Hezbollah Will Stop When Only When They Want To ... The Syrian ambassador to London is calling on Hezbollah to back down, and release the hostages:

From JerusalemPost:

The Syrian ambassador to London, in an interview with the BBC, called on Hizbullah to stop firing missiles at Israel.

"Syria is not interested in joining the battle," the ambassador said.

He also asked Hizbullah to come to an arrangement that would include exchanging prisoners

I wonder if the ambassador has communicated with his government lately; or rather -- with the Iranian puppetmasters of the conflict.

Saudi is also blaming Hezbollah for the escalating regional conflict.

From KhaleejTimes: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -

In a significant move, Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s political heavyweight and economic powerhouse, accused Hezbollah guerrillas - without naming them - of “uncalculated adventures” that could precipitate a new Middle East crisis.


A Saudi official quoted by the state Saudi Press Agency said the Lebanese Hezbollah’s brazen capture of two Israeli soldiers was not legitimate.

The kingdom “clearly announces that there has to be a differentiation between legitimate resistance (to Israel) and uncalculated adventures.”

Meanwhile, back in Lebanon, Faoud writes in his "WelcomeToMyLebaneseDream:

KHALAAAASSS!!! (which means it is finished) guilty. We are ALL guilty. ALL OF US. Emergency hiwar watani session??? I am not sure if I should laugh or puke my guts out on the table. Let it be known to all. We are scared, our lives are on the line, our country is history, but it's all our fault. Each and every one of us. These are the people we elected, these are the people we let freely thrive in their little haven of hatred and murderous ideals, and this is us, scared and incapacitated, failing but to point fingers and complain. Well let me tell you this folks, we pulled our pants down and stuck our naked asses out, and now that we're fucked, we really don't have jack shit to complain about. (StetsonTip Froggy at Blackfive)

Here's some text from a letter to Prime Minister Olmert from the Lebanese Foundation For Peace:

We Lebanese congratulate you on your recent actions against the Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon. We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation.

Since Israel's forced withdrawal in 2000, pulling out due to pressure from the Clinton Administration, Hezbollah has not for one day ceased its terror incentives, acts of war and provocations at the border. Hezbollah, with the help of Syria and Iran, turned Southern Lebanon into a terror base supported by 12,000 Iranian missiles threatening every initiative for Peace in general and the security of Israel in particular.

Unfortunately, the West should have understood from the beginning that diplomacy does not work with terrorism, neither the Saudi backed initiatives in Lebanon, it enforces terrorism and acts like a booster for Hezbollah justifications on the ground...

On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport to thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from fundamentalism. We ask you for support, facilitations and logistics in order to win this struggle and achieve together the same objectives: Peace and Security for Lebanon and Israel and our future generations to come

Meanwhile, with impeccable logic, Hezbollah has just fired 20 more rockets into Israel, saying that they'll stop whenever they decide to stop. (Or, when the mullahs in Iran instruct them to.)

Check the CounterTerrorismBlog for a very clear analysis.

UPDATE: Looks like more than 60 rockets were fired.

Second UPDATE: There were reports that the rocket which hit Haifa Thursday was fired by Iran. However, that's not quite true.

From YNet, StetsonTip Allah:

IDF officials said that the missile that was fired to Haifa on Thursday evening has the similar characteristics of the Katyusha rockets that were fired on city of Carmiel, and therefore it was fired by the Hizbullah.

The IDF rejected the Hizbullah's denial of firing the missile saying that it was "An attempt to cover up the disaster that Hizbullah is causing Lebanon. (Hanan Greenberg)

IRIS has a photo of the Katyusha rocket:

The Katyusha Rocket "Multiple Rocket Launcher" BM-21 pictured here could be easily taken apart and smuggled into a "demilitarized" Palestinian state. Individual Katyushas can be launched from a pipe using just a car battery.

The rockets on this truck have a range of 12.7 miles / 20.4 km. Katyushas can easily carry chemical warheads. One full salvo of rockets from this truck would fire the explosive equivalent to four Iraqi-type Scud missiles, which were launched into Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. No apartment in Tel Aviv would be safe, as the map below demonstrates (Haifa's twice that far from the Lebanese border, which contradicts the Katyusha rocket range, but I guess improvements can always be made -- FB)

Incidentally, the Katyusha rocket was originally developed by the Russians.

Here's a list of Iranian rockets, from Wikipedia:

Short Range
Samid Artillery Rocket
Fajr-3 Artillery Rocket
Tondar-69 Artillery Rocket
Oghab Artillery Rocket
Shahin-II Artillery Rocket
Naze'at Artillery Rocket
Zelzal Artillery Rocket
Fateh-110

Medium Range
R-17E, variant of Russian Scud B
Shahab-1
Shahab-2
Shahab-3
Shahab-3D
Fajr-5 Artillery Rocket
Kosar stealth missile

Long Range
Shahab-4
Shahab-5
Shahab-6

Ground to Air Missiles
Misagh-1
Misagh-2
Sayyad-1
Shahab Thaqeb

Anti-Tank Missiles
Saghegh
Ra'ad (Iranian version of AT-3 Sagger)

Anti-Ship Missiles
Noor (Iranian version of C-802)

Might be important to refer to someday.

  ¶ 8:03 AM