All Quiet(er) in HaifaMaimon Schwarzschild

From Menachem Kellner, our Haifa correspondent:

    Q-u-i-e-t — shhhhhhhhhhhhh

A whole day without alarms, adrenalin, zipping off to shelter.  A guy could get used to this.

But no one I have spoken to wants to get to used to it.  Everyone I have spoken with today has the same attitude: if this war sort of peters out, with Hezbollah intact, our kidnapped soldiers lost in the morass which is Lebanon, the threat of katuysha rockets hanging permanently over the North of Israel (not to mention Iran and Syria strengthened), then
all of the blood and treasure spilled on both sides of the border will have been for naught.

There is a lot of disgruntlement here over the way in which we consistently mishandle our relations with the world. Today, the case of Mohammed Dura; and the case of the poor family blown up on the Gaza beach a few weeks ago:  First the army takes blame and apologizes and only afterward does it start to become apparent that things were not as clear as first thought and that perhaps our people were not at fault. The IDF (Israel Defence Force) says that it attacked the building in Qana at 1:00 AM and it collapsed 6 hours later – if that is the case why did we run to tell the world that we were responsible for the poor people killed there? What happened during those intervening 6 hours when the only people on the scene were Lebanese, unhampered by further bombing runsfrom Israel?

But, pundit I am not, nor do I want to become one, so let me close with a brief report on today. The day passed normally, for a change; we even went out to dinner – in Haifa! – to celebrate a friend’s retirement. We did not have to travel South, out of “tehum BOOM” to eat in peace. When we got home, the parking lot in our building was full – another good sign.

Israel is in the unhappy situation that war is worrisome, but the wrong kind of “peace” may be even more worrisome.