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Briefing 93

PHONY DIPLOMACY
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on 25 July that ‘temporary solutions’—in other words, an immediate ceasefire—were unacceptable in the Israel-Lebanon war, which could be ended only with a ‘durable solution’ based on ‘enduring principles’. ‘US support for Israeli demands that Hizbollah be forced back from the border and disarmed before there can be peace has been interpreted by those calling for an immediate ceasefire, including the Lebanese government, as a green light from Washington for continuing the offensive.’ (Financial Times, 26 July, p. 6)

LEBANON: TWENTY EYES FOR AN EYE
‘At a briefing on Monday, a senior [Israeli] officer told reporters that Gen [Dan] Halutz [Israeli chief of staff] had ordered retaliatory strikes on a civilian district of Beirut known as a Hizbollah stronghold. “For every Katyusha barrage on [the northern Israeli town of] Haifa, 10 more buildings in the Dahiya neighbourhood of south Beirut will be bombed,” the senior officer quoted him as saying.’ (Telegraph, 26 July, p. 12) ‘So far 18 [Israeli] civilians have been killed [by Hezbollah rockets and mortars fired onto northern Israel]... That compares with more than 400 dead in Lebanon.’ (Guardian, 26 July, p. 5)

‘Israel has killed and wounded Lebanese civilians with artillery-fired cluster munitions, Human Rights Watch alleged yesterday after investigat-ing an attack on the village of Blida on July 19. Firing such weapons [possibly supplied by the US] into civilian areas may violate international humanitarian law, it said... Hizbollah is also accused of killing Israeli civilians indiscriminately with rockets packed with ball bearings.’ (FT, 25 July, p. 7)

GAZA: USING A HUMAN SHIELD
‘At least nine people have been killed in Israeli air raids in the east of Gaza. More than 120 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel began rescue efforts [for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit]. The attacks on Gaza have been overshadowed by fierce clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon... About 30 Israeli tanks moved back into northern Gaza early Wednesday [26 July], backed by the air strikes.’ (BBC News Online, 26 July)

‘The Israeli army has been accused of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in an operation in [the] northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun last week,’ positioning hostages to be shot first if militants attacked their position. (BBC News Online, 25 July)

‘The UN’s top humanitarian official Jan Egeland has described Israel’s month-long military offensive in Gaza as a “disproportionate use of force”. Mr Egeland, who is in Gaza to assess the damage, said he was shocked by the targeting of civilian infrastructure including Gaza's only power plant. “This is very clear, a disproportionate use [of power],” Mr Egeland told reporters. “Civilian infrastructure is protected. The law is very clear. You cannot have any interpretation in any other way.” (BBC News Online)

DELIBERATE AIRSTRIKE ON UN FORCES
On 25 July, an Israeli airstrike killed four UN observers in their patrol base in Khiam, Lebanon. The UN Secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said: ‘This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked UN post at Khiyam occurred [after] General Alain Pelligrini, the U.N. force commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day... stressing the need to protect that particular U.N. position from attack.’ (CNN, 26 July)

‘The U.N. observers killed... called an Israeli military liaison about 10 times in the six hours before they died to warn that the aerial attacks were getting close to their position, according to a U.N. officer. After each call, the Israeli officer promised to have the bombing stopped,’ he said. (CNN, 26 July)

The Times pointed out: ‘The timing, just as Israel was trying to persuade Western powers to send troops for a beefed-up multinational border force, could not have been worse... The multinational force is at the centre of Western efforts to obtain a ceasefire.’ (26 July, p. 6) Hence a possible motivation for the airstrike: to frighten those who might contribute troops to a multinational force, thereby delaying promises of troop contributions from them, and thus delaying the ceasefire that the world is demanding.

GRAPES OF WRATH, AGAIN
Israel’s 16-day ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’ onslaught in 1996 also aimed at isolating and defeating Hezbollah. During that assault, Israel bombed a clearly-marked UN post at Qana, killing 100 civilians. ‘The Israelis said it was a tragic mistake, but a UN inquiry by a Dutch general concluded that the shelling was probably deliberate.’ (BBC News Online)

24 July 2006: ‘Israel’s rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances’ near Qana once again. (Guardian)

HEZBOLLAH AND ISRAEL
Hezbollah is carrying out war crimes against civilians. Hezbollah did initiate this crisis. Nevertheless, the overwhelming bulk of atrocities are being carried out by Israel, which is terrorizing and attacking an entire nation on a completely different scale to Hezbollah. Furthermore, it was Israel that escalated the crisis following the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on 12 July. On 13 July, ‘Israel imposed a land, sea and air closure of Lebanon... after it bombed dozens of targets including Beirut airport, a television station and villages in the south of the country’. Hezbollah fired 60 rockets, killing one Israeli, while Israel killed 37 Lebanese, all on 13 July. (Guardian online, 13 July)

Hezbollah has kidnapped Israelis before without provoking war. ‘In 2004, the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, swapped 420 Palestinian and Lebanese security prisoners for the release of an abducted Israeli businessman, who was also a reserve army colonel, and the bodies of three soldiers killed four years earlier.’ (Guardian, 13 July)

Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University says the planning for this campaign began long ago: ‘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.’ (San Francisco Chronicle, 21 July 2006)

Note that, this is not an ‘Israel-Hezbollah conflict’. Israel is not fighting Hezbollah, but bombing and blockading the entire nation of Lebanon.

HEZBOLLAH KNOWS ITS LIMITS
The media portray Hezbollah as a mad group dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Untrue on both counts. Hezbollah has demonstrated self-discipline, with very few cross-border rocket firings (apart from the Shebaa Farms area occupied by Israel, that Hezbollah claims as Lebanese territory). Apart from that, ‘it’s [mostly] been quiet since the Israeli evacuation in 2000,’ according to Richard W. Murphy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as US Ambassador to Syria in the 1970s: ‘The fact is Hezbollah knows its limits.’ (New Yorker, 28 July 2003)

There was cross-border fighting in Nov. 2005, then a truce which lasted until May 2006, when Hezbollah fired some rockets into Israel after the assassination in Lebanon of Islamic Jihad official Mahmoud Majzoub. Hezbollah blamed Israel. Israel accepted a ceasefire within hours of the attacks. (CNN, 28 May) The truce held till 12 July.

HEZBOLLAH AND PALESTINE
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was asked if the group would block a two-state settlement based on the 1967 borders (which would guarantee the existence of Israel): ‘He hesitated a moment and declared, “At the end, this is primarily a Palestinian matter... Let it happen. I would not say O.K. I would say nothing”.’ (New Yorker, 28 July 2003)

So: while Hezbollah started this crisis, and commits war crimes, it is Israel that turned the crisis into a war, that has committed the over-whelming bulk of war crimes—blockading an entire country and killing hundreds rather than dozens of civilians—and that prolongs the war.

Also: Hezbollah is willing to accept peace between Palestine and Israel based on the 1967 borders. Israel is not. This is ‘the central reason [Israeli PM Ehud] Olmert has chosen a violent non-solution to Hezbollah over a peaceful authentic solution.’ (Johann Hari, Independent. For more information on this point, see JNV Anti-War Briefing 90: The Gaza Siege and JNV Anti-War Briefing 92: Stop Israel.)

BRITAIN HELPS SUPPLY BOMBS TO ATTACK LEBANON
‘Britain has been used as a staging post for major shipments of bunker-busting bombs from America to Israel.’ (Telegraph, 26 July)

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Briefing 93