Tel Aviv, Israel -- Except for the areas in northern Israel, which are within the range of Hezbollah missiles so residents are in shelters, life in the rest of the country is as usual. Tonight, for example, I will go to a theater in Tel Aviv. People are worried, of course. The stock exchange took a plunge of nearly 5% (mostly because foreign investors withdrew money from Israeli banks while the U.S. dollar went up -- making it probably the only place on earth). People's concerns focus on the future. What will happen next? How can escalation be prevented?
My estimate is that this is going to be a long war lasting several weeks at least. The Israeli government, which declared a ground, air, and sea blockade on Lebanon is determined to end this crisis with at least one success -- to remove a constant threat by forcing Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from the border with Israel and to have the Lebanese government deploy its army there as one would have expected of a sovereign state. Such a demand was backed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 nearly six years ago. But since Hezbollah will have difficulties accepting the demand and because the government in Beirut is weak and does not wish to exercise its authority and confront the Shiite organization, I can foresee a long war of attrition and escalation.
Israel will bomb suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has it headquarters. They will respond by hitting more towns and ones deeper in Israel and the Israeli airforce will hit power plants and blacken Lebanon and so on. Only pressure by the international community -- especially France, USA, and Russia -- on Lebanon and Syria could bring about a de-escalation of the crisis. Once there is a ceasefire and the Lebanese army is deployed, Israel and Lebanon will open talks about the release and swap of prisoners.
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