Headlines Bubble About New Middle East War

Hezbollah says it’s ready for another war with IsraelLove | Peace We’re not prone to plastering large-scale, sensational headlines over AOC about a new war with Israel.

Trying to sort out any accurate report about unofficial peace talks beginning between Israel and Palesting, the headlines that keep coming at us concern a new war in the Middle East.

First the good news. Israel and the Palestinians formally agreed Saturday to four months of indirect peace talks, clearing the way for President Obama’s first sustained attempt to bring peace to the Middle East.

Both sides are already mounting the PR effort to articulate their disclaimers about moving to direct talks, but this is business as usual in Middle East peace negotiations. Without our being negative, little media applause is heard about this unofficial peace talks effort.

Sorting through a heap of war-mongering headlines, we turn to the Christian Science Monitor’s Friday article: Hezbollah says it’s ready for fresh war with Israel — and stronger now. Known for balanced, accurate reporting, CSM writes:

Many analysts believe that the next war will not be confined to Hezbollah and Israel but will also draw in Syria and possibly Iran in a regional conflagration. Hezbollah’s leaders say that it would be of sufficient scale and intensity to change the geopolitical balance in the region. “That kind of war would change every parameter in the Middle East,” Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said recently.

The stakes for both sides are so great that the military preparations of Israel and Hezbollah to some extent serve as a mutual deterrent against rash action.

“I don’t believe there will be [war]. I think there is too much at stake to lose for all the parties,” says Michael Williams, the top United Nations official in Lebanon, after an April 28 meeting with Prime Minister Saad Hariri. “I think tensions have been high the past few days. But I hope these will lower now.”