Israel Readies for Iran Showdown by Attacking Lebanon
Various | 18.07.2006 18:35 | Anti-militarism | World
Look who cries "Terrorists!!", while creating devastating wars, slaughtering innocent people, and violating International Law. The same Extremists who started the unwinnable mess in Iraq, on a bed of LIES.
Israel Readies for Iran Showdown by Attacking Lebanon
by Trita Parsi
As the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah persists, an Israeli strategy of enlarging the conflict seems to be crystallizing.
Neoconservative pundits in the U.S. have pointed an accusatory finger at the usual suspect – Tehran – arguing that Hezbollah was pushed by Iran to open a new front against Israel to capitalize on Israel's involvement in Gaza and to draw attention away from the controversy around its nuclear program.
Recalling Hezbollah's close ties to Iran and Syria, both Washington and Tel Aviv argue that the recent clashes must have the support and blessing of these two states.
But even considering the anti-Israeli rhetoric of these states – in particular Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's venomous comments regarding Israel's right to exist – they seem to lack either a credible motive or a plan for escalating violence against Israel.
Such a conclusion rests on the assumption that Tehran and Hezbollah could have predicted Israel's reaction to the ambush and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Mindful of the decades-long fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – in which kidnappings of soldiers have been the rule rather than the exception – the assertion that Iran and Hezbollah aimed to draw Israel into a major war remains unconfirmed.
Israel's heavy-handed response, which risks embroiling the entire region in a war, is rather unprecedented and unlikely to have been predicted by Hezbollah, despite Israel's shelling of the Gaza strip after Palestinian fighters took an Israeli soldier prisoner.
Clearly, Ahmadinejad seeks to exploit the conflict – both by appealing to the disgruntled Arab and Muslim public outside of Iran by defying the U.S. and Israel, and by drawing attention away from its nuclear program and send the West a signal of what its allies in the region are capable of. But credible intelligence proving this was an Iranian trap is yet to surface.
In fact, much indicates that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have little to gain from an extensive confrontation with Israel at this time. Syria is in a weak position – the George W. Bush administration refuses to talk to it, its diplomatic maneuverability is limited, and its army is in shambles. Just the other week, Israel humiliated Syrian President Bashir Assad by having Israeli jets break the sound barrier over his palace in Damascus. Assad's inability to respond was a poignant reminder to the Arabs of their impotence.
Hezbollah, in turn, needs to prove to the Lebanese public that it doesn't need Israel's enmity to justify its existence. Dragging Israel into the heart of Beirut, recently rebuilt after decades of warfare, does the exact opposite. It sends Lebanese society the signal that Hezbollah's continued existence comes at great peril for Lebanon's future.
"It led us to a war we are not prepared to fight," Yassin Soueid, a retired Lebanese general, told the Washington Post. "Israel could hit the presidential palace. … They can hit wherever they want, and there is nothing we can do about it."
Iran, on the other hand, is playing a high-risk game with the West over the nuclear issue. Its strategy seems to be to continuously defy the U.S. but stop short of trapping itself in a military confrontation it knows it cannot win.
While Ahmadinejad huffs and puffs – he has warned Israel that it "will face a crushing response" if it attacks Syria, and accused Arab leaders who have refused to cheer on Hezbollah of being "complicit in the Zionist regime's barbarism" – there is little evidence showing an active Iranian role in the fighting.
"This is rhetoric, not actual policy," Mohammad Atrianfar, editor of the reformist Iranian newspaper Shargh, told Time magazine's Azadeh Moaveni.
Accusing Israeli officials of using the Lebanon crisis to find new reasons to attack Iran, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes that "There is no evidence that [Iran] dominates the Hezbollah or has more control than Syria. … Until there are hard facts, Iran's role in all of this is a matter of speculation, and conspiracy theories are not facts or news."
On the contrary, the one state that may have a strategic interest in expanding the conflict is Israel itself. Numerous Western states have condemned Israel's actions as disproportionate and inflammatory. "One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Lebanon," France's President Jacques Chirac told reporters. "I find, honestly, like most Europeans, that the reactions are completely disproportionate."
Tel Aviv seems to have – with a potential future showdown with Iran in mind – sought an opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah and Hamas in order to weaken Iran's deterrence and retaliation capabilities. Over the last few months, Israel's policy on Iran has been reassessed, partly due to Iranian warnings that it would retaliate against Israel if the United States targeted its nuclear facilities.
Through Hamas and the Hezbollah, Iran could bring the war to Israeli territory, a scenario that has further accentuated Israel's vulnerability to asymmetric warfare. By preemptively attacking Hamas and the Hezbollah now, Israel can significantly deprive Iran of its capabilities to retaliate against the Jewish State in the event of a U.S. assault on Iran. Once Iran obtains a nuclear capability, however, this option may no longer be available to Israel.
Furthermore, Israel's harsh reaction may be motivated by a need to conceal the reduced strategic maneuverability it enjoys as a result of Washington's failure in Iraq. Though Israel certainly possesses the military means to fend off any conventional Arab offensives, the strength of its deterrence is to a large extent tied to U.S. military prowess.
An overextended United States may embolden Israel's enemies, who may be tempted to test Israel's resolve and ability to uphold its tough posture. Through its crushing response and by expanding the conflict, Israel seeks to conceal this potential vulnerability and signal the Arabs to abandon any adventurous ideas that the U.S. difficulties in Iraq may have given them.
What may have started with a Hezbollah ambush on an Israeli convoy seems to be ending with a much larger Israeli campaign to reduce its vulnerability to Iranian retaliation, while exposing Tehran by neutralizing its deterrence capabilities in the Levant.
(Inter Press Service)
www.antiwar.com/ips/parsi.php?articleid=9324
What Does Israel Want?
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around, employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for latter course of action.
I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: ‘low intensity conflict’. It was too low to their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal – headquarters – and for which they bought, with American tax payer money – the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.
The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a ‘low intensity conflict’; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a ‘real’ war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of ‘riots’ in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel’s power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army’s ability to conduct a conventional war.
The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army’s main vision for the battlefield is today still that of ‘shock and awe’ rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The ‘low intensity’ war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a ‘real’ war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine – a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.
After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada – the suicide bomb – you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.
I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.
Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.
The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army’s hunger for a ‘high intensity conflict’. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers ‘is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut’. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. ‘But they can sneak them with a car’, insisted the interviewers. ‘Oh indeed’ said the Israeli Foreign Minister, ‘This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country’. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its ‘real’ might and compensate for the frustrating years of the ‘low intensity conflict’ that had sent Israel’s best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.
This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that ‘we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran’. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.
The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel’s ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.
Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.
Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.
There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land’s native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel’s military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.
It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.
Bush: Iran May Be Behind Crisis
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2006/180706Iran.htm
Did they try to buy Yellow Cake from Niger, too?
US hawks smell blood
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Seeing a major opportunity to regain influence lost as a result of setbacks in Iraq, prominent neo-conservatives are calling for unconditional US support for Israel's military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and "regime change" in Syria and Iran, as well as possible US attacks on Tehran's nuclear facilities in retaliation for its support of Hezbollah.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG19Ak01.html
Remember that "Regime Change" is an illegal policy, and leaked documents prove that the US and UK are well aware of this fact.
All in a day's work for America's ally
"[W]hat would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had actually unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel's troops crossed into Lebanon? What if the Lebanese air force then killed 73 Israeli civilians in bombing raids in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and Israeli West Jerusalem? What if a Lebanese fighter aircraft bombed Ben Gurion airport? What if a Lebanese plane destroyed 26 road bridges across Israel? Would it not be called 'terrorism'? I rather think it would. But if Israel was the victim, it would also probably be Word War Three."
mparent7777.livejournal.com/10348252.html
And Lebanon would immediately draw the condemnation of the International Community.
James Woolsey calls for an attack on Syria
www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/17/james-woolsey-calls-for-an-attac/
Iran and Syria to blame, says Blair
www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-5954077,00.html
Wow, the very two countries these criminal LIARS want to attack, but couldn't dupe the world into supporting them on ...
Better not let this one get out:
Experts challenge White House line on Iran's influence
msnbc.msn.com/id/13907826
Politicians and Media Selling America's Soul for an Israeli Shekel
www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion editorials/2006 Opinion Editorials/July/18 o/Politicians and Media Selling America's Soul for an Israeli Shekel By Mohamed Khodr.htm
Israel Readies for Iran Showdown by Attacking Lebanon
by Trita Parsi
As the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah persists, an Israeli strategy of enlarging the conflict seems to be crystallizing.
Neoconservative pundits in the U.S. have pointed an accusatory finger at the usual suspect – Tehran – arguing that Hezbollah was pushed by Iran to open a new front against Israel to capitalize on Israel's involvement in Gaza and to draw attention away from the controversy around its nuclear program.
Recalling Hezbollah's close ties to Iran and Syria, both Washington and Tel Aviv argue that the recent clashes must have the support and blessing of these two states.
But even considering the anti-Israeli rhetoric of these states – in particular Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's venomous comments regarding Israel's right to exist – they seem to lack either a credible motive or a plan for escalating violence against Israel.
Such a conclusion rests on the assumption that Tehran and Hezbollah could have predicted Israel's reaction to the ambush and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Mindful of the decades-long fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – in which kidnappings of soldiers have been the rule rather than the exception – the assertion that Iran and Hezbollah aimed to draw Israel into a major war remains unconfirmed.
Israel's heavy-handed response, which risks embroiling the entire region in a war, is rather unprecedented and unlikely to have been predicted by Hezbollah, despite Israel's shelling of the Gaza strip after Palestinian fighters took an Israeli soldier prisoner.
Clearly, Ahmadinejad seeks to exploit the conflict – both by appealing to the disgruntled Arab and Muslim public outside of Iran by defying the U.S. and Israel, and by drawing attention away from its nuclear program and send the West a signal of what its allies in the region are capable of. But credible intelligence proving this was an Iranian trap is yet to surface.
In fact, much indicates that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have little to gain from an extensive confrontation with Israel at this time. Syria is in a weak position – the George W. Bush administration refuses to talk to it, its diplomatic maneuverability is limited, and its army is in shambles. Just the other week, Israel humiliated Syrian President Bashir Assad by having Israeli jets break the sound barrier over his palace in Damascus. Assad's inability to respond was a poignant reminder to the Arabs of their impotence.
Hezbollah, in turn, needs to prove to the Lebanese public that it doesn't need Israel's enmity to justify its existence. Dragging Israel into the heart of Beirut, recently rebuilt after decades of warfare, does the exact opposite. It sends Lebanese society the signal that Hezbollah's continued existence comes at great peril for Lebanon's future.
"It led us to a war we are not prepared to fight," Yassin Soueid, a retired Lebanese general, told the Washington Post. "Israel could hit the presidential palace. … They can hit wherever they want, and there is nothing we can do about it."
Iran, on the other hand, is playing a high-risk game with the West over the nuclear issue. Its strategy seems to be to continuously defy the U.S. but stop short of trapping itself in a military confrontation it knows it cannot win.
While Ahmadinejad huffs and puffs – he has warned Israel that it "will face a crushing response" if it attacks Syria, and accused Arab leaders who have refused to cheer on Hezbollah of being "complicit in the Zionist regime's barbarism" – there is little evidence showing an active Iranian role in the fighting.
"This is rhetoric, not actual policy," Mohammad Atrianfar, editor of the reformist Iranian newspaper Shargh, told Time magazine's Azadeh Moaveni.
Accusing Israeli officials of using the Lebanon crisis to find new reasons to attack Iran, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes that "There is no evidence that [Iran] dominates the Hezbollah or has more control than Syria. … Until there are hard facts, Iran's role in all of this is a matter of speculation, and conspiracy theories are not facts or news."
On the contrary, the one state that may have a strategic interest in expanding the conflict is Israel itself. Numerous Western states have condemned Israel's actions as disproportionate and inflammatory. "One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Lebanon," France's President Jacques Chirac told reporters. "I find, honestly, like most Europeans, that the reactions are completely disproportionate."
Tel Aviv seems to have – with a potential future showdown with Iran in mind – sought an opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah and Hamas in order to weaken Iran's deterrence and retaliation capabilities. Over the last few months, Israel's policy on Iran has been reassessed, partly due to Iranian warnings that it would retaliate against Israel if the United States targeted its nuclear facilities.
Through Hamas and the Hezbollah, Iran could bring the war to Israeli territory, a scenario that has further accentuated Israel's vulnerability to asymmetric warfare. By preemptively attacking Hamas and the Hezbollah now, Israel can significantly deprive Iran of its capabilities to retaliate against the Jewish State in the event of a U.S. assault on Iran. Once Iran obtains a nuclear capability, however, this option may no longer be available to Israel.
Furthermore, Israel's harsh reaction may be motivated by a need to conceal the reduced strategic maneuverability it enjoys as a result of Washington's failure in Iraq. Though Israel certainly possesses the military means to fend off any conventional Arab offensives, the strength of its deterrence is to a large extent tied to U.S. military prowess.
An overextended United States may embolden Israel's enemies, who may be tempted to test Israel's resolve and ability to uphold its tough posture. Through its crushing response and by expanding the conflict, Israel seeks to conceal this potential vulnerability and signal the Arabs to abandon any adventurous ideas that the U.S. difficulties in Iraq may have given them.
What may have started with a Hezbollah ambush on an Israeli convoy seems to be ending with a much larger Israeli campaign to reduce its vulnerability to Iranian retaliation, while exposing Tehran by neutralizing its deterrence capabilities in the Levant.
(Inter Press Service)
www.antiwar.com/ips/parsi.php?articleid=9324
What Does Israel Want?
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around, employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for latter course of action.
I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: ‘low intensity conflict’. It was too low to their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal – headquarters – and for which they bought, with American tax payer money – the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.
The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a ‘low intensity conflict’; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a ‘real’ war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of ‘riots’ in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel’s power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army’s ability to conduct a conventional war.
The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army’s main vision for the battlefield is today still that of ‘shock and awe’ rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The ‘low intensity’ war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a ‘real’ war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine – a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.
After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada – the suicide bomb – you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.
I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.
Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.
The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army’s hunger for a ‘high intensity conflict’. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers ‘is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut’. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. ‘But they can sneak them with a car’, insisted the interviewers. ‘Oh indeed’ said the Israeli Foreign Minister, ‘This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country’. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its ‘real’ might and compensate for the frustrating years of the ‘low intensity conflict’ that had sent Israel’s best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.
This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that ‘we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran’. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.
The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel’s ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.
Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.
Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.
There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land’s native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel’s military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.
It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.
Bush: Iran May Be Behind Crisis
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2006/180706Iran.htm
Did they try to buy Yellow Cake from Niger, too?
US hawks smell blood
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Seeing a major opportunity to regain influence lost as a result of setbacks in Iraq, prominent neo-conservatives are calling for unconditional US support for Israel's military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and "regime change" in Syria and Iran, as well as possible US attacks on Tehran's nuclear facilities in retaliation for its support of Hezbollah.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG19Ak01.html
Remember that "Regime Change" is an illegal policy, and leaked documents prove that the US and UK are well aware of this fact.
All in a day's work for America's ally
"[W]hat would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had actually unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel's troops crossed into Lebanon? What if the Lebanese air force then killed 73 Israeli civilians in bombing raids in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and Israeli West Jerusalem? What if a Lebanese fighter aircraft bombed Ben Gurion airport? What if a Lebanese plane destroyed 26 road bridges across Israel? Would it not be called 'terrorism'? I rather think it would. But if Israel was the victim, it would also probably be Word War Three."
mparent7777.livejournal.com/10348252.html
And Lebanon would immediately draw the condemnation of the International Community.
James Woolsey calls for an attack on Syria
www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/17/james-woolsey-calls-for-an-attac/
Iran and Syria to blame, says Blair
www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-5954077,00.html
Wow, the very two countries these criminal LIARS want to attack, but couldn't dupe the world into supporting them on ...
Better not let this one get out:
Experts challenge White House line on Iran's influence
msnbc.msn.com/id/13907826
Politicians and Media Selling America's Soul for an Israeli Shekel
www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion editorials/2006 Opinion Editorials/July/18 o/Politicians and Media Selling America's Soul for an Israeli Shekel By Mohamed Khodr.htm
Various
