The life-threatening activities of Hezbollah and Hamas had simply reached a point where sugical intervention became imperative.
While all who care about human life must regret the loss and maiming of it anywhere, we also know that Lebanon is too weak to clean out Hezbollah itself, while Hamas in Gaza has no intention of remedying itself.
So the only hope is to drain the boil and let the healing process begin.
The most curious question is whether Israel has a silent goahead to clean the sore spot widely enough to include problems the West has with Syria and Iran. As you well know, there are other nations that would dearly like to see remedial treatment of the regime in Syria and the nuclear irritant in Iran.
And it appears that Dr. Olmert may be ready to perform the entire operation, with all the silent assistants he requires during the military operation.
At this writing, Syria is playing a waiting game, no doubt encouraged to by the Israeli fly by of its errant leader's home before the procedure began, while Iran seems to be unwittingly moving toward a position where it may be vulnerable to a bit of a squeeze to exude its harmful elements.
While the surgery may be painful, the overall prognosis is good, in fact, the only hope for peace.
At least, once the dangerous infection has been treated, the painful sensitivity can begin to subside and the wound can eventually heal. It will be a long process and it will no doubt leave a scar, but if the healing process doesn’t begin now, it will only take longer, and the infection may spread and involve even more areas of the Middle Eastern body politic.
Finally, as you might have observed, a boil is in one way similar cancer, in that, despite its wily ways of spreading, it is a dumb disease, because as it continues to grow it finally kills its host and thereby itself.
