The good guys are not idle, according to Jane's Defence Weekly from my email updates:
Amid Lebanon's swelling political crisis, the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has been building up the army with help from the US and sympathetic Arab regimes in the Gulf. However, and more significantly, it has also quietly doubled the strength of the paramilitary Internal Security Forces (ISF) with Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians for a possible showdown with the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Party of God (Hizbullah) movement and its pro-Syrian allies over who will govern.
[Jane's Defence Weekly - first posted to http://jdw.janes.com/ - 15 December 2006]
Are the Lebanese government force getting ready to whack Hizbollah?
If I may depart from my usual impulse to belittle the French, are the French acting so hostile to the Israelis in southern Lebanon in order to have the freedom to side with the Lebanese Christians and Sunnis when the clash finally comes? That is, do the French want to avoid tainting their intervention in an inter-Arab battle with the charge they are doing Israel's bidding? Are the French really working with us?
You never can tell.
