EDITORIAL — Tinderbox

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants have given no indication of slowing down in their attacks on Israel, and Tel Aviv is unlikely to end its blistering air strikes on Lebanon. Someone will have to risk getting caught in the crossfire and stand between the warring forces to restore a semblance of calm in that part of the world. A multinational force may have to be deployed. Whatever it takes, the international community must move quickly before bitterness and vendetta consume the region.

In the tinderbox that is the Middle East, preventing a conflagration usually includes asking which side fired the first shot or threw the first punch. But this is always complicated by other factors. In the latest eruption of violence that has destroyed what took years of painstaking work to rebuild in Lebanon, extremist Hezbollah militants struck first, snatching two Israeli soldiers in a border incursion. Hezbollah launched the attack as Israel was punishing the Hamas government in Palestine for seizing Israeli soldiers last month.

Hamas and Hezbollah are responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against Israel and other countries in the past decades. Palestinians, however, voted Hamas into office in free elections several months ago. Should the world deal with a democratically elected government that sponsors terror? Countries including the United States say no.

It took many years for the Lebanese to rebuild a country devastated by civil war and Syrian military occupation. It will take only a few days of Israeli bombardment to reduce the entire country back to rubble. The world at least is cobbling a unified response to the latest eruption of violence. The international community called for an end to Hezbollah and Hamas attacks on Israel. Even as the world recognized a state’s right to defend itself, however, there was also a call for restraint in the Israeli response. International intervention may be needed to stop the violence. Peace is an elusive commodity in this part of the world, but multinational forces may be able to restore and maintain order.