European Press Review: "The Fire is Spreading"

Everything would be simpler if the conflict were only between Israel and Palestine, remarked La Repubblica in Rome, as the major powers wouldn't be as helpless as they are in the current crisis. "It's a new Orient," assessed the paper, "everything has changed since the fall of Saddam." In just the last few months, the world has witnessed "Arafat's death, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Sharon's retirement, the developments in Iran, Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, growing rivalries between the Shiites and Sunnis, and the chaos in Iraq." All that, and the US, which had once been the referee in the region, has sunk into the "quagmire of Iraq.""The fire is spreading," concluded the paper, "but who can make a stand against it?"

"Israel has, in fact, the right to defend its territory," opined Serbia's Danas Tuesday, but tempered the statement by saying the disproportional military response to the Israeli soldier's abduction indicated alternative motives. "The Hezbollah attack gave Israel a legitimate reason to strike back," asserted the paper. Without the military confrontation, Olmert's government would have faced certain political death, it said, adding: "Olmert didn't pass up the opportunity to achieve deep political consensus and conduct a war that the majority of Israelis support."

Austria's Der Standard praised the G8 countries for not only recognizing who is guilty in the crisis but also for casting off their timidity and "calling the guilty parties by name." "One can only hope," continued the paper, "that the western world, out of its own interests, will now help kick out Hezbollah." If that doesn't work, warned the paper, "then Hezbollah will have a nuclear Iran behind them when they provoke the next crisis -- and then the Middle East will look very old."

The G8 declaration on the Middle East "must rank as one of the most pro-Israel international statements in at least a decade" and "is motivated by the fear that a victory for Hamas and Hezbollah will be a victory for the forces of extremism across the Islamic world," assessed Britain's Telegraph. On the other hand, "Israel sees the war as an opportunity to change the perception that its withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005 were a sign of weakness." The paper predicted that an international intervention force would "either be ineffectual or risk turning itself into a target" and that "the best chance of success lies in politics and diplomacy."

The Arab and Muslim neighbors of Palestine and Israel have failed, concluded Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in that they have neglected for many years to make proposals that were capable of "alleviating Israel's general mistrust." The paper commented that frustration had built up since Israel's full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer -- a move which, it says, was not rewarded by the other side. "The Israeli public is demanding an even stronger approach than the one taken so far," observed the paper, adding that this stronger approach is now being demonstrated.