DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Poll: Nearly All Palestinians Back Hizballah (AFP/Yahoo)
    Hizballah had the support of 97% of Palestinians, compared with 3% who said they were opposed to the group, according to a poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Near East Consulting group.
    93% of Palestinians thought that two Israeli soldiers captured in a July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the war in Lebanon should not be released unconditionally even if it means an easing of the conflict.

    See also Some Israeli Arabs Back Hizballah Despite Deaths - Wafa Amr (Reuters)
    "Hizballah has raised up our heads and lifted our spirits," said Israeli Arab Ali Manna as he mourned two nephews killed in a Hizballah rocket attack.
    Despite the fact that Arabs make up a third of the 48 people killed by rocket fire on northern Israel, the sympathies of some of the Arab minority lie very much with the Lebanese group rather than the Jewish state.
    "Hizballah's popularity has increased immensely among the Arabs in Israel," said Rawda Atallah, head of the Arab Cultural Association in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city that has been one of the main targets of Hizballah attacks.

3,050 Rockets Have Hit Israel (Jerusalem Post)
    Since the fighting in the north began on July 12, 3,050 rockets have landed in Israel, police said Tuesday.

Reuters Admits More Image Manipulation - Yaakov Lappin (Ynet News)
    Reuters has withdrawn a second photograph and admitted that the image was doctored.
    A photograph of an Israeli F-16 fighter jet over the skies of Lebanon is said to be seen firing "missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh."
    In fact, the plane in the picture is actually firing defensive flares aimed at dealing with anti-aircraft missiles.
    In addition, while only one flare was dropped, two other "missiles" were added to the original photograph.
    In response, Reuters has withdrawn from its database all photographs taken by Beirut-based photographer Adnan Hajj.
    See also Media Manipulating the War News? - Jack Kelly (Real Clear Politics)

Forests in Northern Israel Are Damaged as Hezbollah Rocket Attacks Ignite Fires - Dina Kraft (New York Times)
    Hizballah rocket fire is also taking a toll on the environment, igniting hundreds of fires in Israel's few forests in the Galilee region.
    Officials estimated Monday that as much as 9,000 acres of land, including almost 3,000 acres of forest, has been damaged by fire in the past four weeks caused by daily barrages of rockets from Lebanon.
    At least one major forest in northern Israel has lost up to 75% of its trees.
    The firefighting teams include Jews and Arabs.
    See also Fires Caused by Katyushas Set Northern Forests Back 50-60 Years - Isaac Apter (Jerusalem Post)
    See also New York Firemen Come to Reinforce Israeli Firefighters - Max Kitaj (Jerusalem Post)

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Hizballah, Iran, and Syria - Not Israel - Are Flouting International Law
- Orde F. Kittrie (Wall Street Journal)

• At Qana, Israeli aircraft fired toward a building to stop Hizballah from shooting rockets at its cities. The aircraft did not deliberately target civilians; but Hizballah rockets are targeted at civilians, a clear war crime. If Hizballah used Lebanese civilians in Qana as "human shields," then Hizballah, not Israel, is legally responsible for their deaths.
• Hizballah and Iran - which provides this terrorist group with arms, direction, and over $100 million a year - are in continual violation of international law. Their calls for Israel's destruction violate the international genocide treaty's prohibition of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." Iran's effort to develop a nuclear arsenal that could obliterate Israel, or deter its responses to future Hizballah attacks, violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
• Iranian (and Syrian) support for Hizballah violates UN Security Council Resolution 1373, requiring states to "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts." Hizballah began the armed conflict with rocket attacks on Israeli towns and the abduction of Israeli soldiers: unprovoked acts of war violating an internationally recognized border.
• China killed hundreds of peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989, and has for five decades occupied Tibet, slaughtering tens of thousands. As many as 200,000 have been killed as Russia has leveled the capital city of Grozny. All of the leading EU countries actively participated in NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, killing hundreds of civilians, though Yugoslavia posed no threat to the existence of any of the EU countries that bombed it.
• Compared with how China, Russia, and the EU have dealt with non-existential threats, Israel's responses to the threats to its existence have been remarkably restrained rather than disproportionately violent.

  The writer, a professor of international law at Arizona State University, served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2003.