Just World News with Helena Cobban – Page 148 – Info, analysis, discussion

As Bush sows, so Hamas reaps?

I just want to add to all my previous posts here on the Gaza Palestinians’ bust-out of earlier today that the political ground for this intriguing new move was sown in good part by President Bush’s amazingly maladroit trip around the Middle East over the past two weeks.
During the trip, Bush underlined again and again his intense concern for Israelis, their security, and their every last little whim. But he turned a notably deaf ear to the pleas he heard from all his most ardent Arab friends that he do something to demonstrate some concern for the hardships being suffered by the Palestinians and some real resolve to stop, for example, Israel’s continued illegal encroachments on Palestinian land and the harsh– and also illegal– collective punishments it has been imposing on the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank for many years now.
Bush even attempted to publicly “joke” about of the hundreds of much-hated checkpoints/chokepoints that have been choking any semblance of ordinary life in the West Bank for many years, and jovially urged the Palestinians to just “forget about” the whole string of UN resolutions that underline what their rights to their own lands and to a decent life thereon really are.
During Bush’s visit to the region, Israel escalated its military attacks against the Gaza Palestinians. Much of the media in Syria and Lebanon, where I was until yesterday, was full of commentary to the effect that Bush gave Israel a “green light” to do that and also to tighten the screws of the siege it has maintained on Gaza for many years now.
Is it in any wonder that in these circumstances Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak evidently feels he can do nothing to intervene to re-close the wall between Gaza and Egypt, and no other Arab leaders are prepared to step forward to help to stem the tide of Hamas’s growing power?

Debka-file’s interesting take on the Gaza bust-out

Here’s how Israel’s Debka-file reported* on today’s Gaza bust-out:

the strategic feat achieved by Hamas Tuesday night, in capturing a section of Sinai from Egyptian forces, is irreversible

outside Israel’s military reach.

And here’s how they reported the Egyptian political dimension:

his main worry is not the Palestinian issue but concern that his own opposition, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, may adopt Hamas tactics and stir up trouble in his cities.

What did I tell you?
I see that Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza, Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri, has meanwhile described Egypt as,

The story continues…
—
* Update Thursday morning: I just tried to revisit that Debka-File URL linked to there and found that the content quoted here has been replaced by some other extremely important content, which I comment on here.

And I can now reveal…

…that last week in Damascus I interviewed Hamas head Khaled Mishaal and Palestinian Islamic Jihad head Ramadan Shallah.
More– including as soon as possible a link to the audio from both full interviews– to follow.
My first bottom line: Mishaal very definitely talked about being interested, under certain circumstances, in a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel. (However, he notably didn’t tell me about any plans for an imminent “bust-out” from Gaza! Why didn’t he tell me all their secret plans, I wonder?)
I’m just working on making the best possible plan to report on/disseminate what I got in these interviews. They provide a good complement and updating to a lot of my earlier reporting on Palestinian issues (and also, to the reporting I did in February 2007 on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.)

Gaza bust-out: Past plans and future prospects

This report from the London Times’s James Hider strongly indicates that the demolition of vast long stretches of the wall between Gaza and Egypt had been long planned by Gaza’s present Hamas rulers. Hider writes– and the accompanying photo also indicates– that,

The accompanying photo certainly shows indications of considerable amounts of cutting.
Hider also writes:

Hamas would be prepared to cede some control to President Abbas and his Fatah-led government in the West Bank.

The downing of the wall may well have been planned to coincide with the opening of the current, Hamas-led conference of Palestinian oppositionists in Damascus, Syria.
Here is a Reuters report of the conference’s first day.
The Hamas people argue that their actions are not aimed at undermining Palestinian national unity. But very evidently the big bust-out from Gaza is a major embarrassment to PA president Mahmoud Abbas, who has so far had little or nothing to show for his insistence on pursuing the Palestinians’ grievances only through the US-sponsored peace talks with Israel. Abbas has been able to do little but sit idly by, voicing occasional and unheeded protests, while Israel tightened its siege around Gaza over recent weeks.
I spent the past few days in Beirut. (I got back to the US yesterday.) It strikes me that Hamas’s opening of Gaza’s wall with Egypt could make the situation between Egypt and Israel somewhat analogous to that between Lebanon and Israel?
Recall also the plans Gaza’s Hamas leaders have long talked about their hope of reconnecting Gaza to the outside world through Egypt rather than through Israel, as I wrote about here and here and elsewhere.
What is clear already is that the Gaza bust-out has considerably upped the political stakes for Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak. His regime’s survival may now be at stake.
Who can reimpose order on the Gaza-Egypt situation? Israel? I doubt it. Egypt? Very risky indeed. Fateh without coordinating with Hamas? Impossible. A hastily assembled NATO peacekeeping force? Forget about it…
This is, it strikes me, Hamas’s bid to become included in the decisionmaking order. I truly don’t see any resolution to the present situation without Hamas being a party to it.
This story will continue to be big.

Gaza’s opening to Egypt

At dawn this morning, Palestine-Israel time, masked gunmen set explosive charges that felled much of the high wall that has separated Israeli-occupied Gaza from Egypt since the conclusion of Israel’s peace with Egypt in 1979. That opening burst a massive hole through the situation of tight siege that Israel has maintained on Gaza’s 1.5 million people since 2000.
Gaza’s people were quick to take advantage. If you look at the sat photo at the bottom of this BBC news report you can see for about one-third of its length, the Gaza-Israel boundary cuts through the edge of the heavily populated city of Rafah. (Built-up zones appear as brown on the image.) People from throughout Gaza crossed into Egypt to buy basic commodities to take back into the Strip. We can only speculate over what other kinds of goods are being carted into the Strip, but they may well include military supplies.
Hamas’s “caretaker government” in Gaza, elected in a free and fair territories-wide election in January 2006, reportedly moved quickly to take control of the blasted-apart border, closing all of it except for two gaps, over which it maintained control.
This development raises the intriguing possibility that the elected Hamas leaders may now seek to implement a plan they have long had to re-open Gaza’s connection with the world economy through Egypt, rather through Israel, which has sustained a monopoly on all of Gaza’s links with the outside world since it brought the Strip under Israeli military occupation in 1967. (I wrote about how Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar discussed that plan in a March 2006 interview with me, here and elsewhere.)
These developments will also, quite evidently, affect the political situation inside Egypt, where Hamas’s allies from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood form the main opposition to the .US-backed president Hosni Mubarak. Demonstrators in Egypt have been stepping up their demonstrations calling on Mubarak to lift the siege of Gaza.
Yesterday and today Mubarak hit back with harsh repression, detaining scores of MB activists and beating protesters in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square with sticks.
On Tuesday, Hundreds of Palestinian women and children organized a mass, nonviolent confrontation with the Egyptian troops tasked with maintaining the Israeli-coordinated siege at the previous sole crossing-point between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah. At the behest of the Israelis and Americans, Egypt had been keeping that crossing completely closed in recent weeks.
Also of great note: People I talked with during my just-completed trip to Lebanon and Syria all said that public opinion in the Arab world believes strongly that during President Bush’s recent visit to the region he gave a “green light” to Israel to escalate its campaign of military and economic violence against Gaza.
On Tuesday night, the UN Security Council considered the issue of the tight Israeli siege against Gaza. This report from Xinhua makes clear that the “draft presidential statement” prepared by the SC’s current president, Libya, dealt only with Israel’s collective, economic violence against Gaza’s people and not with either Israel’s disproportionate use of military violence against targets in Gaza or the use by Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups of primitive, almost untargeted rocket fire against targets inside Israel.
But even though the draft statement dealt only with the immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and not with either aspect of the military confrontation between the two sides,US representative Zal Khalilzad still said it was “unacceptable.”
Twelve Israeli civilians have died because of ordnance launched from Gaza in the past seven years. 360 Palestinian civilians– along with some 450 accused Palestinian “militants”– are reported to have died because of Israeli military attacks against Gaza within just the past two years. Khalilzad and far too many other members of the western political elites tend to mention only Israel’s casualties from the ongoing military confrontation between the two sides, and fail to mention the far greater number of civilian Palestinian casualties from it.
So last night, the Security Council was unable to come out in support of any statement at all about the Gaza crisis. They are supposed to discuss it again today…
Meantime, I’d love to know whether any negotiations, and of what kind, are underway between Egypt and Hamas?

Gaza crisis: Where is the ‘West’?

I have been reading the latest round of upsetting reports (portal here) on the horrendous effects on Gaza’s 1.45 million people of the greatly escalated collective punishment that the US-funded and US-backed Government of Israel has been inflicting on them in recent days.
The fact of this collective punishment is not new. It has been sustained in a systematic and intentional way since 2000, if not before. It saw one noticeable escalation after the Palestinians’ January 2006 parliamentary elections– in what was quite clearly a move to punish the Gaza Palestinians for the choice they made in those elections. It saw a further escalation in the past two weeks– even while President Bush was touring the region expressing promises about the imminent arrival of “independence” for the Palestinians.
Three things are going on between the well-established and well-supported State of Israel and the extremely vulnerable and effectively stateless community of Gaza Palestinians:

Every single harm suffered by noncombatants in this asymmetrical contest is to be deeply regretted. All parties to armed conflict, whether states or non-state actors, are under an international-law obligation to do their utmost to avoid entangling noncombatants in their military contest.
The Israeli paper HaAretz recently noted that 810 Palestinians were killed by the IDF in Gaza in the two years 2006 and 2007, with some 360 of those judged by HaAretz to have been civilians. Meanwhile, in the seven years since 2001 twelve people in Israel have been killed by military actions launched from Gaza. That’s how asymmetrical the military aspect of this contest in. International actors who treat the IHL violations of the two sides as broadly commensurate fail to understand that.
And then, in addition to their very numerous casualties from that military contest, the Palestinians are also suffering the casualties from the collective punishment regime imposed on them by Israel.
So what has been the response to this situation from governments, intergovernmental bodies, and non-governmental organizations in the currently dominant “western” portion of the world?
From the US government: silence.
From the US-based “human-rights” organizations, as far as I can see: silence.
From the EU’s Commissioner for External Relations, Bentita Ferrero-Waldner today, this:

Notice there that, regarding military actions, she doesn’t even mention Israel’s numerous and extremely damaging military operations against Gaza!
Notice, too, the unsatisfactory nature of the policy prescription she ends with:

“Neither the blockade nor the recent military strikes are able to prevent the rocket attacks [against Israel.] Only a credible political agreement this year, as foreseen at Annapolis, can turn Palestinians away from violence. That is why we must support Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas in their current efforts.”

I agree with her first sentence there. But note that she then specifies that only the Annapolis-based peace process is capable of “turning the Palestinians away from violence.” But the Gaza Palestinians were in no way represented at Annapolis. Plus– and this an even greater error here– she is assuming that it is only the Palestinians who need to be “turned away from violence”???? That this whole pesky problem in Gaza has arisen because only the Palestinians have this primitive urge to use violence?
I wonder what she calls the things Israel has been doing to the Palestinians? Non-violence?
Here was UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-Moon’s statement on Friday:

That statement was, I think, somewhat more balanced and politically realistic than Ms. Ferrero-Waldner’s.
Speical kudos, meanwhile, should go to Oxfam for their continued following of the (anti-)humanitarian effects of Israel’s continued tightening of the blocade on Gaza, including this statement today.
And to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, John Dugard, for this statement from January 18, which rightly foregrounds the effects on Palestinian civilians of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and is worth quoting in its entirety:

The killing of some forty Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a Government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process. Recent action violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention. It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets. Israel must have known about the wedding party in Gaza near to the interior ministry when it launched missiles at the ministry building. Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes. The United States and other states which attended the Annapolis conference are under both a legal and a moral obligation to compel Israel to cease its actions against Gaza and to restore confidence in the peace process, ensure respect for international law and protect civilian life.

Readers may ask why Dugard did not mention the casualties from the Palestinians’ rocket attacks against Israel. I imagine this is because his mandate is precisely to look at the human rights situation in the occupied territories. Evidently, though, in any broader consideration of the Gaza-Israel military conflict and its effects, the casualties among Israelis should of course be fully noted.
But it is also worth recalling just why the UN felt it needed to appoint a special rapporteur on the situation of the people of the OPTs. That was, I think, precisely because the members of the UN General Assembly recognized the particularly vulnerable situation of people who are still stateless and cannot rely on having any state intervene to protect their interests or even their lives.
Kudos, too, to B’tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and its allies, who have been petitioning the Israeli High Court to issue an interim order requiring Israel to allow the return of the supply of fuel oil to Gaza to its usual level. This request, B’tselem says, “was filed as part of a petition against the sanctions on the Gaza Strip, from October 2007.”
And meantime, let’s not forget the many dimensions of the assault that Palestinians in the West Bank continue to suffer at the hands of the military occupation regime that has ruled over them for 40.5 years now.
AFP reported yesterday that,

rose by 5.1 percent last year

So much for Israel’s obligations under Annapolis and the “Road Map”…

Two to Tango, or what did Khamenehi really say?

Among the spin-off benefits of a US-Iran hotline, as suggested by R.K. Ramazani in the previous entry, is the possibility that it “could help restore Iran-U.S. diplomatic relations….” As he explained,

“Contrary to widely held myths, Iran has never closed its door to diplomatic relations with the United States. Khomeini left the door ajar “if America behaves itself,” that is, if the United States refrains from imposing its will on Iran. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, subscribes to the Khomeini line, saying that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely.”

Yet just this past week, the hawkishly neoconservative “Committee on the Present Danger” (CPD) repeats the myth. In an essay proclaiming that “It takes two to tango,” to have a diplomatic relations, to have a “grand bargain,” the Iranians are portrayed as not being willing to dance. To the contrary, CPD invokes segments from a recent speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi:

“Cutting ties with the United States is one of our basic policies,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, told students in the central city of Yazd just days ago. And while “[w]e have never said that they will be cut for ever,” Khamenei explained, “[t]he conditions of the U.S. government are such now that it is harmful for us to resume relations… Despite some talkative people’s claims, it has no benefit for the Iranian nation.”

CPD concludes that this “pours more than a little cold water on the suggestion that Washington should push for an immediate rapprochement with Tehran… (as) the ruling ayatollahs don’t seem interested in mending fences.”
This is selective and disingenuous cherry picking for a negative spin. Here’s the full passage of the January 3rd speech in question, without ellipses, as made available via BBC World Service.** (see note below) This is from a translation of a long report provided by Tehran Radio (Voice of the Islamic Republic). Emphasis added and my comments follow:

The leader of the Islamic revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i] referred to relations with America and said: The cutting of relations with the US is one of our principle policies. However, we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely. On the contrary, the US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment. So we should not pursue such relations.
The leader outlined the harm of establishing relations with the US and reiterated: First, the establishment of such relations will not lessen the danger posed by the US because that country had political relations with Iraq when it attacked it. Secondly, the establishment of these relations will prepare the ground for the growth of Americans’ influence in the country and the travel of their intelligence officers and spies to and from Iran. As a result, this is why contrary to the claims made by some talkative people [inside the country] these relations have no benefit for the Iranian nation. Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.
The leader added: Some accuse us of promoting enmity with America. However, that country’s enmity towards the Iranian nation is not based on the [Iranian] president and other people’s harsh interpretations. On the contrary, they are against the principles of the Iranian nation and such a thing has existed since the beginning of the Islamic revolution.

I have been reading Khamenehi speeches and Friday Prayer Sermons for 24 years, dating to when he became President amid the Iran-Iraq War. Khamenehi has long been more adaptable in his “open door foreign policy” pronouncements than commonly understood in the west. (I may prepare a full article just on this narrow, yet critical question about Iran’s “dance” with the question of if and under what circumstances it can renew ties to America.)
Yet to be brief on just this speech, consider:
1. Quite in line with Professor Ramazani’s analysis, Khamenehi yet again emphasizes that there’s no automatic bar to improving ties to the US. Characteristically, he cites the revolutionary hallmark, the cutting of the old ties to America, what became the signature “neither East nor West” revolutionary dictum, so that Iran might be independent and “self-confident,” that it might be free from the relations between “the lion and the lamb.” All that not forgotten, “we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely.”
2. The standard objections and grievances to current US policy are noted. Talks and relations in themselves can bring dangers to Iran, despite the hopes of “talkative people” (e.g., Iranian reformists and pragmatists in Iran).
3. Khamenehi also delivers a back-handed lame defense of Iran’s lightning-rod President when he notes that America’s enmity towards Iran predated Ahmadinejad’s “harsh interpretations.” The fact that Khamenehi is even referencing Iranian criticisms of Ahmadinejad for “promoting enmity with America” startled many observers, and was interpreted as quite a slap.
4. Totally left out of the CPD report is the not so subtle message to America: “The US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment.” Hint, hint America: it doesn’t have to be this way. The US government might change, and it logically then follows that better relations might not be to Iran’s detriment.
5. As a friend suggested in a closed forum, it may also be that Khamenehi is signaling Iranian contenders in the pending Parliamentary and Presidential elections that they may campaign more creatively on foreign policy, to shield them from ideological “heat.”
6. Shamelessly omitted from the CPD essay is Khamenehi’s kicker: “Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.”
That day may be sooner that the CPD and neocon naysayers think – say, if somebody reminds Bush Jr. of Bush Sr.’s inaugural Address (the one about “goodwill begetting goodwill”) or, by this time next year, when two new Presidents are in the wings.
(**Footnote: Curiously, the US government’s parallel translation service – the Open Source Center (formerly FBIS) data base available to the public via World News Connection – does not include the report on this speech. I’ve seen this happen before — somebody at OSC and WNC owes us an explanation)

How to Prevent War at the Strait of Hormuz

R.K. Ramazani weighs in with an essay on how to prevent military incidents at the Strait of Hormuz from catalyzing war between Iran and the United States. Ramazani, known widely as “the Dean of Iran Foreign Policy Studies,” quite literally “wrote the book” on this subject, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. What he wrote on the eve of the Iranian revolution remains a compelling read.
In his current essay, Ramazani, an Emeritus University of Virginia Professor of Government & Foreign Affairs, sets out the stakes and his key argument.:

“The recent naval encounter between the US and Iran extended their cold war for the first time to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Such incidents could escalate into armed conflict, with catastrophic consequences for the world economy, especially the price of oil. To prevent such escalation, Washington and Tehran should establish a “hot line” and an Incident-at-Sea agreement as Washington and Moscow did during the Cold War.”

The need for such a de-conflict mechanism (a regular theme here at jwn) was amply demonstrated by Bush Administration rhetoric:

“… instead of calming down the situation and seeking a creative way of preventing such encounters from escalating into confrontation in the future, the Bush administration increased tensions by exaggerating the episode as if it were a real crisis.
President Bush depicted the maneuver of the Iranian speed boats as “a provocative act,” linked it to America’s dispute with Iran over the nuclear issue, and declared that Iran was, is and continues to be a threat if it is “allowed to learn how to enrich uranium.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates categorically dismissed the view that the Iranian sailors had behaved in a fully proper manner, and the State Department formally protested the actions of the Iranian patrol boats. “

The Republican Presidential candidates, Ron Paul notably excepted, were besides themselves with fevered war talk. While evidence is emerging that the Administration consciously “embellished,” if not blatantly fabricated key aspects of the incident, Ramazani focuses on the strategic context and the need for caution:

“Such hyperbolic charges reveal a dismal lack of understanding of Iran’s unmatched geo-strategic position at the Strait, and of the conception held by the Iranian leaders about the Strait’s security in times of peace and war. Recognizing Iran’s vital interest in the Strait is a crucial first step to establishing a hot line between Washington and Tehran.
Geo-strategically, the narrow and shallow Strait of Hormuz constitutes, as I coined it in 1979, the world’s “global chokepoint.” Oil tankers carrying Gulf oil exports must pass through the Strait before traversing the Bab al-Mandab and Suez Canal waterways to the Eastern Mediterranean or the sea lanes of the Strait of Malacca in the Pacific Ocean.
As the dominant Persian Gulf power at this “chokepoint,” Iran stands as the “global gatekeeper” for world oil markets. Iran’s territorial water abuts the entire eastern shore of the Strait, and numerous Iranian islands dot the sea lanes of the Strait. “

Some financial analysts last summer lamely tried to downplay the significance of the Strait of Hormuz today, claiming that the US could withstand oil shocks were a hot war in the Gulf break out. One remembers the argument that invading Iraq would be a “self-funding” war.
Such “optimism” avoids a sober look at just how much oil transits the Strait of Hormuz. Consider figures from the US Government’s Energy Information Agency. According to the EIA, “oil flows through the Straits of Hormuz account for roughly two-fifths of all global crude oil and petroleum product tanker shipments.”
That is, 40% of the world’s oil traffic by sea must first pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Various alternate pipelines across Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula, even if they could accommodate extra traffic and be kept open in time of conflict, cannot possibly take up the 17 million barrels per day presently exiting via the Hormuz Strait. Never mind the analysts, the oil traders know better: the very talk of military clashes in Hormuz sent oil futures spirally up another 10%.
Yet in this regard, Iran and the world community have a shared set of interests. The world needs the oil; Iran needs to export it. Any Iranian leader, of any political stripe, would agree — with one caveat:

“Iran considers the safe passage of all ships through the international waters of the Strait as inseparable from its vital interest in the security of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s oil, the backbone of its economy, needs to be exported through the Strait. Ideologically Iranian policy makers view the Strait as a “divine blessing” and strategically they see it as Iran’s “key asset” in any “defensive war.”
Tehran is committed to the right of transit passage for all ships through the Strait. Yet any prolonged obstruction of Iran’s oil exports by perceived enemies such as the United States could prompt Iran to retaliate by blocking the Strait. This guiding principle was set by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iraq-Iran war. He warned that if Iran’s oil exports through the Strait were interrupted by hostile acts, Iran would prevent “the passage of a single drop of petroleum from there” to world markets.
Hojatolislam Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament during the Iraq-Iran war, considered “such an eventuality unlikely.” But he warned those Americans who doubted Iran’s capability that Iran could effectively close the Strait by creating “a wall of fire” over it, firing its guns from Qeshm and Lark islands near the Strait, and launching air-to-sea missiles from planes, and from underground depots.”

In other words, if Iran can’t export its oil, it would retaliate by attempting to prevent all exports from passing through its front yard. In short, as Iran sees it, oil exports through the Strait should be safe for all, or safe for none.

Continue reading “How to Prevent War at the Strait of Hormuz”

Nasrullah taunts Israel over body parts

Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrullah’s appearance before a massive crowd in south Beirut today had strong preliminary buzz to the effect that he was going to say something big. I think the new big thing was his claim that as a result of the 33-day war of summer 2006 Hizbullah holds the body parts of numerous fallen Israeli soldier:
(HaAretz agrees with this news judgment.)
Nasrullah told the mammoth crowd:

we have heads of Israeli soldiers, we have hands, and feet; we have nearly whole bodies as well. So what did the army say to the families of those soldiers? They are so weak that they left the parts of numerous bodies– not just one or two or three– on the battlefield.

This claim may well gain some importance inside Israel– and certainly in the years-long indirect negotiations between Israel and Hizbullah over the return to Israel of the mortal remains of Israeli pilot Ron Arad in return for the release of some remaining Lebanese (and perhaps also Palestinian) prisoners held by Israel for many years. Arad has been described as “missing in action” by the IDF since 1986.
The “exchange” negotiations, which are reportedly brokered– whenever they occur– by Germany, also now include the two live Israeli soldiers whose capture in July 2006 sparked the whole 33-day war.
In his speech, Nasrullah also said, “I don’t judge that Israel right now can muster the political or military leadership to wage a war against us.” That seems to be a good judgment. (Though I think he was also right to add the caveat that followed: “we must not be surprised for the future.”) Israel’s Winograd Commission is due to release its final report on the mishandling of Israel’s 2006 war effort on January 30.
HaAretz is reporting continued discord among commission members over how harsh to be in the final text on PM Ehud Olmert. But whatever the text says or refrains from saying, it cannot say anything good about Olmert’s leadership during the war.
Israel’s political-military leadership is still weak today. Partly as a result of the continuing fall-out from the 33-day war; partly because of its inability to resolve the continuing fighting with Gaza, or to stop the Gaza Palestinians from continuing to send their (primitive, but often scary and occasionally lethal) home-made rockets into southern Israel; and partly because of continuing internal discord over the “peace process” with the PA, which has already caused the rightwing Yisrael Beitenu party to flee the governing coalition.
Personally, while I think Israel’s leadership is beset by many internal weaknesses, I don’t wholly draw the conclusion that that means Olmert is on the point of changing his policy and becoming a generous-hearted, visionary peacenik… I believe it is very possible that a weak government, feeling itself beleaguered on many sides– and now openly taunted by the turbanned Sayyed from Beirut!– might lash out somewhere, perhaps somewhere quite unexpected. But that wouldn’t solve any of Olmert’s and Israel’s problems. Indeed, it would most likely only make them worse.
Another couple of points about today’s big Ashoura gathering in Beirut.
AP reminds us that this was the first time Nasrallah has been seen at a big pubic gathering since September 2006. He has very evidently been on an Israeli hit list for many years. His first predecessor as head of Hizbullah was assassinated by Israel before Nasrallah became head of the party in 1991-92., and many times over the years, especially since the 33-day war of 2006, Israeli leaders have announced their desire to target him. So today’s appearance was, on its own, an event worthy of some degree of buzz in Lebanon.
Another aspect is, of course, the sheer size of the crowd– as well as the discipline and forethought that went into planning the whole event. I have no way of gauging the size of the crowd, though it was clearly far more than the “tens of thousands” mentioned by AP. So they were certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Did they total more than the numbers of participants in those two massive street rallies of 2005: the (anti-Syrian) March 14 rally and the (largely pro-Syrian) rally of April 2005? Ot perhaps even more relevant at this point: the big anti-Siniora rally of December 2006. We’ll have to wait for the most scientific form of counting possible. (Though of course, the tally will certainly be an issue of intense political contention.)
But these matters of numbers are important. The pro-Siniora forces in Lebanon call themselves “the majority.” They do currently have a majority in Lebanon’s notably gerrymandered parliament. But Hizbullah and the rest of the opposition contest the claim that the Siniora government represents a majority of the Lebanese people. And the pro-Siniora forces have never held anything like a mass public rally at which their popular support could be demonstrated.
The country is due to have new parliamentary elections in 2009. The voting system on which those elections will be based will evidently be crucial; and there is supposed to be a new electoral law introduced before then to reform the archaic and sectarian system used until now. That electoral reform is one of the three issues currently being discussed in the “package” of Lebanese issues being negotiated by Amr Moussa and several other parties. The other two being the make-up of the new government and the identity of the new President. This latter issue has been resolved, for now. But Michel Suleiman will not be taking up his presidency until the other two issues are also resolved.
The noted expert and author on Hizbullah Amal Saad-Ghorayeb was one of several analysts quoted in The Daily Star here today as saying that actually, maybe Hizbullah and the pro-Siniora (“March 14”) forces would actually prefer for the government crisis not to get resolved right now, but to leave the presidency empty until the elections of 2009.
This concurs with the gut judgment I made when I was here last week, based partly on the impressions I’d gained and blogged about, to the effect that despite having no president and having this continuing constitutional crisis, the country seemed remarkably not poised on the brink of an explosion.
So the Arab League head Amr Moussa continues with his shuttling around the region and his attempt to find an “Arab” solution to the Lebanese crisis. Saad-Ghorayeb was notably unimpressed when we talked earlier today. “President Mubarak said that if the Lebanese could not agree among themselves then he would ‘wash his hands’ of the Lebanese problem,” she said. “When my friends and I heard about that, we fell about laughing. What on earth has the Egyptian government ever done for Lebanon?”
I digress. Let’s wait and see what further fallout today’s rally and Nasrallah’s revelation about the body parts will have.

Update noon-time Sunday, Beirut time: Thanks to the well-informed friend who urged corrections/clarification to a couple of the facts referred to above, which I made. Also, I just talked with a colleague close to Hizbullah who said the estimated crowd size was probably 850,000-900,000– though hard to gauge, given the side-streets etc. The CIA’s July 2007 estimate of Lebanon’s population is 3.9 million.

Live-(t.v.)-blogging Hizbullah’s Ashoura

The following is a continuation of my record from watching Hizbullah’s
Al-Manar t.v. here in my hotel room in Beirut. It’ds a
contiunuation from this earlier
record, which provides more background on the occasion. Lebanon’s time is two hours ahead of GMT; seven hours ahead of the timing used in our records here at JWN.

11:35. Split-screen view of Ashoura in Kerbala and and Beirut;
later, Baalbek and Beirut.

The speaker talks about Khomeini and readiness for the long
confrontations ahead

11:40 Okay, finally– Here is Nasrallah at the podium.. In
contrast to the preceding speaker, whose voice was harsh and shrill, he
starts off in a low, reassuring voice. He has the distinctive
inability to say his “r”s. He grips the podium and appears quite
calm.

He says that now, as in Hssein’s day, the choice is between
“continuation or humiliation.” (Al-silla
aw al-zilla.) The one presenting us with this choice today
is, he says, mainly George Bush who showed on his recent visit to the
region that he wants to keep the racist Zionist settler entity in place
and strong and occupying our holy places there and oppressing and
besieging our Palestinian brothers; who wants to keep the occupation
going in Iraq for decades including the occupation of our holy places;
who threatens Iran and Syria; who sent the Israeli planes against
all of Lebanon in 2006.

(Please note that my rendering of all
this is necessarily very flawed because I’m watching it on t.v.,
listening to the sound-track, translating it in my head and writing
this down in as near real-time as I can.)

Talked about the attack of the Zionist airplanes in 2006… and with
all the help they had from the whole world they didn’t succeed, after a
battle of 33 days they didn’t succeed in wiping out our resistance..

The following is my rough rendering
of the rest of the speech:

Now, after the visit of Bush the ummah (Islamic nation) needs to
resist all his schemes.

Secondly, we need to resist all attempts to confiscate our holy places

We need to undertsand who is our enemy, Bush is trying to
persuade our leaders and peoples that Iran is the enemy but it is
not. It is our neighbor and our supporter.

Bush announced continued war against our brothers in Gaza and against
the Palestinian people in general. Even while Bush was in the
region the Zionist planes were attacking Gaza and killing the people
there and escalating the siege that tries to impose hunger and death on
the people.

We say to the Arabs we don’t ask anything from you. We in Lebanon
don’t ask anything from you because we are resisting. What we ask is that you lift the
siege on Gaza. If the siege continues, without you Arabs
doing anything to lift it then you will be revealed to everyone as
corrupt. The whole ummah is called to take serious steps.

Thirdly, about Lebanon. Raising the question of our citizens who
were kidnapped by Israel. If this happens to even one Israel, the
Security Council meets and makes a big fuss, but this happens so
frequently to our people being kidnapped by Israel…

I don’t judge that Israel right now can muster the political or
military leadership to wage a war against us; but we must not be
surprised for the future so we must continue the resistance.

We do not want war but we reject that anyone wages war on our country.

Fourthly, we say that that Israel is acting as it is because it is
weak, as was shown particularly in the war of July. So I say to
the Zionists: your army lies to you. They say they never
leave the bodies or body parts of your soldiers on the battlefield … but
we have heads of Israeli soldiers, we have hands, and feet; we have
nearly whole bodies as well. So what did the army say to the
families of those soldiers? They are so weak that they left the
parts of numerous bodies– not just one or two or three– on the
battlefield.

He talks about Aml founder Musa Sadr
some.

Fifth, at the Lebanese level… He mocks/criticizes the Arab League
intervention a bit.

Showing who is the “majority” and the “minority”…

The Arab intervention has been working night and day to liquidate the
resistance in this country.

We shall continue our efforts to negotiate a resolution to this problem
in spite of their attempts to “internationalize” the Lebanese question
and their threats to do so.

They have tried every year to impose a liquidationist settlement on us
from inside the country. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and now
2008. But they never succeeded.

Haihat minna al-zilla.
(popular shouts.)

Starts to talk about the price of bread and the “electricity
discrimination”… We are
not behind people’s hunger or unemployment or oppression… The
solution to this is the formation of a truly representative government
linked to the people not one linked to private interests and private
banks.

Our negotiator seeks justice and rights. And we won’t leave
Lebanon to the American project.

Every Ashoura we stand here and recommit oursleves to justice and to
struggle for sake of justice We stress our resistance here
in Lebanon, and our commitment to resistance in Palestine, and in Iraq.

Even if they destroy our houses we will stay with you, Hussein. (Shouts
from the crowd.) Even if they kill our children and our women and
our old people and our men, as they did for 33 days during the war of
July, we will stay with you….

12:25, he’s coming to an end. He ends up greeting “the most noble
of people, the most dignified of people… ” The broadcast stops
fairly abruptly.