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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richnorth who wrote (78928)	8/13/2006 9:58:49 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Shouldn't we have diplomacy first and if that fails then take the military options? We have it backwards in the current Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, I think. Flawed tactics give impetus to Israel's enemies The war option is fuelling the Islamists, argues editor-at-large Paul Kelly August 09, 2006 THE Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is a new war in the Middle East, conducted by ancient rules of religion, ideology and tribalism. It is not a struggle for territory or a conventional conflict about Israel's borders, as were the wars of 1967 and 1973. Those battles belong to a lost era. This war has Israel fighting a new enemy defined by deep historical forces: Islamist fundamentalism, global jihad and religious ideology. It is a conflict not dissimilar to that facing the US since 9/11, with an enemy that has defied American strategy and outflanked its conventional military superiority. These are alarming omens for Israel in a war that has not gone well. Nor is this a war between sovereign nations. Israel is fighting in Lebanon but it is not fighting the Lebanese state. It fights a sub-group of the nation with its privatised militia outsourced to Iran. As Israel's senior statesman Shimon Peres says, Hezbollah has dual objectives: to destroy Israel and to turn Lebanon into an Islamist state. The flaw in Israel's tactics is embarrassingly apparent. It cannot defeat Hezbollah in its own right. It can win only by strengthening the Lebanese state, yet its military campaign threatens to weaken and cripple Lebanon, leaving it hostage to internal sectarianism and Hezbollah's rising prestige. This war reveals the transformation of the Middle East. It transcends the old debate about trading land for peace, a process that appears quaintly secular and negotiable. The "land for peace" idea that governed the post-1967 struggle is in eclipse after the Palestinian rejection of president Bill Clinton's 2000 negotiation and Yasser Arafat's launch of his intifada. The irony of this war is that it is designed to underwrite not Israel's expansion but its withdrawal from land. The war, from Israel's perspective, is about whether the "separation" strategy of former prime minister Ariel Sharon is viable. Sharon planned to withdraw from Gaza and most of the West Bank because he recognised, finally, that holding these territories was more a liability than an asset for Israel. Convinced it had no peace partner with the Palestinians, Israel's new strategy, leveraged off Sharon's authority, became that of separation. Sharon created a new party, Kadima, that Ehud Olmert took to victory at the 2006 poll when the Israeli public gave democratic approval to a new defensive strategy that assumed any comprehensive political settlement was far off. The issue now is whether Israel has run out of options. Will Kadima's entire political rationale of seeking security instead of occupation be validated? Can Israel actually obtain security in separation? The doubts arise because of its new enemy. The Islamisation of this conflict is apparent in the victory of Hamas, the rise of Hezbollah, the growing influence of Iran and the synthesis of religious fanaticism, grassroots politics and epic geo-strategic goals. The old days of defeating the Egyptian and Syrian armies must invoke nostalgia. These days northern Israel is being hit by several thousand Hezbollah rockets. Hamas and Hezbollah are parties fuelled by the grievances created by Israel's power. Hezbollah has converted southern Lebanon into a mini-Shi'ite state backed by Iran and Syria, running health and welfare services, propounding an Islamist ideology that denies Israel's right to exist and prosecutes the global jihad against the US. Hezbollah's 1983 suicide bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut, killing more than 200 US troops and forcing president Reagan to withdraw from Lebanon, now appears as an omen of a future that neither the US nor Israel seems able to manage. Israel holds no Hezbollah territory and withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Yet the Arab narrative has turned that withdrawal into a story of Israeli weakness and Islamic strength, just as Israel's recent withdrawal from Gaza is being slotted into the same narrative. This war is converting Hezbollah into heroes. The alarm has registered in Israel and the West with one consistent theme from Olmert, Tony Blair and George Bush: any settlement must not allow Hezbollah to emerge a winner. It is not apparent how this will be achieved. While Hezbollah provoked this conflict, it is Israel that launched a wider war against Hezbollah. It must be doubted whether Sharon would have taken the bait. He surely would have been more wary of the pitfalls in Lebanon and more aware of the risks to his separation strategy. This war is likely only to damage Israel as its long-run position deteriorates further. The first military lesson is that Israel has been embarrassed to find Hezbollah more formidable than it imagined. Olmert has had to modify his military goals. At the outset, Israel talked of "breaking" Hezbollah, but now it seeks a UN force with teeth to contain its militia. Quite a retreat. The second military lesson is that Hezbollah, as its leader Hassan Nasrallah says, "needs only to survive to win", a convenient yet probably accurate view if you define survival as the retention of its military option. The third military lesson, intangible yet potent, is that Hezbollah's resistance has undermined the mystique of Israeli military power, just as the Iraq intervention has undermined the mystique of US military invincibility. These may be false perceptions but they are energising the jihadists. The political lessons seem even bleaker. Weakening Lebanon plays into Hezbollah's aspiration to shift Lebanon into the Shi'ite orbit. The civilian casualties will lengthen Hezbollah's recruiting lines, promote deeper hatred of Israel and ferment radicalisation of the Islamic world against Israel and the US. The core problem seems to be the appeal of the Islamist movement. It is depressing to think the Middle East post-9/11 is being redefined in terms of the global war between the West and militant Islamists. This war has included the successful 2001 attack on the US, the defeat of the Taliban, the US intervention in Iraq and the retaliatory insurgencies within Iraq and Afghanistan that leave the US exposed. This wider war has promoted the rise of Iran, simultaneous with the rise of Shia power. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seeks to lead this populist new radicalism by his quest for a nuclear weapon and his rhetorical extremism that denies Israel's right to exist and promotes the cult of martyrdom. In this sense the conflict may possess another dimension as part of the struggle between America and Iran, with Israel and Hezbollah as proxies. Despite its firepower, Israel is starting to look vulnerable, a nation running low on strategic options. The US and Europe need to intervene urgently with a diplomatic strategy that exploits the alarm of the Arab states about Iran and turns back the clock towards negotiation. At this point the war option just fuels the Islamists. theaustralian.news.com.au