This means that that it will last for about twenty minutes.

Prediction.

Hezbullah will take between 3-5 hours setting up in key vantage points that were previously destroyed. Do a small in initial attack. Then when Isreal resumes firing, they will blame Israel and resume full attacks. They will see if there's any solid proof they attacked first. If there is some good proof, apologists will claim it was a rogue branch of Hezbullah.

Conditional. Good.

That's exactly what I hope they will do. Always, from now on.

Cease-fires MUST apply to BOTH parties. If they don't, they are surrenders. And I'm tired of watching Israel surrender again and again.

This isn't good news. Now that Hezzbollah knows that Israel "will" stop under pressure, the question becomes "how much pressure needs to be applied?"

Hopefully Israel will stick to the hours exactly, and resume the very second the 48 hours has expired.

Once again, Israel agrees to stop killing terrorists before the job is done. Israel did neither of the two things it set out to do; it didn't get back its kidnapped soldiers, nor did it hammer at Hezbollah to the point where Hezbollah didn't pose a threat to Israel. Unfortunately, every time Israel pulls back from trying to kill terrorists, more Israelis die in the not-too-distant future. And for what, 50 or so supposed civilians who were too stupid to heed the warning to evacuate?

More here: for those who care

It’s only when Israel errors a bit in striking a military target Hezbollah purposely locates next to “Innocent people” that it’s a tragedy. Had a Hezbollah rocket killed 56 Israeli women and children in their sleep, it would be heralded in the Arab world as a great victory. This is known as asymmetric morality.

Did Israel really kill these people or did a munitions storage area explode when the terrorist tried to recover it from a damaged building. I'm betting on the latter. Funny that the building stood for 8 hours and then fell into a heap without warning and killed all of those terrorists. Yes, anyone in the building was a terrorists as is 99.9% of those killed that the terrorists classify as civilians. The people of the free world really are suckers for a sob story, of maybe just stupid. How did the NY Terrorists Times manage to write a first hand account of the collapse of the building during the bombing if it stood for 8 hours? I knew they were in the hands (or on the payroll) of the terrorist but I didn't know they attended the terrorist planning sessions.

Now we know. The current Israeli govt. is, in the end, too weak to do what is necessary to survive. Sadly, I doubt that the US govt. has the will either. But I guess both governments are just reflections of their people's weakness.

What's the over-under?

I've got 18 hours.

LenS, an even more intriguing question: what would the U.S. do in these circumstances? Are our people getting so fat and happy that they would avoid war at any cost.

The polls seem to suggest so. The West is heading toward a decadent, narcissistic end in the face of challenges from Islamic aggression.

If we were so shocked at civilian deaths in WW II, we'd be speaking German now, along with the rest of the world. We were willing to pay any price--in tens of thousands of military lives, and to kill the same number of civilians in Dresden and other parts of Germany.

Are we too weak morally to survive this new existential threat?