Tel Aviv – Israelis reacted with a mix of dread and defiance Wednesday to news that their nation’s troops were fighting on a second front, this one on Lebanese soil that most people were glad to see Israel quit six years ago.
An air of crisis grew as television stations broadcast nonstop reports about the latest hostilities along the Lebanon frontier – the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas and a subsequent cross-border incursion by Israeli forces that left many Israelis anxiously wondering whether their nation was heading for war there again.
“A bloody mess is dangerously imminent,” said 45-year-old Shaul Cohen, finishing a coffee at a kiosk in downtown Tel Aviv. “I was in Lebanon, and I don’t want to go back.”
The violence on Israel’s northern border added to the sense of turmoil in the region, with a 2-week-old Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip following the capture of a soldier by Palestinian militants.
Taken together, the two operations represent for many Israelis a test of their nation’s resolve in the face of a threat by Islamist militants.
“These are the first three cases where Israelis are kidnapped inside Israel and taken to outside Israel. This is a new step. This is why Israel can’t tolerate it,” said Mordechai Kedar, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after a costly 18-year presence that by its end faced increasing opposition in Israel. For many Israelis, the latest border flare-up revived unhappy memories of that period, but it also stoked anger over the brazenness of the Hezbollah attack onto their nation’s soil.
Many Israelis, already pained by the June 25 capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit by Palestinian militants from Gaza, found themselves Wednesday in reluctant support of new military action in Lebanon.
Among those wrestling with competing sentiments was Zahara Anteby, a founding member of the so-called Four Mothers movement that led the campaign for withdrawing Israeli troops from Lebanon.
“I am very sad that we are entering there,” Anteby said by telephone from her home in Kakhal, in the northern Galilee region. “But there are times when you don’t have any other possibility – just to protect your son.” She added: “I hope that it will finish very quickly.”
