Rohan Pearce
It’s all about “Letting Israel Be Israel”, according to the headline of an article in the July 31 neo-conservative Weekly Standard. The article by Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned magazine, endorsed “Bush’s consistent approach to war and peace in the Middle East”. In the case of the brutal Israeli offensive against Lebanon — Operation Change of Direction as the Israel “Defense” Forces have dubbed it — the policy of the White House has been to back the Israeli regime to the hilt, with the promise of endorsing an eventual ceasefire (and possible international “peacekeeping” force) after the IDF has crushed the Hezbollah-led Lebanese resistance.
Barnes wrote that “No one should have been surprised by President Bush’s let-Israel-fight policy in the current Middle East conflict. Bush is consistent. The essentials of his approach to Israel and its enemies were adopted four years ago when the president ostracized then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and called for democracy and reform in the Arab countries. Bush’s policy is pro-Israel in that it is based on his belief that Israel wants peace with its neighbors, but some of them don’t want peace with Israel. So Israel stands on higher moral ground.”
Of course for Bush and those who make it their profession to engage in apologetics for his regime, such as Barnes and his ilk, terms like “democracy”, “reform” and “peace” bear little resemblance to most dictionary definitions. The “higher moral ground” on which Israel stands in the conflict with Lebanon is littered with corpses: A July 26 open letter by Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s secretary general, noted that “in Lebanon Israeli air attacks and bombardments have killed more than 300 civilians, more than a third of them children, and wounded thousands. More than half a million Lebanese have been displaced by Israeli bombings and threats.”
According to a July 25 report by renowned journalist Dahr Jamail, records at the Beirut Government University Hospital indicate that around 55% of casualties admitted for treatment are aged 15 years or younger. A hospital official said that around 30% of people admitted had died due to the severity of their injuries.
Khan noted that Israel had imposed a naval and air blockade on Lebanon, had attacked the Beirut international airport and bombed dozens of roads and bridges, as well as other infrastructure and residential areas. Her letter also criticised Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel, writing that “17 civilians have been killed and hundreds of others have been injured”. But even for an organisation like Amnesty that can sometimes work itself into contortions trying to be “fair” in its criticisms of human rights abuses committed by “democratic” Israel in its conflicts with Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, the sheer brutality of the Israeli assault precludes most of the usual linguistic gymnastics.
Khan noted: “The humanitarian situation for civilians remaining in the south [of Lebanon] is worsening by the day, including in the southern port city of Tyre, which is also having to cope with a large influx of people internally displaced from villages in the south of the country. The destruction by Israel of electricity power plants and other infrastructure has left hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities without the necessary resources and supplies at a time when they have to cope with a massive increase in casualties. Ambulances and rescue crews have reportedly been attacked by Israeli forces as they have tried to reach victims of the bombing ... the civilian population of Lebanon now faces a humanitarian disaster.”
A Human Rights Watch statement released on July 24 revealed that the group’s researchers had confirmed Israel’s use of artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas inside Lebanon. A July 19 attack on the village of Blida using cluster munitions killed one person and injured a dozen more, including seven children.
Jawad Najem, a surgeon at the Najem Hospital, told Associated Press that patients admitted to the hospital had burns from phosphorous-based incendiary weapons. The July 24 wire-service report noted that the Geneva Conventions prohibit “using white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations and in air attacks against military forces in civilian areas”.
Israel’s motivation
If anyone ever had any illusions to the contrary, it is now beyond question that Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 may have provided the pretext for Israel’s assault, but not its motivation. A July 27 commentary in the Israeli daily Haaretz by Ze’ev Shiff argued that “we must not forget the most important aspect of this war: Hezbollah and what this terrorist organization symbolizes must be destroyed at any price. This is the only option that Israel has. We cannot afford a situation of strategic parity between Israel and Hezbollah.”
That the target of Israel’s war is Hezbollah itself and not the liberation of captured IDF troops or an end to the (largely militarily ineffective) rocket attacks by Hezbollah was echoed by Barnes: “Today, the major issue is a cease-fire. The establishment and the Europeans want one, and at least for now Bush doesn’t. Why not? A cease-fire would preserve the status quo ante, the situation before the war between Israel and Hezbollah. That would mean Hezbollah, armed with thousands of missiles, would still be deployed along Israel’s northern border. Not only would Israel’s security remain in jeopardy, but the fragile democracy in Lebanon would continue to be compromised by Hezbollah’s presence.”
At the July 26 international conference in Rome, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stymied attempts to have the gathering call for an immediate ceasefire. ''Yesterday in Rome we have in effect obtained the authorisation to continue our operations until Hezbollah is eliminated in southern Lebanon’‘, Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon told Israeli Army Radio on July 27.
Washington’s role goes beyond making sure that any ceasefire will come into force only after Israel’s aims have been achieved — a July 22 New York Times article reported that the Bush administration ''is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’‘. Reuters reported on July 19 that the Pentagon had ''notified Congress on Friday that it planned to sell Israel JP-8 aviation fuel valued at up to [US]$210 million to help its aircraft 'keep peace and security in the region’’‘.
From 2001 to 2005, US-manufactured weapons worth more than $6.3 billion were sold to Israel. US military aid for Israel from 2001 to 2007 is expected to total more than $19.5 billion according to Foreign Policy in Focus, which says US aid accounts for over 20% of Israel’s military budget.
Resistance
Although Israel has far from unleashed all of its military might against Lebanon, the firepower that it has levelled at the country has been formidable. But despite the Israeli onslaught, it is yet to destroy Hezbollah’s resistance.
The New York Times reported on July 26 that “Israel’s initial talk of breaking Hezbollah’s back has slowly given way to more limited goals as Israeli ground troops have bogged down just a few miles into the country. The latest talk is of creating a buffer zone about 1.2 miles wide, which Israel said it could police from its side of the border.”
A July 25 article filed from Beirut for the McClatchy Newspapers wire service reported that in the aftermath of fierce bombing raids, “Hezbollah guards armed with shiny machine guns reappeared at their posts”, policing the area and preventing looting. The report said that the group’s “ability to regroup so quickly in a place where acrid smoke is still rising from fresh targets illustrates the futility of Israel’s initial aim of dismantling the militant network ... Intensive air raids diminish Hezbollah’s military capabilities, but they also bolster the group’s popularity among Lebanese who consider the group their protector.”
An analysis by Amos Harel in Haaretz asked “Has the army failed?” Harel wrote: “The war, they [the Israeli military and government] say, is going well, Israel has chalked up several successes and has the upper hand. But one thinks that if Israelis had been asked on July 12 whether it was possible that Hezbollah would shell the North for two weeks without the IDF’s being able to stop it, most of them would have replied in the negative ... Only a massive blow to Hezbollah can lessen its stranglehold over the Lebanese government, something which has not yet been achieved.”
Skirmishes such as the successful Hezbollah operation that captured the Israeli soldiers on July 12, noted a July 26 Wall Street Journal report, “have fed tension between Israel’s top military officials — who believe it isn’t possible to wipe out Hezbollah without a sizable increase in troops on the ground — and an Israeli government fearful of rising casualties and reluctant to declare a mass call-up of reservists that could add to the conflict’s huge strain on the economy.
“In both camps there is a fear of being sucked into protracted combat that would evoke painful memories of the previous occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Some military analysts say Bint Jbeil is typical of what the Israeli military would face on a far bigger scale if it extends the war to Hezbollah’s other strongholds.”
Bint Jbeil, a Lebanese town near the southern border, has been the site of a fierce battle between the IDF and Hezbollah guerrillas after Israeli soldiers began to assault the town on July 24. An Israeli soldier described the ensuing battle as “hell on Earth” to Haaretz. The paper reported that “enemy forces had organized a well-planned ambush. Soldiers faced gunfire from any and all directions.” At least eight Israeli soldiers died, and more than 20 were wounded.
Associated Press reported on July 27, “So far, Israeli troops have gone house to house taking positions on the outskirts of the town, without going far inside Bint Jbail”. According to AP, “Hezbollah fighters are heavily outnumbered by Israeli troops ... But they use classic guerrilla tactics, choosing when to strike in the hilly territory they know well. They are dug in with extensive tunnel networks and stockpiles of rockets and other weapons.”
A July 28 AP article reported that the Lebanese cabinet, including its two Hezbollah members, had approved a call for an immediate ceasefire that ''includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the [Hezbollah] guerrillas’‘. The plan ''starts out with an immediate cease-fire’‘, which would be followed by the release of prisoners by both sides and an Israeli withdrawal; the placing of the Sheeba Farms (the area of Lebanon still occupied by Israel after its 2000 withdrawal) under UN control until the there is a ''final demarcation of the border’‘; the provision of maps to minefields laid during the Israeli occupation; and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the country’s south.
