Where the Boys Are, at Least for Now, the Girls Pounce

By KATHERINE ZOEPF

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 1 — This is a city of nightclubs, but the nightlife is something else these days, and not just because of the feverish edge sharpened by the war last summer.

By 8 p.m., women in their 20s and early 30s are prowling in packs of five and six, casting meaningful glances at any and all passing men. In the bars the women dance for hours — often on top of the bar — and legs, midriffs, bare shoulders and barely covered bosoms are offered for public admiration.

Samir Khalaf, a professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, said the scene astonished his American colleagues. “They are just shocked,” he said. “ ‘This is Lebanon, the Middle East?’ they say. They can’t stop talking about all the belly buttons, about all these highly eroticized bodies. You see it everywhere here, this combination of consumerism and postmodernism and female competition.”

For a few weeks twice a year, after Ramadan and before Christmas, thousands of Lebanon’s young men return from jobs abroad — and run smack into one of the world’s most aggressive cultures of female display. Young women of means have spent weeks primping and planning how to sift through as many men as possible in the short time available. The austere month of Ramadan ended a week ago.

The country’s high rate of unemployment pushes the young men to seek work elsewhere, sometimes in Western countries like France and Canada, but mainly in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the other oil states on the Persian Gulf. The women, inhibited by family pressures, are generally left behind.

“The demographic reality is truly alarming,” Professor Khalaf said. “There are no jobs for university graduates, and with the boys leaving, the sex ratios are simply out of control. It is now almost five to one: five young girls for every young man. When men my sons’ age come back to Lebanon, they can’t keep the girls from leaping at them.”

For the men, who return with deep pockets and high spirits, the holiday welcome is gratifying.

“In Doha it is completely impossible, because you can’t talk to women in the gulf,” said Wisam Hamdan, 35, back from Qatar, where he manages hairdressing salons. “But Lebanese girls are very friendly. I am hoping to meet lots of girls, and then I will pick one.”

The other night Roula Hallak, 27, was wandering the bars of Gemmayzeh, an eastern Beirut neighborhood, with a troupe of six meticulously dressed and made-up girlfriends.

“I’m not looking, but she is, and so is she,” Ms. Hallak said, poking two of them, who giggled and declined to give their names. “It’s so hard to meet the perfect guy this way, but there are so many out in Beirut at this time of year. You go out and you look and you’re always hoping.”

According to Professor Khalaf, Lebanese Christians have been migrating for economic reasons since Ottoman times. But as the nation’s economic crisis has deepened, the exodus has come to include young men from all religious groups and across the socio-economic spectrum, as well as a tiny but growing number of young women.

Over the last two decades, the Persian Gulf has become the economic pole, and its pull has only grown stronger since the monthlong war this summer between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. With the political situation here still so uncertain, investment and work opportunities are growing even scarcer, and the gender imbalance worsens.

For young women here, dressing fashionably is a competitive game; stare-down contests between young women in restaurants and malls are common, particularly, say the girls, when one of the women is accompanied by an attractive Lebanese man.

Kareen Yazbek, a Beirut psychologist, says that the lack of available men is a constant theme in her discussions with young women recovering from depression and drug addiction.

“Throughout my practice, the main issue that comes up with many young women is that they can’t find anyone to be with or to marry,” Ms. Yazbek said. “Among college-age girls it’s not such a problem, but after graduation there’s a big change as the men start seeking work outside of Lebanon.”

“The social pressures on young women are just huge,” Ms. Yazbek continued. “The focus is more and more on being beautiful, on pleasing other people. The competition is intense, conformity is a big thing, and everyone, rich and poor, gets plastic surgery. You can go to parts of Beirut where almost every young woman has the same little nose.”

And the big prize, all seem to agree, is the attention of one of the visiting native sons.

“The guys that remain in Lebanon are the stupid ones!” exclaimed Nayiri Kalayjian, 19, who was hitting the bars on Monot Street, in central Beirut, with three girlfriends.

“We’re too good for them,” she said. “The ones who remain in Lebanon are the ones with closed mentalities, the ones who just want a virgin girl. You start to feel that the men who stay in Lebanon are the ones with no ambition in their work, and so you wonder, why are they still here?”

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لأنني أدمنت

زياد الرحباني

أدمنت لا شعورياً في منتصف الثمانينات حضور الرئيس أمين الجميل وخطاباته وتصريحاته خاصةً تصريحه الشهير في الولايات المتحـدة والذي هدَّدَ فيه بـ "قصف دمشـــق إذا إضطّرَ"، وظللـــت على هذه الحــــال حتى أُبعِدَ الرئيس عن لبـنان. وأعترف بأنني عانيت ومَرَّت علَيَّ أيــام كالحــة (أي مُرَّة ومُعَتَّقة) وما كان شيء وُصِفَ لي يُغنيني عَنهُ، وأعترفُ أني رُحتُ أتدهور معنويًا حتى أني عاقرتُ الخمور وبتهوّر متصاعد الى أن عاد! فأستشعرتُ أن جسدي سيعود حتماً الى إستقراره السابق وذلك تباعاً مع كل كلمة سيتفوه بها الرئيس. لكن المفاجأة المؤلمة كانت أنه لم يكن له عليَّ المفعول نفسهُ، ربما أنا تغيرت؟ فهو لم يتغير، بالعكس! راجعتُ الأطباء وأجمعوا على أن جسمي إعتادَه فلم يَعُد ينفعني مهما صَرَّحَ أو قال، حتى ولو قصف دمشق. فسألتهم: ما العمل؟ وصفوا لي بيار أمين الجميل، مرة واحدة في اليوم. وبدأت العلاج وها أنا أحاول بكل إنتظام. من الواضح حتى الآن أن عوارضه الجانبية لا تُحصى وأهمّها أنه أيضا وزير الصناعة. حلمت به قبل يومين وقد استدعي الى واشنطن لإدارة شركات "جنرال الكتريك" فغادر اقليم المتن الشمالي على عجل، هو المشهود له باطلاعه العميق على العلاقة المركّبة بين "الكمية والنوعية"، وكيف أنهُ، وفي أسابيع معدودة، تمكن بدهائه من رفع مستوى صرف ليرتنا الوطنية إلى 1500 دولار لليرة الواحدة... فإعتقل فوراً

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رايس واجتماع <الخليج + 2>: الاعتدال لا الديموقراطية

فواز طرابلسي

لم يبقَ لوزيرة الخارجية الأميركية كوندليسا رايس غير أن تضيف إلى ألقابها لقب <الأمين العام لجامعة الدول العربية>، فهذا هو ما مارسته خلال قمة <المعتدلين العرب> الممثلين بوزراء خارجية دول الخليج الست إضافة لمصر والأردن التي انعقدت في القاهرة بناء على جدول أعمال وتوزيع عمل أفصحت عن بعضه رايس خلال مؤتمر صحافي في جدة.
بانتظار تحليل المقررات واستبيان ما أعلن منها وما لم يعلن، نستطيع، دونما كبير مغامرة، القول إن قمة القاهرة تشير الى منحى جديد تختبره الآنسة رايس وهو تمرير السياسات الأميركية بواسطة كتلة عربية تكشفت عنها مواقف <المعتدلين العرب> إبان الحرب الإسرائيلية الأخيرة على لبنان.
وليس من قبيل الصدفة أن تفتتح تلك المرحلة الاختبارية الجديدة بإطلاق رصاصة الرحمة على آخر وهم حول دور ما للولايات المتحدة في نشر الديموقراطية في المنطقة.
ليست الأولوية ل<الاعتدال> وحسب، وإنما <الاعتدال> ولو على حساب الديموقراطية، بل ضدها. رداً على سؤال لصحافي اكتشف المفارقة بين التوكيد السابق على الديموقراطية والأولوية الحالية المعطاة ل<الاعتدال>، أجابت رايس إن <القوى المعتدلة سوف تنتقل في النهاية الى قوى ديموقراطية معتدلة>.
هذا الاعتراف بأن قوى <الاعتدال> ليست ديموقراطية لا يحتاج الى مزيد من الشرح والتفصيل، طالما أنه آت مباشرة <من فم الحصان> كما يقول المثل الإنكليزي. ولكن هذه هي بعض المآثر الأخرى ل<المعتدلين العرب>:
? <المعتدلون> هم الحكام الذين يسهل أن يُغلّب لديهم العداء لإيران بحجة التخصيب النووي على العداء لإسرائيل ذات المائتين أو الثلاثماية رأس نووي!
? و<المعتدلون> هم الذين يرتضون بأفضل شروط لاستثمار ثرواتهم النفطية على يد شركات النفط مثلما يرتضون توظيف معظم عائدات نفطهم في الغرب.
? و<المعتدلون> هم الذين يستقبلون القواعد العسكرية الأميركية ولا يمانعون استخدامها لنقل <الأسلحة الذكية> لإسرائيل في الحرب الأخيرة على لبنان.
? و<المعتدلون> هم الذين يحكمون مستخدمين أذرعة ميليشياوية لا تصدر بحقها قرارات تحريم دولية طالما أنها لا تقاتل من أجل إجلاء الاحتلال الأميركي من العراق ولا ترمي إسرائيل حتى بوردة.
? و<المعتدلون> هم الذين لا يثيرون كبير إشكال عندما تعتقل إسرائيل <المعتدلة> و<الديموقراطية> أكثرية نواب المجلس التشريعي المنتخبين على لائحة حركة حماس. مع أن هؤلاء <المعتدلين> يرفعون عقيرتهم بالصراخ ضد <مغامرات> المقاومة اللبنانية عندما تسعى بعملية أسر جنود إسرائيليين لاستكمال مهمات تحرير الأسرى والأراضي اللبنانية.
هذا لا يعني أن <غير المعتدلين> هم بالضرورة ديموقراطيون. ولكنه يعني أن هذا <الاعتدال> وهو الاسم الآخر للخضوع للإرادة الإمبراطورية الأميركية لن يلد ديموقراطية، لا الآن ولا في <النهاية>.
يبقى أن يقتنع بعض أصناف القوميين العرب والإسلاميين، وحتى بعض أصناف اليساريين، بأن الولايات المتحدة ليست تسعى إلى فرض الديموقراطية عليهم فيما هم يمارسون <الممانعة>. اللهم إلا إذا كانت ممانعتهم هي ممانعة للديموقراطية!

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Anti-Arab Racism, Islam, and the Left

by Rami El-Amine

Racism against Arabs and Muslims long preceded the 9-11 terrorist attacks and has much of its roots in Western imperialism in the Middle East, especially Israel's colonization of Palestine. Yet, the escalation that we witness today can be traced to the war on terror launched after 9-11 by Bush and his neoconservative ideologues with the backing of the Democrats. Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism has helped sell the detentions, wars, gulags, and occupations of US imperialism's latest and boldest venture into the Middle East and South Asia. In turn, this imperial venture has further inflamed racist views of Arabs and Muslims.

What makes this growing racism so frightening is its wide acceptance in US society, particularly by the left. With the latter, it is not as much conscious racism as not doing enough to fight it. Part of this may be due to ambivalence, but it also stems from a lack of a dynamic understanding of Islamism. Broad support gives anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism a sense of legitimacy and respectability that makes building a mass movement that can end the war and occupation of Iraq difficult, if not impossible, since so much of the support for the war is fueled by fear and racism.

We thrash, curse for air
As our strangler declares, look
How violent the Arab
-- Haiku for the Head Locked by Zein El-Amine

According to an ABC-Washington Post poll taken in March 2006, a majority of people in the US believe that "Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence," with 46 percent expressing a negative view of the religion, 7 percent higher than in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The poll also found that 25 percent of people in the US admitted to "harboring prejudice towards" Muslims and Arabs. The institutional effect of this racism is stark. The earnings of Arab and Muslim men working in the US dropped about 10 percent since 9-11, according to a new University of Illinois study. The drop in wages was most dramatic in areas reporting high crime rates. Robert Kaestner, co-author of the study said there was "an immediate and significant connection between personal prejudice and economic harm."

This should not come as a surprise when you consider the extent of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism being perpetrated by governments and the media around the world. The past year has seen the mass publication of Danish cartoons ridiculing Islam, police brutality and repression against North Africans in France, and a riot against mostly Lebanese immigrants in Australia -- all of which led to mass protests and, in the case of France, riots by Arabs and Muslims in response.

While such blatant racism has not yet provoked a similar response in the US, it has not been because of any shortage of incidents:

1. Last year a Washington, DC, radio host continuously referred to Islam as a "terrorist organization" on his show (Paul Farhi, "Muslims Call Comments by WMAL Host 'Hate-Filled,'" Washington Post 26 Jul 2005: C01).
2. The Coalition for a Secure Driver's License started a campaign to put up "Don't License Terrorists" billboards depicting an Arab holding a hand grenade in one hand and a driver license smeared with blood in the other.
3. Republican Congressman Tancredo of Colorado openly called for the US to preempt a terrorist attack by attacking Muslim holy sites like Mecca.

War on Terror

Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is an indispensable part of the so-called "war on terror" or "the long war," as it is now referred to, and US plans to dominate the Middle East. By dehumanizing those that the US is waging war against, this racism makes their death and the destruction of their countries more palatable to the US public and quells domestic resistance to the war. Today it helps numb people to the deaths of dozens of Iraqis per day and the mass murder of Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel.

Fomenting anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism has not been difficult because, as Noam Chomsky puts it, such racism has "long been extreme, the last 'legitimate' form of racism in that one doesn't even have to pretend to conceal it." I do not want to minimize all the other forms of racism that run deep in this country, but there is indeed a certain legitimacy and respectability given to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism that is not found with other forms of racism. This legitimacy stems from the fact that anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism cuts across the entire political spectrum, from right to left. It is accepted and even practiced by those who would not tolerate other forms of racism. While the anti-racist record of liberals and some on the left is not the best, it is particularly bad when it comes to Arabs and Muslims.

Green Menace

Arabs have historically been more the targets of this racism than Muslims. This began to change in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution because it was no longer just Arabs who were the enemy. The end of the Cold War and resistance to US hegemony, particularly by Muslims in the Middle East, made Islam a useful scapegoat for US imperialism -- its new bogeyman now that communism was gone. Books by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations became popular because they gave "scholarly" backing to the idea that Islam was the main threat to Western "civilization."

Many have drawn parallels between this scapegoating of Muslims to the red scare during the Cold War, referring to it as the "green menace." While the comparison is appropriate, the concept of the green menace is, in many ways, much more insidious because it relies on racism rather than ideology. It is a more effective means of instilling fear in people, deflecting their attention from their everyday problems, and mobilizing them against some supposedly powerful enemy. That is not to say that the red scare was not (and still is not) used in a racist manner against countries like Vietnam, North Korea, China, Cuba, and against black activists in the US. It is just that the main communist bogeymen, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, were white Europeans.

The specter of the green menace, on the other hand, relies on the fact that Muslims look different and, even if they do not look different, they have distinct names, places of worship, dress, and customs that can be easily exploited to portray them as the "other" -- different, prone to violence, and barbaric. Also, in the age of "full spectrum dominance," this racism can be used to justify and mobilize attacks on a huge swath of the world's poor because Muslims are not only present in large numbers in the Middle East, but in Africa, Asia, and most urban centers in Europe, the United States, and Canada.

Having said that, I have chosen to use the term "anti-Arab/anti-Muslim" rather than just one or the other because both groups -- and many others, including Sikhs, who are neither Arab nor Muslim -- are the targets of the racism we are seeing today. The piercing words, physical assaults, and flying bombs and bullets do not know nor care that we are not all the same.

Republicratic Racism

The racist hysteria around an Arab company, Dubai Ports World (DPW), managing six US ports is a good example of both the uniqueness and pervasiveness of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism in the US. During the public debate over the deal, it was those who traditionally have at least paid lip service against racism, the Democrats, who were the most xenophobic and, in some cases, downright racist. At a rally in Newark, New Jersey, attended by a number of Democratic Congressmen, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) described the port deal as an "occupation." He added that "we wouldn't transfer the title to the Devil; we're not going to transfer it to Dubai."

The liberal group MoveOn.org was less blatantly racist but still contributed to the hysteria. On its website it asked people how it should respond to the "port security scandal." In their summary of the issue, they regurgitated the same distorted arguments politicians from both parties had been using, like "Dubai is . . . known as an international money laundering hub for Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks." Such use of unsubstantiated generalizations only feeds into the stereotype that the Middle East is crawling with terrorists. Of the five possible responses that MoveOn.org asked people to choose from, all but one fed into the anti-Arab hysteria whipped up around the deal. For example, one of the choices was for MoveOn.org to "[f]ocus on whichever course is most likely to stop the ports from being handed over to the UAE." The other was to "[s]upport the Democratic bill in the Senate banning all corporations owned by foreign governments from managing security at American ports." None of the options were about exposing the anti-Arab bias of both political parties and the media.

With Democrats and liberals taking such a right-wing stance, it's no wonder that Bush and some Republicans were portrayed as supporting the deal because they were friends of Arabs. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, liberal Richard Cohen says, "Maybe because Bush is a Bush -- son of a president who got to know many Arabs -- or maybe because he just naturally recoils from prejudice, his initial stance on this controversy has been refreshingly admirable."

Yes, remarkably, Bush may indeed be a defender of Arabs. However, he is selective in which Arabs he defends. Bush is more than willing to protect the rich Arab monarchies that lord over the Gulf, but certainly not the thousands of Arabs and Muslims that his racist war on terror has maligned, detained, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Nothing captures this fact and the dehumanizing role of racism better than the following words from a letter Guantanamo Bay detainee Jumah Dossari gave his lawyer before attempting suicide:

The detainees are suffering from the bitterness of despair, the detention, humiliation, and the vanquish of slavery and suppression. I hope you will always remember that you met and sat with a "human being" called "Jumah" who suffered too much and was abused in his belief, self, dignity and also in his humanity. He was imprisoned, tortured, and deprived from his homeland, his family, and his young daughter who is in the most need of him for four years . . . with no reason or crime committed.

Sadly, Jumah Dossari is only one of thousands of Arab and Muslim prisoners, many of them nameless, being "detained" in US prisons and unknown "black sites" around the world, including here in the US at places like the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The Anti-war Movement

United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and others in the anti-war movement, as well as generally perceived progressive groups such as the Green Party sat out the DPW deal "controversy" and, more importantly, the whole anti-Muslim cartoons debate. There were protests on every continent, led mostly by Muslims who saw this as part of a broader war on Islam by non-Muslims -- one that they were actually finally allowed to act on, as opposed to more egregious aspects of the war on terror like torture, imprisonment, and occupation that their rulers do not want to rock the boat over. The failure of anti-war groups in the US to organize any events in solidarity with Muslims worldwide, let alone even put out statements condemning their publication, helped reinforce the perception that the anti-war movement is not concerned with anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism.

On the positive side, some of the anti-war groups who are part of UFPJ have been organizing speaking tours of Iraqis. US Labor Against the War (USLAW) organized a tour of six Iraqi trade unionists around the country in June 2005, and in early 2006; Code Pink brought several Iraqi women to the US on a powerful tour involving Cindy Sheehan and other families of US soldiers killed in Iraq. Such events are very effective in combating racism because they humanize Iraqis and help break down stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims. The Green Party has also been good about issuing statements condemning the government's targeting and racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims. However, if groups are genuinely concerned and committed to bringing about a just peace in the Middle East, then an explicit strategy of confronting anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism needs to be a central and consistent part of their work.

The failure of some anti-war groups to take anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism head-on may be due to the small number of Arabs and Muslims involved, and organizations' lack of movement on these issues then reinforces the lack of Arab and Muslim involvement. For example, there is only one Muslim (and no Arabs) on UFPJ's Steering Committee. While UFPJ does manage to have Arabs and Muslims speak at their actions and events, they are generally not involved in organizing with UFPJ on any consistent basis.

Islamophobia and Zionism

The failure of many in the US antiwar movement to fight anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is often rooted in conscious or unconscious acceptance of two interconnected racist ideologies of Islamophobia and Zionism. A good example of this is the anti-war movement's wary response to Hamas' overwhelming victory in this year's Palestinian legislative elections.

The election was immediately seized upon by Zionists to tighten the occupation and add to the already heightened racism against Arabs and Muslims in the US. While US and European leaders were mobilizing the world against the new, democratically elected government of Hamas (punishing the entire Palestinian people in the process) on the grounds that it did not renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel, few in the anti-war movement were exposing the virulent anti-Arab racism found at all levels of the Israeli government, which is actively working to ensure that a Palestinian state will never exist, refuses to give equal rights to Palestinians (and all non-Jewish residents of Israel), and is killing Palestinians on a daily basis. At the annual conference of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC, in March, the Israeli Ambassador to the UN commented: "While it may be true . . . that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim." This comment was applauded and went unchallenged by the media or any of the Congresspeople in attendance.

Calls for the ethnic cleansing or "transfer" of Palestinians are not uncommon in Israel, even at the highest levels of the government because Zionism -- a product of European colonialism -- sees a Jewish majority and Jewish-privileged state as being incompatible with respecting the rights of the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. Rehavam Zeevi, the Minister of Tourism assassinated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 2001, called Palestinians "lice" and "a cancer" and openly advocated their forced transfer. In March, Zvi Bar'el, a regular columnist for the Israeli paper Haaretz wrote, "Israel's problem is not Hamas, strong or weak; the problem is with the Palestinian people, who chose it. They have to be changed or eliminated if one wants quiet. . . ." Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Is Our Home party, the largest party in the sizeable Russian bloc in Israel's new Knesset, supports what is essentially a plan to ethnically cleanse Israel of its Palestinian citizens. Sergei Podrazhansky, the editor of one of Israel's Russian language dailies, said "I know that even the most left-wing person in Israel wants to wake up and not see any Arabs here." The annual poll by the Center for the Struggle Against Racism shows that comments like these are not isolated views. The poll found that 68% of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab and 40% believe "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens" (Eli Ashkenazi and Jack Khoury, "Poll: 68% of Jews Would Refuse to Live in Same Building as an Arab," Haaretz 22 March 2006).

Support for the "transfer" or expulsion of Palestinians is evident in the US as well, particularly among neoconservatives. In response to a suicide bombing in Israel in August 2001, two neoconservative Washington Post columnists, Michael Kelly and Charles Krauthammer, called for the expulsion of Palestinians. So it was no surprise to read the rank racism in Krauthammer's column following Hamas' recent election victory. He said, "By a landslide, the Palestinian people have chosen these known stances: rejectionism, Islamism, terrorism, rank anti-Semitism, and the destruction of Israel in a romance of blood, death and revolution."

The US media, and even many activists, perpetuate the steroetype that Hamas wants to destroy Israel, rather that listening to what Hamas has to say about its goals. Hamas' leadership has often publicly committed to end violent resistance and enter into negotiations to resolve the main impediments to a just peace for the Palestinians. In a July 11 Washington Post Op-Ed by the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh from Hamas, described the conditions necessary to make this possible: "[R]ecognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people . . . reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. . . . Statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law."

Colonial Mentality

Israel's colonization of Palestine has actually been the source of much of the anti-Arab/anti-Muslim ideas that have been accepted by the mainstream. The propagation of the idea that Palestinians are Arab and Muslim fanatics not deserving of rights and equality, let alone their own state, has been an indispensable part of the process of the creation, expansion, and support of the state of Israel since 1948. What has helped these ideas spread and become "legitimate" in the US are not neoconservatives like Krauthammer, but liberal supporters of Israel who are actively involved in the Democratic Party and social justice causes. While this has changed over the past six years as more people have begun to identify Israel with US imperialism and apartheid South Africa, supporters of Israel still play an important role in making these ideas acceptable, particularly on the left (see the Arab Women's Solidarity Association's "The Forgotten ' –ism:': An Arab American Women's Perspective on Zionism, Racism and Sexism").

For example, in response to the US Green Party (USGP) Resolution 190 calling for divestment from Israel, opponents have started a "Let 190 Go" campaign complete with its own website, www.advocatesforisrael.org. A number of prominent leftists and former candidates of the Green Party like Stanley Aronowitz and Marakay Rogers have been pushing to repeal the resolution. While most have been careful to avoid racist arguments (a difficult thing to do when supporting a racist state), many have cited a letter from the Israeli Green Party (IGP) in their effort to convince more Greens to repeal the resolution. The letter is rife with arguments based on racist stereotypes, like "Did you know that in the Palestinian media there is glorification of violence and of suicide bombers?"

In arguing against the resolution, one prominent global justice activist and member of the DC Statehood Green Party (DCSGP) said, "I feel if the USGP party won't listen to fellow Greens in Israel . . . my continued membership or enthusiasm for our party is going to shrink . . . as Green Values . . . seem to have changed with this stupid resolution." But he exposed the colonial mentality of so many supporters of Israel when he said that it all boils down to the fact that "Israelis should have human rights too and quality of life doesn't have to suffer in order to improve the Palestinian's." In other words, he is concerned about Israelis having to give up their swimming pools so that Palestinians could drink and water their fields.

Worthless Arab Lives

The tragic consequences of the failure of the anti-war movement in the US to challenge anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism were laid bare during Israel's bloody invasion of Gaza and Lebanon. The public support for or, at best, indifference to such massive loss of innocent life and virtual destruction of entire countries and territories can only be fathomed in the context of a racism that basically says that Arab and Muslim lives are worthless and dispensable. In what other situation would the blatant targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure and the carrying out of not one but three massacres in the span of a week by a close US ally -- with explicit US approval and military support -- be tolerated? Add to this the fact that something similar continues to take place in Gaza and dozens of Iraqis are dying every day under the US occupation in Iraq.

Nothing exemplifies this dehumanization better than the case of Private Steven D. Green, the US soldier who raped a young Iraqi girl along with several other soldiers and then killed her and her entire family in the town of Mahmudiyah. Well before this incident, Green had said in an interview with a Stars and Stripe correspondent (now AP reporter) that he came to Iraq to kill people. He said, "I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing. . . . Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'" I'm not sure what's more problematic -- what Green said or the fact the reporter never reported it until charges were filed against Green.

Of course such racism is dismissed as the words and actions of some crazed individual. But Green's comments --- like those of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who fought in the first Gulf War and said similar things -- are the logical outcome of the racism being espoused at the highest levels of government and in the media. In response to the dozens of Lebanese civilians that were being killed in the early days of Israel's assault, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said with no regrets: "There's no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and those killed in Israel from malicious terrorist attacks." Meanwhile the mainstream media portrayed the war as being between equals even though over 1200 Lebanese, almost entirely civilians, and only 157 Israelis, more than two-thirds soldiers, were killed.

Instead of immediately challenging this and other lies, UFPJ reinforced the perception of a symmetrical war propagated by the media by mentioning first in communications their concern for "the loss of life on all sides . . . all attacks on civilians" and front-loading condemnations of Hezbollah, without necessarily even getting to the point of the grossly uneven death and destruction in Lebanon and Palestine caused by Israel. Although the statements UFPJ released improved as the slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinians continued unabated (partially due to feedback from Palestine-solidarity activists), they did not even call for a day of decentralized protests around the country.

To get a sense of how conservative UFPJ was around the invasion of Lebanon, one need only compare their statements and actions to anti-war groups and individuals in other countries. A widely distributed and lauded video during the fighting was British MP George Galloway's interview on Sky Television (Britain's Fox) in which he not only exposes the media's bias toward Israel but challenges the widely accepted view in the West that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. This argument needs to be made because after 9-11 most people in the US don't need to hear anything beyond "this is a terrorist organization" to make up their mind about who is right and who is wrong. Therefore, challenging the US government labels of "terrorist" would go a long way toward shifting the debate in this country on issues related to the "war on terror."

The reason no one in the US has done what Galloway did is that in addition to Islamophobia there is a level of acceptance of the lies about Islamism, even by radicals. For example, the anti-capitalists who blog at www.threewayfight.blogspot.com posted an entry titled "Defending My Enemy's Enemy" during Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon in which they argued that while Israel is the clear aggressor in the conflict and needs to be opposed, it doesn't mean the left should support Hezbollah. The bloggers argue:

…Hezbollah is essentially a right-wing political movement. Its guiding ideology is Khomeini-style Islamic fundamentalism. Hezbollah's political ideal, the Islamic Republic of Iran, enforces medieval religious law, imposes brutal strictures on women and LGBT people, persecutes religious and ethnic minorities, and has executed tens of thousands of leftists and other political dissenters.

If it's not already, this argument will one day become part of one of Hillary Clinton's or even George Bush's (minus the part about LGBT people) speeches justifying a war on Lebanon and Iran. Even though the entry is insignificant in terms of the number of people who probably read it, it articulates a political view that a lot of the left, particularly anarchists and anti-authoritarians, subscribe to but are not as open about -- hence their conspicuous absence from a lot of the organizing against Israel's invasion.

These kinds of arguments ignore the fact that Hezbollah gave up on fighting for a theocracy long ago. It is an established political party in a multi-ethnic and -religious state in which they have the support and admiration of the other ethnic and religious groups and work closely with those on the left as well as the right. Additionally, Hezbollah's recent victory was not just a victory over the Israeli apartheid state but a major blow to US imperialism, the main source of oppression and exploitation in the world. It could possibly have a libratory effect not just in the Middle East but also in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Understanding Islamism

In short, proponents of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism can be broken down into several groups. One consists of the Pipes and Krauthammers of the world who see Islam as inherently violent, authoritarian, intolerant (anti-Semitic, misogynist, etc.), and therefore a natural breeding ground for terrorists. Another group says that it is not Islam but political Islam or Islamism that is the source of terrorism -- that Islamists have twisted what is otherwise a "good" religion for their own fanatical purposes. Fluctuating between these two groups is the majority of people in the US, who, according to the ABC-Washington Post poll cited earlier, have for now apparently bought into the first group's blatant racism.

This is not surprising since Pipes, et al. are given free reign in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and New York Times and appear extensively in the media. They also have the ears of a large number of politicians, including their fellow neocons in the administration. But the main reason for the growth in the number of people who feel Islam is inherently prone to terrorism is the paucity of people exposing and combating these ideas. Even those who say Islamism is the problem and not the religion itself end up feeding into stereotypes of Muslims because their arguments are based on generalizations -- that all Islamists are reactionary and even fascistic -- and the false belief that there are other stronger secular forces and factors that are being ignored by the media.

A good example of this could be seen on the USLAW tour of Iraqi trade unionists. A number of people stressed that the tour was a good way to show that there was a more progressive alternative to the Islamists and Baathists when it came to opposition to the US occupation. One problem with this is that it overstates the role unions play in the opposition to the occupation. But the bigger problem is that the leaders of one of the unions doing the best work against the occupation, the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra (GUOE), clearly sympathize and have close relations with the Islamist Moqtada Al Sadr. I would even venture to say that the majority of the Basra oil workers -- who have gone on strike several times, including most recently in February 2006, over economic as well as political issues like privatization and the occupation -- are supporters of Al Sadr.

The GUOE and its leaders are a perfect example of why a more dynamic understanding of Islamists -- one that does not lump them all into one homogenous group and dismiss them as reactionaries -- is needed. While only a minority of Muslims might consider themselves Islamists, a large number, maybe even a majority, support them. This is especially the case among the poor and marginalized. As the Islamists have steadily filled the vacuum created by the disintegration of the left (a direct result of US intervention in the region), they have taken on some of the language and politics of the left, becoming the main force in resisting the ravages of poverty, imperialism, and authoritarian rule. As a result, they have also gained the support of some non-Islamist political activists and co-opted others, becoming the hegemonic force in opposition to the ruling regimes and their imperial backers.

Islamists

This is not to say that all Islamists are progressive, but that they are not uniformly reactionary. Moreover, each Islamist group or party differs from the other in significant ways. They are products of their own distinct histories, shaped by different colonial experiences, class struggles, and imperialism.

For example, Hamas and Hezbollah reflect the experience of a much poorer and oppressed population than Al-Qaeda. As a result of not being based in any one country and who its leaders are, Al-Qaeda says and does very little for workers and the poor. Hezbollah takes positions against privatization and neoliberalism and for workers' rights that have historically been taken up by the left in Lebanon. Moreover, like some of their fellow Shiite Islamists in Iraq, Hezbollah is not trying to create a theocracy through an Islamic revolution but work within a democratic system to ensure the rights and aspirations of the Shiites, the most downtrodden in Lebanese society.

In contrast, those groups who hold or have held state power like the Islamists in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan are more right-wing and authoritarian, ruthlessly suppressing any resistance. Almost all the groups that are allowed to operate openly -- or in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, semi-openly -- provide a wide range of social services to the poor.

Hamas and Hezbollah have also been shaped by a resistance struggle against Israeli occupation and US imperialism. In Iraq, the Sadrists took up arms against the US occupation while their fellow Shiite Islamists in the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) supported it. Hezbollah, and now Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, all participate in elections while Al-Qaeda and other Islamists reject them.

Even on the question of women's rights there are differences, with the level of involvement of women in the day-to-day activities of each group being an indicator of how supportive they are of women's rights. With Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and most of the Islamist groups in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, there is little or no involvement of women and little or no support for women's rights. On the other hand, Hamas and the Egyptian Brotherhood ran women candidates; some even won. And women are openly involved at many levels in Hezbollah (for more on this, check out the documentary The Women of Hezbollah airing on Link TV).

They'll Never Win

Exposing and ending anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism needs to be a priority in the anti-war movement and the left in general. Doing so will not only bring more Arabs and Muslims into the movement, but also undercut the racist basis of support for the war. It will also alleviate the sense of isolation and powerlessness that so many Arabs and Muslims feel as a result of being the targets of war and racism.

Such blatant injustice combined with a lack of any effective mass opposition to the US-backed murder of so many innocent Arabs and Muslims is, ultimately, what pushes people to resort to terrorism. On the other hand, what the resistance in Lebanon has accomplished shows a successful alternative to such desperate and, ultimately, counterproductive tactics. It has also shown how quickly things can turn in this seemingly overwhelming struggle to stop the US war machine.

Most importantly, however, Lebanon has shown that we, Arabs and Muslims, can be locked up, tortured, and bombed but we will never stop resisting US and Israeli efforts to beat us into submission. Nothing captures this better than the words of Kamel, a shopkeeper who refused to leave Nabatiyeh, one of the hardest hit towns in south Lebanon: "Look around you, they have destroyed much of Nabatiyeh, but that is all they can do, destroy people's homes and livelihoods. They can't destroy our spirit and that is what they don't understand and why they will never win this war."

__________________________________________________

Rami El-Amine, an Arab/Muslim activist and writer, is a founder and former editor of Left Turn magazine. His article, “The Shia Rise Up,” in the Summer 2004 issue of Left Turn also appeared on ZNet, Muslim WakeUp, and Dissident Voice as well as a number of other websites and blogs. He can be reached at qawom (at) mutualaid.org. This article will be also published in the October/November issue of Left Turn.

URL: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/elamine030906.html

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السيّد يؤنّب خادمه

جوزف سماحة
المصدر: جريدة الأخبار

«ما خلا وضع إعلانات على الطرق فإن من الصعب جداً على إدارة بوش أن تكون قد أعلمت إسرائيل بقوة أكثر، أنها راغبة في أن يُقدِم الجيش الإسرائيلي على سحق حزب الله بعنف وقوة وبدون تردد». هذا ما قاله ناشط في منظمات يهودية أميركية (آرون راسكاس، «جيروزاليم بوست» 22/10).
لا لزوم للإعلانات على الطرق. السياسة الأميركية معروفة جيداً في لبنان إلى حدّ أن الشائعات تقول إن هامشيي الأكثرية كانوا محرجين لدى استضافة رايس وولش قدر إحراج ضابط مرجعيون لحظة تقديم الشاي.
لقد توّجت واشنطن، في الحرب على لبنان، سياسة مديدة من الدعم لإسرائيل. لم تعد الولايات المتحدة بعد 2001، تحمي الأمن الإسرائيلي والتفوّق على العرب. باتت تشجّع التوسعية الصهيونية وتراها ترجمة للعدوانية الأميركية. ولقد حصل تماهٍ كامل في تعريف «الإرهاب» يلغي، من الأساس، فكرة المقاومات الوطنية، ويشمل دول الممانعة، ويرفع مزاعم «الديموقراطية أولاً» للتغطية على إعادة الهيكلة الجذرية.
وليس سرّاً أن الولايات المتحدة، بمساعدة حثيثة من فرنسا، ساهمت في تهيئة المسرح اللبناني لتقبّل التدخل الإسرائيلي، لا بل، لاستدعائه. كما ليس سراً أن واشنطن حرّضت إسرائيل على الذهاب في إجرامها الى أبعد حدّ ممكن ولو أدى ذلك الى المجازفة بـ«ثورة الأرز الأميركية» التي بدت، لفترة، درّة تاج الإدارة في «الشرق الأوسط الكبير». لقد شاركت الولايات المتحدة مباشرة في الحرب عبر الجسر الجوي للأسلحة، وعطّلت المؤسسات الدولية قبل أن تحاول تطويعها. والأهم من ذلك أن بوش غامر بمزيد من انكشاف بلاده في المنطقة، وتعميق الكراهية لسياستها الخارجية، وتعريض أنظمة عربية «حليفة» لضغط شعوبها.
باختصار، تصرّفت الولايات المتحدة كما لو أن 99 في المئة من أوراق اللعبة في يد إسرائيل. وكانت تتوقع، وهذا من حقها، أن ينجز الجيش الحليف «سحقاً» كاملاً للمقاومة في لبنان يبرر عشرات مليارات الدولارات التي تدفعها له الإدارات الأميركية منذ عقود معتقدة أنها تستثمر أموالها فيه.
لم يطابق حساب الحقل حساب البيدر. لم تكن إسرائيل عند مستوى الأماني الأميركية المعلّقة عليها، تماماً كما في وسع إسرائيل أن تزعم أن الجيش الأميركي لم يكن في مستوى الأماني التي تعلقها عليه تل أبيب في... العراق!
انتهت الحرب العدوانية من دون نصر. يعني ذلك، استطراداً، أنها انتهت إلى ما يشبه الهزيمة. وارتدّت مفاعيلها إلى الداخل الإسرائيلي الذي شرع في مراجعة مؤلمة للذات.
إذا تركنا إسرائيل تعيد النظر في الكثير من حساباتها واستعداداتها فإننا سنلاحظ قلقاً واضحاً جدّاً عند داعميها الأميركيين، سواء في الأوساط اليهودية المغالية في يمينيتها أو في أوساط الأصوليين المسيحيين المتصهينين.
يرى هؤلاء أنهم فعلوا ما في وسعهم من أجل توليد القناعة بتطابق المصالح بين إسرائيل والولايات المتحدة، ويلاحظون أن التعثر في لبنان يهدّد الجهد الذي بذلوه لأن «الأميركيين إذا كانوا يحبّون الضحايا فإنهم لا يحبّون الخاسرين».
ثمّة قناعة شرعت تبرز ضمن هذه البيئة تقول إن الفشل أضرّ بمكانة إسرائيل بصفتها مرتكزاً استراتيجياً أساسياً للولايات المتحدة في المنطقة. لقد جرى تحويل أطروحة «المرتكز الاستراتيجي» إلى حقيقة دامغة لا تقبل شكّاً. ولذلك فإن تسرّب الأسئلة إليها يمكنه أن يقود أطرافاً في المؤسسة الأميركية الحاكمة إلى البحث عن سبل لسياسة أكثر توازناً في المنطقة.
إلى ذلك فإن التعثر الإسرائيلي ألحق ضرراً بالحرب الأميركية الكونية على «الإرهاب». وبما أن هذه الحرب هي الاسم الرمزي لإعادة إنتاج شرق أوسط مستسلم للمصالح الأميركية، فإنّ من حق السيّد أن يؤنّب خادمه على أدائه.
ولم يكن باقياً سوى أن تدخل إسرائيل في مرحلة ارتباك حتى يشعر أصدقاؤها الأميركيون بأنهم باتوا في موقع يُضعف قدرتهم على تسويق الأهمية الفائقة لهذا السند الإقليمي.
ربما كان من الواجب أن نتذكّر أن نظرية «إسرائيل المرتكز الاستراتيجي» هي نظرية واكبت حرب حزيران 67 وتلتها. كانت الإدارة الأميركية قد شرعت تتنبّه إلى أهمية إسرائيل قبل ذلك بوقت قصير، إلا أن الانتصار المدوّي في «حرب الأيام الستة» فتح الأعين في واشنطن: ها هي الدولة الطامحة إلى صداقة أميركا تقدّم لها عربوناً ثميناً ليس أقل من «رأس الحركة القومية العربية». منذ ذلك الوقت حصل تحوّل في الولايات المتحدة بأن ازدادت سياستها الشرق أوسطية «إسرائيلية» وازداد يهودها صهيونية.
يمكن التأريخ بحزيران 67 لبداية انقلاب إيديولوجي في الولايات المتحدة أدخلها، في ما يخص «الهولوكوست» مثلاً، في إطار وعي أوروبي لعقدة الذنب الناجمة عن الجريمة التاريخية. إلا أنّ التعديل على الإيديولوجيا لا ينبغي أن يخدعنا كثيراً. لقد أصبحت إسرائيل اعتباراً من ذلك الوقت «أهمّ توظيف أميركي خارجي على الإطلاق» على حدّ توصيف شهير أطلقه آرييل شارون.
إن الحسم في تحوّل إسرائيل إلى أبرز مرتكز استراتيجي أميركي في الشرق الأوسط، هو الذي أعلى من شأن «أصدقائها» الأميركيين وزاد نفوذهم. وهكذا فإن قوة «اللوبي اليهودي أو الصهيوني» في الولايات المتحدة هي نتيجة لقوة إسرائيل أولاً، وقبل أن تتحوّل إلى عنصر مهمّ من عناصرها.
ومن هنا فإنّ أي تراجع في هيبة إسرائيل وقدرتها الردعية ينعكس سلباً على الموقع المميّز للمدافعين عنها في واشنطن، مع ما يمكن لذلك أن يتركه من أثر على الدعم الأميركي لإسرائيل. ليس غريباً، والحالة هذه، أن يبرز قلق لدى هذه الأوساط في أميركا ما دامت تدرك أن بعض سلطتها مرتبط ببقاء الجيش الإسرائيلي قوة لا تقهر واحتياطياً بالغ الأهمية للسيد الأمبراطوري.
وما يعزّز هذه المخاوف، أن التعثر الإسرائيلي (ونتائجه) يحصل في ظل «التجرّؤ» على طرح قضية نفوذ «اللوبي» علناً ولأول مرة (الدراسة الصادرة عن هارفرد)، وفي ظلّ الفشل الأميركي في العراق وما قد ينجم عنه من تحميل للمسؤولية إلى الجناح «الإسرائيلي» في الإدارة وفي النخبة الأميركية الحاكمة.
من المبكر الحسم في نتيجة هذه التفاعلات. إلا أنها موضوع مهمّ للمتابعة. فإذا سارت الأمور في وجهة محدّدة تكون هذه واحدة من النتائج المهمّة لـ«النصر التاريخي والاستراتيجي» الذي أشار إليه الأمين العام لحزب الله حسن نصر الله. هل تمحو حرب تموز ــ آب 2006 بعض آثار عدوان حزيران 67 في هذا المجال تحديداً؟

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WATCHING LEBANON

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.
The New Yorker - Issue of 2006-08-21 - Posted 2006-08-14

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.”

Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat—a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a “legal state.” Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.”

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel’s plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, “Prior to Hezbollah’s attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were.” A Pentagon spokesman said, “The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program,” and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.

The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military co?peration for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.

“The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,” the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ ” The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.

“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.” (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”—Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. “If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers’ kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. “Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two,” the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.

The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. “They’ve been sniping at each other,” he said. “Either side could have pointed to some incident and said ‘We have to go to war with these guys’—because they were already at war.”

David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. “We did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us.” There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah “was pressing to go on the attack,” Siegel said. “Hezbollah attacks every two or three months,” but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.

In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. “The neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah,” Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha’aretz, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. “By provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity.”

“We were facing a dilemma,” an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “had to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response—to really take on Hezbollah once and for all.” Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.

The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel’s perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army’s signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.

One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. “Hamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code,” the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that “they got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population.” The conclusion, he said, was “ ‘Let’s go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.’ ” The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be “a full-scale response.” In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 “picked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to ‘warm up’ the north.” In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz “as seeming to be weak,” in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said “he thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past.”

Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.

The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)

Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, “in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior co?rdination with the United States.” He was troubled by one issue—the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. “For the life of me, I’ve never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily,” he said. “We usually go through long analyses.”

The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.

In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. “Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model,” the government consultant said. “The Israelis told Condi Rice, ‘You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days.’ ”

There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: “If it’s true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective—it was not about killing people.” Clark noted in a 2001 book, “Waging Modern War,” that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, “In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground.”

Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, “Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.” (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)

Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top—at the insistence of the White House—and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely,” he said. “It’s an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.’s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out,” he said. “Cheney had a strong hand in this.”

The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition—including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. “But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney’s office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states “in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative.”

The surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”

In the White House, especially in the Vice-President’s office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. “They are telling Israel that it’s time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure.”

Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country’s leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah’s medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. “The problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes,” Siegel told me. “The only way to resolve this is ground operations—which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn’t work.” Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz’s deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. “There is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it,” the consultant said. “If Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn’t stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We’re no longer playing by the same rules.”

A European intelligence officer told me, “The Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?” The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group’s ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.

A high-level American military planner told me, “We have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we’ve talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure.” There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to anticipate the unintended consequences,” he told me. “Will we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you’re up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You’re not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case.”

There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, “Every negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah—anti-ship and anti-tank missiles—and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran’s new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble.”

Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled “The Shia Revival,” also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington’s ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer—to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. “Military action cannot bring about the desired political result,” Nasr said. The popularity of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Nasr said, “you may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah—the rock star of the Arab street.”

Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration’s most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.

Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that “there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.” He added, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.”

A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. “He is angry and worried about his troops” in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, “and he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq.” Rumsfeld’s concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war’s implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war’s impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, “there is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what’s taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it’s a difficult and delicate situation.”

The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, “Rummy is on the team. He’d love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations.” The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being “delighted that Israel is our stalking horse.”

There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately “agitating” inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria—so far, without much success. Last week, the Times reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as “trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties” within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and “conservatives in the government,” including Cheney and Abrams, “who were pushing for strong American support for Israel.”

The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice’s role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. “She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire.”

Bush’s strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair’s own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has “gone out on a particular limb on this”—especially by accepting Bush’s refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “Blair stands alone on this,” the former diplomat said. “He knows he’s a lame duck who’s on the way out, but he buys it”—the Bush policy. “He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington.” The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, “when the Iranians”—under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment—“will say no.”

Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals—to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. “Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

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Israel set war plan more than a year ago

Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon
Matthew Kalman, San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service
Friday, July 21, 2006

Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.

In the six years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly."Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

Israeli officials say their pinpoint commando raids should not be confused with a ground invasion. Nor, they say, do they herald another occupation of southern Lebanon, which Israel maintained from 1982 to 2000 -- in order, it said, to thwart Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Planners anticipated the likelihood of civilian deaths on both sides. Israel says Hezbollah intentionally bases some of its operations in residential areas. And Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has bragged publicly that the group's arsenal included rockets capable of bombing Haifa, as occurred last week.

Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

"There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. "One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground."

The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel's aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign -- to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week -- remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon.

"I have the feeling that the end is not clear here. I have no idea how this movie is going to end," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a military analyst for the daily Haaretz newspaper.

Thursday's clashes in southern Lebanon occurred near an outpost abandoned more than six years ago by the retreating Israeli army. The place was identified using satellite photographs of a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel, said Israeli army spokesman Miri Regev.

"We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed (Wednesday) by the ground operation of our forces," said Regev. "This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations -- to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens."

Israeli military officials say as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah's missile capability has been destroyed, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But missiles continue to be fired at towns and cities across northern Israel.

"We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages."

"From the start of this operation, we have also been active on the ground across the width of Lebanon," said Brig. Gen. Ron Friedman, head of Northern Command headquarters. "These missions are designed to support our current actions. Unfortunately, one of the many missions which we have carried out in recent days met with slightly fiercer resistance."

Israel didn't need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.

But to destroy them, Israel needed to map the location of each missile.

"We need a lot of patience," said Hanegbi. "The (Israeli Defense Forces) action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village."

Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza -- as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that a traditional military campaign would be counter-effective.

"A big invasion is not suitable here," said Marzuk. "We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces."
Since fighting started

-- Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.

-- Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

-- At least 330 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.

-- 32 Israelis have been killed, among them 17 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least 12 soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.

-- Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian.

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Strikes Are Called Part of Broad Strategy

U.S., Israel Aim to Weaken Hezbollah, Region's Militants

By Robin Wright - Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006; A15

Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombing in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.

For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.

For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants -- with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.

"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."

Hezbollah's cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others has provided a "unique moment" with a "convergence of interests" among Israel, some Arab regimes and even those in Lebanon who want to rein in the country's last private army, the senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing conflict.

Israel and the United States would like to hold out until Hezbollah is crippled.

"It seems like we will go to the end now," said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon. "We will not go part way and be held hostage again. We'll have to go for the kill -- Hezbollah neutralization."

White House officials said Friday that Bush has called on Israel to limit civilian casualties and avoid toppling the Lebanese government but has not pressured Israel to stop its military action. "He believes that the Israelis have a right to protect themselves," spokesman Tony Snow said in St. Petersburg, where Bush is attending the Group of Eight summit. "The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."

Specifically, officials said, Israel and the United States are looking to create conditions for achieving one remaining goal of U.N. Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, which calls for the dismantling and disarming of Lebanon's militias and expanding the state's control over all its territory.

"We think part of the solution to this is the implementation of 1559, which would eliminate that [armed group operating outside the government] and help Lebanon extend all of its authority throughout the whole country," national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters with Bush in Russia yesterday.

The other part of the resolution calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which was completed in April last year -- after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, which was widely linked to Syria.

If Lebanon as a first step takes over Hezbollah's stockpiles, which included more than 12,000 rockets and missiles before the current strife began, then cease-fire talks could begin, the Israeli official said.

"The only way a cease-fire will even be considered is if 1559 is fully implemented," said the senior Israeli official. Lebanese troops must be deployed to take over positions in Hezbollah's southern Lebanon strongholds to ensure that there are no more cross-border raids or rocket barrages into northern Israel.

There are no guarantees, however, that this strategy will work. Israeli airstrikes could backfire, experts warn.

"Hezbollah was risking alienating not only the Lebanese public at large but, incredibly, its very own Shiite constituency. But if Israel continues with its incessant targeting of exclusively civilian targets, and, as a result, life becomes increasingly difficult for the people, I would not be surprised if there is a groundswell of support for Hezbollah, exactly opposite of what Israel is trying to achieve," said Timur Goksel, an analyst and former spokesman for the U.N. force in Lebanon who lives in Beirut.

The Bush administration's position -- and diplomacy -- are the opposite of what happened during the Clinton administration.

The last Hezbollah-Israel cease-fire was just before dawn on April 27, 1996, after the United States brokered a deal to end a punishing 16-day Israeli offensive designed to end Hezbollah's rocket barrages. More than 150 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed; more than 60 Israelis were injured. Tens of thousands on both sides of the border had fled or gone into bunkers.

Then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher shuttled for a week between Jerusalem and Damascus to mediate a written agreement, a sequel to a similar oral deal he negotiated after skirmishes in 1993.

For now, that is not a viable option to end the current conflict, U.S. officials say. With its diplomacy redefined by the war on terrorism, the Bush administration has opted for a course that plays out on the battlefield.

Pressed on whether a cease-fire was possible soon, the Israeli official said it was "way, way premature" to consider an end to hostilities. "There is no sense to have a cease-fire without a fundamental change," he said. "That change is to make sure the explosiveness of the situation cannot carry over to the future. That means neutralizing Hezbollah's capabilities."

The Bush administration is also using Resolution 1559 as a barometer, U.S. officials say, acknowledging that the Lebanese government has shown neither the ability nor the willingness to deploy its fledgling army to the southern border.

U.S. officials have cautioned Israel to use restraint, particularly on collateral damage and destruction of infrastructure, which might undermine the fragile government. There was some U.S. concern about attacks on the Beirut airport, but otherwise Washington is prepared to step aside and defer diplomacy unless there is a dramatic break, U.S. officials say.

"They do have space to operate for a period of time," the U.S. official said about Israel. "There's a natural dynamic to these things. When the military starts, it may be that it has to run its course."

Israel and the United States believe that the Israeli strikes in Gaza, following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, have undermined Hamas. "There is no Hamas government -- eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail, another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little," said the senior U.S. official.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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