Opinion | Columnists
Why is Israel destroying its neighbour?
Israel is waging a war of extermination in Lebanon. Without regard to the civilian population, it is seeking to destroy Hezbollah, much as it has attempted over the past six months to destroy Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories.
- By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 July 20, 2006
Israel is waging a war of extermination in Lebanon. Without regard to the civilian population, it is seeking to destroy Hezbollah, much as it has attempted over the past six months to destroy Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories.
It wants to root out these movements altogether.
Its strategy in Lebanon seems to be to empty the south of its population, driving the Shiites out of their traditional homeland in much the same way as it continues its pitiless onslaught on Gaza.
Why this Israeli savagery? By their cross-border raids and the capture of three Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah and Hamas humiliated the Israeli army and dented its deterrent capability. In Israeli eyes, this cannot go unpunished. It is determined to bring home to the Arabs the tremendous cost of daring to attack Israel.
The Israeli army has a score to settle with Hezbollah which, by guerrilla harassment, drove it out of Lebanon in 2000, ending its 22-year occupation of the south. With this success, Hezbollah demonstrated to the whole Arab world - and to the Palestinians in particular - that Israel was not invincible. Now Israel is trying to set the record straight.
No doubt some Israeli hawks, such as the chief of staff Dan Halutz, regret the "unfinished business" of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon when, having killed 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, it failed to secure the political reward of bringing a submissive Lebanon into its orbit.
This time, too, Israel may find that its war aim of destroying Hezbollah and Hamas is unattainable.
Hezbollah's leader, Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah - Israel's "Enemy Number One" - has repeatedly warned Israel to expect "surprises". The missile attacks on Haifa, Israel's third largest city and the disabling of one of Israel's most advanced warships were certainly painful surprises. They carried the war into Israel's home territory.
The greatest "surprise" Hezbollah might still have up its sleeve would be to survive the present crisis, bloody but unbowed. The longer Hezbollah holds out, the greater Israel's problems with the international community and the greater the pressure of Arab opinion on those Arab regimes that have so far stood shiftily on the sidelines. Israel has always relied on brute force to ensure its security. This doctrine rests on the belief that the Arabs will never be strong enough, or capable enough, to challenge it. This is a fundamentally racist attitude.
Muscle-flexing
But beneath the bluster and the muscle-flexing lies a deep-seated paranoia and insecurity, reflected in the conviction, shared by many of Israel's citizens, that the Arabs want to kill them and that they face a permanent existential threat. This dark view of their environment - something of a self-fulfilling prophecy - goes some way to explaining the extravagantly disproportionate nature of Israel's attacks and its blatant disregard for international legality and any semblance of morality.
Israel is able to behave in this way because it has been given extraordinary immunity by the United States. A striking aspect of the crisis is, indeed, America's total political, diplomatic and strategic support for Israel.
America's gross bias has paralysed the UN Security Council, the G-8 and the European Union. So great is American pressure that none of these bodies has been able to insist on an immediate end to the Israeli onslaught.
Terrorism is usually defined as the indiscriminate killing of civilians in pursuit of political goals. Is this not what Israel is doing in both Lebanon and Gaza? By any objective standard, Israel is guilty of state terrorism.
But killing Arabs in this wanton manner and smashing their countries must inevitably have negative consequences for Israel's own security. Israel's terrorist behaviour legitimises the terrorism of its enemies. And America's uncritical support for Israel legitimises terrorism against the United States itself. That is what 9/11 was all about, although to this day the United States has not faced up to why it was attacked. The US and Israel are sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.
Washington's unconditional backing for Israel highlights the fact that this is not simply a war between Israel and Hezbollah. By seeking to bomb Lebanon into submission, Israel intends to strike a blow at the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis, which has challenged US-Israeli dominance in the region. The key issue is whose will is to prevail in this vital part of the world.
If the conflict had been a purely local one, Israel might have agreed to an exchange of prisoners, as both Hezbollah and Hamas demanded, and as has taken place a number of times in the past. But the war has a wider dimension.
The US has given Israel a free rein because it is confronted with the probability of two highly disagreeable developments: a nuclear-armed Iran and a humiliating defeat in Iraq. It urgently needs to regain the initiative in the wider Middle East and has persuaded itself - or been persuaded by Israel's friends inside and outside the administration - that Israel can help it do so.
The situation is complicated by a further layer of conflict. The Arab oil producers in the Gulf dread an upset in the regional power balance. Israel's indifference to Arab life risks convincing many young Arabs that long-term coexistence with Israel is not possible. Arab intellectuals are increasingly expressing the view that Israel is a colonial state, which must eventually disappear.
At their summit meeting in Beirut in March 2002, all the Arab states declared their readiness to establish normal peaceful relations with Israel within its 1967 borders. But Israel rejected the offer. It must surely be time for Israel to think again. The offer may still be on the table.
Only by withdrawing from Palestinian territories, respecting Lebanon's sovereignty and returning the Golan to Syria will Israel live in peace.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
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