At the beginning of this week, I spent a couple of days in the Israeli-Arab town of Umm El Fahm, which is in the heavily Arab-populated mid-section of Israel known as the Triangle. I was there to research and report on a couple of articles, one of which is now posted on the Forward newspaper website at http://www.forward.com. My meetings with people there gave me hope for the future of this region, even in the midst of all the turmoil and confusion, and now, as the war rages inside Israel and in Lebanon and in Gaza and the West Bank (wars, rather than war is perhaps more like it), it's easy sometimes to forget that there is so much more grey area than black and white here.

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I have been travelling and writing in Israel these past few days, and only now have logged onto tpmcafe to see what folks are thinking. Today, as I drove back from meetings in the Triangle area of Israel, which is mostly populated by Israeli Arabs or Palestinian-Israelis, I saw planes overhead, returning from Lebanon--or helicopters heading out. I stayed on the phone with my cousin and her family in a community near Nahariya that suffered three hits of katushyas today, and they were preparing to sleep in a bomb shelter again tonight.

Of course, it is terrible to see the destruction among civilians in Lebanon-as well as civilians in Israel. And, we should all remember that the crisis in Gaza is continuing as well. But Josh is correct to note how completely absent the U.S. is in this crisis situation--it's really stunning. The Bush White House sent envoys Eliot Abrams and David Welch here a few days ago which clearly did little to stop anything. There is no doubt that this is a crisis that could spin completely out of control. For tpmcafers who want to read some of my writing about this situation, I invite you to check out my articles on the http://www.forward.comForward newspaper website or the American Prospect magazine site: http://www.prospect.org.

Even as the crisis spirals, it's important to remember that there are two different wars being fought now by Israel, on its northern and southern borders, and while they appear to be connected, it's not that simple.

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