ZNet Special
ZNet | Mideast
The Secretary of State Prefers Brahms*
by Irene Gendzier; July 31, 2006
"Tell people!" The plea came from Yusuf al-Alam, who was deploring the conditions in which he and his three children found themselves." No food, no water!"[1] The location was Tyre; the occasion, the escalating Israeli invasion of Lebanon; the appeal, to the humanity of those to whom he turned, unknowing and with evident desperation.
In the period since the onset of Israeli bombardment of Lebanon on July 12, the scale of casualties, including refugees as well as the scope of infrastructure destruction has steadily increased. While sources differ and are constantly being adjusted, the estimate of Lebanese killed is now more than 700, the majority civilians; the number of those displaced is reported to be between 800,000 and 900,000, out of a population of more than 4 million. According to Lebanese and international sources, Beirut's international airport as well as other smaller airports, have been destroyed or are unfit to be used. Lebanon's principal seaports have similarly been bombed, as have more than 60 bridges and 70 roads, along with electrical power plants, fuel tanks, gas stations, civil defense center, radio stations, factories, schools, hospitals, ambulances - including those of the Red Cross -warehouses, moving vehicles, church and mosque, as well as hundreds of residential houses.
According to a July 25 Associated Press report, Lebanese doctors in Tyre were treating patients who were suffering from burns caused by phosphorous incendiary weapons used by Israel. The AP report indicated that the Geneva Conventions prohibit the use of "white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations and in air attacks against military forces in civilian areas."
Researchers from Human Rights Watch have reported that Israel used cluster munitions in the village of Blida on July 19. The Human Rights organization provided photographs of "M483A1 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, which are U.S.-produced and –supplied, artillery-delivered cluster munitions."[2] The same source reports that Israeli Defense Forces officials claim that its use of such weapons is within authorized international standards, but they have also conceded that "the IDF's operations manual warns soldiers that the use of such cluster munitions creates dangerous minefields due to the high dud rate." Hezbollah has repeatedly demanded that the Israelis provide maps of the locations of such minefields, a demand reiterated by the Lebanese government.
On July 25,UN agencies confirmed the state of emergency facing the south of Lebanon, where Israeli bombing of roads effectively blocked the effort to transport relief supplies. Two days later, a truck with food and medical supplies provided by the United Arab Emirates was attacked near the Syrian border.
Earlier, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, reaffirmed the "supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities," an obligation that, if violated, is sanctioned as a war crime under international law.
To judge by U.S. mainstream media accounts of the ongoing Israeli invasion of Lebanon, matters are fairly simple if increasingly stark. The Lebanese Hezbollah represents the latest example of the forces of international terrorism confronting the U.S. and, in this instance, its chief Middle Eastern ally, Israel. Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers is solely responsible for the ensuing Israeli invasion that is a justifiable form of self-defense. As for the Lebanese government, despite its failure to implement UN Security Council Res. 1559 that was designed to disarm militias such as Hezbollah, the Beirut government remains the symbol of what the G.W. Bush administration insists on describing as "a centerpiece of the 'new Middle East.'"[3] Those chiefly responsible for the ongoing chaos in the region are Syria and Iran, the forces directing Hezbollah's operations.
It follows that the solution to the current crisis is also simple, if stark. First, the U.S. will aid Israel in destroying Hezbollah's power. To do so, it will support Israeli control over southern Lebanon with an international force that complies with Israeli and U.S. direction. Then, Washington and Israel will turn to their next target, Damascus, and Teheran.
The above is a self-serving account whose dissemination blocks public understanding of the realities of Lebanese politics, Palestinian conditions, Israeli objectives and U.S. policies in a conflagration whose magnitude in terms of human suffering, social upheaval and political destruction inspired global outrage against the U.S. and its Israeli ally.
The depiction of Hezbollah as the Lebanese arm of Syria and Iran overlooks the fact that it is an indigenous political party serving in the Lebanese Parliament where it represents roughly 40% of the population. Its strength is a function of its role in providing an array of social services ignored by the government in Beirut. In addition, it was Hezbollah that was primarily responsible for ending the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, after an 18 year occupation that followed Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That reversal for Israel has been cited by Israeli critics of the war as a likely contributing factor in Israeli PM Olmert's decision to invade Lebanon.
Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was reportedly intended by Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to lead to an exchange of prisoners with Israel, such as had occurred in the past, in 1996, 1998 and 2004. But there is some question as to what may have actually occurred on July 12, 2006. Various international sources, including Agence France Press (AFP) and The Associated Press (AP), reported that the capture of the Israeli soldiers occurred in Lebanese and not Israeli territory as a result of an Israeli incursion, an account that deserves investigation given Israel's justification of its subsequent retaliation in the name of self-defense.
But the events of July 12 followed on a long history of border incidents involving Hezbollah and Israel, none of which led to Hezbollah's direct attack on Israel. As Zeev Maoz recalls in the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz (July 26,2006):
"On July 28, 1988 Israeli Special Forces abducted Sheikh Obeid, and on May 21, 1994 Israel captured Mustafa Dirani, who was responsible for capturing the Israeli pilot Ron Arad. Israel held these and other 20 Lebanese who were captured under undisclosed circumstances in prison for prolonged periods without trial. They were held as human 'bargaining chips.' Apparently, abduction of Israelis for the purpose of prisoners' exchange is morally reprehensible, and militarily punishable when it is the Hezbollah who does the abducting, but not if Israel is doing the very same thing."
In addition to the above experience of relatively recent vintage, there is an historical context in which the events of July 12 and what has followed, can be situated. In that context, the decision adopted by the Olmert government represents the latest and potentially most violent manifestation of Israeli territorial ambitions in the Lebanese south.
Israeli interest in creating a sphere of influence in southern Lebanon, preferably under Lebanese Maronite control, was discussed in the late 1950s and ruthlessly implemented in 1978 when the Israeli army justified its invasion of southern Lebanon as the creation of a "security belt." In 1981 the UN with US support enforced an agreement between Israel and the PLO that was in place until Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The intervening clashes, however, had led to Israel's bombing of Beirut and bridges leading to the South. It was a preface to a period of massive destruction, with some 17,000-20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians killed as a result of the Israeli invasion, that was followed by the savage massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila at the hands of Israel’s allies, Lebanese Phalangists. The responsibility of Israeli Gen Ariel Sharon in the Sabra Shatila massacre was the subject of the Kahan Report, an investigation that was regarded as far from adequate, according to Israeli critics.
But this did not end Israel's occupation of parts of Lebanon, which continued until 2000. In the interval, two Israeli operations in 1993 and 1996, resulted in mass numbers of civilian casualties and refugee flights of half a million Lebanese in each instance. Even after the withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000, Tel Aviv retained control of the Sheba'a farms area in Lebanon, claiming that it belonged to Syria and not Lebanon; a position disputed by Beirut and Damascus and repeatedly ignored by Washington, in spite of requests that it be addressed.
Conditions within the Lebanon of 2006 had little in common with that which existed more than 20 years earlier. The PLO was no longer the force it had been in Lebanon, although Palestinian camps, including Sabra and Shatila, remained impoverished and overcrowded concentrations of poor Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and other inhabitants who suffered from the lack of the most elemental resources and the blight of unemployment or severe underemployment with few expectations of change.
For Hezbollah and indeed for other Lebanese political parties, the Palestinian condition in Lebanon was inextricably tied to the resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Hence, the impact of Israel's 2006 invasion of Gaza and its continued emasculation of the West Bank on left wing Lebanese political parties as well as on Hezbollah's supporters who from different vantage points offered similar criticisms of the inaction of the government in Beirut.
In practice, relations between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have long been the subject of internal debate. Critics of the party have blamed the government in Beirut for its economic, social and political failures in the south, including its failures to confront Israeli incursions. But far from intensifying sectarian divisions and the mobilization of anti-Hezbollah sentiment, Israel's invasion has served to blunt existing differences as Lebanese officials confront the unprecedented scale of Israeli devastation that Washington encourages and rewards with additional weapons. Contrary to the expectations of Tel Aviv and Washington, far from denouncing Hezbollah, Lebanese, especially those in the south, are ever more ardent supporters of the Sayyid and his organization. "Hezbollah is coming from the people. If they want to destroy all of Hezbollah, they have to destroy all of Lebanon," exclaimed a doctor and member of the Tyre city council.[4]
Insofar as Hezbollah's relations with Syria and Iran are concerned the Lebanese party has been the recipient of weapons and training from Syria and Iran but Gen. John P Abizaid, the US commander for the entire Middle East, stated in an interview held in Iraq on July 21, that "he did not think that Iran or Syria had pressed Hezbollah to initiate its rocket attacks against Israel."[5] The decision was most likely taken at a lower level although exploited by Iran and Syria. From his vantage point, Israel's goal was not to destroy the Lebanese government of PM Siniora or prevent it from eventually extending its control over the south of Lebanon.
While US officials continue to defend Israel's invasions of Gaza and Lebanon as justified acts of self-defense, U.S. media dutifully reported that Israelis were doing battle with Palestinian militants in Gaza.
They omitted to mention that Israel was barring entry into Gaza and the West Bank to those holding foreign passports, including Palestinians with western passports and peace activists - facts reported by the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva and a member of the International Federation of Human Rights.
Among the policies that were thus hidden from view was the unvarnished meaning of the Israeli practice of warning Palestinians residents to flee targeted areas. "Israel says it has dropped leaflets, and even made phone calls to families in the area, warning them that they should leave because militants are operating in the area and that the Israeli military could carry out operations."[6] Palestinians in Gaza confirmed the fact that they had received such calls from "an Israeli Intelligence officer who speaks weak Arabic. He speaks little and has only specific words to say, 'We are from the Israeli Defense Force. Leave the house - we will destroy it in half an hour.'" Other examples may be found.[7] Lebanese have reported similar threats issued as warnings in southern Lebanon.
Israeli sources concede that preparations for this war began in 2000, after Israel's forced withdrawal from southern Lebanon. It was finalized in 2004 after which Israel’s plans were shown to U.S. and other officials. "More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail."[8] The presentation included details of a campaign similar to the one in operation at the present time, save for the claim that there was no intention "to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis." Other Israeli officials have confirmed earlier plans for war against Hezbollah, simultaneously conceding the anticipated difficulties that such an offensive would involve.[9]
Interviewed on al Jazeera on July 24, the Israeli director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Efraim Inbar, described Israeli objectives as designed "to remove the missile threat to Israel, to push Hezbollah out of South Lebanon and to try to damage its military capacity as much as possible."[10] Inbar also indicated, "I advocate attacking Syria," adding that he was uncertain as to whether the Israeli government shared his views. As to Iran, he added, "we're more likely to leave the Iranians to the Americans - for now." His response to the question concerning Israel's conditions for a ceasefire serve to underline Israel's relationship with Washington. "Basically, the minimum conditions are the same as Israel's goals. But the US will decide when enough is enough and Israel will do what is acceptable to them."
The position was not widely quoted in the US media. On the contrary, the White House denied any collusion with Israel. In London, on the other hand, where the British PM supported Washington's position, officials readily admitted that the U.S. "had given Israel a green light to continue bombing Lebanon until it believes Hezbullah's infrastructure has been destroyed."[11]
While the administration in Washington, along with the mainstream media, continued to underscore the role of Syria and Iran as providers of Hezbollah's training and weapons, including its targeting of civilians in Israel, far less attention was paid to the U.S role in supplying Israel, or indeed, whether that role violated the U.S. Arms Export Control Act.
On July 19, Reuter's reported that the Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. produced F-16s that were being used by the Israeli air force against Hezbollah. They were being used in Gaza as well, as part of a campaign to terrorize the Palestinian population. In late July the U.S. was reported as having accelerated delivery of US "High-Technology Bombs to Israeli Military," with the Hezbollah its ostensible target.[12] While the timing of the latest delivery generated media attention, the sale of US weapons to Israel has long been a profitable business for major U.S. corporations such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, since according to U.S. law, "74 percent of FMF (foreign military financing) assistance to Israel must be spent on U.S. military products."[13] According to a 2004 U.S. Congressional Research Service report, in 1998 the US agreed to increase military aid to Israel "from about $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion each year."[14] Estimates of Israeli imports of U.S. arms in the period from 1994-2003 are on the order of $6.9 billion and, according to the same source, Israel has "more F-16s than any other country besides the U.S."
In offering its unconditional support to the Israeli government, the G.W. Bush administration emphasized Israel's right of self-defense. To this, the administration added recognition of Israel's role as the vanguard of US anti-terrorist policies in the Middle East. Washington sought to engage its Arab allies in a parallel effort that was premised on a reordering of the Middle East which, in turn, was justified as bringing together Arab 'moderates' against radicals and extremists. In the new order, Israel was in first place, followed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the states of the Gulf.
The recent sale of more than $6 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia can be viewed in this context. It is not only a pay-off for Saudi support, it may be read as an attempt to immunize the regime against criticism of its collaboration with Washington and Tel Aviv. The pivotal nature of that collaboration was not a novel departure in U.S. or Israeli or Arab policy. But its more public manifestation may have represented the increasing confidence and contempt in which the parties involved held Arab public opinion.
U.S. supporters of Israel who lobbied the administration for additional sanctions against Syria and for pressure against the European Union to follow U.S. policy towards the Hezbollah, may have been surprised to learn that the director of the Anti-Defamation League "visited the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, to thank him for his country's condemnation of Hezbollah for igniting the crisis by launching a cross-border raid against Israel and abducting two of its soldiers."[15] Nonetheless, several days later the Saudi court announced that it had dispatched its highest officials to warn the U.S. President of its concern if "Israeli aggression" gets out of control. Was it a change of heart or had the Saudis reached the stage where they heard the mounting opposition from within their borders, let alone the cries of despair coming from Gaza and Beirut?
In late July at the Rome meeting where the U.S. Secretary of State spelled out U.S. conditions for a cease fire, Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister whom Washington counted on as a politically reliable ally, pointedly asked his colleagues, "is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" "Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"[16]
No such considerations appeared to hamper Washington's policies. The former Assistant Secretary of Defense (1981-1987), Richard Perle, advocated Israeli 'shock and awe' policies against Hezbollah and its supporters in Lebanon and Syria. There were more than a few evocations of earlier neocon recommendations for a redrawing of the Middle East along lines similar to those emerging under Israel and Washington's direction.[17] The dismemberment of the region into sectarian bloc of compliant entities, with weak states devoid of the capacity to resist U.S. or Israeli policies, was the long term objective. In this context, whether the regimes in question were secular or Islamist in character was a secondary issue
What such designs failed to recognize was the profoundly altered state of the Middle East that was emerging in the wake of the catastrophic sets of double interventions by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by U.S.-backed Israeli forces in Gaza and Lebanon. Only self-deluded officials intoxicated with their own power, ambitious media magnates contemptuous of public opinion, and academic and intellectual apologists for U.S. power and Israeli policies, could countenance the results of such policies by ignoring those at whose expense they were achieved.
And then there was the Israeli massacre at Qana, where at least 60 Lebanese civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The attack led Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora to declare: "Out of respect for the souls of our innocent martyrs and the remains of our children buried under the rubble of Qana, we scream out to our fellow Lebanese and to other Arab brothers and to the whole world to stand united in the face of the Israeli war criminals."[18]
Notes
* "Rice in a Serious Mood," The New York Times, July 27, 2006, p. A3.
1. Sabrina Tavernese, "Tyre Reels From Attacks That Never Fail to Shock," The New York Times, July 27, 2006, p. A15.
2. Human Rights Watch, "Israeli Cluster Munitions Hit Civilians in Lebanon: Israel Must Not Use Indiscriminate Weapons," July 24, 2006. See photographs here and here.
3. Maureen Dowd, "Condi's Flying Dutchman," The New York Times, July 22, 2006, p. A23.
4. Sabrina Tavernese, "Tyre Reels From Attacks That Never Fail to Shock," The New York Times, July 27, 2006, p. A15.
5. Greg Myre and Jad Mouawad, "Israeli Buildup at Lebanese Line As Fight Rages," The New York Times, July 22, 2006, p. A6.
6. Craig S. Smith and Helene Cooper, "Cease-Fire Talks Stall as Fighting Rages on 2 Fronts, Dozens are Killed," The New York Times, July 27, 2006, p. A14.
7. Terry M. Rempel, "This is the Israeli Army," BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem, Palestine, July 25, 2006.
8. Mathew Kalman, "Israel set war plan more than a year ago," San Francisco Chronicle, July 21, 2006.
9. Steven Erlanger and Thom Shanker, "Israel Finding a Difficult Foe in Hezbollah," The New York Times, July 26, 2006, p. A8.
10. Rachel Shabi, "The focus should be on Damascus" (Efraim Inbar interviewed in Tel Aviv), ALJAZEERA.Net, July 24, 2006.
11. Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Patrick Wintour, "United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah: Bush 'gave green light' for limited attack, say Israeli and UK sources," The Guardian, July 21, 2006, p. 1.
12. David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper, "U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery For the Israelis," The New York Times, July 22, 2006, p. A1.
13. Tom Baranauskas, a "senior Middle East analyst at Forecast International, a leading provider of defense market intelligence services in the United States," cited in Thalif Deen, "Israel Violates US Law With Attack on Lebanon," Antiwar.com, July 18, 2006.
14. Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung, with Leslie Heffel, U.S. Weapons at War 2005: Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict: U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers Since September 11, Arms Trade Resource Center, June 2005, p.34.
15. Ori Nir, "Bush Urged to Give Israel More TIme for Attacks," Forward, July 21, 2006.
16. Craig S Smith and Helene Cooper, "Cease-Fire Talks Stall as Fighting Rages on 2 Fronts," "Dozens are Killed," The New York Times, July 27, 2006, p. A14.
17. For additional details see, Irene Gendzier, "Who Rules the Middle East Agenda?" chapter 4 in Democratic Development and Political Terrorism, ed. William Crotty, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2005.
18. CNN, "Israel halts airstrikes for 48 hours," July 30, 2006.
Irene Gendzier is Professor in the Dept. of Political Science at Boston University, co-editor with R. Falk and R.J. Lifton of Crimes of War: Iraq (Nation Books, 2006), and author of the new edition of Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (Columbia University Press, 2006), and other works on US foreign policy on the Middle East.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10683
ZNet | Mideast
Hizballah: A Primer
by Lara Deeb; Middle East Report Online; July 31, 2006
Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi'i movement whose militia is fighting the Israeli army in south Lebanon, has been cast misleadingly in much media coverage of the ongoing war. Much more than a militia, the movement is also a political party that is a powerful actor in Lebanese politics and a provider of important social services. Not a creature of Iranian and Syrian sponsorship, Hizballah arose to battle Israel's occupation of south Lebanon from 1982-2000 and, more broadly, to advocate for Lebanon's historically disenfranchised Shi'i Muslim community. While it has many political opponents in Lebanon, Hizballah is very much of Lebanon - a fact that Israel's military campaign is highlighting.
THE LEBANESE SHI'A AND THE LEBANESE STATE
In Lebanon, the state-society relationship is "confessional" and government power and positions are allocated on the basis of religious background. There are 18 officially recognized ethno-confessional communities in the country today. The original allocations, determined in 1943 in an unwritten National Pact between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims at the end of the French mandate, gave the most power to a Maronite Christian president and a Sunni Muslim prime minister, with the relatively powerless position of speaker of Parliament going to a Shi'i Muslim. Other government positions and seats in Parliament were divided up using a 6:5 ratio of Christians to Muslims. These arrangements purportedly followed the population ratios in the 1932 census, the last census ever undertaken in the country.
This confessional system was stagnant, failing to take into consideration demographic changes. As the Shi'i population grew at a rapid pace in comparison to other groups, the inflexibility of the system exacerbated Shi'i under-representation in government. Meanwhile, sect became a means of gaining access to state resources, as the government shelled out money to establish sect-based welfare networks and institutions like schools and hospitals. Because the Shi'a were under-represented in government, they could channel fewer resources to their community, contributing to disproportionate poverty among Shi'i Lebanese. This effect was aggravated by the fact that Shi'i seats in Parliament were usually filled by feudal landowners and other insulated elites.
Until the 1960s, most of the Shi'i population in Lebanon lived in rural areas, mainly in the south and in the Bekaa Valley, where living conditions did not approach the standards of the rest of the nation. Following a modernization program that established road networks and introduced cash-crop policies in the countryside, many Shi'i Muslims migrated to Beirut, settling in a ring of impoverished suburbs around the capital. The rapid urbanization that came with incorporation into the capitalist world economy further widened economic disparities within Lebanon.
ORIGINS
Initially, this growing urban population of mostly Shi'i poor in Lebanon was not mobilized along sectarian lines. In the 1960s and early 1970s, they made up much of the rank and file of the Lebanese Communist Party and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party. Later, in the 1970s, Sayyid Musa al-Sadr, a charismatic cleric who had studied in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf, began to challenge the leftist parties for the loyalty of Shi'i youth. Al-Sadr offered instead the "Movement of the Deprived," dedicated to attaining political rights for the dispossessed within the Lebanese polity. A militia branch of this movement, Amal, was founded at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. Alongside al-Sadr, there were also other activist Lebanese Shi'i religious leaders, most of whom had also studied in Najaf, who worked to establish grassroots social and religious networks in the Shi'i neighborhoods of Beirut. Among them were Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, today one of the most respected "sources of emulation" among Shi'i Muslims in Lebanon and beyond, and Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah. A "source of emulation" (marja' al-taqlid) is a religious scholar of such widely recognized erudition that individual Shi'i Muslims seek and follow his advice on religious matters. Among the Shi'a, the title of sayyid denotes a claim of descent from Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
Between 1978 and 1982 a number of events propelled the nascent Shi'i mobilization forward and further divorced it from the leftist parties: two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the unexplained disappearance of Musa al-Sadr and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In 1978, while on a visit to Libya, al-Sadr mysteriously vanished, and his popularity surged thereafter. That same year, to push back PLO fighters then based in Lebanon, Israel invaded the south, displacing 250,000 people. The initial consequence of these two events was Amal's revitalization, as Amal militiamen fought PLO guerrillas in south Lebanon. There were increasing Shi'i perceptions that the Lebanese left had failed, both in securing greater rights for the poor and in protecting the south from the fighting between the PLO and Israel. The following year, the Islamic Revolution in Iran set a new sort of example for Shi'i Muslims around the world, and provided an alternative worldview to Western liberal capitalism different from that espoused by the left.
The final, and doubtless the most important, ingredient in this cauldron of events was the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. This time Israeli troops, aiming to expel the PLO from Lebanon entirely, marched north and laid siege to West Beirut. Tens of thousands of Lebanese were killed and injured during the invasion, and another 450,000 people were displaced. Between September 16-18, 1982, under the protection and direction of the Israeli military and then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a Lebanese Phalangist militia unit entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, and raped, killed and maimed thousands of civilian refugees. Approximately one quarter of those refugees were Shi'i Lebanese who had fled the violence in the south. The importance of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to the formation of Hizballah cannot be underestimated.
Following the events of 1982, many prominent members of Amal left the party, which had become increasingly involved in patronage politics and detached from the larger struggles against poverty and Israeli occupation. In these years, a number of small, armed groups of young men organized under the banner of Islam emerged in the south, the Bekaa Valley and the suburbs of Beirut. These groups were dedicated to fighting the Israeli occupation troops, and also participated in the Lebanese civil war, which by this time had engaged over 15 militias and armies. Initial military training and equipment for the Shi'i militias was provided by Iran. Over time, these groups coalesced into Hizballah, though the formal existence of the "Party of God" and its armed wing, the Islamic Resistance, were not announced until February 16, 1985, in an "Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World."
STRUCTURE AND LEADERSHIP
Since 1985, Hizballah has developed a complex internal structure. In the 1980s, a religious council of prominent leaders called the majlis al-shura was formed. This seven-member council included branches for various aspects of the group's functioning, including financial, judicial, social, political and military committees. There were also local regional councils in Beirut, the Bekaa and the south. Toward the end of the Lebanese civil war, as Hizballah began to enter Lebanese state politics, two other decision-making bodies were established, an executive council and a politburo.
Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah is often described as "the spiritual leader" of Hizballah. Both Fadlallah and the party have always denied that relationship, however, and in fact, for a time there was a rift between them over the nature of the Shi'i Islamic institution of the marja'iyya. The marja'iyya refers to the practice and institution of following or emulating a marja' al-taqlid. Fadlallah believes that religious scholars should work through multiple institutions, and should not affiliate with a single political party or be involved in affairs of worldly government. In these beliefs, he is close to traditional Shi'i jurisprudence, and distant from the concept of velayat-e faqih (rule of the clerics) promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran.
Hizballah and its majlis al-shura officially follow Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor to Khomeini as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but individual supporters or party members are free to choose which marja' to follow, and many emulate Fadlallah instead. The point is that political allegiance and religious emulation are two separate issues that may or may not overlap for any single person.
Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah is the current political leader of Hizballah. While he is also a religious scholar, and also studied at Najaf, he does not rank highly enough to be a marja' al-taqlid and instead is a religious follower of Khamenei. Nasrallah became Hizballah's Secretary-General in 1992, after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Sayyid 'Abbas al-Musawi, along with his wife and 5 year-old son. Nasrallah is widely viewed in Lebanon as a leader who "tells it like it is" - even by those who disagree with the party's ideology and actions. It was under his leadership that Hizballah committed itself to working within the state and began participating in elections, a decision that alienated some of the more revolution-oriented clerics in the leadership.
HIZBALLAH AND THE UNITED STATES
In the United States, Hizballah is generally associated with the 1983 bombings of the US embassy, the Marine barracks and the French-led multinational force headquarters in Beirut. The second bombing led directly to the US military's departure from Lebanon. The movement is also cited by the State Department in connection with the kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon and the hostage crisis that led to the Iran-contra affair, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight and bombings of the Israeli embassy and cultural center in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s. These associations are the stated reasons for the presence of Hizballah's name on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. In 2002, then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously described Hizballah as the "A-Team of terrorists," possessing a "global reach," and suggested that "maybe al-Qaeda is actually the B-Team." Hizballah's involvement in these attacks remains a matter of contention, however. Even if their involvement is accepted, it is both inaccurate and unwise to dismiss Hizballah as "terrorists."
There are several major reasons for this. First, Hizballah's military activity has generally been committed to the goal of ending the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Since the May 2000 Israeli withdrawal, they have largely operated within tacit, but mutually understood "rules of the game" for ongoing, low-level border skirmishes with Israel that avoid civilian casualties. In addition, Hizballah has grown and changed significantly since its inception, and has developed into both a legitimate Lebanese political party and an umbrella organization for myriad social welfare institutions.
Another aspect of the US listing of Hizballah on the terrorist list is related to the group's reputation as undertaking numerous "suicide attacks" or "martyrdom operations." In fact, of the hundreds of military operations undertaken by the group during the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, only 12 involved the intentional death of a Hizballah fighter. At least half of the "suicide attacks" against Israeli occupying forces in Lebanon were carried out by members of secular and leftist parties.
A third element in the US insistence on labeling Hizballah a terrorist group is related to the notion that Hizballah's raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel, or "occupied Palestine," as per the party's rhetoric. This perspective is supported by the 1985 Open Letter, which includes statements such as, "Israel's final departure from Lebanon is a prelude to its final obliteration from existence and the liberation of venerable Jerusalem from the talons of occupation." One might question the feasibility of such a project, particularly given the great asymmetry in military might and destructive power that is now on display. The Hizballah rocket attacks of July 2006, which commenced after Israeli bombardment of Lebanon had begun, have thus far killed 19 civilians and damaged numerous buildings - nothing like the devastation and death wrought by Israeli aircraft in Lebanon. There is also reason to question Hizballah's intent, despite frequent repetition of the Open Letter rhetoric. Prior to May 2000, almost all of Hizballah's military activity was focused on freeing Lebanese territory of Israeli occupation. The cross-border attacks from May 2000 to July 2006 were small operations with tactical aims (Israel did not even respond militarily to all of them).
Hizballah's founding document also says: "We recognize no treaty with [Israel], no ceasefire and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated." This language was drafted at the time when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon had just given rise to the Hizballah militia. Augustus R. Norton, author of several books and articles on Hizballah, notes that, "While Hizballah's enmity for Israel is not to be dismissed, the simple fact is that it has been tacitly negotiating with Israel for years." Hizballah's indirect talks with Israel in 1996 and 2004 and their stated willingness to arrange a prisoner exchange today all indicate realism on the part of party leadership.
RESISTANCE, POLITICS AND RULES OF THE GAME
In 1985, Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon, but continued to occupy the southern zone of the country, controlling approximately ten percent of Lebanon using both Israeli soldiers and a proxy Lebanese militia, the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA). Hizballah's Islamic Resistance took the lead, though there were other contingents, in fighting that occupation. The party also worked to represent the interests of the Shi'a in Lebanese politics.
The Lebanese civil war came to an end in 1990, after the signing of the Ta'if Agreement in 1989. The Ta'if Agreement reasserted a variation of the National Pact, allotting greater power to the prime minister and increasing the number of Muslim seats in government. Yet while the actual numerical strength of confessional groups in Lebanon is sharply contested, conservative estimates note that by the end of the civil war, Shi'i Muslims made up at least one third of the population, making them the largest confessional community. Other estimates are much higher.
When the first post-war elections were held in Lebanon in 1992, many of the various militia groups (which had often grown out of political parties) reverted to their political party status and participated. Hizballah also chose to participate, declaring its intention to work within the existing Lebanese political system, while keeping its weapons to continue its guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation in the south, as allowed by the Ta'if accord. In that first election, the party won eight seats, giving them the largest single bloc in the 128-member parliament, and its allies won an additional four seats. From that point on, Hizballah developed a reputation - even among those who disagree vehemently with their ideologies - for being a "clean" and capable political party on both the national and local levels. This reputation is especially important in Lebanon, where government corruption is assumed, clientelism is the norm and political positions are often inherited. As a group, Lebanese parliamentarians are the wealthiest legislature in the world.
While the party's parliamentary politics were generally respected, levels of national support for the activities of the Islamic Resistance in the south fluctuated over the years. Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians and infrastructure - including the destruction of power plants in Beirut in 1996, 1999 and 2000 - generally contributed to increases in national support for the Resistance. This was especially true after Israel bombed a UN bunker where civilians had taken refuge in Qana on April 18, 1996, killing 106 people.
The occupation of south Lebanon was costly for Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made withdrawal a campaign promise in 1999, and later announced that it would take place by July 2000. A month and a half before this deadline, after SLA desertions and the collapse of potential talks with Syria, Barak ordered a chaotic withdrawal from Lebanon, taking many by surprise. At 3 am on May 24, 2000, the last Israeli soldier stepped off Lebanese soil and locked the gate at the Fatima border crossing behind him. Many predicted that lawlessness, sectarian violence and chaos would fill the void left by the Israeli occupation forces and the SLA, which rapidly collapsed in Israel's wake. Those predictions proved false as Hizballah maintained order in the border region.
Despite withdrawal, a territorial dispute continues over a 15-square mile border region called the Shebaa Farms that remains under Israeli occupation. Lebanon and Syria assert that the mountainside is Lebanese land, while Israel and the UN have declared it part of the Golan Heights and, therefore, Syrian territory (though occupied by Israel). Since 2000, Lebanon has also been awaiting the delivery from Israel of the map for the locations of over 300,000 landmines the Israeli army planted in south Lebanon. Unstated "rules of the game," building on an agreement not to target civilians written after the Qana attack in 1996, have governed the Israeli-Lebanese border dispute since 2000. Hizballah attacks on Israeli army posts in the occupied Shebaa Farms, for example, would be answered by limited Israeli shelling of Hizballah outposts and sonic booms over Lebanon.
Both sides, on occasion, have broken the "rules of the game," though UN observer reports of the numbers of border violations find that Israel has violated the Blue Line between the countries ten times more frequently than Hizballah has. Israeli forces have kidnapped Lebanese shepherds and fishermen. Hizballah abducted an Israeli businessman in Lebanon in October 2000, claiming that he was a spy. In January 2004, through German mediators, Hizballah and Israel concluded a deal whereby Israel released hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers. At the last minute, Israeli officials defied the Supreme Court's ruling and refused to hand over the last three Lebanese prisoners, including the longest-held detainee, Samir al-Qantar, who has been in jail for 27 years for killing three Israelis after infiltrating the border. At that time, Hizballah vowed to open new negotiations at some point in the future.
HIZBALLAH'S NATIONALISM
As noted, Hizballah officially follows Khamenei as the party's marja', and has maintained a warm relationship with Iran dating to the 1980s, when Iran helped to train and arm the militia. Hizballah consults with Iranian leaders, and receives an indeterminate amount of economic aid. Iran has also continued military aid to the Islamic Resistance, including some of the rockets in the militia's arsenal. This relationship does not, however, mean that Iran dictates Hizballah's policies or decision-making, or can necessarily control the actions of the party. Meanwhile, Iranian efforts to infuse the Lebanese Shi'a with a pan-Shi'i identity centered on Iran have run up against the Arab identity and increasing Lebanese nationalism of Hizballah itself.
A similar conclusion can be reached about Syria, often viewed as so close to Hizballah that the party's militia is dubbed Syria's "Lebanese card" in its efforts to regain the Golan Heights from Israel. While the party keeps good relations with the Syrian government, Syria does not control or dictate Hizballah decisions or actions. Party decisions are made independently, in accordance with Hizballah's view of Lebanon's interests and the party's own interests within Lebanese politics. After the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005, and the subsequent Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, Hizballah's position was often inaccurately described as "pro-Syrian." In fact, the party's rhetoric was carefully chosen not to oppose Syrian withdrawal, but to recast it as a withdrawal that would not sever all ties with Lebanon, and that would take place under an umbrella of "gratitude."
There is no doubt that Hizballah is a nationalist party. Its view of nationalism differs from that of many Lebanese, especially from the Phoenician-origins nationalism espoused by the Maronite Christian right, and from the neo-liberal, US-backed nationalism of Hariri's party. Hizballah offers a nationalism that views Lebanon as an Arab state that cannot distance itself from causes like the Palestine question. Its political ideology maintains an Islamic outlook. The 1985 Open Letter notes the party's desire to establish an Islamic state, but only through the will of the people. "We don't want Islam to reign in Lebanon by force," the letter reads. The party's decision to participate in elections in 1992 underscored its commitment to working through the existing structure of the Lebanese state, and also shifted the party's focus from a pan-Islamic resistance to Israel toward internal Lebanese politics. Furthermore, since 1992, Hizballah leaders have frequently acknowledged the contingencies of Lebanon's multi-confessional society and the importance of sectarian coexistence and pluralism within the country. It should also be noted that many of Hizballah's constituents do not want to live in an Islamic state; rather, they want the party to represent their interests within a pluralist Lebanon.
The nationalist outlook of the party has grown throughout Hizballah's transition from resistance militia to political party and more. After the Syrian withdrawal, it became evident that the party would play a larger role in the Lebanese government. Indeed, in the 2005 elections, Hizballah increased their parliamentary seats to 14, in a voting bloc with other parties that took 35. Also in 2005, for the first time, the party chose to participate in the cabinet, and currently holds the Ministry of Energy.
Hizballah does not regard its participation in government as contradicting its maintenance of a non-state militia. In fact, the first item on Hizballah's 2005 electoral platform pledged to "safeguard Lebanon's independence and protect it from the Israeli menace by safeguarding the Resistance, Hizballah's military wing and its weapons, in order to achieve total liberation of Lebanese occupied land." This stance places the party at odds with UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for the "disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias" in September 2004, and with those political forces in Lebanon that seek to implement the resolution. Prior to the July events, Nasrallah and other party leaders attended a series of "national dialogue" meetings aimed at setting the terms for Hizballah's disarmament. The dialogue had not come to any conclusions by the beginning of the current violence, in part because of Hizballah's insistence that its arms were still needed to defend Lebanon.
But the party has a social platform as well, and views itself as representing not only Shi'i Lebanese, but also the poor more generally. The Amal militia formed by Sayyid Musa al-Sadr developed into a political party as well, and has been Hizballah's main political rival among Shi'i Lebanese, though they are now working in tandem. The longtime speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, Amal's leader, is the intermediary between Hizballah and diplomats inquiring about ceasefire terms and a prisoner exchange. The party also plays the usual political game in Lebanon, where candidates run on multi-confessional district slates rather than as individuals, and it allies (however temporarily) with politicians who do not back its program. In the 2005 parliamentary contests, the Sunni on Hizballah's slate in Sidon was Bahiyya al-Hariri, sister of the assassinated ex-premier. Since the elections, the strongest ally of the Shi'i movement has been the former general, Michel Aoun, the quintessentially "anti-Syrian" figure in Lebanese politics. Aoun's movement, along with Hizballah, was an important component of enormous demonstrations on May 10 in Beirut against the government's privatization plans, which would cost jobs in Lebanon's public sector.
SOCIAL WELFARE
Among the consequences of the Lebanese civil war were economic stagnation, government corruption and a widening gap between the ever shrinking middle class and the ever expanding ranks of the poor. Shi'i areas of Beirut also had to cope with massive displacement from the south and the Bekaa. In this economic climate, sectarian clientelism became a necessary survival tool.
A Shi'i Muslim social welfare network developed in the 1970s and 1980s, with key actors including al-Sadr, Fadlallah and Hizballah. Today, Hizballah functions as an umbrella organization under which many social welfare institutions are run. Some of these institutions provide monthly support and supplemental nutritional, educational, housing and health assistance for the poor; others focus on supporting orphans; still others are devoted to reconstruction of war-damaged areas. There are also Hizballah-affiliated schools, clinics and low-cost hospitals, including a school for children with Down's syndrome.
These social welfare institutions are located around Lebanon and serve the local people regardless of sect, though they are concentrated in the mainly Shi'i Muslim areas of the country. They are run almost entirely through volunteer labor, mostly that of women, and much of their funding stems from individual donations, orphan sponsorships and religious taxes. Shi'i Muslims pay an annual tithe called the khums, one fifth of the income they do not need for their own family's upkeep. Half of this tithe is given to the care of the marja' they recognize. Since 1995, when Khamenei appointed Nasrallah and another Hizballah leader as his religious deputies in Lebanon, the khums revenues of Lebanese Shi'a who follow Khamenei have gone directly into Hizballah's coffers. These Shi'a also give their zakat, the alms required of all Muslims able to pay, to Hizballah's vast network of social welfare institutions. Much of this financial support comes from Lebanese Shi'a living abroad.
WHO SUPPORTS HIZBALLAH?
As one of Israel's stated goals in the current war is the "removal" of Hizballah from the south, it is critical to note that the party has a broad base of support throughout the south and the country - a base of support that is not necessarily dependent on sect. Being born to a Shi'i Muslim family, or even being a practicing and pious Shi'i Muslim, does not determine one's political affiliation.
Nor does one's socio-economic status. It is sometimes assumed that Hizballah is using its social organizations to bribe supporters, or that these organizations exist solely to prop up "terrorist activities." These views both betray a simplistic view of the party. A more accurate reading would suggest that the party's popularity is based in part on its dedication to the poor, but also on its political platforms and record in Lebanon, its Islamist ideologies, and its resistance to Israeli occupation and violations of Lebanese sovereignty.
Hizballah's popularity is based on a combination of ideology, resistance and an approach to political-economic development. For some, Hizballah's ideologies are viewed as providing a viable alternative to a US-supported government and its neo-liberal economic project in Lebanon and as an active opposition to the role of the US in the Middle East. Its constituents are not only the poor, but increasingly come from the middle classes and include many upwardly mobile, highly educated Lebanese. Many of its supporters are Shi'i Muslim, but there are also many Lebanese of other religious backgrounds who support the party and/or the Islamic Resistance.
"Hizballah supporter" is itself a vague phrase. There are official members of the party and/or the Islamic Resistance; there are volunteers in party-affiliated social welfare organizations; there are those who voted for the party in the last election; there are those who support the Resistance in the current conflict, whether or not they agree with its ideology. To claim ridding south Lebanon of Hizballah as a goal risks aiming for the complete depopulation of the south, tantamount to ethnic cleansing of the area.
In terms of the current conflict, while Lebanese public opinion seems to be divided as to whether blame should be placed on Hizballah or Israel for the devastation befalling the country, this division does not necessarily fall along sectarian lines. More importantly, there are many Lebanese who disagree with Hizballah's Islamist ideologies or political platforms, and who believe that their July 12 operation was a mistake, but who are supportive of the Islamic Resistance and view Israel as their enemy. These are not mutually exclusive positions. One of the effects of the Israeli attacks on selected areas of Beirut has been to widen the class divides in the Lebanon, which may serve to further increase Hizballah's popularity among those who already felt alienated from Hariri-style reconstruction and development.
THE CURRENT VIOLENCE
On July 12, 2006, Hizballah fighters attacked an Israeli army convoy and captured two soldiers. The party stated that they had captured these soldiers for use as bargaining chips in indirect negotiations for the release of the three Lebanese detained without due process and in defiance of the Supreme Court in Israel. As noted, there is precedent for such negotiations. The raid had been planned for months, and the party made at least one earlier attempt to capture soldiers. Nasrallah had stated earlier that 2006 would be the year when negotiations would take place for the release of the three remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. In a July 20 interview on al-Jazeera, he also stated that other leaders in Lebanon were aware of his intention to order a capture attempt, though not of the details of this particular operation.
After the capture of the soldiers, Israel unleashed an aerial assault on Lebanon's cities and infrastructure on a scale unseen since the 1982 invasion. This attack was accompanied by a naval blockade, and more recently, a ground invasion. The ground invasion is being strongly opposed by Hizballah fighters along with fighters from other parties. Both the Lebanese Communist Party and Amal have announced the deaths of fighters in battle. At least 516 Lebanese have been killed, mostly civilians; the Lebanese government's tally of the dead stands at 750 or more. A UN count says one third of the dead are children. In several cases, villagers who were warned by Israeli leaflets or automated telephone messages to leave their homes were killed when their vehicles were targeted shortly thereafter. On July 30, Israeli planes bombed a three-story house being used as a shelter in Qana, killing at least 57 civilians and reawakening memories of the 1996 Qana massacre. The Lebanese government estimates that 2,000 people have been wounded since July 12, while as many as 750,000 people have been displaced from their homes. Hizballah has responded, since early on in the Israeli bombing campaign, by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, killing 19 civilians thus far. An additional 33 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat.
In Lebanon, entire villages in the south have been flattened, as have whole neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Runways and fuel tanks at Beirut International Airport, roads, ports, power plants, bridges, gas stations, TV transmitters, cell phone towers, a dairy and other factories, and wheat silos have been targeted and destroyed, as well as trucks carrying medical supplies, ambulances, and minivans full of civilians. The UN is warning of a humanitarian crisis, and has indicated that war crimes investigations are in order for the targeting of civilians in both Lebanon and Israel. Human Rights Watch has documented Israel's use of artillery-fired cluster munitions, which it believes "may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law" because the "bomblets" spread widely and often fail to explode on impact, in effect becoming land mines. Eyewitnesses in Beirut report that the pattern of destruction in hard-hit neighborhoods resembles that caused by thermobaric weapons, or "vacuum bombs," whose blast effects are innately indiscriminate. Lebanese doctors receiving dead and wounded have alleged that Israeli bombs contain white phosphorus, a substance that, if used in offensive operations, is considered an illegal chemical weapon.
Israel's initially stated goal of securing the release of the two captured soldiers has faded from Israeli discourse and given way to two additional stated goals: the disarmament or at least "degrading" of Hizballah's militia, as well as its removal from south Lebanon. According to an article in the July 21 San Francisco Chronicle, "a senior Israeli army officer" had presented plans for an offensive with these goals to US and other diplomats over a year before Hizballah's capture of the two soldiers. Though Israel is not in compliance with several UN resolutions, the Israeli army appears to be attempting singlehandedly - though with US approval - to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559.
It is unclear how the aerial bombardment of infrastructure and the killing of Lebanese civilians can lead to any of these goals, especially as support for Hizballah and the Islamic Resistance appears to be increasing. Outrage at Israel's actions trumps ideological disagreement with Hizballah for many Lebanese at this point, and as such, it is likely that support for the party will continue to grow.
(Lara Deeb, a cultural anthropologist, is assistant professor of women's studies at the University of California-Irvine. She is author of An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon.)
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10677
ZNet | Mideast
Washington's Latest Middle East War
by Phyllis Bennis; July 31, 2006
The Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine, euphemistically depicted as "self-defense" against Hezbollah and Hamas, is simultaneously an Israeli war for domination, and a regional war to "remap" the contemporary Middle East. In this context it is as much a US as an Israeli war. The immediate trigger has its roots in the extraordinarily hypocritical US-led boycott and international sanctions against the Palestinians that started after the democratic election of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government in January 2006. And beyond the specific trigger, this new war was set in motion by the example presented in Washington's Iraq-centered efforts at militarized regional transformation in the guise of "democratization."
It must be stated unequivocally that this is a war against civilians - there is nothing "collateral" about it. And Israel is responsible for this war. Hezbollah's July 12 raid across the Israeli border may have violated the 1949 armistice agreement between the newly created state of Israel and Lebanon, but it was limited to a military target. The only Israelis killed or captured were soldiers. Given the human devastation of the predictable Israeli response, the raid may have been what French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called it, an "irresponsible act." But it did not violate international law. According to Human Rights Watch, "the targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law." It was Israel's response, on the other hand, that escalated to a full-scale attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure starting with the bombing of the Beirut international airport. That act was what Douste-Blazy, distinguishing it from Hezbollah's raid, called "a disproportionate act of war." The Israeli attack stands in stark violation of the Geneva Conventions prohibitions against collective punishment, targeting civilians, destruction of civilian infrastructure and more. The attack was - and remains - a war crime.
The distinction is important. The Hezbollah attack on the Israeli army post and the failed Israeli attempt to grab back the captured soldiers, constituted a border skirmish. Such cross-border clashes happen around the world on a daily basis; certainly the Israeli-Lebanon border itself has seen more than its share. But a border skirmish is not a war - it's a border skirmish. It only becomes a war if one or the other party wants it to escalate. In this case, there is no question that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government wanted a war. The San Francisco Chronicle and other mainstream media have highlighted the fact that Israel had had this strategic plan in place since at least 2004, perhaps having started it as early as 2000 when Israeli troops pulled out of Lebanon. Israel was waiting for an appropriate time - or an appropriate pretext - to launch it. This moment, this pretext, they deemed, was the time.
US and Israeli Goals
It is telling that both Israel and the US have admitted they do not want a ceasefire. Their goal is an unequivocal military victory, not a diplomatic solution, regardless of the human consequences (and for Israel, regardless of the fate of their iconic but now much more-endangered captured soldiers). Israel appears to believe that it is possible to defeat a popular insurgency with conventional military means, despite a century of colonial history proving precisely the opposite for the US in Viet Nam, the French in Algeria, the British in India, and so many others.
Tel Aviv's goals are to establish unchallenged and unchallengeable military control on all its borders, perhaps including a direct on-the-ground occupation, to wipe out all existing or potential resistance to its domination, and to transform the strategic map of the Middle East. Sound familiar? The approach was first articulated in 1996 when a group of former US officials drafted a strategy paper for Bibi Netanyahu, then running for prime minister in Israel. The paper was titled "Making a Clean Break: Defending the Realm," and it essentially proposed for Israel a Middle East regional version of what the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century, and more importantly the Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy, envisioned for the US on a global level. The essence of all these plans called for the dominant power to establish such overwhelming military control that no existing or future resistance could ever even imagine a challenge to that domination.
In the first few days of the crisis, a potential crack appeared between the Israeli and US aims. Israel's goals were (and remain) primarily military, focused on wiping out any remnant of Hezbollah's and Hamas' power and influence across Lebanon, Palestine and the region. Simultaneously it hoped to bring the fragile holding-on-by-its-fingernails Lebanese government, already in thrall to Washington since the US-orchestrated departure of Syrian troops last year, even more completely under Israeli control. In Gaza Israel was trying to diminish even further the capacity of the already weakened Palestinian Authority. Parts of the Bush administration at that time, at least briefly, seemed to place a higher premium on maintaining the fiction that the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon had set the stage for real "democracy" there, and maintaining something resembling stability in Lebanon remained a crucial propaganda goal. That led to the slightly mixed messages of the first couple of days, in which "Israel has the absolute right to defend itself" was tempered with "but they should be careful not to weaken the Lebanese government." That ambiguity, however, did not last. By the third day or so, the Bush administration had largely abandoned any claimed concern about Lebanon's fragile "democracy," (there was never any concern expressed for Lebanon's people) and had moved into full-scale unequivocal embrace of Israel's aggression, rejecting calls for a ceasefire as "untimely."
What Does Washington Want?
The actual US goals do not include a rapid ceasefire. Rather, Washington is committed to the same kind of regional remapping of the Middle East that Israel's military assault aims for. The Bush administration began this process through its invasion and occupation of Iraq, and its support for Israel's crusade reflects the same disdain for civilian casualties that the US has shown in Iraq. While some of the Iraq War's key neo-con players are now out of the White House (Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Douglas Feith at Georgetown, Scooter Libby on trial, etc.), it is clear that at least part of their intellectual legacy - the unilateralism, disdain for diplomacy, assertion of military power over all - remains in place. What Israel is doing now, with full US support through military and economic aid, diplomatic protection, and political support, aims to remap a "new" Israeli-dominated Middle East. That goal is fully in synch with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which aims to reconstruct a region without a hint of resistance to absolute US control.
For Washington, Israel's war escalates the pressure on Syria and Iran, and it is likely the US will continue to take a direct role. There were complaints that the US evacuation of American citizens was slow; that may be less about inefficiency than about a US insistence on bringing warships up to the Beirut coastline to "escort" the evacuation ship. We may see those ships remaining off the Lebanese coast for quite some time, as an additional message to Syria and Iran, as we may see a longer deployment of the marines currently on-shore inside Beirut, assisting the evacuation.
At the United Nations
Also indicative of Washington's strategy was the US veto of a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations, squelching any possibility of an early international call for an end to the killing. At this point, despite extensive discussion and widespread calls for a ceasefire, the US opposition to a ceasefire has largely paralyzed the Security Council. The secretary general has presented a set of recommendations that, while flawed in some respects at least begins with a call for an immediate "end to hostilities," even if not an official ceasefire. Other UN officials, including humanitarian Jan Egeland and High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour have spoken of war crimes being committed, and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Several leading Non-Aligned countries have indicated other international initiatives might be under consideration as well, perhaps leading to a call for creation of an international "Coalition of the Willing to Stop the Killing."
The US and Israel appear to be considering a UN proposal that would send international troops - "not UN Blue-helmets," according to US Ambassador John Bolton - to the region. While the call for international protection is a longstanding regional demand, the version under discussion now would be far too one-sided to answer the real need. It would essentially impose a new occupation of south Lebanon, albeit by international, rather than Israeli troops, its mandate would include forcible disarming of Hezbollah while doing nothing to rein in Israel's attacks, and it might even be based on NATO, rather than UN troops.
Regional Implications
It is clear that Hezbollah's role in the crisis is leading to a qualitative escalation in regional support for the organization. Inside Lebanon that translates to greater support for Hezbollah's social and political program, and its electoral role in the Lebanese parliament, as well as wider backing for the idea that maintaining Hezbollah's militia separate from Lebanon's national army might just be a good idea. In the region as a whole, Hezbollah is gaining popular acclaim for its role in supporting the Palestinians (specifically in trying to improve Hamas' chance for a prisoner exchange) and most importantly, in challenging Israeli military domination. At a moment when Arab governments across the Middle East remain feckless and silent in the wake of escalating attacks, and people across the region grow increasingly angry about their own governments' seemingly complicit silence, the ability of Hezbollah to go head to head with the Israeli military inevitably brings supporters and converts. This shift in regional consciousness is also reflected in what some Arab analysts are identifying as an "end to fear" among Arab populations,
The Bush administration, seeming to recognize this, has reportedly based the plan for Condoleezza Rice's July 23rd trip to the region on the launch of an "Umbrella of Arab Allies" in explicit opposition to Hezbollah. The rising influence of the Lebanese resistance movement, along with that of Hamas, has created serious challenges for pro-US Arab leaders, who are already viewed with scorn by significant sectors of their population. With the televised images of the Hezbollah guerrillas taking on Israel, and the dramatic scenes of Palestinian and Lebanese victims of Israeli bombings fresh in people's minds, the unwillingness and/or inability of Arab governments to do anything to help the Palestinians and Lebanese, let alone to challenge Israel on their own, stand as a sharp indictment of those regimes throughout the Middle East.
A consequent problem, of course, is that the current scenario also encourages a widespread belief –a dangerous illusion, in my view– that it is possible for the resistance movements overall to actually defeat Israel militarily. Certainly it is true that 18 years of Hezbollah's resistance to Israeli military occupation in south Lebanon did force an Israeli withdrawal. But that example had many particularities that no longer prevail - not least that it took place before September 11, when the US regional involvement was very different, and that Israel's commitment to Lebanon never matched that of its strategic dedication to Palestine.
The Iraq war has already begun to transform political and social consciousness in the region, and there is the potential that some in the region would look at how resistance forces there have fought the US military to a standstill, and imagine that small independent groups of militants might follow that "model" to win against Israel in Palestine as well. Again the distinctions - including the fact that the Iraqi resistance inherited the disparate weaponry of an entire army– outweigh the similarities. What remains similar is the increasingly parallel level of destruction in both Lebanon and Iraq.
Washington's Arab Allies
On a political level, the current war in Lebanon is also transforming the region, to the detriment of the existing Arab governments. It is remembered with pride and anger across the Middle East that in expelling the Israeli troops from Lebanon, Hezbollah was the first Arab resistance movement to force Israel to retreat, something no combination of Arab governments could ever do. At least as of the third week of July, there is a widening and increasingly visible divide splitting the Arab states.
On the one hand are those governments who see Hezbollah's rising influence as a threat to their own power and are willing to condemn Hezbollah and at least tacitly support the US-Israel alliance, including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. On the other hand are those governments more worried about losing power and control of their own populations who are all adamantly anti-Israel and pro-Hezbollah, who are claiming (disingenuously or not) to support the Palestinian and Lebanese against Israel. Those include Syria of course, whose government has remained quiet and largely afraid to move because of US threats even while public pressure mounts demanding public support for Hezbollah and the Palestinians. That group also includes non-Arab Iran, whose government has been very careful in its response, claiming that it would respond to an Israeli attack on Syria, but remaining conspicuously silent about its own role vis-à-vis the attacks on Lebanon.
A recent and surprising addition to the critic-of-Israel contingent is Iraq's President Nouri al-Maliki. The defection of the Iraqi leader from the US camp represents a significant defeat for the Bush administration's Lebanon plan. Chosen in a US-orchestrated election held under continued US military occupation, al-Maliki had earlier promised to demand a timeline for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, but he never made good on that promise. Ironically, even Lebanon's own Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, long understood to be a product of Washington's anti-Syria "democracy" crusade, seems to have moved out of the pro-US camp, taking a clear we-will-fight-alongside-Hezbollah position in response to the Israeli threats of a massive ground invasion of Lebanon. Other powerful Lebanese parties have also announced support for Hezbollah, undercutting longstanding efforts by successive Lebanese governments to suppress its influence. Elsewhere in the region, individual politicians in pro-US Arab states including Saudi Arabia have begun efforts to distance themselves from their own government positions.
And For the Palestinians
In Gaza, the potential importance of the Hamas-Fatah unity process in the Palestinian Authority, shaped by the June acceptance by all sides of the "Prisoners' Declaration," has largely been diminished. Certainly the unity process remains important. But with one-third of the Palestinian Authority's cabinet members and many of the Hamas members of the Legislative Council held in Israeli prisons as potential bargaining chips for a future prisoner exchange, and the US-Israeli orchestrated international isolation and sanctions of the PA still in place, the PA itself is barely surviving, hardly able to help its population cope with the ravages of the Israeli assault, and certainly not doing much governing. The Hamas-led government in the occupied territories also faces a political and credibility challenge from the external, Damascus-based leadership of the divided organization, who some believe have been more supportive of Hamas' renewed military activity than the Hamas representatives in the internal government in Gaza and Ramallah.
In the meantime, the link between the Gaza crisis and the still escalating Lebanon/Hezbollah crisis, has brought Palestine back to the center of regional politics, away from its Oslo and post-Oslo identity as a narrower issue limited to the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip alone. In the process of raising the profile and credibility of Hamas as the centerpiece of Palestinian politics, however, this trajectory has largely sidelined the importance and legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO. Hamas has never been a member of the PLO. As Hamas' prestige, both within Palestine and internationally, rises, there is a danger that the PLO could be left behind - and with it, the representation of those components of the Palestinian nation who do not live in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, most importantly the Palestinian refugees and exiles who now number more than 3 million spread around the world.
The Gaza-Lebanon Crisis and the Iraq War
How the new Lebanon crisis (Gaza and the rest of Palestine was of course already in crisis) is affecting the way the US is carrying out of its war in Iraq remains uncertain. But its impact on the wider militarization of the region has already become clear. The US has ratcheted up its provision of both emergency (jet fuel), and regular military equipment (including a batch of replacement "smart" bombs) to Israel. A New York Times article noted that analysts recognize US support for Israel in this war as equivalent to Iran's support of Hezbollah. And the Bush administration just approved just $6 billion worth of new US arms sales to the nervous Saudi government, including Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles and other military equipment. The administration justified the sale to Congress claiming that the sale would help strengthen Saudi Arabia's military and its ability to help the US fight terrorism around the world.
It is also clear that the murderous Israeli assault in Lebanon and Gaza, and their proud endorsement by the US, is ratcheting up even further the already sky-high Iraq-fueled levels of anger towards the US This may lead to another shift in the military situation inside Iraq, with US troops becoming even greater immediate targets. To the degree that sectarian considerations are shaping military outcomes in Iraq, it will not go unnoticed that while all of Lebanon has been made victim of this war, Lebanon's Shi'a and the Shi'a-majority towns and cities of the south, already the poorest of the country, are suffering the most. Also, Hezbollah, now seen regionally as defender of not only Lebanon but Palestine and Arabs in general, is a Shi'a movement. However, the sectarian considerations are likely to remain secondary to the much broader concern that all Lebanese, including Sunni, Christians and all others, and all Gazans, who are overwhelmingly Sunni (as well as West Bank Palestinians, still suffering under occupation and international sanctions), have been made victims by a US-Israeli policy of all-out indiscriminate war against entire peoples.
Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, whether it becomes a permanent occupation or not, will certainly escalate the crisis further. This is particularly true of Israel's declared intention to establish what Tel Aviv calls a "buffer zone" inside southern Lebanon. Israel has adopted the racist language of the Pentagon in Iraq, describing their goal being to "clean out" Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, and then "hold" them to prevent a return. As Kofi Annan said on July 21, even if Israel "plans to say it's a 'security zone,' for others it will be an occupation."
The New War and the US Peace Movement
There is no question that overall, the escalation of the regional crisis to include all-out war in Lebanon and Gaza will make some work of the peace movement more difficult. It will be harder to call for bringing home all the troops from Iraq now, while the media propaganda focuses on "Israel under attack." This is certainly true in terms of influencing congress or other policymakers, where the focus on Israel is escalating the existing Democratic Party leaders' embrace of the Iraq war. And at a moment when key Republicans appear to be distancing themselves from the Bush administration's war strategy, if not from the war itself, the new crisis is giving Republicans an opportunity to welcome the Bush administration's position, while competing with Democrats over who can be stronger supporters of Israel. The unanimous Senate vote and the near-unanimous House votes supporting Israel's war unequivocally and enthusiastically give some indication of that.
But we must never lose sight of the value, the legitimacy, the importance of non-violent struggle. As Americans our own history has seen our most important social victories - against slavery, for voting rights, for civil rights - won by mass mobilization and education. We can't stop now.
We need to recognize and figure out why popular opinion has not matched the uncritical pro-Israeli cheerleading that has characterized mainstream politics. Higher percentages of the public are rejecting the close public embrace of Israel by the Bush administration, urging that the US "not engage" in the war. For many this means opposition to the US reengaging in active Middle East diplomacy. Missing, of course, is the broader understanding that uncritical US diplomatic and political support for Israel's wars and occupations, along with more than $3 billion each year in military and economic aid, is the default position of US politics - whether or not the US leads the diplomacy, it is certainly "engaged" in the issue.
Polls indicate the public has a far more nuanced understanding than the politicians, with significant percentages critical of Israel. There is a small group of congresspeople, reflecting that more nuanced position, who have taken the [in this context] courageous decision not to join the groundswell of pro-Israel cheerleading, and voted no or present on the resolution. Many of those members and others are also supporting a new bill introduced by Dennis Kucinich calling for an immediate ceasefire.
One reason for the public willingness to recognize the devastation being caused by Israel's war may, ironically, be mainstream television coverage. Despite the jingoism of many newscasters (though many TV journalists on the ground in Lebanon and Gaza have often been surprisingly even-handed), the graphic horror visible in the pictures is having a much bigger impact than the commentary.
The nature of the crisis, and the response to it demonstrates once again the need for education as the fundamental strategy of our movement. Certainly we have to engage with those in power, and immediate protests are important - bird-dogging Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and other members of the administration to demand a ceasefire; sit-ins in the offices of pro-war members of congress; demonstrations against war crimes at Israeli consulates or the White House; informational picket lines outside media outlets perpetrating lies. Those demonstrations are also important as a message to people in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon and Palestine, just as has been the case in Iraq, that there are Americans who say no to the Bush agenda, who reject the militarism and unilateralism and lack of democracy that give rise to these wars.
And we must do more. We are faced once again with an American public willing to accept a media-driven definition of the crisis - accepting that it began with Hezbollah's July 12 raid to capture two Israeli soldiers. Most Americans do not recognize that even this very specific crisis began much earlier, with the US-led international isolation and sanctions against the entire Palestinian people after the election of Hamas, with the Israeli missile assault killing a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach, with the "targeted assassinations" that have killed more than 125 non-targeted civilians, with the assassination of the newly-nominated deputy minister in the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Certainly most Americans do not root this crisis in the seizure of the latest of 9,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, or the legacy of 38 years of occupation of Gaza, or the consequences of 18 years of Israeli occupation of south Lebanon.
We face an American public lacking the information to challenge the reversed chronology of the crisis that has become the assumed wisdom. Even though the New York Times' own July 19 chronology and a July 24 article finally told the truth, almost no one in the US seems to grasp the actual sequence of this particular set of events. Hezbollah crossed the Israeli border and captured two Israeli soldiers - an attack on a military target. Israel responded with a failed attempt to get the soldiers back, and then escalated immediately to massive airstrikes on Lebanese civilian targets –first the southern bridges, then the Beirut international airport. Only then, after Israel had transformed a border skirmish into a war and escalated from military to civilian targets, did Hezbollah begin its own illegal firing of rockets against civilian targets, Israeli cities.
Instead the majority of Americans - steeped in longstanding beliefs that Israel is always in the right - remain convinced that Israel's attacks in Lebanon were only in response to Hezbollah's rockets hitting Israeli cities. As a movement we need to take responsibility for a broad campaign of popular education that will make it impossible for such widespread misinformation - let alone the even more profoundly missing historical context - to gain and keep its foothold in public consciousness.
This is a moment for the broad anti-war and anti-empire movement to strengthen its ties with the longstanding movements for Palestinian rights and against US support for Israeli occupation, for human rights and a just and comprehensive peace in the region. That collaboration will also insure, among other things, that we do not allow the absolute horror and the more visibly international character of the Lebanon war, to push the Gaza crisis and the continuing horror of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem off the top of our agenda.
We have an especially difficult challenge ahead as we look at how the Israeli "axis of terror" framework is reviving the popularity of the "war on terror" framework in the US While opposition to the war in Iraq continues to rise, there is a danger that the Bush administration's claims - that the war in Lebanon is against global terrorism escalating against the US and our friends - could reverse that trend. We need to take on the work of educating people about the nature of US policy, how it leads to war, and how the current horror in Gaza and Lebanon is very much Washington's war. We have to remind ourselves and others how the illegal US war in Iraq is encouraging the view that invading and occupying another country is a perfectly legitimate replacement for diplomacy and negotiations.
This is an extraordinary moment of crisis, but also a moment of opportunity. The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has told the world that war crimes have been committed on both sides, and warned that political leaders of supporting countries could be held personally liable. Human Rights Watch investigators in Lebanon told NPR that they are investigating Israeli war crimes. We should take advantage of that opportunity to press for accountability of our own government for its complicity in Israeli war crimes by providing the military hardware, fuel and weapons to Israel, knowing that they are being used in violation of international and US domestic law. It is also an opportunity for us to build our ties with our counterparts in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, as we press for international charges to be brought against top Bush Administration officials who may be complicit in Israeli war crimes; the model of Belgium, France, Brazil and other countries prohibiting accused war criminals from entering their countries should be something we struggle to apply to US leaders involved in backing the current war.
Our Country, Our War?
At the end of the day this is a moment we must acknowledge and come to terms with a great sadness. What does it say about the state of our nation that our top officials have abandoned diplomacy with such certitude? That they are building a culture that welcomes unimaginable violence? That they are using their military and economic power around the globe to kill, dispossess, impoverish, and disempower people, isolating the US people from the world by taking our nation to war and standing as an unaccountable Colossus astride the entire world? That they have abandoned international law in favor of the law of empire? What does it say about us, as a people?
And what does it say about our movement, and what we have to do?
Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her latest book is "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy US Power."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10678
posted by attilav at 16:42
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