>Actually it was someone else who brought up the fact that even killing hundreds of members of Hezbollah would be too many, so I asked what is acceptable, but I think we are getting sidetracked.

Right - let's get back.

>Israel has taken care to avoid civilians death. It gave the civilians in southern Lebanon warning so that they could evacuate before seizing some areas of southern Lebanon.
>
>No, Ms. Rice proposed that there is no point in a cease-fire that will only result in us coming back to this point at some time in the near future.

IOW, she doesn't see any reason why Israel shouldn't be doing what it's doing. Peace forces may be fine once Israel concludes the job is done.

http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/Sept12.htm (among other thousands of places) has this nice quote from Moshe Dayan's interview for Maariv (also New York Times on May 11 1997):
Look, it's possible to talk in terms of 'the Syrians are bastards, you have to get them, and this is the right time,' and other such talk, but that is not policy," Dayan told Tal in 1976. "You don't strike at the enemy because he is a bastard, but because he threatens you. And the Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us." According to the published notes, Tal began to remonstrate, "But they were sitting on the Golan Heights, and ...."Dayan interrupted: "Never mind that. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was."

>Do you believe that Hezbollah has suddenly changed its mind, and no longer wants to attack Israel?

I think they want to liberate the occupied territories and live there. If that's read as "attack Israel" then yes.

>Yes, Hamas was suddenly given the power to run Gaza.

That's called democracy. They had elections. The "given" should read "given by their people". Well, at least given the mandate - the rest was taken away (funds, freedom of movement and other minor details).

>It turns out that being the opposition (in this case as Hamas was to Arafat in Gaza) is a lot like being the 2nd string quarterback: everybody loves you, until you are actually in charge and have to start producing results.

Actually, harder: it's often repeated in history that a liberation movement is not the best steward of the country. There's too many warriors with merits who expect that they'll be ministers or mayors, while they haven't ever learned to do anything else but fight. Though I know Palestinians invest a lot in education of their people, which may work to their advantage - if they let those educated people do their job.

>I am a big fan of the Frontline series on PBS. This is a link to a show I hope to watch sometime in the near future to better understand the radical elements in Israel.

I've seen one of those, and compared to them our good friend Howie is very moderate.

>>Funny that all this happened just a day after Hamas expressed a will to recognize Israel and negotiate. As usual, whenever there's a good chance for peace, something hits the fan on either side.
>
>Expressed a will to recognize Israel? I mean, how hard is it? I would like to see a link if you have one.

Here's a probe they let out this fall: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9424469/ (still unofficial).
Then, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498851330&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
And http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/29/hamas.interview/ - specially this sentence: "Until Israel says what its final borders will be, Hamas will not say whether it will ever recognize Israel, Zahar said. "If Israel is ready to tell the people what is the official border, after that we are going to answer this question.""