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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (192335)	7/20/2006 5:53:46 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A Protracted Colonial War commondreams.org With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon by Tariq Ali In his last interview - after the 1967 six-day war - the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'." In Israel's actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US. The offensive against Gaza is designed to destroy Hamas for daring to win an election. The "international community" stood by as Gaza suffered collective punishment. Dozens of innocents continue to die. This meant nothing to the G8 leaders. Nothing was done. Israeli recklessness is always green-lighted by Washington. In this case, their interests coincide. They want to isolate and topple the Syrian regime by securing Lebanon as an Israeli-American protectorate on the Jordanian model. They argue this was the original design of the country. Contemporary Lebanon, it is true, still remains in large measure the artificial creation of French colonialism it was at the outset - a coastal band of Greater Syria sliced off from its hinterland by Paris to form a regional client dominated by a Maronite minority. The country's confessional checkerboard has never allowed an accurate census, for fear of revealing that a substantial Muslim - today perhaps even a Shia - majority is denied due representation in the political system. Sectarian tensions, over-determined by the plight of refugees from Palestine, exploded into civil war in the 1970s, providing for the entry of Syrian troops, with tacit US approval, and their establishment there - ostensibly as a buffer between the warring factions, and deterrent to an Israeli takeover, on the cards with the invasions of 1978 and 1982 (when Hezbollah did not exist). The killing of Rafik Hariri provoked vast demonstrations by the middle class, demanding the expulsion of the Syrians, while western organizations arrived to assist the progress of a Cedar Revolution. Backed by threats from Washington and Paris, the momentum was sufficient to force a Syrian withdrawal and produce a weak government in Beirut. But Lebanon's factions remained spread-eagled. Hezbollah had not disarmed, and Syria has not fallen. Washington had taken a pawn, but the castle had still to be captured. I was in Beirut in May, when the Israeli army entered and killed two "terrorists" from a Palestinian splinter group. The latter responded with rockets. Israeli warplanes punished Hezbollah by dropping over 50 bombs on its villages and headquarters near the border. The latest Israeli offensive is designed to take the castle. Will it succeed? A protracted colonial war lies ahead, since Hezbollah, like Hamas, has mass support. It cannot be written off as a "terrorist" organization. The Arab world sees its forces as freedom fighters resisting colonial occupation. There are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli gulags. That is why Israeli soldiers are captured. Prisoner exchanges have occurred as a result. To blame Syria and Iran for Israel's latest offensive is frivolous. Until the question of Palestine is resolved and Iraq's occupation ended, there will be no peace in the region. A UN force to deter Hezbollah, but not Israel, is a nonsensical notion. Email to: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

To: geode00 who wrote (192335)	7/20/2006 6:02:26 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Lebanon puts cost of raids at $2 Billion ft.com By Roula Khalaf and Ferry Biedermann in Beirut Last updated: July 19 2006 10:45 Washington has given Israel a limited timeframe to achieve its “clear goal” in disabling Hizbollah with assurances from the US that Israel would be allowed to defend itself, as the conflict entered its eighth day. Lebanon’s finance minister said on Tuesday Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon had caused up to $2bn in infrastructure damage, as a trail of devastating raids continued across the country on Wednesday. With a free hand until the expected arrival of Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, in the region sometime in the next week, the relentless Israeli bombardment is driving up Lebanon’s soaring reconstruction costs each day it continues. Heavy Israeli shelling in the south and east of Lebanon on Wednesday killed 47 civilians as thousands awaited evacuation from the conflict zone. The army said its ground forces have crossed into southern Lebanon to target Hizbollah in “restricted” attacks while Israeli air strikes pounded the group’s Beirut stronghold and the Shweifat area outside the capital. Lebanese authorities say over 280 have died, mainly civilians, while Israel says 25 Israelis have died, including 13 civilians. As Israeli warplanes bombed army bases and hit trucks taking medical supplies from the United Arab Emirates on the Beirut-Damascus highway on Tuesday, Jihad Azour, the finance minister, told the FT the government was scrambling to assess the damage, and the costs were growing by the hour. “We’re talking billions of dollars in terms of infrastructure – exceeding $1.5bn to $2bn,” Mr Azour said, citing attacks on roads, bridges, telecommunications, electricity, ports, airports and even private sector facilities, including a milk factory and food warehouses. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has received reports of 50,000 to 60,000 internally displaced people who have fled from the heavily Shia-populated south of Lebanon and southern suburbs of Beirut, areas that have suffered most under the Israeli attacks. Mr Azour said Israel’s objective had gone far beyond the return of the two soldiers that militants from Hizbollah, Lebanon’s largest Shia party, had captured last Wednesday in a cross-border raid. “In five days we went from daylight to nightmare: the destruction is not targeting one group and it’s not only making Hizbollah pay. It’s making all of Lebanese society suffer,” he said. His comments came as diplomatic efforts aimed at brokering a ceasefire shifted to Israel. Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister, said after meeting a United Nations delegation in Jerusalem that “Israel will continue to combat Hizbollah and will continue to strike targets of the group” until two captured soldiers were released, Lebanese troops were deployed along the border and the guerrilla group disarmed. The UN delegation put forward a ceasefire package including a proposed international force that Israel had rejected because of fears it would hamper its military capability. However, Tzipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, said on Tuesday Israel might not object to a temporary force. Mr Azour said that, based on the pattern of attacks, Israel was slicing the country in different parts and isolating in particular the south and the eastern Baalbek region, a Hizbollah stronghold, in addition to a complete blockade of the country by sea, air and land. The government, he said, was struggling to organise food deliveries and services to these regions. Indeed, according to the ICRC, some villages in the south were now completely cut off. Although supplies, including medicine, were available they were often not reaching their destination. The broader economic impact of the Israeli offensive was also substantial in a country that spent more than a decade in reconstruction after the 1975-1991 civil war. Mr Azour said Lebanon had been expecting the best tourism season since 1974 and the economy was projected to grow by more than 5 per cent as the oil boom in the Gulf generated foreign direct investment and greater tourism receipts. Banks on Tuesday were severely restricting the withdrawal of dollars from accounts, amid rising concerns that people would rush to change Lebanese pounds into dollars. Mr Azour said there was a limited amount of dollar bank notes in the system and insisted that central bank foreign currency reserves of $13bn, more than 18 months of imports, would help keep any pressure on the Lebanese pound under control. Additional reporting by Sharmila Devi in Jerusalem