MB Civic

Israel’s “new Middle East”

by Tanya Reinhart
Edited by Mark Marshall.

Beirut is burning, hundreds of Lebanese die, hundreds of thousands lose all
they ever owned and become refugees, and all the world is doing is rescuing
the “foreign passport” residents of what was just two weeks ago “the
Paris
of the Middle East”. Lebanon must die now, because “Israel has the right
to
defend itself”, so goes the U.S. mantra, used to block any international
attempt to impose a cease fire.

Israel, backed by the U.S., portrays its war on Lebanon as a war of self
defense. It is easy to sell this message to mainstream media, because the
residents of the North of Israel are also in shelters, bombarded and
endangered. Israel’s claim that no country would let such an attack on its
residents unanswered, finds many sympathetic ears. But let us reconstruct
exactly how it all started.

On Wednesday, July 12, a Hezbollah unit attacked two armored Jeeps of the
Israeli army, patrolling along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Three Israeli
soldiers were killed in the attack and two were taken hostage. In a news
conference held in Beirut a couple of hours later, Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah explained that their aim was to reach a prisoner exchange,
where in return for the two captured Israeli soldiers, Israel would return
three Lebanese prisoners it had refused to release in a previous prisoner
exchange. Nasrallah declared that “he did not want to drag the region into
war”, but added that “our current restraint is not due to weakness…
if
they [Israel] choose to confront us, they must be prepared for surprises.”
[1]

The Israeli government, however, did not give a single moment for diplomacy,
negotiations, or even cool reflection over the situation. In a cabinet
meeting that same day, it authorized a massive offensive on Lebanon. As
Ha’aretz reported, “In a sharp departure from Israel’s response to
previous
Hezbollah attacks, the cabinet session unanimously agreed that the Lebanese
government should be held responsible for yesterday’s events.” Olmert
declared: “This morning’s events are not a terror attack, but the act of
a
sovereign state that attacked Israel for no reason and without provocation.”
He added that “the Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a part, is
trying to undermine regional stability. Lebanon is responsible, and Lebanon
will bear the consequences of its actions.” [2]

At the cabinet meeting, “the IDF recommended various operations aimed at the
Lebanese government and strategic targets in Lebanon”, as well as a
comprehensive attack on southern Lebanon (where Hezbollah’s batteries of
rockets are concentrated). The government immediately approved both
recommendatons. The spirit of the cabinet’s decision was succinctly
summarized by Defense Minister Amir Perertz who said: “We’re skipping the
stage of threats and going straight to action.”[3]

At 21.50 that same day, Ha’aretz internet edition reported that by that time
Israel had already bombarded bridges in central Lebanon and attacked
“Hezbollah’s posts” in southern Lebanon. [4] Amnesty International’s
press
release of the next day (13 July 2006) stated that in these attacks “some 40
Lebanese civilians have reportedly been killed… Among the Lebanese victims
were a family of ten, including eight children, who were killed in Dweir
village, near Nabatiyeh, and a family of seven, including a seven-month-old
baby, who were killed in Baflay village near Tyre. More than 60 other
civilians were injured in these or other attacks.”

It was at that point, early on Wednesday night, following the first Israeli
attack, that Hezbollah started its rocket attack on the north of Israel.
Later the same night (before the dawn of Thursday), Israel launched its
first attack on Beirut, when Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut’s international
airport and killed at least 27 Lebanese civilians in a series of raids.  In
response, Hezbollah’s rocket attacks intensified on Thursday, when “more
than 100 Katyusha rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon in the largest
attack of its sort since the start of the Lebanon War in 1982”. Two Israeli
civilians were killed in this attack, and 132 were taken to the hospital
[5]. When Israel started destroying the Shiite quarters of Beirut the
following day, including a failed attempt on Nasrallah’s life, Hezbollah
extended its rockets attacks to Haifa.

The way it started, there was nothing in Hezbollah’s military act, whatever
one may think of it, to justify Israel’s massive disproportionate response.
Lebanon has had a long-standing border dispute with Israel: In 2000, when
Israel, under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, withdrew from Southern Lebanon,
Israel kept a small piece of land known as the Shaba farms (near Mount Dov),
which it claims belonged historically to Syria and not to Lebanon, though
both Syria and Lebanon deny that.  The Lebanese government has frequently
appealed to the U.S. and others for Israel=12s withdrawal also from this
land, which has remained the center of friction in Southern Lebanon, in
order to ease the tension in the area and to help the Lebanese internal
negotiations over implementing UN resolutions.  The most recent such appeal
was in mid-April 2006, in a Washington meeting between Lebanon’s Prime
Minister Fouad Siniora and George Bush.[6] In the six years since Israel
withdrew, there have been frequent border incidents between Hezbollah and
the Israeli army, and cease-fire violations of the type committed now by
Hezbollah, have occurred before, initiated by either side, and more
frequently by Israel. None of the previous incidents resulted in Katyusha
shelling of the north of Israel, which has enjoyed full calm since Israel’s
withdrawal. It was possible for Israel to handle this incident as all its
predecessors, with at most a local retaliation, or a prisoner exchange, or
even better, with an attempt to solve this border dispute once and for all.
Instead, Israel opted for a global war. As Peretz put it: “The goal is for
this incident to end with Hezbollah so badly beaten that not a man in it
does not regret having launched this incident [sic].”[7]

The Israeli government knew right from the start that launching its
offensive would expose the north of Israel to heavy Katyusha rockets
attacks. This was openly discussed at this first government’s meeting on
Wednesday: “Hezbollah is likely to respond to the Israeli attacks with
massive rocket launches at Israel, and in that case, the IDF might move
ground forces into Lebanon”.[8] One cannot avoid the conclusion that for the
Israeli army and government, endangering the lives of residents of northern
Israel was a price worth paying in order to justify the planned ground
offensive. They started preparing Israelis on that same Wednesday for what
may be ahead: “‘We may be facing a completely different reality, in which
hundreds of thousands of Israelis will, for a short time, find themselves in
danger from Hezbollah’s rockets’, said a senior defense official. ‘These
include residents of the center of the country.'” [9] For the Israeli
military leadership, not only the Lebanese and the Palestinians, but also
the Israelis are just pawns in some big military vision.

The speed at which everything happened (along with many other pieces of
information) indicates that Israel has been waiting for a long time for ‘the
international conditions to ripen’ for the massive war on Lebanon it has
been planning. In fact, one does not need to speculate on this, since right
from the start, Israeli and U.S. official sources have been pretty open in
this regard. As a Senior Israeli official explained to the Washington Post
on July 16, “Hezbollah’s cross-border raid has provided a ‘unique moment’
with a ‘convergence of interests’.”[10] The paper goes on to explain
what
this convergence of interests is:

For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of
Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is
pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East,
U.S. officials say.[11]

For the U.S., the Middle East is a “strategic playing field”, where the
game
is establishing full U.S. domination. The U.S. already controls Iraq and
Afghanistan, and considers Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and a few other
states as friendly cooperating regimes. But even with this massive foothold,
full U.S. domination is still far from established. Iran has only been
strengthened by the Iraq war and refuses to accept the decrees of the
master.  Throughout the Arab world, including in the “friendly regimes”,
there is boiling anger at the U.S., at the heart of which is not only the
occupation of Iraq, but the brutal oppression of the Palestinians, and the
U.S. backing of Israel’s policies. The new axis of the four enemies of the
Bush administration (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran) are bodies viewed by
the Arab world as resisting U.S. or Israel’s rule, and standing for Arab
liberation. From Bush’s perspective, he only has two years to consolidate
his vision of complete U.S. control of the Middle East, and to do that, all
seeds of resistance should be crushed in a devastating blow that will make
it clear to every single Arab that obeying the master is the only way to
stay alive. If Israel is willing to do the job, and crush not only the
Palestinians, but also Lebanon and Hezbollah, then the U.S., torn from the
inside by growing resentment over Bush’s wars, and perhaps unable to send
new soldiers to be killed for this cause right now, will give Israel all the
backing it can. As Rice announced in her visit in Jerusalem on July 25, what
is at stakes is “a new Middle East”. “We will prevail” – she
promised
Olmert.

But Israel is not sacrificing its soldiers and citizens only to please the
Bush administration. The “new Middle East” has been a dream of the Israeli
ruling military circles since at least 1982, when Sharon led the country to
the first Lebanon war with precisely this declared goal. Hezbollah’s leaders
have argued for years that its real long-term role is to protect Lebanon,
whose army is too weak to do this. They have said that Israel has never
given up its aspirations for Lebanon and that the only reason it pulled out
of Southern Lebanon in 2000 is because Hezbollah’s resistance has made
maintaining the occupation too costly.  Lebanon’s people know what every
Israeli old enough to remember knows – that in the vision of Ben Gurion,
Israel’s founding leader, Israel’s border should be “natural”,
that is – the
Jordan river in the East, and the Litani river of Lebanon in the north.  In
1967, Israel gained control over the Jordan river, in the occupied
Palestinian land, but all its attempts to establish the Litani border have
failed so far.

As I argued in Israel/Palestine, already when the Israeli army left Southern
Lebanon in 2000, the plans to return were ready.[12] But in Israel’s
military vision, in the next round, the land should be first “cleaned”
of
its residents, as Israel did when it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in
1967, and as it is doing now in southern Lebanon. To enable Israel’s
eventual realization of Ben Gurion’s vision, it is necessary to establish a
“friendly regime” in Lebanon, one that will collaborate in crushing any
resistance. To do this, it is necessary first to destroy the country, as in
the U.S. model of Iraq. These were precisely Sharon’s declared aims in the
first Lebanon war. Israel and the U.S. believe that now conditions have
ripened enough that these aims can finally be realized.

End Notes:

[1]  Yoav Stern, ‘Nasrallah: Only deal will free kidnapped soliders,’
Ha’aretz July 13, 2006.

[2] Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Gideon Alon, ‘Gov’t okays massive strikes
on
Lebanon,’ Ha’aretz, July 13, 2006.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Amos Har’el, ‘Israel prepares for widespread military escalation’,
Ha’aretz internet edition, Last update – 21:50 12/07/2006.

[5] Amos Harel, Jack Khoury and Nir Hasson, Over 100 Katyushas hit
north, Ha’aretz July 14, 2006.

[6]’Lebanese PM to lobby Pres. Bush on Israeli withdrawal from Shaba’,
by Reuters, Ha’aretz, April 16, 2006:

“Lebanon’s prime minister [is] asking U.S. President George Bush to put
pressure on Israel to pull out of a border strip and thus enable his
government to extend its authority over all Lebanese land… ‘Israel has to
withdraw from the Shaba Farms and has to stop violating our airspace and
water,’ Siniora said. This was essential if the Lebanese government was ‘to
become the sole monopoly of holding weapons in the country’.., he added.
‘Very important as well is to seek the support of President Bush so that
Lebanon will not become in any way a ball in the courtyard of others or… a
courtyard for the confrontations of others in the region,’ Siniora said.
Lebanon’s rival leaders are engaged in a ‘national dialogue’ aimed at
resolving the country’s political crisis, the worst since the end of the
1975-1990 civil war. One key issue is the disarming of Hezbollah… The
Shi’ite Muslim group says its weapons are still required to liberate Shaba
Farms and to defend Lebanon against any Israeli threats.”

[7] Amos Harel, Aluf Benn and Gideon Alon, ‘Gov’t okays massive strikes
on
Lebanon’, Ha’aretz, July 13, 2006.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Robin Wright, ‘Strikes Are Called Part of Broad Strategy’, Washington
Post, Sunday, July 16, 2006; A15.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Tanya Reinhart Israel-Palestine – how to end the war of 1948, Seven
Stories press 2002, 2005, p. 83-87. See ‘How Israel left Lebanon’
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart (Media articles section, as of Thursday).

[Tanya Reinhart is Professor Emeritus of linguistics and media studies at
Tel Aviv University and a frequent op-ed writer for the Israeli evening
paper ‘Yediot Aharonot’.  The second edition of her 2002 book
Israel/Palestine – how to end the war of 1948 has appeared last year (Seven
Stories), and her new book: The Road Map to Nowhere, will appear in
September (Verso).. See: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart ]

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