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Breaking News: Isreal and Lebanon at War? (pg. 57)
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Professor Martin Kramer says that he does not know, and therefore he cannot answer, whether the war will rip apart the delicate fabric of Lebanese society.
But, he says, "I expect that it will shatter the fragile fiction of Lebanese politics."
A world-renowned expert on Lebanon, Kramer is a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a former director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Why do you think this crisis is happening?
"Hezbollah's hubris has created an opportunity for Israel.
"Since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah has basked in the illusion that it defeated Israel - that it somehow discovered a path to victory that had eluded Arab governments and the Palestinian movement.
It began to puff itself up, as the only force willing and able to stand up to Israel. Hezbollah lost its respect for Israeli power, and began to portray Israel as unable to sustain a protracted conflict.
"Nasrallah allowed a personality cult to develop around himself, and Hezbollah marketed him as the only strategic genius in the Arab world. Increasingly, it would seem that the higher echelons in Hezbollah began to believe their own propaganda.
"I doubt Hezbollah expected the Israeli reaction to be as swift, extensive and destructive as it has been.
Hezbollah probably believed it would score a few points in Arab public opinion by a cross-border operation, and that it would make one more incremental change in the rules of the game.
"It was a strategic miscalculation. Hezbollah didn't internalize changes in the broader strategic climate.
The top regional issue today is Iran's nuclear drive, not the fate of Hamas or the Palestinian issue. If Hezbollah had understood this fully, it would have laid very low until needed by Iran in a mega-crisis with the United States. At that point, its threats against Israel would have been added to the overall deterrent capabilities of Iran, and might have caused the United States to think twice.
"Hezbollah apparently didn't understand this. If Iran was directly involved in the decision, it also shows an erosion of discipline in Iran's own decision-making process. Iran had nothing to gain from this little adventure, and a lot to lose. It may well be that President Ahmadinejad's rhetoric is beginning to cloud judgment in Tehran.
"In any case, it is in the interests of Israel and the United States to deal with the Hezbollah threat now, and not later in the midst of a far more dangerous crisis over Iran's nuclear plans. So a war now to degrade Hezbollah is a shared Israel-U.S. interest, which means that Israel can wage it without many constraints.
"Hezbollah now finds itself spending all sorts of military assets that were supposed to serve a much more important purpose than freeing a few Lebanese prisoners or winning a few propaganda points. These are assets it probably won't be able to replenish, and their very use exposes them and makes them vulnerable.
"In sum, Hezbollah overplayed its hand, and Israel is taking full advantage of its mistake."
What is the way to end the crisis? And can Israel defeat Hezbollah?
"Ending the crisis is obviously not an end in itself.
The objective has to be to reduce Hezbollah to a negligible factor in larger calculations, to degrade and deplete its capabilities, to the point where it's about as significant a constraint as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Jordan. It will take some time to reverse the years of neglect, and Hezbollah will not allow the halo around it to be smashed without fighting back. But Israel has a U.S. license to take its time now and get it right, and it would be foolish not to use it.
"In any event, Israel has no choice. Islamism has come to fill the space that used to be occupied by Arab nationalism in Nasser's time: an ideology of rejection, resistance and false promise of a Middle East without Israel. Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, whatever their merits, have only fed this Islamism with lore of sacrifice and victory. The Islamists have a narrative, and they think the world conforms to it. The narrative is based on a very partial reading of reality. It has to be defeated, just as Nasser's narrative had to be defeated. It took the 1967 war to demolish the Arab nationalist/Nasserist narrative. Israel has no choice but to deliver a blow sufficient to destroy the Islamist narrative, in which Hezbollah looms large.
"Incredibly, Nasrallah is making the same mistakes as Nasser. By puffing himself up, he isn't deterring Israel; at this point, he's only making himself and his movement a bigger and more legitimate target.
Hezbollah has become a prisoner of its own myth, which is that at any moment it can go one-on-one against Israel - and win. It can't, and now is the best opportunity to prove it - to Lebanese Shiites, to all Lebanese and to the rest of the Arab-Muslim world.
"At any moment in time, it is Israel that can turn Nasrallah either into a cinder or a shadow figure like Osama bin Laden, reduced to sending defiant missives from some basement or cave. And Israel can scatter the big chiefs of Hezbollah like the United States scattered the Taliban. This has to be the objective - bin Ladenization of Nasrallah, Talibanization of Hezbollah - and it is not beyond reach. Of course, bin Laden and the Taliban still exist, but they aren't a regional or global factor. That is the objective here as well.
"Any number of developments could threaten this scenario. It's not so much what Hezbollah might do, as what mistakes Israel might make. The most obvious pitfalls are too much 'collateral damage' or a reoccupation of part of Lebanon. Either could drain Israel legitimacy, sap American support and leave Israel isolated. Since this is a new government headed by a new prime minister, it's impossible to predict whether they will know how to handle the unexpected twists that are inevitable in war."
How popular, influential and strong is Hezbollah in Lebanon?
"Lebanon is a divided society. Hezbollah's power base is limited to the Shiite community, and even there, allegiance is not total.
"Hezbollah basked in the admiration of many Lebanese after Israel's withdrawal, but that aura has been eroded steadily over the past few years. This is because, following Israel's withdrawal, Hezbollah's continued 'resistance' along the border fell outside the national consensus.
"As a result, we have seen more and more political figures in Lebanon criticize Hezbollah. The Nasrallah personality cult has been a way to keep the faithful in line. Not so long ago, Hezbollah thugs took to the streets after a Lebanese television station broadcast a satire of Nasrallah. The mob burned tires and cars.
The episode showed that Nasrallah's moral standing had slipped, and that the movement had been reduced to intimidation to keep up the facade.
"The point here is that Hezbollah is no longer the darling of Lebanese nationalism, and its recent conduct has made it increasingly look like something foreign. This is certainly the message that is being sent by leaders of most other factions in the country:
that Hezbollah has usurped the power of
decision-making on war and peace from the legitimately constituted government, and that it is acting outside the Lebanese national interest. The more Israel intensifies its attacks, the more that criticism is likely to spread - even among Shiites. I do not see the country rallying around Hezbollah."
Do you expect this crisis will tear apart the fragile fabric of Lebanese society?
"I don't know about the society, but I do expect it to tear apart the fragile fiction of Lebanese politics.
An independent Lebanon is incompatible with an extra-legal, extra-territorial status for any militia.
This fact could be papered over before; now it is exposed for all to see.
"Of course, no one faction in Lebanon is in a position to disarm Hezbollah, and neither is the government.
Only Shiite opinion can achieve this. So it is up to Israel to demolish Hezbollah's argument that its arms deter Israel. Israel must demonstrate the opposite:
that Hezbollah's arms invite Israeli attack, especially against Shiites. Only if the Shiites themselves realize this, and only if they become the main source of criticism of Hezbollah's strategy, will Hezbollah feel compelled to modify it. This will not happen overnight; it could take months or years.
"What is certain is that Lebanon is better prepared to confront its devils now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. There is a new generation that does not want to go back to the old days. It is they who will have to come out in the streets to make yet another Cedar Revolution - this time, one in which the Shiites have a predominant role."
The hothouse
To understand how Hezbollah was transformed from a marginal organization - a status to which Prof. Kramer would like to see it revert - we have to go back to the time tunnel of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and indeed three years earlier, to the Islamic Revolution in Iran. After seizing power, the aides of the revolution's fomenter and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, established an organization called Hezbollah (Party of God). Its role was to impose Islamic law and order and to sow fear among the residents of Tehran.
From there the idea was conveyed, with the help of the revolution's exporters, the Revolutionary Guards, to the small, weak Shiite community in Lebanon.
Moving with the ideas was Mossad man Eliezer Tzafrir, the head of the espionage agency's Tevel mission in Iran in the last days of the Shah's rule and an eyewitness to the seizure of power by the Khomeinists.
He returned to Israel and in 1983, he was appointed head of the Mossad mission in Beirut until its closure the following year.
"At first we didn't know about the existence of Hezbollah and we paid no attention to it," says Tzafrir, who recently published a book about his Lebanon experience. "There was a terrorist attack in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and then, in 1983, another in the Marine headquarters, neither of which anyone took responsibility for, but it was clear to us that a Shiite Islamist terror group was developing, under the inspiration of Iran."
So the monster grew right in front of your eyes?
"At one stage there was a declaration of Hezbollah's existence. The founder and spiritual leader was Sheikh Fadlallah. But from that time until now, he has acted as a spiritual figure who issues religious rulings.
Alongside him grassroots people began to become prominent, such as Abbas Mussawi" - who later became the organization's secretary-general and was assassinated in 1992 by missiles fired from an Israel Air Force helicopter in southern Lebanon - "and Imad Mughniyah," a Shiite Fatah man who remained in Lebanon after the PLO left Beirut for Tunisia and joined Hezbollah, becoming a key operations officer who is responsible mainly for terrorist attacks overseas.
"We tried to penetrate Hezbollah, but that was difficult even then, and it remains so today. The Lebanese forces that were our allies and had the capability to obtain information about developments in Lebanon also tried unsuccessfully to put out feelers.
Neither we nor the Lebanese forces had enough data and operational intelligence to evaluate Hezbollah correctly."
So in this matter, as in many others, you relied on the security apparatus of the Christian forces led by Eli Hubeika (who was responsible for the Sabra-Chatila massacre in 1982 and the liquidation of thousands of Palestinians, and years later hooked up with the Syrians and became a minister in the Lebanese government, before being killed in mysterious circumstances a few years ago)?
"With all the disgust I feel today, I have to say honestly that in the year when I was head of mission, I was a friend of Eli Hubeika's. We ate and drank together two or three times a week and we drew on him and his people to obtain information. I also admit that we, and I, overestimated the true ability of the Christians. Looking back, Hubeika possessed traits that, in my view, represent even what is happening in Lebanon today: Human life is worthless in their eyes.
Hubeika and his people had a custom of detaining people and asking them to say the word 'tomato' in an Arab accent. If the person said 'banadora,' he was clearly a Lebanese and was released, but if he said 'bandore,' he was a Palestinian and they executed him."
In other words, this was another failure of the Mossad?
"It's true that our ties with the Christians influenced Israel's operational activity in Lebanon.
But the Mossad was not the only body that operated in Lebanon. The bulk of the activity was carried out by the Israel Defense Forces. And in any event, this was Israeli government policy. To claim that Israel created or helped to create Hezbollah shows a misunderstanding of the Lebanese and regional reality.
It recalls the claim that the Military Government created Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are Islamic movements that represent important currents in the societies in which they are active."
In your opinion, can the mistakes of the past be rectified today, more than 20 years later?
"Yes. Hezbollah started to believe its own propaganda.
Israel can and should attack and diminish Hezbollah and bring about its demise as a significant militant organization."
Not realistic
Dr. Reuven Erlich has lower expectations. "Experience shows that there are no solutions for the Lebanon tangle," he says. "Anyone who talks about dismantling Hezbollah's capability is not being realistic."
Erlich was the intelligence officer of the Liaison Unit to Lebanon in the 1980s and afterward served as the deputy of Uri Lubrani, the coordinator of government activities in Lebanon, and one of the shapers of Israel's Lebanon policy. Lubrani declined to be interviewed for this article because he is still an adviser to the defense minister. But those who spoke with him in the past week say he is furious, because defense ministers and governments did not heed his warnings.
As of this writing there are reports Iran's Revolutionary Guard commander is now involved in assisting Nasrallah and that Iran air-lifted additional rocketry to Hezballah fearig the Abu Ad Duhur military airfield would be bombed.
Israeli special forces are making progress against stiff resistance and in difficult terrain. Hezballah is on the defensive. Israel provided safe passage thru its lines for Lebanese it warned to leave Tyre.
Hezballah is trying to restrain them in order to claim more Lebanese civilian casualties when Israel attacks Hezballah locations etc.
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| sabi10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by jonSun
Well at least Hezballa croosed the border & kidnapped sodiers & not civilians likw the IDF has been doing for 40 yrs. |
kidnapped civilians haa...you big smart, sit there in the big safe city, go to work, go to clubs etc.. and you think you know everything, i guess that you didnt learned anything from 11/9/2001 or maybe you need another attack like that... like i said before dont be so smart ass, read and learn everything before you say something like that! |
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| TranceGiant |
| Very interesting read, Shakka, thanks for that. |
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| jdat |
| quote: | Six Keys to Peace
It isn't rocket science, but the playbook for bringing stability to the Middle East requires American commitment, Israeli restraint, Arab flexibility-and a little luck in Iraq
By MICHAEL ELLIOTT
Time Magazine - 31st of July upcoming cover story - Six Keys to Peace Web link
Posted Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006
With a few bland words�"this Sunday I will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories, where I will meet with Prime Minister Olmert and his leadership and with President Abbas and his team"�U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week linked her office not just to one summer's crisis but also to the careers and reputations of those who preceded her in high office.
Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker, Madeleine Albright and others found themselves dragged into the business of trying to bring peace to the Middle East. Year after year, decade after decade, a region that is sacred to three religions and the home of sublime landscapes�yet drenched in blood and covered in the dust of bombed-out rubble�brings those who live in more comfortable neighborhoods back to its old quarrels. Canada, the saying goes, is a nation with too much geography and not enough history. The Levant is the world's un-Canada�a small sliver of land in which ancient grievances are played out again and again as if they held the key to understanding tomorrow.
Rice's trip this week marks an implicit recognition by the Bush Administration that there are some burdens that every U.S. presidency has to bear. It is not that Bush has ignored the Middle East; on the contrary, he is fighting a war there, and the commitment of the President to advance the cause of democracy in nations that have long been autocracies amounts to a policy of revolution. But in six years, Bush's team has studiously avoided the habits of the past: shuttle diplomacy, Camp David summits, special envoys. To Bush & Co., those things are naive, incremental, Clintonian. But whether he likes it or not, the President�and his Secretary of State�is deep in the Clinton woods now; the very least that well-wishers can do is point them toward pathways through the thickets.
In truth, Bush and Rice know those paths well. Everyone does. There is no mystery to the theory of peace in the Middle East; it's the practice that has proved so difficult. But it is worth setting out the keys to peace that�with time, patience and goodwill in an area where they are in chronically short supply�might one day allow people to concentrate on building a better life for their children rather than scurrying into bolt-holes and shelters. Here are six of them.
1. Get the U.S. Involved
It is easy to see why any U.S. administration would want to stay out of Middle East peacemaking. Those who have tried have had little to show for their pains. Jimmy Carter's successful effort to broker a peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978 did nothing for his political fortunes. In 1983, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, 241 members of the U.S. armed forces died after the bombing of a military barracks in Beirut�killed by a suspected Hizballah faction. And Bill Clinton left office bitterly disappointed that all his intelligence and charm were insufficient to bring about a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
But Rice's trip is evidence that the U.S. is involved in the Middle East, whether it wants to be or not. That is not, for once, because it is the world's sole superpower, the policeman to which those in any tough neighborhood eventually turn. It is because the U.S. has a unique relationship with Israel and is committed to guaranteeing its security. That means Washington can talk to the Israelis and, occasionally, convince them that their best interests require them to talk to those whose motives and behavior they despise.
As the scale and ferocity of the fighting in Lebanon stunned the world, nations lined up to accuse Israel of a "disproportionate" response to Hizballah's raid two weeks ago, when it kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. But few initially were in doubt as to who started the fight, and it wasn't Israel. "I'm not any more fond of violence or the prospect of a major war than anyone else," says a French official involved in counterterrorism. "But how could Israel not respond to this provocation in a most forceful way?" Even the Saudis, never quick to grant Israel favors, disavowed Hizballah's actions in a remarkable statement that implied that Hizballah should "alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created." King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt likewise condemned Hizballah for "adventurism that does not serve Arab interests."
There is little mystery about why Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan�all Arab states with predominantly Sunni Muslim populations�would distance themselves from Hizballah. The Lebanese organization is a Shi'ite fighting force, founded and bankrolled by Shi'ite�and non-Arab�Iran. As Tehran flexes its muscles in the region, pursuing technology that could enable it to build nuclear weapons and watching as Shi'ite forces gradually dominate Iraq, Arab powers have become worried. That gives the U.S. an opening. Administration officials say one purpose of Rice's trip is to create an "umbrella of Arab allies" opposed to Hizballah. "She's not going to come home with a cease-fire but with stronger ties to the Arab world," says a U.S. official. "What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran." It was, perhaps, the prospect of such an alliance that led Rice last week to say, "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the birth pangs of a new Middle East."
2. Don't Forget The Palestinians
Like any birth, this one won't be easy. The leading Sunni Arab states, if they are to join the U.S in opposition to Hizballah and Iran, are likely to ask for something in return, and it is not hard to divine what it would be: a full-hearted U.S. commitment to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
For the Arab states, it is axiomatic that a second key for curing the ills that have plagued the region is peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Settle that, many believe, and economic development will proceed apace, extremist groups will lose their reason for being, and public support for violence will evaporate. Even if some of those claims are far-fetched�what, precisely, has Israel done that would explain the woeful economic performance of the Arab world for a generation?�they are deeply held and widely shared.
"Terrorism," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the U.S. Congress in 2003, "will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated."
There is little disagreement among states in the region or outside it about what an ideal peace between Israel and the Palestinians would involve. Since before World War II, most reasonable observers have known that sooner or later, two states�one with a Jewish majority, one with an Arab one�would share the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. That was the basis of the talks between Israel and the Palestinians in the last year of the Clinton Administration; it was acknowledged by the meeting of Arab states in Beirut in 2002, when they committed themselves to "normal relations" with Israel if it withdrew to its pre-1967 borders; it was the basis of the road map adopted by the U.S. and other powers in 2003; and it was accepted, finally, by Israel's old warrior Ariel Sharon, although he ultimately lost faith in negotiations and adopted a policy of unilateral "disengagement" from the Palestinians. As Sharon's heir and successor, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also knows that one day a Palestinian state will come. The belief is nearly universal. "We know we can't wind this up with guns and tanks," Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Time. "The final solution has to be done diplomatically."
But 2006 is not 2000, when negotiations at Camp David got mired in the devilish details of a deal�how Jerusalem would be governed, how much land Israel would retain on the West Bank, how Palestinian refugees should be handled. Since then, Israel has seen suicide bombers flock to its cities from the West Bank and watched rockets sail into its towns from Gaza and Lebanon, areas from which it had withdrawn all its soldiers�in the case of Lebanon, a full six years ago. Within that context, it isn't the details of a two-state solution that matter now; it is something much more elemental. Israel needs to know that in any deal with the Palestinians, its people will be safe.
3. Guarantee Israel's security
For that reason, the third key to peace is to find a way to convince Israelis that they and their children can sleep easy at night. And here Israel finds itself in a dilemma. The Jewish state's superb armed forces never failed when asked to fight against massed armies in conventional wars. But Israel is not fighting a standard war now; with Hamas and Hizballah, it is battling against cells of well-trained militias energized by religious fervor. Armies surrender when their leaders tell them to; guerrillas just slip back to a safe house and wait to fight another day. Worse, today's irregular foes live in villages, hide in houses and are sheltered by civilians (or force civilians to shelter them).
All that means that Israel has to fight a war that inevitably results in terrible and visible damage to towns and cities�and costs innocent lives. In the court of world public opinion, that is a fight Israel ultimately can never win. Worse, precisely because the collateral damage of such a war is so immense�witness the areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into a wasteland of shattered masonry�Israel risks creating a new generation of Arabs that hates it with a passion. By trying to guarantee its security today, Israel may be merely threatening its security tomorrow.
In any two-state solution, Palestinians would control the West Bank. But the need to maintain Israeli security has compelled some observers to rethink how an Israeli withdrawal from the region should be handled. Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton, criticizes the way Israel left Gaza last year. "The withdrawal," says Ross, "should not have taken place unless the Palestinians were going to create the security force to ensure security on their side, so that there weren't attacks out of Gaza into Israel." Given all that has happened, says Ross, Olmert will be able to pull out of the West Bank only if one of two conditions are met: "Either his withdrawal is geared only to [Israeli] settlers and not soldiers ... or the Palestinians are able to put together a credible security force."
4. Stabilize Lebanon
By leaving soldiers in the west bank after any withdrawal, Israel might hope to guarantee security on its eastern border. But the same tactic wouldn't work to the north; nobody is going to countenance Israel's occupying a swath of southern Lebanon again (as it did from 1982 to 2000) to deny Hizballah room from which to fire its rockets�least of all Israelis themselves, who are horrified by the idea of a re-occupation. That is why the fourth key to peace is to stabilize Lebanon. In part, that means propping up the fragile government of technocrats led by Fouad Siniora and pumping donors to help Lebanon rebuild itself (again)�which will be the focus of a high-level international meeting in Rome this week. But it also means ensuring that Hizballah can no longer use its strongholds in the south to threaten regional peace. That explains why Rice has been at pains to insist that her mission is not to restore the status quo ante but to change the game in Lebanon so that Hizballah is out of the picture. Rice and other top U.S. officials do not expect that Hizballah will be completely disarmed by Israel anytime soon; but they would not be sorry to see its power sufficiently undermined so that other nations can contribute to what Rice calls the "robust" force that will be needed to police the border when hostilities cease.
Getting those forces in place may be easier said than done. When Israeli officials are pressed on who, precisely, might man the border and face down the remnants of Hizballah, they throw out names�Turkey, Egypt, "the Europeans"�in a way that suggests the plan has not yet been thought through. Israeli officials take refuge in the hope that other nations will recognize that Iran, Hizballah's sponsor, is sufficiently dangerous to regional peace that defanging its proxy becomes something that every sensible party would want to do. "Iran," says Peres, "is trying to make a mockery of world institutions." That thought leads to the fifth key to peace�and perhaps the hardest of all to pin down.
5. Handle Iran
The one factor that truly distinguishes this summer's crisis from earlier ones is the realization that Iran is a central player. Among Israelis, it is generally assumed that Hizballah had Iran's encouragement when it kidnapped the soldiers. And that view isn't held just in Jerusalem. "There isn't the slightest degree of ambiguity or doubt as to Iran's role in this," says a French foreign-affairs official. "How much coincidence could there be in Hizballah kidnapping the Israeli soldiers on the same date that ministers met in Paris to decide what measures to take on the Iranian nuclear issue? None, in our opinion." Avi Dichter, Israel's Internal Security Minister, calls on other countries to help Israel show that "Iran's strategy has failed in Lebanon" and claims that if Iran is not faced down, it will try to destabilize oil states in the Gulf.
Assuming Iran was indeed behind Hizballah's raid, what happens next? The U.S. and other powers are discussing how to rein in Iran's nuclear program, and it may be easier to jointly impose sanctions now that Iran is viewed as responsible for mayhem in Lebanon. But what then? Take a look at a map. Iran is an oil-rich nation that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq, among others. It has a strategic position in Eurasia that cannot be wished away. European officials talk of a "constructive dialogue" with Tehran that involves recognizing it as an important regional power while maintaining the right to sanction it if it breaks the nuclear rules. But Israel�along with many supporters in the U.S.�thinks dialogue with a nation whose leader has said that Israel "must be wiped off the map" is a waste of breath. The U.S., meanwhile, has had few substantive talks with Iranian officials for the past 26 years�and it is anything but clear what levers Washington and its allies think they can pull if Iran really does seek a position of hegemony in the region. Yet even if Iran was to be contained or if it changed its tune, it is hardly certain that Hizballah would follow suit. There is even less reason to think Hamas would. Israel's Dichter claims that Iran made its first overtures to Hamas in 2001 and that Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based leader of Hamas, is a "frequent flyer between Damascus and Tehran." But Hamas is a Sunni organization rooted in Palestinian resistance. It doesn't need Iran's encouragement to fight Israel.
6. PRAY FOR IRAQ
There is, finally, the matter of Iraq. The original U.S. hopes for Iraq were not implausible: a successful democracy there would indeed help bring stability to the whole region. But the failure of the U.S. to impose order in Iraq after the invasion of 2003 has emboldened all those who believe that further spasms of violence will force Washington and its allies to give up their push for fundamental change. And there are worse possible outcomes. Iraq could become the launching pad for a full-on war between Sunni and Shi'ite, with Iran entering the fray on the Shi'ite side and the Arab states defending Iraq's Sunnis. In the bitter Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, more than a million people were killed or wounded�and any repeat of that carnage would take place in the context of a region where at least one power, Iran, is determined to develop nuclear weapons.
Seen in that light, there's little wonder that Rice is off on her travels. Her predecessors may have found their shuttles around the Middle East both vexing in their detail and disappointing in their outcome. But they knew that for the U.S. and the world, staying at home was more dangerous still. Rice and her boss, it seems, have got that message.
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| psychosomatica |
| quote: | Originally posted by ronk
please, show me one case of Israeli civilians that have been killed because they have been used as a human shields against their will.
(note that if Hezbollah uses human shield NOT against the civilians will, I count them as Hezbollah militants.) |
I really don't see your point. Both sides use human shields. Both sides are wrong. Don't condemn the other side for doing what you've done (and I believe are still doing.. ) |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ronk
I think I made my point.. |
Joseph Panossian had changed his story (later in the day) if you bothered to look at the time stamps for the reports he filed with AP.
Keep relying heavily on the media, remember they parroted the US when Saddam supposedly had nukes.
You remember Iraq don't you? Or did you forget already? |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: |
Pictures from Tel Aviv antiwar protest 7/22
set browser to unicode-8 to read text below or visiting site.
פעילי "גוש שלום" בין הצועדים. השלט בערבית: "ממשלת אולמרט ופרץ מבצעת פשעי מלחמה!"
Gush Shalom activists among the marchers. Arabic poster: "The Olmert-Peretz Government is Committing War Crimes!"
חלק מההמון בכיכר הסינמטק
Some of the 5000 protesters at Cinemateque Square
"די להרג אזרחים", "טוב שחרור אסירים מחפירת קברים!"
Marching through the streets of central Tel-Aviv. "Stop Killing Civilians", "Exhanging Prisoners is Better than Digging Graves"
קטע מהמצעד ברחוב איבן גבירול
Veteran marchers
השורה הראשונה, מאחורי שרשרת ביטחון
Leading the march, behind protective line
אורי אבנרי נואם בעצרת
Uri Avnery addressing the thousands
ח"כ לשעבר עיסם מחול נואם
Communist leader Issam Makhoul speeking
אביר קופטי מ"נשים נגד מלחמה" בחיפה
Abeer Kopti, from Haifa sectiob of "Women Against War".
צילום: רחל אבנרי
Photo: Rachel Avnery
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To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men
Abraham Lincoln |
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| KrazyDJs |
| quote: | Originally posted by psychosomatica
I really don't see your point. Both sides use human shields. Both sides are wrong. Don't condemn the other side for doing what you've done (and I believe are still doing.. ) |
You still didn't proved that the IDF used human shields (If you said it that is, too lazy to look up for that post :p ).
EDIT
ogvh5150,
I doubt if 1% of them have been hiding in the shelters for the last 12 days. I'm pretty sure they all live their lives in Tel Aviv, or any other city that doesn't get bombed. They still can voice their opinions, but it's easy to protest against a war you don't even "feel", isn't it? |
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| ronk |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
Joseph Panossian had changed his story (later in the day) if you bothered to look at the time stamps for the reports he filed with AP.
Keep relying heavily on the media, remember they parroted the US when Saddam supposedly had nukes.
You remember Iraq don't you? Or did you forget already? |
:eyes:
how blind can you be?
I'm not relying on those news articles in the internet I posted above, and I couldn't care less about that AP guy.
this 'war' broke because of the violation of these borders and the abduction. we got out of Lebanon 6 or so years ago, why would we even want to be there?
I saw a video (yeah, with my own eyes) about it. the soldiers were in the middle of a patrol along the border within the territories of Israel. Hezbollah fired at them, killed three as far as I recall, and abducted two from the Israeli territories. I saw the soldiers vehicle, it was in Israel. |
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| venomX |
| quote: | Originally posted by KrazyDJs
You still didn't proved that the IDF used human shields (If you said it that is, too lazy to look up for that post :p ).
EDIT
ogvh5150,
I doubt if 1% of them have been hiding in the shelters for the last 12 days. I'm pretty sure they all live their lives in Tel Aviv, or any other city that doesn't get bombed. They still can voice their opinions, but it's easy to protest against a war you don't even "feel", isn't it? |
But then those who 'dont feel it' can use their intellect to come up with more reasonable plans. The problem with 'feeling' is that i clouds judgement and leads to irrational behavior. If we all guided ourselves by feeling organized society would not be able to exist. In the heat of battle, in the middle of a crisis, the only way to make objective decisions is to distance yourself a bit from what you 'feel'. I dont the time to look up the sources right now but psychologicial studies have proven that when performing tasks with heavy cognitive demands unless one is extremely proficient in them the presence of adrenaline in the bloodstream decreases effeciency by a great degree ie. making tough decisions with a hot head leads to bad decisions. |
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| venomX |
| quote: | Originally posted by ronk
:eyes:
how blind can you be?
I'm not relying on those news articles in the internet I posted above, and I couldn't care less about that AP guy.
this 'war' broke because of the violation of these borders and the abduction. we got out of Lebanon 6 or so years ago, why would we even want to be there?
I saw a video (yeah, with my own eyes) about it. the soldiers were in the middle of a patrol along the border within the territories of Israel. Hezbollah fired at them, killed three as far as I recall, and abducted two from the Israeli territories. I saw the soldiers vehicle, it was in Israel. |
Thats quite the claim, its pretty random that someone would be shooting a video at that monent, any links? |
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