TEL AVIV, Israel – Israelis reacted with a mix of dread and defiance Wednesday to news that their nation’s troops were fighting on a second front, this one on Lebanese soil that most people were glad to see Israel quit six years ago.
An air of crisis grew as television stations broadcast nonstop reports about the latest hostilities along the Lebanon frontier: the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas and a subsequent cross-border incursion by Israeli forces that left many Israelis anxiously wondering whether their nation was heading for war there again.
“A bloody mess is dangerously imminent,” said 45-year-old Shaul Cohen, finishing a coffee at a kiosk in downtown Tel Aviv. “I was in Lebanon, and I don’t want to go back.”
Many Israelis, already pained by the June 25 capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit by Palestinian militants from Gaza, found themselves Wednesday in reluctant support of new military action in Lebanon.
Among those wrestling with competing sentiments was Zahara Anteby, a founding member of the so-called Four Mothers movement that led the campaign for withdrawing Israeli troops from Lebanon.
“I am very sad that we are entering there,” Anteby said. “But there are times when you don’t have any other possibility – just to protect your son.”
Uri Dromi, a former government spokesman who is editor of publications at the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank in Jerusalem, said few Israelis favor a return to Lebanon.
But he said there would likely be wide public support for harsh military reprisals, including airstrikes against Lebanon, as long as they did not lead to a return of the long-term involvement that began with Israel’s 1982 invasion.
Now, Dromi said, Israelis “want to be left alone. It’s like a bad neighborhood. You’re in a bad neighborhood but you’re not moving.”
Shimon Biton, 49, who owns a falafel stand in Safat, said Israel’s pullout from Lebanon in 2000 had emboldened the Iran-linked Islamic movement. “I think we’re a fearful nation and we’re paying the price for that in blood,” he said.
Others, though, expressed hope that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would take the opportunity to negotiate a prisoner release with Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.
“If the matter is discussed, more complications can be avoided,” said Rafi Aharon, 36, at the Tel Aviv kiosk.
“But it seems to me that they’re not going to meet and talk,” Aharon said. “What’s going to happen is that there’s going to be more bloodshed and more soldiers are going to be abducted. It’s a catastrophe.”
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