Here's something I just don't understand

MSNBC has across the top of it's homepage "Breaking News" that Israel and Hezbollah will stop fighting Monday morning. But, in the meantime...

Mideast fighting rages despite cease-fire plan

More Israeli tanks and soldiers surged into southern Lebanon on Saturday, reaching the Litani River and engaging in some of the heaviest ground combat of the monthlong war just hours after the U.N. Security Council adopted a cease-fire plan.

[Israel has launched] an expanded offensive that tripled Israeli troop strength in southern Lebanon to 30,000.

The big expansion of Israel troop strength prompted Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, to declare the fight far from finished and likely to get worse. “We must not make a mistake, not in the resistance, the government or the people, and believe that the war has ended. The war has not ended,” he said.

Only a lack of a moral compass prevents leaders on both sides from immediately implementing the ceasefire. By making an effort to do as much damage as possible before the ceasefire takes affect, each side actually threatens the agreement itself. One side or the other may feel the need to respond to some provocation by the other in the hours before the end to hostilities is to take effect. One side or the other may feel that too much advantage has been gained, or that its honor is damaged somehow, and then back away from the agreement.

Most importantly, if an agreement has been reached, why wait to end fighting? There is no excuse.

Let's remember, the majority of the victims of this war have been civilians. If the war continues, even for another 36 hours, more civilians die. Now that there is an agreement that all sides have agreed to to end the war, how can more civilian deaths be justified? How can anyone possibly provide a moral argument to explain the killing of even one more child?

While I am glad that the agreement has been reached, and thankful that fighting is scheduled to end Monday, I feel that the escalation of fighting on the heels of the agreement shows how far the leadership of Hezbollah and Israel are from moral decision making.

GP