daily Star (Lebanon).

Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers were on full alert in Southern Lebanon Monday, a day after rockets were fired into northern Israel for the first time since the August 14, 2006, UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the summer war.

The army and police also set up snap checkpoints in the border zone a day after unidentified militants fired two rockets into northern Israel, causing no injuries and minor damage in Kiryat Shmona.

It's very convenient for terrorist groups to agree to a cease fire and then subcontract with so-called splinter groups so that they can effectively continue their terrorism while pretending to abide by the cease fire.

The attack, the first since Israel's devastating invasion last year, raised tensions in Lebanon, which since May 20 has suffered a string of deadly bombings and further shaken by battles with Islamist forces in the North.

Some day Arab states may learn that the terrorism they either promote or condone when practiced against Israel doesn't stay confined to Israel. One irony is that Lebanon would have been spared all its agony if it hadn't let Hizbollah operate as a terrorist state-within-a-state in Southern Lebanon.

We could go further back and note its civil war might have been averted had it not allowed the PLO to set up an earlier state-within-a-state in Southern Lebanon three decades ago.

UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmine Bouziane described the incident as a "serious breach" of a nearly year-long truce and urged all parties to exercise restraint.

Bouziane said UNIFIL "got the impression" that those who launched the rockets "did not want to escalate attacks."

For now, they're perfectly happy to just occasionally launch Katyusha rockets at innocent Israelis, testing how far they can go without provoking any defensive actions by Israel.