Meanwhile, back in the Holy Land...

The Washington Times: Pre-emptive attack on Hamas eyed

TEL AVIV -- Applying a lesson from the recent war against Hezbollah, Israeli leaders are increasingly talking about staging a pre-emptive military offensive in the Gaza Strip in order to avert a Hamas buildup of improved missiles.

Israeli forces already operating in the Gaza Strip Monday killed at least nine Palestinians and wounded 20. But officials and politicians say a broader operation against Hamas is necessary if Israel wants to deny it the ability to stockpile weapons like the Shi'ite militia Hezbollah, which was able to build up its arsenal during six years of relative calm.

"We should not allow Hamas to build in Gaza what Hezbollah built in Lebanon," said Ephraim Sneh, Labor parliamentarian. "[A broad offensive] seems to me almost unavoidable because the accumulation of arms in Gaza in the hands of Hamas and other terror organization is intolerable."

The talk of an escalation in Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed in principle to bring a far-right party, Yisrael Beitenu, into his coalition.

The move stabilized a coalition whose foundations emerged from the Lebanon war severely shaken. But it also reorients the political constellation of Mr. Olmert's government toward the right.


The Washington Times: Iran, Syria rebuild Hezbollah

Iran and Syria are rapidly rearming Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon as an international peacekeeping force has failed to carry out a U.N. mandate to disarm the Shi'ite militia group, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday.

The UN is ineffective! I'm shocked! Shocked and dismayed, I tell you!

Mr. Mofaz, a former defense minister and chief of general staff in the Israeli Defense Force, also warned that time was growing short for the international community to implement effective sanctions to halt Iran's drive for nuclear weapons.

"We know the policy of the Iranian regime is to buy time by talking" while it pursues a nuclear bomb, Mr. Mofaz said in an interview in his suite at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington. "So far they have been very successful."