The United Nations Security Council is meeting to vote on a resolution about the Israel-Lebanon war. It's live on television at the moment and is even webcast online. It is interesting to see the procedures and how they run. Ghana has the presidency and their representative invited the representatives from Israel and Lebanon to sit sit at the council table for the upcoming discussion. I wonder if we will get another Kruschev style shoe incident, I doubt it, the days of Kruschev diplomacy are gone and they wouldn't have made it to the council table if everyone had not already agree to the resolution.
The resolution calls for an ceasefire and that civilians should be protected that leads me to think they don't expect the ceasefire to be immediate or to hold. Israel will withdraw in parallel to the deployment of 15000 UN peace keepers and the Lebanese army. They are calling for an arms embargo on Lebanon, thats bit unbalanced since the US is shipping tonnes of arms to Israel. The US is giving more financial aid to Lebanon and getting the private sector (*cough* Halliburton *cough*) involved in rebuilding the infrastructure.
We'll see if anyone actually acts on it and how long a ceasefire holds, Hezbollah are not at the council table so I imagine they will do whatever they want regardless of who votes for what in New York.
Update: The resolution has passed unanimously. It is Resolution 1701. I hope it's number isn't a reflection of its chances of becoming reality ;-).
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