A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

Sept 11, 2009 Missiles Strike Northern Israel

Three Katusha rockets on landed in the Western Galilee this afternoon near (Naharia) today. No one was hurt and the rockets landed in open fields, causing no appreciable damage. The IDF believes a Palestinian group affiliated with Islamic Jihad fired the rockets. It is clear however, that nothing is fired from southern Lebanon, without the approval of Hezbollah.

The reason for today's missile firing is clear-cut, and has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with Lebanese politics. Yesterday the western backed Prime Minister designate, Saad Hariri, announced he could not create a coalition government and resigned. Most observers believe he will return to the President and ask for a new mandate, and that this time, instead of trying to form a broad-based coalition that would include Hezbollah he would create a narrow coalition without them. They refused to agree to his designates for communication minister and interior ministers, and thus stymied his efforts to create the government.

Hezbollah fears this move by Hariri and today’s actions were designed to say that Hezbollah, if left out of a government, can create a great deal of mischief. It's unclear what effect the firing will have, it may boomerang against them- but…