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Israel’s reaction makes sense but local rockets must not boom
regionally
S P Singh
The Gaza crisis
spills over. Right now the world can hear the steady boom of
rockets being fired from Lebanon and watch Israel fending off
attacks on its northern and southern borders. But be very very
clear. This time the conflict is not local as it may seem
initially. It is very much regional. The psychological barrier
which prevented the frequent clashes between Israel and
Hezbollah over the last few years has been crossed.
Events in the last few days have shaken
everyone awake. Rockets may sound distant, the daily headlines
may denote an escalation at a hitherto dormant border, but be
warned. It could be war at the world's doorsteps. The millions
that crawl into bunkers and those who are dying denote what life
is made up of, currently for them, soon for many others in the
Middle East. And anything that happens there affects you.
While it can be argued for the moment that
justification for Hezbollah's aggression is totally lacking,
that the counter attack launched by Israel is fully justified,
that the Lebanese government has clearly avoided a confrontation
with Hezbollah for years, it is also true that realising real
politics, Israel too refrained from moving against Hezbollah.
Now that the provocation is here, clear and present, there is
only one mistake that Israel can make. And it is already doing
that.
Israel is now acting against Lebanon,
because Lebanon is officially responsible for Hezbollah. Israel
can state simply that it is attacking the address from which
missiles and Katyusha rockets are being launched. But wait a
minute! When Hezbollas fired the rockets, what did it expect? It
expected a certain Israeli reaction; and Israel did not
disappoint.
But failure is interwoven into the subtext
if Israel leaves aside real politics and goes after the Lebanese
government. Hezbollah's designs are diabolic. The enemy always
wants you to do the predictable. The trick lies in being
innovative. Someone wants to halt peace initiative by provoking
Israel. The trick lies in thwarting such an entity and still
save the peace.
Lebanese government is weak. Israel's
counter attack may ensure Lebanon collapses again. A civil war
there will enlarge the local rocket exchange and soldier
kidnappings into a regional war. And consequences of such a war
are unpredictable. Hezbollah cannot achieve such an aim on its
own. It's getting Israel to do it. Israel must make sure that it
is not doing the enemy's dirty task.
Also, it has to desist from its intention
of custom-designing the Arab world according to its needs. So
far it has failed. It has to have reasonable goals. Achievable
goals. Breaking Hezbollah's power and ending its influence is an
unachievable goal. Do not forget the experiments with Palestine
Liberation Organisation. At one time, Israel wanted to finish it
off. Superior weaponry and force did not succeed. The proven
short sightedness of 1982 must not be forgotten.
True that the French President Jacques Chirac has expressed
concern about "will to destroy Lebanon". But there are other
reasons.
Hezbollah is not PLO. It is a mini-Iran.
And Iran's commitment is towards more than mere Palestinian
cause. It will fight Israel after the Israel-Palestine peace
too.
Iran’s president has famously denied the
Holocaust. Iran has committed itself to undermining any prospect
of real peace between Israel and the Palestinians through its
agents like the Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Islamic
Jihad.
Israel has to realise that its fate is
intertwined with Palestine and peaceful coexistence with
Palestine only strengthens it to deal with Hezbollah. A
disproportionate attack on Lebanon will harm Israeli-Palestine
solution seeking efforts. This is what Hezbollah's aim is.
Please bear in mind that the latest
provocation has come just when the Hamas government of Prime
Minister Ismail Haniya was in the process of wrapping up
negotiations with the more moderate Palestinian Authority
president, Mahmoud Abbas, on a political document that might
have allowed the renewal of negotiations with Israel. As Abbas
and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert met on June 22, the
hugs and the kisses did seem reluctant at the breakfast as hosts
King Abdullah II of Jordan and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate,
watched.
But the signs were positive. The two
promised to meet in two weeks. Mr. Olmert promised an important
release of Palestinian prisoners to celebrate a new
relationship. It was at this juncture that the soldier crisis
drowned that initiative. Just as it drowned the internal
Palestinian negotiations, and reduced Mr. Abbas, at least for
the moment, to near irrelevance.
This is where the success for those who
provoke a strongman lies. This is where the strongman has to act
with the strength of a statesman too. And this is where the
world's strongman also has to be seen as acting the way a
strongman should. George W Bush has to be seen doing his job as
a superpower leader. Many of the killed in Lebanon were Canadian
citizens. Tomorrow they may be of the U.S. too. Bush has to do
more than calling Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora,
Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
about the violence.
If nothing else, then the fact that we are
talking about a region with the world’s one-third fuel stocks
should be enough inspiration for more innovative intervention.
As air strike sirens pierce the peace of
the night in Beirut and in Haifa, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and
in the Israeli Galilee, Israel and Lebanon must do all they can
to help ameliorate the pain of children and adults facing the
horrors of war.
Cynics will say the current scenario
underlines the end of the acumen of those who thought diplomatic
innovativeness had a chance. But remember; every time the world
has reached such a stage, talks have been the only way out.
International crisis cannot be left to an alchemist's lore.
July 18, 2006
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