Usa And Lebanon - Page 3

hira iftikhar rana · #21 Tuesday, August 08, 2006

INSTEAD of bringing the Israel-Hezbollah conflict to an end, the US-French draft UN resolution threatens to deepen the crisis, and would entail continued bloodshed and havoc. Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria have rejected it on the obvious ground that it fails to meet legitimate Lebanese demands.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fawad Siniora, in a press interview, defended Hezbollah as “playing an important role in the independence and freedom of Lebanon” and maintained that his seven-point peace formula, including a demand for “complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli troops” was the only means of stopping the hostilities. In the regional context also, his views tallied with the general Muslim and Arab assessment that peace ‘depended on Israel’ and could be attained once it pulled out from all occupied Arab territories. Hezbollah dismissed the draft resolution out of hand; it would continue fighting till Israel ceased aggression and removed its forces from Lebanon. Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem declared after meeting Lebanese President Émile Lahoud on Sunday that if Israel were to attack his country, it was ready to face the challenge of a regional war and respond with all means at its disposal, raising the fear of a widening of the war. Iran, accused by the West of arming Hezbollah along with Syria, has termed it “one-sided” incapable of solving the crisis.
Dr Condoleezza Rice called for the resolution’s early passage by the Security Council, but expected it to end “large-scale violence” only. Her belief that violence in the Middle East would continue “for some time to come” is well founded, since the policies the sole superpower has been pursuing and the kind of resolution it is piloting could not be expected to put a stop to it. Since Israel mercilessly attacked Gaza and later Lebanon, Washington has come out more forcefully than ever before in support of its outpost in the region, refusing to listen to earnest pleas for an immediate end to the unceasing massacres of civilians and destruction of vital infrastructure. The scenario is becoming gloomier by the moment and crying out for a humane and rational approach. Israeli supporters at the UNSC must pay heed to the small still voice of their conscience and amend the resolution to ensure a fair deal to the parties to the conflict. There is an urgent need for the world community to genuinely strive for resolution of the Middle East problem that has been the cause of the sufferings of Palestinians. That is the surest route to peace and security for Israelis as well.

hira iftikhar rana · #22 Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Israel never ended the conflict even as it packed up from Lebanon in 2000 and kept intruding intro its southern part at will and killing people whenever it wanted. The views expressed by Dr Kim Howells, British Minister of State at Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in last Sunday’s Oped pages of this paper that “Hezbollah…unquestionably bears the responsibility for unleashing this violent state of affairs” are patently absurd; they fly in the face of facts, both current and historical.
For a look at the real background and provocation of the current war, the reader must turn over the page of the same day’s paper and see Anders Strindberg’s masterly analysis of the situation and the aggressive and infuriating policies, which Israel has unremittingly pursued since its withdrawal. Hezbollah’s act of July 12 was a retaliatory move and not “murderous cross-border raid into Israel” that constituted “as act of extreme and gratuitous provocation”. It was an engagement in the continuing conflict.
As the UN monitors’ report points out, Israel crosses the ‘Blue Line’ into Lebanon on an almost daily basis. It shoots and kills ordinary civilians, abducts them at will, refuses to give maps of mines it had laid in the area it occupied, mines that maim and kill ordinary civilians off and on and does not hand over Sheba Farm. Unlike Hezbollah, it has not honoured the agreement on swapping prisoners and kept three popular Lebanese figures in custody. Thus, the conflict never ended with the end of occupation; it has been kept alive with daily acts of provocation by Israel.
If Dr Howells terms the Hezbollah act of killing Israeli soldiers as “murderous”, one wonders what adjective he would use to describe the reign of civilian deaths and terror created by Israel’s deliberate bombardment of housing compounds, busy city centres, fleeing survivors, powers stations, roads, bridges and airports – in fact, any object that comes into view, not sparing the clearly marked Red Cross vehicles nor the UN observers post. The UN post repeatedly told the Israel command that it was under attack and reminded it of its status. Yet it continued to hit it, causing the deaths of four observers. By all counts, the Jewish state is a terrorist entity.
Hezbollah had stuck to the principle of only targeting soldiers, till Israel set about raining murders and mayhem from the skies on the Lebanese non-combatant civilian population in the current onslaught. It has been firing rockets on the Israeli territory only in response and to drive the Israeli forces out of the country. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon has aptly observed that “Hezbollah is playing an important role in the independence and freedom of Lebanon”. Yet in the eyes of the West, it is a terrorist outfit.
The West does not perceive Israel as a terrorist state; it only exercises its right of self-defence as its planes raze to the ground a civilian building at Qana and murder in one devastating raid 37 children kept in its basement. The building could not possibly have been mistaken for a military target. It was considered safe.
Tel Aviv aims at instilling shock and awe among the public with ruthless and indiscriminate air raids. Yet ignoring the well-known Jewish hold of the media in the West that mostly feeds the rest of the world also, Dr Howells blames Hezbollah for flooding “the world’s media with graphic images of death and destruction” and calls it a “cynical ploy” to gain sympathy. The world should know that the ghastly scenes of death and chaos are not just mental pictures; they are real. If anything, the media is not relaying, and indeed is incapable of depicting, them in stark detail that only those present on the spot could observe. The reality is much more horrible. It is Israel that is creating these images. It would be an interesting study to find out how Hezbollah, being relentlessly hammered by a mighty military machine for the past 28 days and with scarce sources to spare, has been responsible for flooding the media with them.
Hezbollah has a popular base that transcends the religious barrier. An investigator was able to trace the antecedents of 38 Lebanese, who voluntarily participated in the Hezbollah suicide attacks against the last Israeli occupation. Only eight of them were Islamists; the rest were ordinary citizens, among them Christians, including a woman. Hezbollah is perceived by the Lebanese as a genuine resistance movement.
The indomitable courage it has shown in the current fight against Israel has raised its standing in the world, galvanised the entire Lebanese population behind it (note above the Lebanese Premier’s opinion of it) and gained it support not only in the Arab street but also Muslims the world over. The Israeli strategists, who felt that the resistance organisation could be pulverised in a matter of days, are having second thoughts.
The lop-sided US-French draft resolution before the Security Council is hardly the stuff that could eliminate Hezbollah. Impartial analysts do not see in it the chances of peace being restored. American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seems only interested in ending “large-scale violence”, obviously, to assuage the international outrage at the Israeli brutal attacks. Her idea that it would continue “for some time to come” contains the false hope that such iniquitous measures could ensure lasting peace.
It has been a major flaw in Western thinking that resistance forces (“the culture of violent militancy”) can be wiped out with brutal force, leaving the causes that gave rise to them unaddressed. Similarly, it is too facile to think that tackling illiteracy, joblessness and poverty would by themselves eliminate violent militancy. It is noteworthy that all the 17 suspects of 9/11 were highly educated and most of them in Western universities and not, by any chance, poor. In fact, education is an effective means of creating awareness of the deprivation of political and social rights. And when driven to the wall, even the educated and well off would turn violent. The handicaps of illiteracy, joblessness and poverty, instead, generally breed hopelessness and listlessness.
There is no doubt that violence and instability would inhibit progress, but subjugating nations, exploiting them and appropriating their resources are far more damaging and regressive steps.
The Middle East crisis, whether it manifests itself in Lebanon, 9/11 or other acts of violent reaction, is basically the question of rights of the Palestinian people. It is their right to independence and freedom and the security of life and property that has to be guaranteed to see the last of resistance organisations like Hezbollah. Repressive and tendentious measures can only exacerbate the situation. They are a recipe for radicalising the people. Only a just solution of the Palestinian problem would eliminate ‘violent militancy’. Otherwise, the birth pangs of a new Middle East that Secretary Rice sees would have no ending.

hira iftikhar rana · #23 Tuesday, August 08, 2006

It is unfortunate that instead of calling for restraint Bush offered support to Israel’s ruthless raids on civilians in Lebanon, killing innocent people, and its (Israel’s) reoccupation of Gaza. Embracing no policy is also a policy because it gives the US administration a room for double standards and opportunity to serve its hidden agendas.
The Bush administration has deliberately followed a wrong policy on Palestine that helped Hamas win. Now that victory has become a sore point resulting into escalation of conflict and unnecessary bloodshed and Israel’s adventurism into Lebanon. May it be issues related to Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the dire need is to opt for political solutions rather than military action. To linger on with issues, especially in the Middle East, is not in the interest of the American people.
Abandonment of any peace process anywhere in the world can lead to disastrous consequences. Bush is fond of starting wars not knowing how to end. This phenomenon has been very aptly described by the well-known scholar Peter Galbraith in terms of American incompetence and Bush’s ignorance and lack of knowledge. It is a question that also relates to American administrations’ prejudices and biases against the Muslim world.
Go and talk to Hezbollah. Hezbollah sure can become America’s partner in the peace process if there is an element of sincerity on the part of the US and Israel. Credibility on both sides is essential. Israel had earlier rejected the ceasefire. Now the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has rejected Egypt’s call for prompt action regarding immediate ceasefire stating that ceasefire would be advisable once the root cause of the fighting (in the US view, Hezbollah’s aggression) was addressed. Strange enough, in the US view, Israel is not the aggressor now or at any other point in time.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Hezbollah of coordinating with Iran its capture of two Israeli soldiers, enabling Tehran to divert attention away from its nuclear programme. According to reports, Israel’s incessant attacks on Lebanon have done more than wreak a terrible human toll. They have also badly affected country’s fragile economy just when it was on the road to recovery. It is a nation under siege. According to some sources Israel is deliberately looking to destroy the Lebanese economy under the pretext of wanting to eliminate Hezbollah, and the international community must know that.
The US-Israel approach to the Palestine issue has become more complex with the passage of time, virtually denying to Palestinians the right to self-determination and the promise of establishing an independent Palestine state. Israel is staking a claim to the exclusive use of force as an instrument of policy and punishment, and is seeking to deny any opposing state or non-state actor a similar right. If Israel has right to self defence and has the right to use force, so do its neighbours. An analysis into the history of Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty since the late 60s is quite revealing.
The real issue in this context therefore is the right to resist Israeli arrogance and be treated at par with it in every respect. Why should Israel compel its adversaries to do its bidding. Why should it act with vengeance? And why should it not end its years’ long stupid war against the helpless Palestinians and the innocent civilians in Lebanon.
Violations of human rights by Israel and unjust policies of countries supporting Israel are the major source of terrorism. Anti-West terrorism is likely to grow if appropriate timely measures are not initiated to correct the situation in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Take action where it is needed instead of indulging in blame-game.
Peace in the Middle East is the key to better socio-economic status for the people of the region and the people around the world. Instead of putting pressure on Hezbollah, Hamas and others, a policy of cooperation and cooptation can be expected to produce desired outcome in terms of peace and welfare of the people. Any perceptual biases and psychological fixations on the part of the white house will be barriers to communication for results.
Most often than not individuals and groups that become objects of hate at point in time are directly or indirectly the creation of those who later start to hate them. The once favourite are labeled extremists fundamentalists and terrorists. That is the end result of utilitarian politics and the height of unethical behaviour of the West, which has exploited situations in most developing countries, making and breaking relations for selfish interests.
Bush’s ‘New Middle – East’ means Israeli dominance of the region. This is not going to be the right step towards peace and the resolution of the crises.

hira iftikhar rana · #24 Wednesday, August 09, 2006

ALMOST one thousand civilian deaths, almost a million displaced, four UN peacekeepers killed and some 10 injured, Lebanese army barracks destroyed with numerous casualties caused to soldiers who stayed away from the conflict and 60 per cent or more of Lebanon’s infrastructure destroyed.

This is the grim tally resulting from the disproportionate response of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and of the Bush administration’s decision to view the crisis as an opportunity to redraw the map in the Middle East.

There is no end in sight since it is apparent from the 200 or more rockets being fired every day into northern Israel, some with deadly effect, that the ostensible prime target — Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal — has not yet been destroyed nor has the ability of the Hezbollah to launch such rockets been seriously affected.

If the Israeli air force has failed so far to deliver on the promises that the air force commander is said to have made, the Israeli army’s advance into Lebanon is having even tougher going with the Hezbollah resistance proving to be far more resilient than the Israelis had been led to expect. Press reports suggest that at least twice Israeli forces have been thrown out of the border village of Bint Jebeil. Elsewhere, Hezbollah has claimed that four Israeli tanks have been damaged in villages for occupation of which battles have been raging intermittently since the conflict began on July 12.

The Israelis have been critical of their prime minister’s decision to rely primarily on the air force to destroy Hezbollah and are now deeply worried about the casualty count which is bound to mount as Israel pursues a land offensive with the ostensible purpose of driving Hezbollah out of the approximately 15-mile depth that lies between the Lebanese Israeli border and the Litani river.

Some Muslim commentators have expressed their apprehension that Israeli aggression is aimed not merely at the destruction of Hezbollah’s military potential but at the reoccupation of southern Lebanon at least up to the Litani river. Farfetched this may well be but it is indicative of the deep distrust of Israeli and US motives among the people of the region.

Meanwhile, the Israeli people are also concerned about the damage - relatively light when compared to Lebanese losses - that Hezbollah rockets have inflicted on the morale of the Israeli people and on the image of invincibility that the Israelis had acquired after their lightning fast victories in earlier wars with their Arab neighbours. The killing of 12 Israeli army reservists, who were due to move into Lebanon, just south of the Israeli-Lebanese border at the village of Kifr Giladi has intensified such concerns and prompted an intensification of Israeli air attacks.

In the light of these ground realities Prime Minister Olmert’s claims of having crippled Hezbollah sound almost as bombastic as the claims Arab leaders used to make during their losing wars against Israel. This early and remarkable success on the part of Hezbollah, and the folk hero status its leader Sheikh Nasrallah has acquired in an Arab world sadly bereft of heroic figures, must not, however, blind us to reality.

It is inevitable, given the overwhelming Israeli military superiority and the unending chain of supplies from the US on the one hand, and the cutting off of all supply routes for Hezbollah on the other, that the Israelis will be able to prevail if they are not reined in. What Hezbollah has achieved by denying Israel a quick victory is time — time to allow the resentment and hatred in the Muslim world to build, time for Israel’s supporters in Washington and elsewhere to be questioned about the destruction they are wreaking and the consequences for ties between the West and the Arab and Muslim worlds, time for isolating Israel’s supporters and putting them before the bar of international public opinion. What should be the effect of this?

Olmert, whose disproportionate reaction was owed, in my view, almost entirely to his desire to be seen as a worthy successor to Ariel Sharon, will not be influenced by the international outrage. He believes that even after the recent erosion the support his present posture enjoys in Israel is overwhelming. In his view, friendly or even normal relations with Israel’s Arab neighbours are a distant dream. Israel can and must impose its own “peace” on these neighbours and be prepared to defend it with its military might. If this leads to turbulence and instability in the region so be it since it will only enhance in American eyes the value of the alliance with stable and democratic Israel.

It is only the Americans, pushed ever so gently by the Europeans and an ever more beleaguered Prime Minister Tony Blair, who can rein him in and they have good reason for doing so.

If Israel is allowed to continue, Lebanon will be destroyed along with Hezbollah’s arsenal but Hezbollah, as a movement will live on. Despite the current display of Arab solidarity the deep and chronic fissures in Lebanon exacerbated by economic hardship will reemerge and a new phase of Lebanon’s civil war of the 1970s and 1980s will commence. The Cedar Revolution of which the Americans were the most fervent proponents if not sponsors will wither. Freeing Lebanon from foreign influence will remain an elusive goal.

Lebanon will not be the only country in which Hezbollah will find fresh adherents nor will the Shias be the only recruits. If Al Qaeda chooses to recruit it will run out of enrollment forms but even more ominously other Al Qaeda-like organisations will sprout all over the Arab and Muslim world. Terrorist attacks, with Muslim countries as the first victims, will also spread to the West. Muslims settled or born in Europe and the US will be viewed with increasing suspicion even if they maintain a low profile and offer no more than oral sympathy to their coreligionists and kinfolk in the Middle East. Analysts and scholars will find it increasingly difficult to maintain in the West a distinction between the “radical Islamists” and the “moderates” who reflect the true spirit of Islam.

The incipient civil war in Iraq may turn into a full-fledged confrontation with the occupation forces. Already it appears to me that the demonstrations in Baghdad, larger than those in any other Arab country have caused misgivings and will, in all likelihood, strain relations between the Americans and the Shia alliance. The rejection of demands made when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington for a condemnation of Hezbollah has apparently had an impact on Congress where Israel’s supporters abound.

In these circumstances it is perhaps time for the Bush administration to look again at the Security Council resolution they have virtually coerced the French into accepting and which calls for a cessation of hostilities but permits the Israelis to continue to occupy the Lebanese region into which they have moved. According to the latest reports the Arab League ministers are sending, after their meeting in Beirut, a special delegation to the UN to ask that the resolution be brought in line with the seven-point proposal made by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and approved by the Lebanese cabinet of which Hezbollah is a part.

Currently, the American president maintains that a ceasefire resolution would not address the root problem which he identified as being the “ability of Hezbollah to operate as “a state within a state” and to establish an armed presence in southern Lebanon while receiving arms from foreign sponsors, notably Iran and Syria. The Lebanese proposal that the Israelis withdraw completely from Lebanese territory and be replaced in that area by the Lebanese army backed by the 2,000 strong UNIFIL force currently in Lebanon seems to meet the American demand. The Lebanese are not opposed to the subsequent introduction of a robust international peacekeeping force but argue rightly that the vacating of Lebanese territory must not be made dependent on the induction of such a force which will take time.

The Lebanese have also demanded the return of the Shebaa Farms. The Israelis argue that the area belongs to Syria and presumably that its return would be part of the peace settlement with Syria. They dismiss as cartographic manipulation the Syrian assertion that the area is part of Lebanon. The Lebanese argument is that since the Syrians and Lebanese are both agreed that this is Lebanese territory Israel should hand it over and thus remove the rationale for Hezbollah retaining a militia that could strive for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty over Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory. This is not a fundamental issue and could be dealt with in the second resolution which would also deal with the question of the overall Arab-Israel relationship. The question of the exchange of prisoners could also be left to the second resolution.

The Israelis should certainly be required, as a matter of humanitarian law, to provide the Lebanese with the maps of the minefields that they laid in Lebanon during the long years of occupation. It is legally mandatory for Israel to do so but in the present circumstances it is also the sort of gesture that could at least in small measure mitigate the impact of the damage Israel has done.

The Americans have to see that the Hezbollah’s move away from being a military force has been made more difficult by recent events and by the elevated status that Hezbollah now enjoys in Lebanon and the Arab world. Hezbollah, however, is also aware that after the dust settles those who praise it for restoring Arab pride will also blame it for providing the excuse Israel needed to wreak havoc on Lebanon. It will have to tread a fine line and that it is already doing so by endorsing Prime Minister Siniora’s efforts to get an agreement on a resolution that will ultimately lead to the disarming of Hezbollah.

The Americans can tell the Israelis that they risk little in agreeing to this proposal. The Israelis have the force to be able to reoccupy Lebanon if the implementation of the agreement falters or if Hezbollah’s conversion into a purely political force does not occur.

In an election year and with his band of dedicated neo-conservative advisers President Bush may find this a difficult decision to make but it is the only one that can save the region and the world from further destruction turmoil and instability.

hira iftikhar rana · #25 Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Israeli invasion has gained momentum as more of the southern Lebanon suffers the crushing weight of its armour. Hezbollah is proving to be a mighty obstacle, like Hassan Nasrallah said that Israel was measuring its advance in metres in days unlike the previous invasion when it used to be kilometres in hours.
The people of Lebanon too are resolute this time around and many have not decided to abandon their homes notwithstanding the warnings and the wanton destruction of their homeland by Israel. May be, they have become used to all this.
Maya Mikdashi posts her thoughts from Beirut:
On balconies we stare into our neighbourhoods and (re)learn to map them in darkness.
We try to get together every night to talk. It helps relax, or distract us. The out-loud questioning, hypothesizing and arguing makes us feel that there is reason, that we can put the previous day's violence into a chart and then navigate it to some conclusion, logical or otherwise. We guess which roads we could, if we wanted to, drive on tonight. Which areas of which cities we could visit. But we also know that we will not drive on those roads, and we will not visit friends, family, or even favourite restaurants and bars in different parts of the country. Increasingly, we do not mention, or fantasize about going to the south, where some of us have a family house that we visit at least once each summer.
Still, the talking helps, as do the intoxicants. It makes us feel like we have a modicum of control over our lives. Even if we know it to be a lie, sometimes artifice is productive. And necessary. It helps us get ready for the next day, and the next day's work.
During the day, we work with the displaced, trying to make their situation a little bit more bearable. Every day, it takes a Herculean effort to cover the needs of just a few hours for just a few of the 900,000 internally displaced Lebanese (and other) citizens.
We also film. Bridges, tunnels, smoke, and stories. I aim my camera, and shoot. Eyes that cry with pain, anger and fear. Hands that wring with worry and knead each other with anxiety. Mouths that speak of loss, of frustration, and of terror.
Sometimes, there is humour and in-the-future invitations to their homes that they were forced to flee from.
"What if your house is no longer there?" I asked one woman who was living, along with 35 other people from five different families in a room that was five by six meters.
"We'll rebuild it, and then you can come over for a visit".
When the work is done (and it is never done) the waiting begins. The constant, nagging feeling that this is only the beginning - that things can, and will, get much worse. At the very least, that the invasion will continue and with it, Israel's indiscriminate aerial, sea and land bombardment throughout Lebanon.
No, we are not waiting for a cease-fire. We are waiting for the world to realize the emptiness of these words and learn how the term "cease-fire" is being used to create the time, excuse, and opportunity for more war and death. Ceasefire is following in the path of the word "peace" in the first edition of the dictionary of the New Middle East. Like the operation of the word "peace" in Palestine, cease-fire provides the discursive "cover" under which aggression, occupation, and invasion can continue and metastasise.
The hardest part is the waiting. It fills the body with lethargy.
Inside, we hear the news through the crackles of a transistor radio and the beeping arrival of text messages. Israeli soldiers are trying to "enter" Ba'albeck and Sour. They have been seen in the Beka'a. They are already inside the southern part of the country, and are pushing upwards towards its belly, the Litani River.
In Arabic, the word used is invasion. In English, the word "invasion" is not considered "precise" enough. Perhaps the problem is that it is too precise.
Outside the windows, flying objects are heard cutting through the air. The buzzing sound of reconnaissance, the hovering omnipresence of a F-16. The first night I heard the planes - now more than three weeks ago - I walked quickly into our foyer whenever they broke the sound barrier or fired a missile. I spent the night standing in the corridor between the living room (where the TV was) and the imagined safety of the four-walled foyer where I had spent many nights as a child during a different war. Today when planes approach and missiles are dropped I flinch, but do not move. Fear begins to feel like a luxury, while mourning has become an instinct.
Every day, more corpses are produced while others are found under rubble, in cars, on streets and in shelters. On bridges, in fields, in buses, in bedrooms and in hospitals. Their skin is charred black and ghostly white. The flesh comes away in pieces. Sometimes the pieces need to be gathered and placed together in a plastic bag - a crude simulation of what used to be a whole, living human being. The pieces are then buried in mass graves. Some coffins are less than a foot long. These are for infants.
Yet even this image is deceptive. Coffins, like corpses, come in all sizes. Some coffins do not have names written on their surface because the flesh inside them could not be identified. Some of the smaller coffins contain what is left of a large man. Some of the larger coffins contain the burnt, smothered, or dismembered remains of more than one child - especially if the corpses used to be siblings before they were killed.
At these mass graves, the ground itself mirrors the bodies; it has been turned inside out.
(Maya Mikdashi is a graduate student at Columbia University. She is co-director of the award-winning documentary film About Baghdad.)
Such uncertainty about the future and even of ones own survival in this conflict is not uncommon among the Lebanese living in the direct line of fire. In the longer run, it is this psychological trauma, particularly faced by the young ones will poison the hope of any lasting peace in the region.

hira iftikhar rana · #26 Thursday, August 10, 2006

It is seldom that one comes across a well-informed comment in the blogosphere upon a developing event like the present crisis in the Middle East. Yet there are many out there with strong opinions that they want the world to appreciate.
Dr Patrick McGreevy of American University Beirut shares his outlook upon the conflict (8 Aug 2006).
US leaders often assert that their policies and actions in the Middle East are intended to influence the perceptions and actions of Arabs. Do they have any idea how things look from here?
Daniel Richter’s book ‘Facing East from Indian Country (2001)’ attempts to tell the story of early America from the point of view of the Native people who saw their lands invaded from the east. The newcomers, for the most part, did not want to live among the people who were already there: they simply wanted to remove them. It is a revealing thought experiment for most US Americans to imagine their national story from the vantage of those for whom that story was their own doom. Perhaps a similar thought experiment is in order to consider how US attempts to create “a new Middle East” look from the vantage point of the region’s Arab inhabitants.
Gazing westward upon the North American continent, many European colonizers saw a land that seemed essentially empty, a zone for the fulfilment of their dreams and schemes. The North American Natives, if noticed at all, could be seen as part of the emptiness itself: they simply didn’t count as equally human. Richter believes, nonetheless, that a world in which natives and newcomers could live together remained possible until the 1760s when, in the wake of ruthless violence on the frontier, Natives and non-Natives each began to see themselves as essentially different and incompatible. After the revolution against imperial Britain, US Americans appropriated for themselves the appellation “American,” and continued to gaze westward with the colonizers’ vision of a land that was essentially empty. The US became a settler society. The conquest is pretty much over now, if largely unexamined, yet the perspective of facing west remains. We still talk of going “out west” and “back east”.
Gazing eastward toward Jerusalem, Westerners invented the term “Middle East,” a designation that defined the region by reference to their own viewpoint. Edward Said used the word “orientalism” to describe how Western “knowledge” about the region was interwoven with attempts to control it. The “knowledge,” for example, that Arabs were backward, lazy, violent, and fanatical, meant that their world needed rearranging, and that Western powers such as France and Britain must take up the challenge. More recently, some have suggested a more complex picture. Not all westerners have reduced Arabs to sub-human status. In the years following World War II, many Arabs appreciated the US for its anti-colonial stance, and African-Americans, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, identified with Arab resistance movements.
For those facing west from Arab country today, however, the US appears as the latest in a long list of Western adversaries and colonizers. Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to destroy terrorism at its heart, but it was based on faulty “knowledge”, and has instead created an open wound, a maelstrom of blood. Operation Just Reward, the Israeli-led and US-backed attack on Lebanon, was supposed to create a “New Middle East” by crushing Hezbollah, but faulty “knowledge” again has led to a situation of great danger. The Arab World is not a blank slate awaiting the schemes of Westerners. And it must be said: the creation of the State of Israel was another scheme for remapping the region based on the view that the people already here mattered less than those arriving from the west, and that their lands could be treated as if they were empty. For those facing west from Arab country, this was an injustice, an original sin. All talk of resolution, of Arab hospitality, must begin with this recognition. I hope the time when it is possible for Arabs, Christians and Jews to live together here has not passed. But if Israelis hope to become a settler society like the US that seeks not to live with the region’s native people, but remove them, they will discover that their “knowledge” is faulty because the eastern Mediterranean is not North America. Instead of melting away from European diseases, these native people are increasing.
I spoke today with a Sunni Arab friend about last night’s horrible rocket attack on Haifa. I mentioned that it might have been an Arab neighbourhood that was hit. My friend said: “That is not the point: they are human beings.” I mention this to underline that there is a basis for conversation, although some in Lebanon now doubt that there is a serious partner for peace in Israel.
The Bush Administration encourages Israel to crush Hezbollah, perhaps because many in the US think Israel is a settler society facing exactly the situation their own country once faced. But haven’t Israelis been here long enough to recognize that simplistic example of the eastward gaze called the war on terror? Lashing out will not make Israel safe; such a strategy is based on faulty “knowledge”: it is like ploughing the sea. If crushing people will make them capitulate, the people of Gaza would long ago have become docile rather than defiant. There is only one way: the Israelis must talk to their adversaries and negotiate a just settlement that addresses Arab concerns on an equal footing with their own.
(Dr Patrick McGreevy joined American University of Beirut as the Director of CASAR in 2004. Prior to that, he was Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Geography and Earth Science at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. He served as a Fulbright Chair of American Studies in Hungary in 1999-2000.)
Dr Patrick’s observations and conclusions are insightful and present yet another dimension for understanding the genesis of this conflict. His analogy between the Israeli settlement in the region and the European settlement in the US more than two centuries ago does help in comprehending the viewpoint of the West, particularly the US, towards this crisis.

hira iftikhar rana · #27 Thursday, August 10, 2006

It is seldom that one comes across a well-informed comment in the blogosphere upon a developing event like the present crisis in the Middle East. Yet there are many out there with strong opinions that they want the world to appreciate.
Dr Patrick McGreevy of American University Beirut shares his outlook upon the conflict (8 Aug 2006).
US leaders often assert that their policies and actions in the Middle East are intended to influence the perceptions and actions of Arabs. Do they have any idea how things look from here?
Daniel Richter’s book ‘Facing East from Indian Country (2001)’ attempts to tell the story of early America from the point of view of the Native people who saw their lands invaded from the east. The newcomers, for the most part, did not want to live among the people who were already there: they simply wanted to remove them. It is a revealing thought experiment for most US Americans to imagine their national story from the vantage of those for whom that story was their own doom. Perhaps a similar thought experiment is in order to consider how US attempts to create “a new Middle East” look from the vantage point of the region’s Arab inhabitants.
Gazing westward upon the North American continent, many European colonizers saw a land that seemed essentially empty, a zone for the fulfilment of their dreams and schemes. The North American Natives, if noticed at all, could be seen as part of the emptiness itself: they simply didn’t count as equally human. Richter believes, nonetheless, that a world in which natives and newcomers could live together remained possible until the 1760s when, in the wake of ruthless violence on the frontier, Natives and non-Natives each began to see themselves as essentially different and incompatible. After the revolution against imperial Britain, US Americans appropriated for themselves the appellation “American,” and continued to gaze westward with the colonizers’ vision of a land that was essentially empty. The US became a settler society. The conquest is pretty much over now, if largely unexamined, yet the perspective of facing west remains. We still talk of going “out west” and “back east”.
Gazing eastward toward Jerusalem, Westerners invented the term “Middle East,” a designation that defined the region by reference to their own viewpoint. Edward Said used the word “orientalism” to describe how Western “knowledge” about the region was interwoven with attempts to control it. The “knowledge,” for example, that Arabs were backward, lazy, violent, and fanatical, meant that their world needed rearranging, and that Western powers such as France and Britain must take up the challenge. More recently, some have suggested a more complex picture. Not all westerners have reduced Arabs to sub-human status. In the years following World War II, many Arabs appreciated the US for its anti-colonial stance, and African-Americans, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, identified with Arab resistance movements.
For those facing west from Arab country today, however, the US appears as the latest in a long list of Western adversaries and colonizers. Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to destroy terrorism at its heart, but it was based on faulty “knowledge”, and has instead created an open wound, a maelstrom of blood. Operation Just Reward, the Israeli-led and US-backed attack on Lebanon, was supposed to create a “New Middle East” by crushing Hezbollah, but faulty “knowledge” again has led to a situation of great danger. The Arab World is not a blank slate awaiting the schemes of Westerners. And it must be said: the creation of the State of Israel was another scheme for remapping the region based on the view that the people already here mattered less than those arriving from the west, and that their lands could be treated as if they were empty. For those facing west from Arab country, this was an injustice, an original sin. All talk of resolution, of Arab hospitality, must begin with this recognition. I hope the time when it is possible for Arabs, Christians and Jews to live together here has not passed. But if Israelis hope to become a settler society like the US that seeks not to live with the region’s native people, but remove them, they will discover that their “knowledge” is faulty because the eastern Mediterranean is not North America. Instead of melting away from European diseases, these native people are increasing.
I spoke today with a Sunni Arab friend about last night’s horrible rocket attack on Haifa. I mentioned that it might have been an Arab neighbourhood that was hit. My friend said: “That is not the point: they are human beings.” I mention this to underline that there is a basis for conversation, although some in Lebanon now doubt that there is a serious partner for peace in Israel.
The Bush Administration encourages Israel to crush Hezbollah, perhaps because many in the US think Israel is a settler society facing exactly the situation their own country once faced. But haven’t Israelis been here long enough to recognize that simplistic example of the eastward gaze called the war on terror? Lashing out will not make Israel safe; such a strategy is based on faulty “knowledge”: it is like ploughing the sea. If crushing people will make them capitulate, the people of Gaza would long ago have become docile rather than defiant. There is only one way: the Israelis must talk to their adversaries and negotiate a just settlement that addresses Arab concerns on an equal footing with their own.
(Dr Patrick McGreevy joined American University of Beirut as the Director of CASAR in 2004. Prior to that, he was Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Geography and Earth Science at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. He served as a Fulbright Chair of American Studies in Hungary in 1999-2000.)
Dr Patrick’s observations and conclusions are insightful and present yet another dimension for understanding the genesis of this conflict. His analogy between the Israeli settlement in the region and the European settlement in the US more than two centuries ago does help in comprehending the viewpoint of the West, particularly the US, towards this crisis.

hira iftikhar rana · #28 Thursday, August 10, 2006

PRESIDENT Bush finds himself today looking at a potential legacy that includes a world in which anti-Americanism will have increased exponentially among America’s friends and foes alike, terrorism will have grown rather than receded, and America will be enmeshed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gaza and now Lebanon provide the Bush administration with a major opportunity to demonstrate its global leadership and its stated commitment to the spread of democracy and promote the Middle East peace process, policies used by the Bush administration to legitimate the US led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Tragically, the administration has thus far chosen to be part of the problem not of the solution.

From North Africa to Southeast Asia as a recent Gallup World Poll indicates, overwhelming majorities (91-95 per cent) said that they did not believe the US is trustworthy, friendly, or treats other countries respectfully nor that it cares about human rights in other countries (80 per cent). Outside of Iraq, there is over 90 per cent agreement among Muslims that the invasion of Iraq has done more harm than good. How has the administration responded?

In a world in which the war on global terrorism has come to be equated in the minds of many Muslims (and others) with a war against Islam and the Muslim world, the administration reemphasised the importance of public diplomacy, appointing a talented senior Bush confidante, Karen Hughes, and spoke of a war of ideas.

However, the administration’s responses in Gaza and in Lebanon undercut both the president’s credibility and the war on terrorism.

The US has turned a blind eye to Israel’s launching of two wars whose primary victims are civilians. It failed to support UN mediation in the face of clear violations of international law and Israel’s use of collective punishment, policies in Gaza that Amnesty International labelled war crimes.

It refused to heed calls for a ceasefire and UN intervention and continued to provide military assistance to Israel.

America, with its unconditional support of Israel, has become a partner not simply in a military action against Hamas or Hezbollah militants but in a war against democratically elected governments in Gaza and Lebanon, a long time US ally. The “disproportionate response” to Hezbollah’s July 12 seizure of two soldiers and killing of three others has resulted in the death of more than 1,000 the displacement of more than 900,000 and the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure; its primary victims are hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians not terrorists.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticism of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon as “excessive use of force” was countered the next day by the New York Times headline “US speeds up bomb delivery for the Israelis.”

Is it any wonder that news reporters in the Arab world speak of the Israeli-US war, a Western Christian religious leader and long-time resident of Lebanon speaks of “the rape of Lebanon,” or that in Southeast Asia, as one observer put it, “Malaysians are telling Bush, forget the war on terrorism. He is inflaming terrorism!”

There are no easy answers but as John Voll has argued, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon some 20 years ago demonstrated that a massive military response is not the solution.

The administration needs to respond in concert with the international community and international organisations like the United Nations. America must lead in the call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and a negotiated settlement as well as be a major donor in the restoration of the infrastructures of Gaza and Lebanon.

While nothing should compromise America’s commitment to the existence and security of the state of Israel, America’s national interests and credibility not only in the Arab/Muslim world but internationally will depend on our ability to “walk the way we talk.” US policy should make no exceptions, for the Arabs or Israelis, when it comes to the disproportionate use of force, indiscriminate warfare whose primary victims (those killed, injured or displaced) are majorities of innocent civilians not terrorists, collective punishment and the massive violation of human rights.

hira iftikhar rana · #29 Thursday, August 10, 2006

Lebanon rejected the US-French draft resolution -- the text didn't call for a total ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal -- and now the United States disagrees with France: the proposed text resulting from the French revision after the Lebanese rejection is too weak for the Bush administration, because now Paris is in favour of a ceasefire as well. In other words, the resolution is too close to the Arab countries' demand that the proposed document require a complete halt to the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Like France, the United States has welcomed the announcement by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that his government is ready to deploy 15,000 troops in the south -- something, significantly, the two Hizbollah ministers in his cabinet have agreed on. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he found the announcement "interesting". But the US objection is that an Israeli exit from the area would leave a vacuum which Hizbollah can fill. The position is in complete disregard of the fact that replacement of the Israeli forces by Lebanese troops would restore Lebanon's sovereignty in the area, and that, vacuum or no vacuum, the Israeli occupation defies that sovereignty. Besides, the Lebanese proposal means that Hizbollah's presence or control over south Lebanon will eventually come to an end, which is precisely what Israel wants.

Far more important for President Bush than such issues of principle and morality is removal of what he considers the root cause of the problem, as he said in his remarks on Monday in Texas, where he is on vacation. For him the root cause is the presence of Hizbollah guerrillas, not Israel's constant violation of Lebanese border territory, despite its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, and its refusal to vacate the Shebaa Farms area (which it seized in the 1967 Six-day War) and return it to Lebanon. As even western commentators are beginning to acknowledge, it is these provocations which caused Hizbollah to react by kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers on July 12. According to the US and Israel, though, the abductions are the real reason behind the crisis. The result of the wrangling over the proposed resolution is the unending carnage in southern Lebanon, with the delay itself encouraging Israel not to halt its offensive. Indeed, Israel, which has evacuated its towns and villages near the Lebanese border while it drops fresh warning leaflets in Lebanon's border areas, is on the verge of further broadening its brutal operation. On Tuesday, an Arab League delegation at the United Nations denounced the Security Council's inability to stop the "bloodbath" in Lebanon. But as in the lack of resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute, Washington is to blame for the failure, not the United Nations.

hira iftikhar rana · #30 Thursday, August 10, 2006

LEBANON is being destroyed brick by brick, house by house, block by block, road by road and bridge by bridge as a part of Zionist conspiracy to destroy its neighbours and occupy lands so that the Zionist dream of greater Israel can be achieved. So far more than 1,000 people have been killed, of which children are one-third.

About one million people have been displaced by Israeli shelling and bombardment. Yet Hezbollah is fighting with all valour to protect its motherland against Israeli aggression that violates all norms of international law, as well as the UN Charter. Since Israel’s birth in 1948, there has been continuous violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and between Israel and its neighbours. Sometimes, violence was low-level and even latent. And every once in a while it escalated into open warfare, as now.

Whenever full-scale violence broke out, there was a debate about what started it, as though that mattered. We are now in the midst of warfare between Israel and Palestine in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon. And the world is engaged in its usual futile debate about how to reduce the open state of warfare to low-level violence.

Israel’s basic strategy since 1948 has been to rely on two things in the pursuit of its objectives: a strong military and strong outside western support. So far this strategy has worked in one sense: Israel still survives.

The question is how much longer this strategy will continue to work. Historically the source of outside support has shifted over time. We forget that in 1948 the crucial military support for Israel came from the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. When the Soviet Union pulled back, it was France that came to fill the role. France was engaged in war against a revolution in Algeria, and it saw Israel as a crucial element in defeating the Algerian national liberation movement. But when Algeria became independent in 1962, France dropped Israel because it then sought to maintain ties with a now-independent Algeria.

It is only after that moment that America moved into its present total support of Israel. One major element in this turn-around was the Israeli military victory in the six-day war in 1967. In this war, Israel conquered all the territories of the old British Mandate of Palestine, as well as more. It proved its ability to be a strong military presence in the region. It transformed the attitude of world Jewry from one in which only about 50 per cent really approved of the creation of Israel into one which had the support of the large majority of world Jewry, for whom Israel had now become a source of pride.

This is the moment when the Holocaust became a major ideological justification for Israel and its policies. After 1967, Israeli governments never felt they had to negotiate anything with the Palestinians or with the Arab world. They offered one-sided settlements but these were always on Israeli terms. Israel wouldn’t negotiate with Nasser. Then it wouldn’t negotiate with Arafat. And now it won’t negotiate with so-called terrorists. Instead, it has relied on successive shows of military strength.

Israel is now engaged in the same catastrophic blunder as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The US is heading towards a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq. Israel’s current military campaign is a direct parallel of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The Israeli generals are already noting that Hezbollah’s military is far more formidable than anticipated, that US allies in the region are already taking wide distance from the US and Israel (note the Iraqi government’s support of Lebanon and now that of the Saudi government), and soon will discover that the Israeli public’s support is more fragile than expected. Already the Israeli government is reluctant to send land troops into Lebanon, largely because of what it thinks will be the reaction of its own people inside Israel. Israel is heading towards a humiliating truce arrangement.

What Tel Aviv does not realise is that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah need Israel. It is Israel that needs them, and needs them desperately. Israel’s only guarantee will be that of the Palestinians. And to get this guarantee, Israel will need to rethink its strategy for survival.