re was go hezbollah in article shaig apr composer think com shaig composer think com shai guday writes snip imagine it is not a terrorist camp as you and the israelis like to view the villages they are small communities with kids playing soccer in the streets women preparing lunch men playing cards etc i would not argue that all or even most of the villages are terrorist camps there are however some which come very close to serving that purpose and that is not to say that other did not function in that way prior to the invasion the village i described was actually the closest i could come to describing mine i agree there may be other villages where the civilian population has deserted because it is too close to israeli lines and thus gets bombed more often in such villages often the only remaining inhabitants are guerillas and some elderly who have nowhere else to go but for the most part the typical south lebanon village is more like mine one where civilians and guerillas live together they are often inhabiting the same house many families are large some have members of the families involved in hizollah most others are not that is what is so hard of south lebanon israel is not fighting an army with well drawn battle lines but a guerilla tyoe resistance which by definition and necessity blends with the local populace not because they are evil cowards that use women and children as shields but because that is the only way one can fight a more powerful better equipped occupying army some of the villages and yours might well be among them are as you describe not all are there are a large number of groups in the area backed by various organizations with a wide range of purposes hizbollah and amal were two of the larger ones and may still be hizbollah and amal are now the main two militias though hizbollah people tend to be more committed to resistrance operation and better motivated by religious conviction as to retaliation while mistakes may be made that is still a far cry from indiscriminate bombing which would have produced major casualties it may be a mixture of what we both say sometimes israel chooses its targets carefully at other times it just sends its pilots on sorties aimed at a town in general since it only knows that the attackers came from that specific village but has no further intelligence on several occasions israel retalliated against civilian refugee camps even in north lebanon just to show that it will not sit idly after its soldiers have been attacked most of the time it directs the sla to do the dirty work and indiscriminately shell some lebanese villages on the other side i have experienced this shelling myself on several occasions this is why the sla militia is sometimes even more despised than israeli troops well here we disagree i think that israel would willingly withdraw if the lebanese gov t was able to field a reliable force in the area to police it and prevent further attacks i hope you are right on israeli willingness to withdraw but i still contend that withdrawal would be the better course for israel s security since it would reduce its military losses and i claim that the lebanese and syrian gov ts would be able to prevent any further attacks on northern israel there seems to be very little incentive for the syrian and lebanese goovernment to allow hizbollah to bomb israel proper under such circumstances and now the lebanese government has proven that it is capable of controlling and disarming all militias as they did in all other parts of lebanon no the syrian gov t is more than happy to have israel sink into another lebanese morass i could elaborate if necessary hmm here we disagree on what serves syria interests better i think syria wants to have lebanon all to itself it would be willing to guarantee northern israel s security in return for israeli withdrawal i don t think syria wants israel to be involved in its protectorate of lebanon syria is sitting at the negotiating table because it has come to accept that and wants to get a political resolution a renewal of hostilities along the lebanese front could put the whole me peace negotiations back in question i agree only in the case of the isareli soldiers their killing cannot be qualified as murder no matter what you say no but it is regretable as is the whole situation i agree that the loss of any human life is deplorable and regrettable shai guday stealth bombers os software engineer thinking machines corp the winged ninjas of the skies cambridge ma basil
