July 16: Mid East Conflict

NYT: The widening conflict stirred a meeting of world leaders in Russia, where President Bush called on Syria to use its influence with Hezbollah to end the fighting.
David Brooks: this crisis is a return to the elemental conflict between Israel and those who seek to destroy it. You can kiss goodbye to the fascinating chess match known as the Middle East peace process. That chess match was dependent on a series of smart and reasonable Arab players with whom Israel could negotiate. Those smart and reasonable interlocutors still exist. They still invite visiting Westerners to dinner and may still represent the majority of their countrymen. But they are not running the show now. Israel’s main enemies in this crisis are not normal parties and governments that act on behalf of their people. They are jihadist organizations that happen to have gained control of territory for bases of operations. Hamas and Hezbollah knew their kidnappings and missile launches would set off retaliation that would hurt Gazans and Lebanese, but they attacked anyway — for the sake of jihad. They answer to a higher authority and dream of genocide in his name. Through some combination of fecklessness and passivity, the Arab world has ceded control of this vital flashpoint to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad. It has ceded its own destiny to people who do not believe in freedom, democracy, tolerance or any of the values civilized people hold dear.