So, it had come down to this. Tomorrow, Israel will send back the murderer, Samir Kuntar, 4 Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 Lebanon War along with the bodies of almost 200 Hezbollah fighters, the release of an as yet undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners and a report on Iranian diplomats kidnapped in the 1980’s.

What is Israel getting in return? Well, if you believe the reports from the Lebanese media, Read more »

In the wake of the lone madman (so say the police) who took a bulldozer on a joyride and took 3 lives and injured dozens more, and also in contrast to it, things are going wrong for Israel on a non-lone madman level.  The more orchestrated campaign against Israel took 2 turns for the worse today and as usual, no one has any good solutions for it.

First, the known problem.  Hezbollah has been rearming via Syria almost since the war ended 2 years ago.  After the war, UNSCR 1701was supposed to not only prevent Hezbollah from deploying south of the Litani River, but also the re-armament of the organization.  They had 13000 missiles with which to fire back in 2006.  The new figure today puts it at 40000+ short and medium range missiles.  Not to mention of course that there is also evidence of about 2500 Hezbollah fighters Read more »

Although we aren’t privy to the agreement signed by Olmert and Nasrallah, we can be pretty sure that the swap is on course. Today, the IDF Rabbinate confirmed they have begun exhuming the bodies of fallen Hezbollah fighters from a cemetery near Kibbutz Amiad. The deal is expected to go through very quickly with the culmination in about another week and 1/2. Read more »

On the day after the prisoner swap, there has been a ton of hand- wringing in the media. Did Israel or didn’t Israel do the right thing? Was too high a price paid or was this the only move they could have made? There were some surprises. Read more »

I was a little sad to wake up this morning and see that the prisoner swap was passed by a huge majority of the cabinet over the objections of the Mossad and the GSS. I can’t say I 100% blame them for going that route. This puts an end to another chapter for both Israel and Lebanon. Israel gets back Goldwasser and Regev (and we get to see if they are actually alive) and some information on Ron Arad’s whereabouts. Read more »

Forgetting about the infighting going on right now about who does or doesn’t have the right to declare Regev and Goldwasser KIA, now Hezbollah has chimed in with some noise of it’s own.  This of course makes total sense in the context of what’s been going on. Read more »

I was all set to head to sleep this evening, but a last minute reading of the news prompted me to post again once more before I go to sleep. I have said for the last 2 days that the deals being considered for the release of Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and even Gilad Shalit are too steep to truly make sense. This applies more to the case of those kidnapped by Nasrallah’s gang of criminals, as at least we know Gilad Shalit is alive. Read more »

Reading the news today garnered one interesting story about what’s going on in Israel. More specifically with the deal Israel is trying to complete with Hizbullah for the return of Goldwasser and Regev for Kuntar and others.

There is an apparent push by the IDF Chief Rabbi to declare the soldiers missing in action and dead. Why this comes up right now seems to be a mystery as there has been plenty of time to do so beforehand. My guess? Israel didn’t want to prejudice the negotiations with Hizbullah and set the bar too low in terms of what Nasrallah would ask as his price for their return. At least if they gave Nasrallah hope, Israel might have hope to regain their stolen sons. Read more »