WITH Israel’s massive and round-the-clock strikes on Gaza and Lebanon, the Muslim states around the globe are faced with a choice. Should they go with the “street” or should they look after the interests of the state and the elites that dominate them? The reaction of the countries the West has begun to call “Muslim moderate nations” surprised most observers. The leadership of these countries have emphasised that the Israeli action was in response to the unprovoked adventures by Hamas and Hezbollah.

There was indeed provocation by these two organisations but they had acted because of extreme frustration. Not doing anything meant accepting the status quo — a situation in which the blockade of Gaza was smothering Hamas. The great irony was that Hamas had gained power as a result of the process of democratisation pursued by the Palestinians in response to the pressure exerted by Washington. The conclusion was obvious. Official America was prepared to accept democracy only when it produced results that were satisfactory to it and served its strategic interests.

The Muslim world had been in this position before. In 1992, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), or the Islamic Salvation Front, won the first round of elections in Algeria. The Algerian military, at the urging of the French, who in turn were prodded by the United States, cancelled the second phase of the voting. Thousands of supporters of FIS fled to the mountains and began their violent rebellion that lasted for several years and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

While Egypt and Jordan chose to stay on the sidelines of the current Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, Saudi Arabia quickly came out against the Lebanese party and also against Iran. Its position was revealed through the official news agency which said that “a distinction must be made between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures undertaken by elements inside Lebanon and those behind them.” This was also the line adopted by Washington. “Elements inside Lebanon” referred, of course, to Hezbollah and “those behind them” meant Iran. Some of the Sunni states of the Muslim world had clearly decided to side with Israel and the United States in curbing what was seen as the growing influence of Iran not just on the Shia communities but also on the masses in the Muslim world irrespective of the sects to which they expressed allegiance. A curious thing, therefore, happened in America’s campaign to bring democracy to the Muslim lands. The call for such a move was made with great eloquence by George W. Bush, the US president, in his second inaugural speech in January 2005. To thunderous applause by his audience that day and later by a series of neo-conservative commentators and analysts, this is what Bush had to say: “Freedom isn’t America’s gift to the world. It’s the Almighty God’s gift to each man and woman in this world.” This was a lovely sentiment embedded in a beautiful line but from the perspective of American strategic interests in the Muslim world it proved to be disastrous policy.

How did it become a disastrous policy? Encouraged by America, Egypt allowed a bit of space to those who opposed Hosni Mubarak, the country’s long-serving president who had exercised total control over the political system for a quarter century. The result was the resurgence of the dreaded Muslim Brotherhood. Mahmoud Abbas, successor to Yasser Arafat as the chairman of Al-Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority, was encouraged to hold free and fair elections and the result, unexpectedly, was the triumph of Hamas.

The latter is seen from two very different perspectives. For the United States, Israel and much of the West it is a terrorist organisation that has been relentless in its fight against what it regards as oppression. It has developed the suicide bomber as a weapon that has brought some damage but enormous insecurity to Israel and its citizens. Hamas’s supporters see it as a benevolent organisation fighting a war against occupying forces.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese organisation has a similar position. It has been proclaimed a terrorist organisation by the West but is respected by the poor in Lebanon. There is little doubt that Hezbollah will register an electoral triumph and assume control of the Lebanese government if the country’s political system moved towards “one man, one vote.” At the moment the political structure allows disproportionate representation to the Christians at the expense of the Shias who are the country’s largest community and its poorest community.

President Bush and his associates in the government find themselves perched precariously on the horns of a dilemma. Push democracy in the Muslim countries and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah triumph, having built their reputation on the careful provision of social services by dedicated providers. At the top of these organisations are individuals who are clean and committed, thus presenting a clear alternative to the corruption and inefficiency that is so common among the establishments that dominate many Muslim states.

But the electoral triumph of Hamas and the popularity of Hezbollah have one troubling aspect: they are the product of the political under-development of the Muslim world. With poorly developed political parties, the choices available to the electorate are limited to those parties that represent religious ideologies or religious sects or regional interests. This was vividly illustrated by the outcome of the elections in Iraq. Dozens of parties took part in the elections, each representing some sect, ideology or religion. There was no political group that had cross-religious or cross-regional appeal that was able to secure much voter support.

In other words, focus on electoral politics as the first phase of democratisation has had a perverse effect. It has accentuated the divisions in the countries and in the societies in which elections were held rather than bring about political development.

This is not what was anticipated by President George W. Bush and his neocon supporters when they embarked upon their agenda for bringing about political reform in the Muslim world. The experience of the Muslim world demonstrates that freedom is not necessarily Almighty God’s gift to each man and woman in the world as Bush claimed. It has to be earned. It is an achievement rather than divine dispensation.

The word is now out; the genie is out of the bottle. Democracy is the preferred option for the masses in the Muslim world. The arrival of globalisation has meant that this message cannot be kept from reaching the masses by autocratic regimes. The Internet, cable television, and mobile telephones with embedded cameras ensure that news about the world reaches all parts of the globe almost instantaneously. The state, therefore, has to take notice of the street and the street in the Muslim world is getting increasingly agitated. How can the West, now tied to many parts of the Muslim world for economic and strategic reasons, respond to this developing conflict between the rulers and the ruled?

If you possess only a hammer you view every problem as a nail. This is the way America is acting in Afghanistan and Iraq and how Israel has launched its latest incursion in Lebanon. In spite of America’s experience, neo-conservatives have not learnt a lesson. There is a powerful interpretation of the current crisis in the Middle East doing the rounds in Washington. As Gideon Rachman, a commentator writing for the Financial Times, puts it: There is an argument “that the problems America is encountering the world around are precisely the result of the Bush administration’s renewed willingness to work with its allies. According to this thinking, weak-kneed Europeans have lured the US down the path of appeasement in Iran, North Korea and the Middle East.”

William Kristol who, along with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, persuaded President Bush to use force to bring about change in the regime in Iraq, is once again advocating the use of force, a hammer to hit the Muslim nail. Writing for the Weekly Standard, the magazine of the neo-conservatives, Kristol argues that the fighting in the Middle East was part of a broad-based attack on “liberal, democratic civilisation. Weakness is provocative...The right response is renewed strength — in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran.” He urged President Bush to order an immediate “military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.”

It is hard to predict at the time of this writing exactly how the current conflict in the Middle East will end. Its impact, no matter which way it goes, will have enormous consequences for Pakistan.

I have said before in these columns that Pakistan is uniquely placed in the Muslim world. It straddles the Arab and non-Arab Muslim worlds. It has as its immediate neighbour Iran, the largest nation of Shia Muslims, as well as Afghanistan and the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The last two are strong believers of the Sunni interpretation of the Islamic faith. It is not often realised that with some 35 million Shias as its citizens, Pakistan has the second largest Shia population in the world after Iran.

Pakistan has, until recently, offered a reasonably harmonious environment for the followers of two main sects of Islam. It has cultivated close economic relations with Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Gulf. It is negotiating the construction of a natural gas pipeline that will bring Iranian gas into Pakistan. Investors in these countries are pouring billions of dollars in Pakistan to purchase not only the assets being privatised by the government but also in real estate. By working to enlarge the geographic coverage of the Economic Cooperation Organisation and by seeking admission into the Shanghai Group, it is seeking to build strong economic relations with the Central Asian states that follow Sunni Islam.

If the conflict in the Middle East widens the schism between the Sunnis and the Shias, it will have an impact on Pakistan. There will also be an impact if the Muslim street gets further agitated by the disproportionate Israeli response to the provocations by Hamas and Hezbollah. There will be consequence for public policy if the already negative feelings in Pakistan about America are further exacerbated by this conflict. Finally, the deepening of the conflict may encourage India to paint its own communal problems with the brush of Islamic extremists.

How should Pakistan respond to these challenges? They should not be used to further constrain the political system. It is quite possible that Washington may encourage such an approach in search of security in the sensitive geographical area of which Pakistan is a part. But that would a highly dangerous route to take; something the country should not attempt at this time in its history.

EVEN by the grisly standards of the Middle East, the body count is fearsome in Lebanon. Approximately 400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting between the Israelis and the Hezbollah and about 800 wounded. Some 750,000 have been displaced. The infrastructure, painfully reconstructed after long years of strife, has once again been reduced to ruins in many parts of the country.

The agonising truth of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s words that his country was being torn to shreds is clearly visible on TV screens as Israeli bombardment and shelling continues. Meanwhile, in Israel, the combined death toll of civilians and soldiers is about 40 while the number wounded is 360 or thereabouts. All this in the short time that has elapsed since the Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

In Gaza, the tragedy is equally intense. By Sunday the death toll — since the June 25 incident in which an Israeli soldier was kidnapped — had risen to 121, and the number of wounded was approaching 600. Much of Gaza is without electricity and the misery of the people is evident on the limited TV coverage Gaza is receiving with the media attention having shifted to Lebanon. There are virtually no Israeli casualties on this front.

The Israeli retaliation for the kidnapping of its soldiers has been out of proportion to the damage it has suffered and is in violation of the principle of proportionality accepted as customary international law and now part of the Hague Conventions. The Geneva Conventions prohibit armed reprisals that intentionally inflict collective punishment against civilian populations as well as the targeting of non-military targets. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a carefully worded statement, said that while “Israel has a right to defend itself, the excessive use of force is to be condemned.”

The UN human rights commissioner, Louise Arbor, has said, “The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.” She added, “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians... Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.”

This clearly does not weigh heavily with the Israelis who, with America in their corner, can afford to ignore these calls for observing the norms of warfare — just as they have ignored the international community’s calls for an immediate ceasefire. The Israelis are sure they will not lose this war and therefore none of their commanders would ever be tried for criminal excesses.

The Americans have made it clear that they are fully behind Israel’s wanton attacks on Lebanese territory. They have provided it with the wherewithal. As one observer has pointed out, “While the United States provides about $2.5 billion in military and economic aid to Israel each year, US aid to Lebanon amounts to no more than $40 million. This despite the fact that the per capita GDP of Israel is among the highest in the world at $24,600, nearly four times as high as Lebanon’s GDP per capita of $6,200. Lebanon’s lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians — three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line.”

They have ignored impassioned pleas from their closest Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, to pressure Israel into accepting an immediate ceasefire. They have said that a ceasefire was possible only if it was implemented simultaneously with the deployment of international troops, disarming of the Hezbollah militia, return of displaced Lebanese and plans for reconstruction to occur at the same time. This, according to Nabih Berri, the Shia speaker of the Lebanese parliament, was the unacceptable message that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conveyed during her visit to Lebanon on Monday.

Under-Secretary Burns in a public statement had said earlier that an immediate ceasefire would be handing Hezbollah a major victory because it would leave them in a position to launch attacks on northern Israel. So it is clear that the Americans will endorse a call for a ceasefire only after the military capabilities of the Hezbollah have been totally destroyed or at least substantially attenuated. The destruction of Lebanon that this will entail would probably be termed as acceptable “collateral damage”.

In pursuit of this goal the Bush administration has set aside the general principle of not supplying weapons or munitions to a war zone and has sent from its stocks the munitions that Israel needs to replenish the arsenal it is rapidly using up in its relentless assault on Lebanon and Gaza.

There are voices in Europe and around the world that seek to protest the disproportionate Israeli reaction and the raining down of destruction on a country whose government bears no responsibility for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. The fact, however, is that while there is sympathy for the Lebanese people, the western countries do want the destruction of the Hezbollah and in this they are openly or covertly supported by many in the Arab governments who fear this renegade movement. Some may regard it as the vanguard for the creation of a Shia crescent in the Middle East.

The Saudi statement issued after the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers made clear not only the Saudi government’s position but also that of most of the conservative Arab governments. “Viewing with deep concern the bloody, painful events currently taking place in Palestine and Lebanon, the Kingdom would like to clearly announce that a difference should be drawn between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures carried out by elements inside Lebanon and those behind them without consultation with the legitimate authority in their state...”

The Saudis are normally chary of articulating in public their position on regional developments, particularly a position that could suggest any diminution of their support for the Palestine cause. The fact that they felt compelled to speak out indicates the depth of their concern.

The Lebanese have been more bitter. The Hezbollah leader may claim that “Hezbollah is not waging the battle of Hezbollah or of Lebanon. We are waging the battle of the nation, whether we like it or not, whether the Lebanese like it or not.” The Lebanese, outside the Shia plurality, see it differently. As Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri put it, “These adventurers (i.e. Hezbollah) have placed us in a difficult situation because of their irresponsibility... We demand a reckoning with these adventurers who embroiled Lebanon in a crisis it does not need.”

Currently, there is no fear, to my mind, that the conflict will spread to other parts. With an effective naval blockade in place and with roads leading from Syria into Lebanon being under constant bombardment there is little chance that Hezbollah’s arsenal will be replenished. The destruction in Lebanon will continue at least for another week or 10 days and in that period whatever remains of the Lebanese infrastructure will be destroyed.

Hezbollah as a movement will survive but it will be left with precious little equipment to maintain its military capability. The governments in the Muslim, particularly the Arab, world will stand by helpless to influence the course of events. Many may even welcome it in the possibly false belief that this price was worth paying to have the writ of the Lebanese government enforced in all of Lebanon and to reduce, if not eliminate, the Iranian influence in Lebanon.

The question that arises is which of these end results was not known to the Hezbollah when it embarked on the raid into Israel and kidnapped the Israeli soldiers? Did they think, after the violent reaction of the Israelis to the June 25 incident in Gaza, that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would not take the same sort of action in Lebanon? Did they not realise that Olmert, largely perceived as untested, would take the path of war to establish his credentials? Did they not realise that in an election year, few American politicians would have opposed an unprovoked Israeli attack leave alone one for which justification had been provided on a silver platter? Could they not anticipate a US Congress vote which supported Israel by 410 to eight?

Did they not realise that in dealing with Bush they were dealing with a man who (as someone said) was “more committed to Israel” than any other and who would “not bow to international pressure to pressure Israel”? Did they not realise that even the small pro-Arab lobby in Europe would be silenced if there was provocation for Israeli action and such provocation came from a group like Hezbollah? Did they not realise that in the Arab world, rightly or wrongly, they would be seen as acting as the pawns of the Iranians in a game that has little to do with the Palestine cause or the release of Palestinian prisoners held by the Israelis?

I have a strong suspicion that all this was anticipated but both the Damascus-based leadership of the Hamas and Hezbollah proceeded nonetheless because they felt that they were in danger of losing their relevance and their support base. Khalid Mashal was strongly opposed to the agreement that his colleague but rival Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had worked out with President Mahmoud Abbas to stave off the referendum that President Abbas had threatened to hold on the subject of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem.

Haniyeh had in effect recognised Israel — its reality if not its legitimacy — and this was anathema to Khalid Mashal as was the prospect that some progress could be made towards commencing negotiations on the roadmap. There is no doubt in my mind that the kidnapping was the handiwork of Hamas followers loyal to Mashal and opposed to Haniyeh.

Similarly, in south Lebanon, Hezbollah could feel that the international pressure for the implementation of Resolution 1559 calling for the disarming of all militias in Lebanon was beginning to gather force and as Lebanese prosperity increased more means would become available to the government, of which Hezbollah was a part, to persuade or coerce Hezbollah into becoming a purely political party with no military capability. Parochial rather than national or regional interests dictated this sad misadventure.

Western suspicions that Iran, as the main financier and military equipment supplier to Hezbollah, pressured Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to engage in this adventure seem to be misplaced. The temporary diversion of attention that this would achieve would be a small gain for Iran and would be far outweighed by the ill-will it would create in Lebanon, in the Arab world and in the small camp of Europeans and others who are sympathetic to Iran’s position on the nuclear issue.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

A rally of well-dressed middle-class ladies, perhaps 40 in all, protested outside the UN's offices here on July 26, calling for a ceasefire. Representing the Lebanese Council of Women, they handed out leaflets appealing to Kofi Annan to get something done.

They were fewer in number than the recent anti-war demonstrators in Tel Aviv, but more representative. While today's peaceniks in Israel are a lonely, though perhaps slowly growing, minority, the cry for a ceasefire is overwhelming in Lebanon. Why bother to demonstrate when the issue is so obvious?

So my strongest impression of the rally came from Lamia Osseiran, one of its organisers: "The Israelis are radicalising Lebanon, even liberal democrats like me. I took part in last year's demonstrations against Syria. I was a critic of Hizbullah. Now I cannot help but support Hizbullah's fighters who are defending our country." What about Hizbullah's rocket attacks on Haifa? "It's right," she replied. "It's not only Lebanese who should have to suffer. Are human rights available only to Israelis? You can't have winter and summer on the same roof."

Similar views can be heard from many Shias. They have closed ranks behind Hizbullah under the weight of Israeli bombing. Among Sunnis the mood is more complex. The port town of Sidon, south of Beirut, is 90 per cent Sunni. Over the past week it has taken in 70,000 Shia refugees, most of them militant supporters of Hizbullah. They are eager to convince their new Sunni neighbours of the justice of the Hizbullah cause. Whether they have succeeded will not be known until the bombing stops, but every new day of Israel's air strikes on the south lessens the force of the argument that it is all Hizbullah's fault.

The stronghold of anti-Hizbullah feeling is in Lebanon's Christian areas. They have suffered little bombing, and many people argue that Hizbullah is reaping what it sowed. As Youssef Haddad, a young teacher at the American University of Beirut, put it: "If you want a war with Israel, you have to pay the price. I didn't take the decision to attack Israel."

Yet what counts most for now is not the popular reaction but what is happening inside the Lebanese government. Condoleezza Rice seems to have little understanding of the country's political forces. Last year's so-called cedar revolution, with its simplistic "people power" image and the election victory of anti-Syrian parties, apparently led Washington, and alarmingly Downing Street as well, to believe that Lebanon has a radically new and pro-western government.

In fact, Lebanon has a government of national unity in which Hizbullah has two ministers. Being anti-Syrian is not the same as being anti-Hizbullah, and the election winners from the March 14 movement, which developed after the car-bomb murder of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, wisely recognised that the party is an authentic part of Lebanese society. It was better to have it in the government rather than outside.

Demonising Hizbullah as terrorists or Iranian and Syrian agents confuses the picture. Moreover, the only party that declined to take part in government, the Maronite Christians led by Michel Aoun, made a tactical alliance with Hizbullah. Since the Israeli attacks Aoun has been one of Hizbullah's most vocal defenders.

While accepting Hizbullah's political weight, no Lebanese politician believes that its military wing can be disarmed against its will. Their view has to be the starting point for any discussion of an international force for southern Lebanon, whether it is a beefed-up version of the current UN force, Unifil, or some sort of "coalition of the willing". In one sense Israel created Hizbullah. Its occupation of Lebanon after 1982 turned a group of suicide bombers into a resistance movement like Europe's second world war partisans. Expecting foreigners to remove Hizbullah's weapons is a non-starter. Israel is taking heavy casualties in attempting it. How would other foreign occupiers have more success?

Earlier this year Lebanese parties were holding a "national dialogue" to work out, among other issues, how to strengthen the Lebanese army and find a different role for Hizbullah's guerrilla forces. "One option would be to absorb the militia into the Lebanese army and another would be to turn it into a national guard under government control," Michel Faroun, an MP from the March 14 movement, said last week.

The dialogue on Lebanon's defence strategy was only exploratory, since the government agreed that no decisions could be taken until Israel withdrew from the land known as Shebaa farms, occupied since 1967. The latest two weeks of Israeli attacks have reinforced Hizbullah's argument that it cannot disarm until the Lebanese army is stronger.

It is not a question of redeploying the Lebanese army in Hizbullah's place. Only Hizbullah knows the terrain well enough, and has sufficient experience and motivation to defend Lebanon against any future Israeli invasion.

The Lebanese government's position on the idea of an international force is not yet clear. Hizbullah and Amal, the other Shia party, insist that the Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, only had a mandate in Rome on July 26 to call for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange. Although Siniora expressed support for strengthening Unifil, analysts assume he thought this position was safe as long as the mandate and mission are still to be agreed. If the idea took off he would have time to argue that it can only come in with the consent of Hizbullah and Amal. Attempts to impose a force would risk destroying the Lebanese government and revive the danger of a civil war. Perhaps this is Israel's intention. It has shown great skill in exacerbating splits between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, and may think of doing the same in Lebanon.

European governments should resist the idea. Jacques Chirac has rightly said a Nato force is out of the question since the alliance is seen as "the armed wing of the west". Even without this association, any force would risk being seen as Israel's instrument. Israel's plan seems to be either to use foreigners to do its work or, if that fails, to turn south Lebanon into a giant Rafah -- the city in Gaza where it demolished hundreds of homes and created a free-fire zone in which anything that moved was shot.

What Lebanon needs, as Siniora said in Rome, is an immediate ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal so that refugees can go home before any more destruction is wrought. The world should take its cue from that

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

The happenings in Lebanon during the last three weeks have convinced the world about certain realities: First, the US and Israel are names of the same ruthless hegemony which has been wreaking havoc around the world for the last sixty years. Second: There do not exist any laws or principles except those which suit despots and the avaricious of this world. Third: OIC is a dead horse -- otherwise it would have held an emergency meeting the next day after the assault on Lebanon. Fourth: There is a huge gulf between rulers and the common person in Muslim countries. Fifth: A determined group of courageous persons with a cause can face the most savage and unprincipled force. The people of every Muslim nation recognise the US, Israel and their cronies as enemies of Muslims and Islam, though their rulers tow the line of the West even if it were against the interests of the ummah.

Whatever the intensity of feelings about these factors, they definitely have given a sudden boost to the sentiments of brotherhood among Muslims of the world irrespective of national boundaries and ethnic divisions and the stand taken by their governments. This must have been a surprise to the US' power elite and their Zionist manipulators. A noteworthy aspect of the prevailing situation is that despite almost a universal feeling against Israel and the overwhelming support for the Hezbollah, very few Muslim governments have condemned the invasion of Lebanon and the massive destruction of civilian residential areas in the real sense. What has been said is the standard message of sympathy sent after a large mishap anywhere.

To the shame of Muslims of the world the strongest messages came from France and India. The most publicised sentiments from the Muslim world were expressed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt -- condemning Hezbollah. These messages contain a lesson for the Ummah: the Muslim rulers are not free to take the side of the Ummah as it could displease their protectors. Second, their individual views about Hezbollah and its allegiance with a certain ideology of Islam are more important than the cause behind the present bloodshed. It means that rulers of these states are dishonest since they have taken a stand against the wishes of their people. What can one expect with such rulers around?

The conflict between Israel and the people of Palestine and Arabs in general is related to four basic issues. First: what right did the Jews have to descend on Palestine to establish a government in the heart of a country professing another faith? Second: what right did the usurpers have to displace the local population by force creating some of the most shameful instances of human degradation and misery in the history of mankind? Third: why did the Israelis indulge in expanding the area of their illegally begotten territory and usurp parts of neighbouring countries -- with no intention of returning these territories -- and with every intention to extend their boundaries in future? Fourth: what right did the Israelis have to start the sinister business of indulging in hooliganism on behalf of a confirmed expansionary power located in another part of the world, and transform themselves into a continuous threat for the entire Middle East region?

Nobody needs to answer these questions, as the answers are known -- rather experienced. Israel was created to subjugate the regimes of the Middle East where exist the largest reserves of fossil oil. And it has been fulfilling this function to the entire satisfaction of its sponsor. What is astonishing is the role of the Muslim nations in the region and around the world. One is not an extremist in matter of faith: it is as a human being that one is saddened by the injustice and tyranny inflicted upon adherents of another belief or ideology of any colour, ethnicity and creed.

What is most revolting about the Middle East situation, however, is the forced entrenchment of an alien people gathered from around the world, who have been empowered to become the most dominant power in the region, with an agenda dictated from abroad. One's problem as such is not the Jews but the elements set to degrade and annihilate the Palestinians who are the real masters of the land and treat them as enemies in their own homeland -- with their hope of Muslim help having faded long ago. Their plight is worse than that of the people of East Timor and Darfur whose case is pleaded incessantly -- I suspect -- because they happen to be Christians.

One pleads strong and prompt action to restore to the Palestinians their freedom, dignity and their lands -- at the same time reigning in Israel and stopping its aggression and adventurism in the area. There is no doubt that this will have to be done by Muslims themselves. They should learn by now, that extreme polarisation in the world will not permit any country to come to help in an armed conflict. International assistance in mitigating the effects of natural disasters is entirely a different situation as it can happen to anybody. But who came to help Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon? People of these lands could have looked to their political allies or the Muslim countries, but experience must have taught them that nobody in the world -- including International organisations -- would move even their little finger to save the people of a country invaded by a powerful nation or its side-kick. As such there is no hope of any justice from any world body even in the present case.

With the breakdown of traditional friendships and religious considerations, the weaker nations and their people are left with only two courses. One of them is the formation of new political, social, economic and strategic international organisations based on religious affiliations. Let us be honest: when it comes to matters of religion, which country of the world is really secular and objective? Each one of them surrenders to the religious demands of the majority. To expect otherwise would be unnatural. So Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist nations all have their organisations with religious affiliations. The Jews, like all minorities, have organisations based on their faith.

But Muslims must have learnt a lesson from the state of the existing apex Muslim organisation -- the OIC which does not deserve even a mention as it has failed Muslims again and again. This time, Israel attacked Lebanon on July 13, and the OIC has not been able to even convene a meeting at a junior level. What use is a meeting now when Lebanon has already been battered so badly? 57 members representing 1.4 billion Muslims, through their resolve, could have made Israel think twice before bombing civilians and perhaps the Qana tragedy could have been averted.

As a last word, the world should note that in if the war in Lebanon is intensified and an offensive is initiated against new Muslim targets, the world should be ready for new 'terrorist organisations' and new extremist strategies to destroy; as these are bred by the type of injustice, oppression and desperation that is being faced in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. And they could be far more deadly and crippling than what the world has seen so far![/I]

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

Killing of deaf, dumb and mentally retarded children in Qana with a US-supplied laser-guided missile proves that the human community has no conscience.

How can a special child harm a Jew? The Israelis' sheer hatred of Arabs and President Bush's indifference towards the people of the lesser world speak volumes of their beliefs. I have never encountered an American who would kill a child, a child who can't even cry when hit by a phosphorous bomb.
Its really shameful.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

The responses to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon illustrate the limits of international opinion on a determined state with backing from major powers, as well as the limits of military might when faced with a determined opposition, even if the resistance is outnumbered and outgunned.
While these theoretical issues are of great interest to students of political science, the Muslim world in particular has to absorb certain lessons from this crisis, lessons which have been derivable in the past, but which are now being rammed home with even greater force.
International opinion is just words, in the last analysis. However, in the last couple of centuries, the leaders of the international system, which consisted of the European powers and the USA, have made a commendable effort to place checks on excessive behaviour by other states. Aggression, which used to be an accepted mode of behaviour by states, went out of fashion to the extent that even Hitlerine Germany had to create a fiction of a Polish attack before launching World War II. It is a symptom of this trend that all the world’s War Ministers (which actually meant Army Ministers) turned into Defence Ministers.
So Israel’s second naked aggression against Lebanon in the last quarter of a century has been described as an act of self-defence. This is a little more tenable since the US conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq, where there was little self-defence involved. In the first case, it was punitive action, and in the second it was simply dislike for the regime.
Israel has relived this particular configuration, because whereas its attack on Hamas-ruled Palestine was because it detested the regime, its attack on Lebanon was punishment for its government’s inability or refusal to rein in Hezbollah. And while the USA might have won a certain amount of sympathy for attacking authoritarian regimes, Israel has hit the only two outposts of democracy in the Arab world.
Israel’s attack on Lebanon led to some squawking by other countries, but it managed to obtain a free hand. The USA and other Western powers have not been condemnatory, as expected, but the interesting part is that this time around they have not even been critical. There is no pretence at fairness; they are on Israel’s side.
So who are they against? Why would the USA and other Western powers be so enthusiastic about the Israeli pounding of two democracies? Hamas is perhaps easier to understand. Western powers have never accepted the results of apparently democratic elections unless there was a certain degree of ideological conformity. Salvador Allende was as unacceptable in 1973 as the Sandinistas in 1979, and after the fall of the USSR, as the FIS in Algeria, or Hamas in 2006.
Those who believe that Western democracy is not just compatible with, but completely congruent with, Islam, need to ponder why this is the case. It should never be forgotten that democracy is not just a method of transfer of power, but the political manifestation of capitalism, and constitutes part of an entire package. It is feasible to extract methods from democracy to ensure participatory government in some other system, such as Islam or socialism, but democracy is not just about elections and legitimacy through a popular mandate.
Is Lebanon a primarily Muslim issue? While it is indeed a humanitarian tragedy of huge proportions, with Israeli forces once again proving that they will give no quarter to women and children, Muslims are generally viewing it as an attack on ‘themselves.’ On the other hand, their governments are viewing it as an attack on a friendly country, but are distancing themselves from the whole episode.
Pakistan’s reaction is typical. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz thinks he has done his national and international duty by telephoning his Lebanese counterpart, assuring him of his deepest sympathies, and promising more relief goods. Fawad Siniora probably would have preferred anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft missiles and a couple of divisions of mechanized infantry thrown in, but all he is getting is sympathy and relief goods, as if his country was hit by an earthquake, as if his affliction has come from an act of God, not from men.
Siniora is caught in a nutcracker. He might wish to disarm the Hezbollah militia, but it is a political actor. The only force which could keep it in check, the Syrian occupying forces, has been thrown out by US intervention, and now a small Lebanese army is supposed to do what the powerful Israeli army cannot. And since the Israeli army is failing to achieve its military objectives, Lebanon is being punished. This is much like the USA’s –do-more’ tactics with Pakistan over Afghanistan, where its own military’s professional failures are being covered up by blaming Pakistan for not doing enough.
Israel, the USA and India are all united by a wish to see other Muslims deal with their Muslim problems. Pakistan is involved in two of these problems, in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Condemnatory resolutions and sympathetic noises are not helping the Lebanese, any more than they helped the Palestinians, the Kashmiris, the Chechens, the Afghans and the Iraqis, or even the many Muslim victims of murder and massacre committed by other Muslims. The nearest to a practical solution came from Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who called on the Muslim governments to form a single military force to expel the Israelis from Lebanon. There is a certain sense in this. The 50-odd members of the OIC have more than four million men under arms, apart from something like 4000 military aircraft, over 20,000 tanks and heavens knows how many artillery pieces. A lot of this equipment is in horrible shape, but it is better than nothing.
However, the problem is that there are more than 50 governments, and they will never act in unison. There we come to a concept which our own President Pervez Musharraf has popularized in another context: unity of command. If there was a single government commanding these forces, then a rather different situation would prevail.
Muslims, after a millennium of thinking of each other as essentially the same, had nationalism imposed on them by the colonial experience. The paradox is that while they have not developed vibrant nationalisms of their own, as the originators did, they have certainly developed a feeling of hostility towards other Muslim nationalities. We bemoan the failure to develop a true Pakistani nationalism, at the same time as we bemoan the Arab and Palestinian failure to do anything for us. Yet these same Arabs have stopped fighting for their rights in the name of nationalism alone, as they did until 1982. Now the fighting is done in the name of Islam as well, and this automatically creates a vested interest throughout the Islamic world. Kashmir. Afghanistan. Iraq. Chechnya. All have had ‘foreigners’ laying down their lives not in the name of international brotherhood, but Islam.
Until Muslims themselves understand the phenomena that are at work in this readiness to sacrifice for ‘others’ who are actually ‘ours’, there is little chance of a resolution. There will continue to be bloodshed, humiliation and suffering. We come back to the need for unity of command. How is this to be achieved? That is, again to quote Musharraf, ‘just tactics.’ Once we agree on the strategy, that will be easier than anyone could think.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

A CENTRAL claim of the Bush administration’s foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism. So what do you do when you get a democratically elected terrorist organisation? Ignore the contradiction. Pretend it doesn’t exist.

In the past few weeks there has been something utterly surreal about the US continuing to allow the Israeli military to pummel Hezbollah, and kill women and children along the way, while insisting that Washington’s purpose is to strengthen the legitimate, democratic government of Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, has been calling desperately for the one thing that the US and Israel have refused: an immediate ceasefire. And Hezbollah, which the US and Britain characterise as a terrorist organisation, is itself an important part of that democratically elected government.

So we must do everything for that democratically elected government except what it asks. We know best what is good for them. Whoever said democracy meant letting the people themselves decide? As Lebanon’s special envoy, Tarek Mitri, told PBS, America’s publicly funded broadcaster, on Tuesday: “You can’t support a government while you’re allowing its country to be ruined.”

Meanwhile, Hamas is not allowed to operate as the democratically elected government of the Palestinians. The Palestinian people spoke. But they got it wrong. They must have been misinformed. They must think again.

Of course there’s a real dilemma here. Just because Hamas and Hezbollah competed and did well in elections, that doesn’t mean you must accept everything they stand for. Both are Janus-faced movements, as was IRA/Sinn Fein. Engaging with Hezbollah-as-Sinn Fein or Hamas-as-Sinn Fein doesn’t mean tolerating the terrorist activities of Hezbollah-as-IRA or Hamas-as-IRA. Up to a point, you can fight the terrorist side while encouraging the political side. In fact, the name of the game is precisely to shift their calculus of self-interest towards peaceful politics, by increasing both the costs of violence and the benefits of participation.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy. They involve negotiating with terrorists, letting some past wrongs go unpunished and accepting that a movement’s militant rhetoric may lag behind the more pragmatic reality of its position. Everything, in fact, that the US practised in its relations with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which it initially characterised — with reason — as “without any questions, a terrorist group”.

Two diametrically opposite conclusions may be drawn from these first strange fruits of democratisation in the Middle East. One is to say that the whole Bush agenda of supporting democratisation in the Arab and Islamic world was misguided from the start — the product of a naive, missionary-cowboy approach to international politics. It destabilises. It brings terrorists and extremists to power.

The cure is worse than the disease. So let’s get back to seasoned old “realism”. Let’s not try to transform these countries or expect them to be more like us, but take them as they are. Let’s pursue our national interests — security, trade, energy — with whatever allies we can find. Stability comes first.

This is the default position of much European diplomacy. It’s the wisdom of Jacques Chirac. Curiously enough, it’s also where some of the European left ends up — taken there by its opposition to “war for democracy” a la Bush and Blair, or simply by the kneejerk “If Bush is for it, we must be against it”. But following the American debate closely over the past weeks, I find that opposition to the democratisation agenda is also growing inside the US.

There has always been a Republican “realist” position, associated with figures such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Bush Sr. After Iraq, and this latest imbroglio, it could regain the upper hand in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. It could win out on the other side of American politics too. If one looks at the foreign-policy debate among Democrats, one finds a strong strain of such “realism” — though tagged with “progressive”.

The argument that the US should pull back from this poisonous world, look to its own economic interests and find allies wherever it can appeals to a significant part of the Democratic electorate. For many Democrats, the fact that the current president has identified himself so strongly with the promotion of democracy is another reason for being sceptical about the promotion of democracy. If democratising the Middle East means Iraq, Hezbollah and Hamas, better not try it.

I believe this is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw. In the long run, the growth of liberal democracies is the best hope for the wider Middle East. It’s the best hope of modernisation, which the Arab world desperately needs; of addressing the root causes of Islamist terrorism, inasmuch as they lie in those countries rather than among Muslims living in the West; and of enabling Arabs, Israelis, Iranians, Kurds and Turks to live side by side without war. But it will be a long march.

We know from elsewhere that the intermediate period of transition to democracy can be a dangerous time, that it can actually increase the danger of violence, especially in countries divided along ethnic and religious lines, and where you rush to the party-political competition for power without first having a functioning state with well-defined borders, a near-monopoly of force, the rule of law, independent media and a strong civil society. That’s what happened in the former Yugoslavia. That’s what’s been happening, in different ways, in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq. Full, liberal democracy contributes to peace; partial, half-baked democratisation can increase the danger of war.

What we in the community of established liberal democracies should do is not abandon the pursuit of democratisation but refine it. Recognise that only in exceptional circumstances (such as post-war Germany and Japan) do democracies grow from under military occupation, and that the purpose of building democracy does not justify military intervention. Accept that, as the Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji wrote in the New York Times, it’s better for people to find their own paths to freedom, and our job is to support them.

Learn from experience that well-defined borders, the rule of law and independent media are as important as an election — and may need to precede it. That along the way you have to negotiate with nasty people and regimes, such as Syria and Iran. And that, in this dirty, complicated world, advocates of armed struggle — terrorists, if you will — can become democratic leaders. Like Menachem Begin. Like Gerry Adams. Like Nelson Mandela.

So let’s not throw out the democratisation baby with the Bush bathwater. There’s a seriously good idea there. It just needs to be a lot better executed, and with patience for the long haul. The right conclusion is strange but true: a little democracy is a dangerous thing — so let’s have more of it.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

A new challenge for Nato



“The mission is simple - but the delivery of it is complex,” British defence secretary, Des Browne, told the Commons last month, a neat summary of Britain’s task in Afghanistan, but also a misleading one. It would have been better to have admitted that the mission this country has taken on is anything but simple.

These are testing times for friends of a liberal, interventionist foreign policy, caught between Iraq, the White House and a prime minister who in his more manichaean moments presents every aspect of world affairs as a struggle between progress and reaction, a battle that admits no subtlety and no prospect of compromise. The many people who question this absolute vision but do not want to turn their back on the world are being left out of a debate that is being cut down to extremes.

Tony Blair did nothing to help such reasonable people last week when he denounced Islamic resistance to the West as “a revolt against the modern world — its diversity, its mass culture, its belief in equality of race and gender, its openness”. This is close to describing events in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon as part of a single battle for civilisation, which is setting the stakes far too high.

Not only does it misrepresent the reality of three different (if at times interlinked) conflicts, and the scale and causes of the fighting in each, but it dooms his task. On Mr Blair’s measure, success means reshaping societies, through force of arms if necessary, which cannot be achieved in the terms he describes. One consequence — already evident in parts of British debate — may be a gradual turning away from all progressive engagement with the world, in favour of a strict definition of national interest. A pragmatic assessment of the purpose and limits to intervention is needed if the cause is to survive.

In Afghanistan, David Richards, the British commander of Nato’s international security assistance force, took on new responsibilities for security in the south of the country and spoke, rightly, of the need to break the “cycle of oppression, murder and poverty”. That task that has so far cost the lives of eight British soldiers in action and seen the country experience its bloodiest spell in five years.

Conflict has extended beyond the southern Helmand province, where British forces are concentrated; it has certainly unsettled hopes that last year’s successful election marked a new period of stability for Afghanistan. Retreat now would mean calamity for a country whose history since 2001 has stood in contrast to the bloody mayhem of Iraq: new schools, 3 million refugees returned home, slow but real economic growth and a legitimate government — which yesterday saw a new chief justice elected.

Afghanistan was a failed state: all progress now is good news. But that does not mean doubts about what comes next should be buried. General Richards has himself expressed unease about the confused and contradictory programme of reconstruction in the country - calling it “close to anarchy”.

The risk is that for all the prime minister’s definitive vision of good against evil, Afghanistan will follow the pattern set in other countries that have seen western intervention, perhaps not Iraq but certainly Bosnia and Kosovo. Neither has become self-sustaining, though both have a form of peace.

The reality of nation-building is complex. It requires time, luck and money, it cannot be imposed from the outside alone and it means deciding that small gains are sometimes the best that can be hoped for. There is nothing noble about aiming for impossible perfection: whether a settlement before a ceasefire in Lebanon or the rapid transformation of Afghan civil society.

Accepting this does not mean abandoning liberal values, as the prime minister has said, nor does it mean tolerating injustice. Instead it means considering what can be done and what cannot; a liberal foreign policy not an absolutist one.

—The Guardian, London

Middle East conflict is unlike any other, in the sense that many lives and issues are inextricably entangled in it. The grievances born out of the creation of the state of Israel more than half a century ago still persist, especially the plight of the Palestinians who became stateless refugees over night is heart-rending.
Usama Abu el-Sheikh writes from Shatila refugee camp in Beirut.
My name is Usama Abu el-Sheikh, and I am from Tabaria, Palestine. I am of course a refugee and have never been to my hometown in Palestine though I learned about it from my grandparents and I read some books about it. I have never been to Tabaria, but I am Tabarian, and will remain so, as I am from Shatila too and will remain so. Although I always dreamt of corresponding with my country and my hometown to see if I still have relatives there, I was unable to, because there is no mail between Lebanon and the State of Israel. Ironically, only the missiles of Hezbollah can be sent to Israel. We are not allowed to return, but the missiles go where we cannot. But how can you send love to Tabaria with a missile?
I am nineteen now, and I grew up in Shatila camp. As a child I wanted to be many things, sometimes a doctor, other times an engineer or a journalist. As a child, you know, I could dream whatever I wanted to and I wanted to be many things. As I was growing up though, my dreams started to be hit by my reality, by my being a refugee in Lebanon where we have no civil rights.
Being the oldest son of a widowed mother with seven children and no one to care for her after the death of my dad, when I was just seven years old, I lived a real struggle inside. My father’s words as he was on his death bed asking me to “care for the family” are the words that keep echoing in my head. I got to be the “man of the household” without choosing it, without knowing it. As a child, it was ok, but as I was becoming a teenager, I always wanted to fulfil this responsibility and always I was not able to stand the fact that I’m not fulfilling my responsibility as the head of the household.
My mum, like all Palestinian mothers, wanted me to get my education. For her it was the way to help the family out, because the identity “educated” is kind of a compensation of our lost identity as Palestinians - not lost in terms of our own feelings but in terms of how the world deals with us. It was hard to focus though, especially because I couldn’t see a future. How could I be a doctor in a country where I have no rights? So I left school, and now I work in a phone call shop in the camp.
Maybe you are wondering why I am writing to you about my personal life at a time of war. I just wanted to express that this war reinforced my ideas that what we need is a collective solution for everyone, not individual solutions such as are offered here and there. Just as being “educated” will not replace my loss of identity, a solution for Palestine, separate from Lebanon or Syria or Iraq is not going to be possible.
I sit in the camp and think about how much effort is put to separate us all from each other. And now we have the F-16s over our heads joining us together, all in one camp. I do not mean Shatila camp, but a much bigger camp for all those whose lives are cheap in this world, the camp of those who die like bugs, the camp for those on whom they test their weapons.
As proud as I am of Lebanon’s resistance, I do not think I will be returning to Palestine soon. I will keep sending my love to my hometown in Palestine. I know that the world never hears our cries. But they do hear the roar of the missiles. Can you send love on a missile?
With love from Shatila.
Lebanon harbours more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees; descendants of the 100,000 that arrived there in 1949, who had fled or were expelled from their homes and lands in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel. They are still unable to return to their homes.
Their right of return was recognised for the first time by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 194 of 1948. By the resolution 3236 of 1974, it became an ‘inalienable right’ of the refugees.
This is just in Lebanon. In toto, the number of Palestinian Diaspora runs into millions and they constitute roughly 18 per cent of the total refugee population of the world.
Their life is a constant struggle for survival amid the most unfavourable conditions imaginable.
Majority of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in 12 official refugee camps, like the one at Shatila, serviced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, others live either in cities and towns or what are known as unofficial camps.
Lebanon is rightly concerned about the presence of such a large refugee population on its soil. With the recorded population growth rate of 3.1 per cent among the Palestinians, Lebanon fears that they would soon outnumber the Lebanese. Thus it has imposed various restrictions upon the Palestinians that are against the tenants of international law.
Palestinians are forbidden to construct any homes or shelters using bricks. The ceilings of their homes and makeshift shelters are usually made of corrugated metal or bamboo sticks topped by mud. In addition, since 2001, Lebanese law has effectively prevented Palestinian refugees from owning property in Lebanon.
Furthermore, for years, Palestinians were not allowed to work in dozens of professions in Lebanon, including, as accountants, secretaries, deputy directors, marketing agents, salespersons, pharmacists, electricians, guards, drivers, cooks, hairdressers or engineers. After June 2005, Palestinian refugees are permitted to work in various occupations by law, though not those governed by a professional syndicate such as engineering, medicine and pharmacy, from which they are still barred.
Non-ID Palestinian refugees are a category of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who do not possess valid identification documents; due to this, they face more severe restrictions on their human rights than registered refugees.
They are also unable to register their marriages as they have no official registration themselves.
Given the importance of marriage in the Palestinian community in Lebanon, not being able to get or register as married can have profound social consequences and even psychological and economic consequences.
Amnesty International quotes the example of Miryam, a 20-year-old non-ID Palestinian refugee, in its recent report.
Miryam is engaged for five years to a Lebanese man. However, she has not been able to get married as her marriage would not get a civil recognition because she has no documents. Her family has been working on the papers for years, but there seems to be nothing that they can do. Consequently, she is very depressed.
With no hope for the future and no connection with the past for many of these second or third generation refugees, depression is too small a word to express their predicament.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.

AS the intensity of Israel’s savagery against the Palestinians and the Lebanese increases by the hour, two questions are agitating many a mind: how could Israel ‘fight’ two wars simultaneously — in Gaza and Lebanon — and what is it that Israel seeks to achieve in Lebanon?

The answer to the first question is easy. Israel is not ‘fighting’ on two fronts; it’s merely decimating and pulverising two defenceless peoples in Gaza and Lebanon. There’s no element of a fight between a Goliath armed to the teeth, by the generosity of the sole superpower of our times, and two minuscule Davids, armed with only stones and brickbats (as in the case of the hapless Palestinians) or piddling Katyusha rockets (in the ‘arsenal’ of the much-maligned Hezbollah in Lebanon) carrying more pyrotechnics than payloads.

Arrayed against this pittance is formidable state-of-the-art weaponry — F-16s, helicopter gunships, 1000-pound ‘bunker busters’, napalms, sophisticated missiles, ‘smart bombs’ et al. You name any weapon worthy of being in the arsenal of a superpower and you can rest assured that Israel would have it, thanks to its mentors and partners in Washington. In more than 40 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy (whose demise was engineered, many suspect, because he wasn’t too enthusiastic about Israel’s then budding nuclear arsenal), Israel has received more than 110 billion dollars in military and economic assistance from Washington; the bulk of it in the form of military aid.

As if all this wasn’t enough for the partisans of Israel in Washington, Pentagon announced a ‘gift’ of $210 million worth of aviation fuel for Israel to help it “keep peace and security in the region” just as the Israeli warplanes and bunker busters were raining down hell-fire on the hapless civilians of Beirut. No wonder Israeli warplanes have been roaming the skies over Lebanon with such abandon in this age of costly aviation fuel; they can always count on their pipeline to the Pentagon.

Pentagon’s largesse was followed by the US ambassador to the UN John Bolton’s yet another veto to kill a Security Council draft resolution critical of Israel. In the years since the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli war, the US has exercised its veto more than 90 times; and each time in support of Israel, rendering the UN totally impotent to act as a referee between Israel and the Palestinian and Arab victims of its aggression.

A tail wagging the dog is always a funny situation. However, a pigmy state dictating the policies of a giant power isn’t funny but tragic, both for the superpower itself and for the world, too. In its unabashed infatuation with the Israeli agenda of expansionism in the Middle East, Washington has lost all its pretensions of being an honest broker, especially under its neo-conservative ruling elite.

The quest for a ‘final solution’ to the festering Palestinian question has dominated the agenda of Israel and its neo- conservative allies and mentors in Washington, especially since the cataclysm of 9/11 that facilitated the laying down of ideal conditions for reaching this much-desired end-result of nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. In other words, the drafting of a joint Israeli-US agenda to hammer out a new political map of the region, favourable entirely to the interests of both allies, was undertaken in right earnest.

Branding the Palestinian struggle for liberation of their territories as an act of ‘terrorism’ was the first salvo under the new game plan. Yasser Arafat was corralled and incarcerated within the walls of his headquarters in Ramallah, eventually to die there three years later. In that period, the Palestinians were brutally pummelled by an unrepentant Ariel Sharon. His clear intent was to break the back of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. But he failed to extinguish the flame of freedom in the occupied territory, or Gaza, just as he had failed earlier in Lebanon in the 1980.

Even the death of Arafat, or the building of the neo-apartheid ‘wall’ on Palestinian lands didn’t bring Sharon closer to realising his age-old dream of getting done with a people who refused to fade into the shadows of history.

Not only did the Palestinians refuse to submit to Tel Aviv, they also committed the ultimate ‘sin’ of electing Hamas, a terrorist party in Washington’s and Israel’s lexicon, to power, early in January this year, in response to George W. Bush’s clarion call for democracy in the Arab world. What the Palestinians didn’t understand was that they were supposed to exercise their democratic right by only acting within the parameters laid down for them by Washington.

The policy planners of the US and Israel rushed to their common drawing board as soon as the last ballot had been counted in the Palestinian camp, bringing Hamas to power as the dictates of democracy demanded. The unthinkable had happened and the Palestinians had to be punished for their ‘folly’ of electing a ‘terrorist’ outfit. So unabashed were these policy planners, and their leaders, that they openly talked of drawing up a joint strategy to drive Hamas out of power. Starving the Palestinians was declared fair and legitimate. All aid to the Palestinian Authority was cut off, and Israel clamped a virtual blockade of Gaza. Even the incapacitation of Sharon, the architect of expansionism, didn’t dampen enthusiasm in Tel Aviv or Washington to implement the plan.

However, an excuse, or ruse, had to be invented before the full force of the Israeli punch could be unleashed against the Palestinians. Neither of the allies had forgotten what Alexander Haig, Secretary of State to Ronald Reagan, had advised the then Israeli defence minister, Ariel Sharon, in 1982, when he went to Washington to receive America’s green signal for his planned invasion of Lebanon to weed out the PLO. Haig directed him to find a convincing alibi for the world. An abortive attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador to Britain was quickly laid at the door of the PLO and Lebanon was invaded with impunity and Washington’s full blessings.

On this occasion the fuse was lit with the ‘abduction’ of the 19-year old corporal Gilad Shalit, on June 25.

The world’s memory may be short but not that short as to forget that the ‘tit’ of Shalit’s abduction was in response to the ‘tat’ of a day earlier, June 24, when a Palestinian doctor and his son were snatched by the Israelis from Gaza. Few in the outside world would even remember that thuggery or know the names of the Palestinians grabbed and imprisoned by the Israeli intelligence. There is no trace of the Palestinian abductees. But for the recovery of the corporal, Israel has been tearing Gaza upside down, and inflicting collective punishment of a most ruthless kind on its 1.4 million inhabitants.

The same medicine of horrendous collective punishment is also being administered on the Lebanese, because Hezbollah dared to upset the apple cart being arranged by the Israelis and the Americans. Hasan Nasrallah, the charismatic leader of Hezbollah, is now the latest candidate fit to be made another horrible example of, in the mould of Arafat and Saddam Hussein, in order to knock the fear of Israel into the hearts of those Arabs who are still unprepared to accept the reality of the Jewish state as the sentinel of Pax Americana in the region.

Why George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who desperately aspires to be a worthy successor to his mentor Ariel Sharon, are so furious with Hezbollah isn’t so hard to explain. They thought they had taken care of Lebanon for good following the mysterious assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri last year. They were quick to blame the murder on Syria, although the jury is still out on it. But Syria was hounded out of Lebanon in its wake, exactly according to the game plan chalked up by the two allies. Everything was going according to a plan, until Hezbollah spoiled it.

The hawks in Washington, synchronising every move on the political chessboard with their Israeli counterparts, think they can still make the best of a bad situation by inflicting maximum punishment on Hezbollah, for daring to stand up to Israel; on the Lebanese people, for refusing to discard Hezbollah as their only line of defence against Israel; and on the Lebanese government, for not kowtowing to Israel and not denouncing Hezbollah.

Though belatedly, the European countries have started to speak in support of a ceasefire in Lebanon, Washington is still resisting it in order to give as much time as necessary to its ally to finish the job. But the real task, which both Israel and the US want to accomplish, is to somehow entice Syria and Iran to jump into the fray. Bush, in particular, has no qualms about pointing the finger at Syria for its ‘involvement’ in Lebanon, and blaming Iran for arming Hezbollah. He has given a carte blanche to Olmert to pound Lebanon to smithereens. He is at one with Olmert to seek not only a ‘final’ solution in Palestine but also ‘dismantle’ Hezbollah, something that Sharon couldn’t do in a quarter century.

So, the best UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan can do is to make barely audible murmurs of protestations in support of an international force to be sandwiched between Israel and Lebanon — something that looks distant and unfeasible at the moment. Israel, and its American mentors, must have their full pound of Arab flesh before the guns fall silent in Palestine and Lebanon.

And what about the reaction in the Arab world? The silence of the lambs reigns there and stays there. The Arab people may shed all the tears they have over the plight and persecution of their brethren but that doesn’t bother their rulers, whose fealty to Washington is beyond reproach.

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This is the sign of 1 who loves GOD that his chief care z goodness n devotion n his words r mostly in praise n glorification of GOD.