Can Middle East hostilities be defused?

JERUSALEM — For the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel is facing hostilities on two fronts. The exceedingly volatile situation is liable to embroil other Middle Eastern states, culminating in a regional conflict similar to that of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Faced with such a prospect, Israel could yield to international appeals for restraint and allow tensions to subside. By doing so, however, it would accelerate a process in which Syrian- and Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon can keep the country in a state of perpetual military mobilization, paralyzing it economically and deepening its diplomatic isolation. To deny the terrorists this victory, indeed to survive, Israel must take bold action to fundamentally alter the security situation on its northern and southern borders.

Paradoxically, Israel has been attacked from the two territories from which it unilaterally withdrew with the approval of much of the international community. Since the pullout of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah terrorists have periodically fired rockets at civilian targets in Israel and ambushed soldiers across the U.N.-recognized border. Since the withdrawal from Gaza last year, Hamas and other Palestinian groups have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israeli territory and have repeatedly attempted to conduct terrorist raids across the border.

Israel refrained from large-scale military reprisals for this aggression, confident of having won international goodwill through its withdrawals and fearful of being dragged

back into the Lebanese and Gazan morasses. But Israelis have learned that unprovoked violence against them raises little outcry in the world and that failure to react to isolated acts of terror invites unremitting terror. Today a united Hezbollah-Hamas axis has emerged, financed and trained by Syria and Iran, with the goal of destabilizing Israel and frustrating its efforts to disengage from the conflict. In spite of the perils that this front poses to Israel, and the ethical dilemmas that fighting it raises, Israel can transform the situation into one that promotes both domestic and regional stability.