Value changes in Israel, too

Back in March, I wrote in this CSM column about some Israelis “sip[ping] lattes in lavish shopping malls as conflict with the Palestinians seems comfortably distant.” Some commenters here on JWN grew intriguingly apoplectic about that, which was an honest description of something I saw in several places, especially in greater Tel Aviv.
I think, though, that I was getting close there to remarking on something significant about the change in Israel’s values and self-image over the years. Long gone, apparently is the self-image Israelis used to like to project of being hardy, egalitarian “pioneers” committed to building a new and better society there. Instead, we have this report in today’s HaAretz, indicating just how far the erosion of that image has gone:

    Senior sources in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and field officers who took part in the war in Lebanon said on Tuesday that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who went to his bank branch and sold an NIS 120,000 investment portfolio only three hours after two soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah on the northern border, cannot escape resignation.
    The sources say there is a clear ethical flaw in the chief of staff’s behavior during the hours when soldiers were killed in Lebanon and others were attempting to rescue wounded. Halutz should resign the moment the military completes its pullout from south Lebanon, they said.
    At this stage, it does not appear that Halutz intends to resign of his own accord.
    Several hours after the July 12 abduction, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared war on Hezbollah and Israeli warplanes began bombing targets deep inside Lebanon.
    But as the country’s political and military echelons met urgently to discuss the possible declaration of war, Halutz went at 12:00 P.M. to sell an investment portfolio, the Ma’ariv newspaper reported on Tuesday…

Personally, I don’t have anything against Israelis, individually or collectively, becoming rich and living a west-European-style lifestyle. I do, however, have considerable objections to my government giving the largest swathe of the “aid” dollars it gives to any country, to Israel– at a time when the GDP per capita there is already well over $20,000. And I do have an objection to Israelis continuing (many of them) to live off reparations that they received for properties that were seized from their families in the early 1940s in Europe, at a time when they still refuse to discuss giving any reparations, themselves, for properties seized from Palestinians in 1948 and indeed for all the considerable material damage Israel has visited on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians over the decades since then.
Anyway, if Israelis want to focus on getting rich, and spend their time sipping lattes in malls, that’s great. Just let them finish concluding their unfinished business with their neighbors, first. Like, they should get out of all (or darn’ nearly all) of the lands they occupied during the war of 1967 and have been exploiting and benefitting from heavily ever since… Like, they should settle up the many other claims still outstanding against them since 1948… Once they’ve done all that, sure, partying and making money on both sides of the present “Green Line” would be good.
(And meantime, they should know that the privations they are continuing to visit on their neighbors will ensure that these neighbors’ claims on Israel can never be simply wished away, however much many Israelis might want to do that.)
Actually, one could be pretty hopeful about the desire that many Israelis now have to live relatively luxurious, European- or US-style lifestyles. After all, in Portugal, back in 1970s, it was the desire of the new generation of army officers to be free of the constraints of conscription, and the constant waging of colonial wars that made that system necessary, that finally persuaded those officers to go home from their colonial outposts and lead the country’s peaceful, democratic, anti-Salazar revolution.., And as a collateral benefit of that desire the younger Portuguese had for a Carnaby Street lifestyle, the rapidly democratizing Portugal shucked off its vast colonial holdings like an uncomfortable old skin. Maybe the new generation of Israelis could be like that, too? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Ann Kerr and American values

My dear friend Ann Kerr, with whom Bill and I spent the past weekend in California, had a heart-rending op-ed in yesterday Christian Science Monitor that’s appropriately titled The murder of American values in Lebanon.
Her piece is a tiny out-take from the big project she’s working on, in which she has gone back to interview four Arab women who were her room-mates when she did a year’s undergraduate study at the American University of Beirut (AUB) back in the mid-1950s. These women are Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Syrian. They are Christian and Muslim. They have all, it seems, led fascinating lives much marked by all the political turmoil through which their families have passed.
Ann is currently writing these interviews up into a book. (She has already published two: this one, and this one.)
Another thing that has marked Ann’s life deeply is that her husband, the distinguished scholar of Middle Eastern politics Malcolm Kerr, was murdered in 1983 in his office in Beirut, where he was the newly installed President of AUB. His assailants were reportedly Lebanese Shiite militants affiliated with a pre-Hizbullah network, who struck him (presumably) because he was a prominent symbol in Lebanon of the US, which gave Israel a green light for the military assault and subsequent, debilitating occupation of one third of Lebanon that the IDF had launched just the previous year.
Those networks were acting in a quite anti-humane and illegal way when they targeted killed and kidnapped civilians in Lebanon in those days. Yes, they were acting out of their own intense pain, after an Israeli military operation that killed an estimated 17,000-19,000 Lebanese and Palestinian people in lebanon, the vast majority of them civilians. But still, that was no excuse.
I never knew Malcolm Kerr, though he was a good friend and colleague of my spouse’s– and he was always someone who had tried to understand the Arab viewpoint and worked for balance and fairness in US Middle East policy. Over the years, though, I came to know Ann and to love and admire her a lot. She and her four kids were, quite understandably, devastated by Malcolm’s killing. But they notably did not let that grief and anger become transformed into any kind of broader anger against “all Arabs” or “all Muslims” or “all Shiites”. Just the opposite. In the years since 1983, Ann has been a constant advocate for better understanding between US citizens and all the peoples of the Middle East. For some years, she led a program that took smart US students on visits to a number of Arab countries. She wrote and published those two earlier books. The first is a poignant evocation of Malcolm Kerr’s life– he grew up at AUB in the 1940s, since his parents both also taught there– and of their life together, the family they founded, and the grief the family suffered after his killing… The second book is built around many of the beautiful watercolor landscapes Ann has painted in various countries of the Middle East over the years…
Anyway, nowadays whenever we’re together Ann and I often talk for hours. We differ on some issues (pacifism, the value of the US-style trial system, etc.) But we agree on much, much more than we disagree on! Three or four years ago she persuaded me to join the “Leadership Council” of a DC-based organization called Churches for Middle East Peace, which does some excellent if low-key advocacy work on Middle East peace issues
Anyway, it was great to see her CSM op-ed. Its argument, incidentally, picks up well on the theme in this specially commissioned column that I wrote actually on September 11, 2001. That one appeared in the 9/13/2006 edition of the paper. It was titled Don’t let our values be a casualty, too, and it started like this:

    We may not know for many days yet how high the human casualties of Tuesday’s attacks will mount. But we should take care that some of our country’s basic values don’t fall casualty to the attacks, too…

But goodness, back then these were the main values that I listed as being in possible jeopardy: “Things like our capacity to reason calmly, our sense of caring for one another, and a basic optimism that – in spite of these horrifying acts -there are still things we can do to make the world a better place.” If only I could have seen back then that it would be not only those capacities in the US population that would be sadly undermined over the years that followed by our government (and the vast complicit parts of the news media), but also many fundamental portions of the US Constitution and the country’s respect for the rule of law, as well.
I guess I couldn’t even conceive of that back then.
So yes, all of us, inside and outside the United States, have reason to mourn the murder of many of the best of American values over the past five years.

Israel’s failed ‘field test’ for a possible US attack on Iran

Sy Hersh’s latest article in the New Yorker tells us that the Bush administration– and in particular, Dick Cheney and his (previously indicted) Middle East hatchet-man, Elliot Abrams– were “closely involved” in the planning of Israel’s terrifying and lethal assault against Lebanon, hoping that this could be, essentially, a “field test” for the tactics that the US might use in a future attack against Iran.
If so– and Hersh makes a good case that this was indeed the reason for the generous diplomatic and military support that the Bushites gave to the Israelis throughout the assault– then the spectacularly unsuccessful politico-military results of the field test, from the US-Israeli perspective, must have left the Iranian mullahs sleeping much more comfortably in their beds…
Hersh writes:

    The Bush Administration… 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.

His sourcing is his oft-used mix of (nearly always un-named) “security consultants”, “former intel officials”, etc, though he does cite a number of intriguing named sources. The piece seems to me to be highly credible.
The main ways in which Cheney was hoping that the Israeli assault could help a future, still-possible US assault against Iran were– according to Hersh’s quite intelligent-sounding sources– twofold:

    (1) Israel’s assault could itself serve as, essentially, a testing ground in which tactics and weapons that the US might use against Iran in the future could be field-tested and evaluated– that’s the “prelude” business Hersh refers to– and
    (2) By “taking down” Hizbullah’s capacity to launch blistering rocket attacks against Israel, the Israeli military would remove one of the main factors that might otherwise act as a strong deterrent against any US attack against Iran, maing such an attack more conceivable.

Hersh’s piece reveals a number of significant things about strategic decision-making inside both Israel and the Bush administration.
First, and most evident, is that the Israeli “plan” for taking down Hizbullah was one that relied almost totally on the use of airpower and other forms of stand-off weaponry (ship-launched missiles, drones, etc). This would clearly be the most plannable way in which the Bushites might be planning to attack Ira, since the US, like Israel, harbors an intense wariness to getting bogged down in a ground war.
But of course the “airpower plan” developed and used by IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz failed miserably at taking down Hizbullah’s military capacity– even while it had the entirely predictable political effect of uniting the Lebanese population more firmly around Hizbullah than it had been for the past three or four years.
Interesting results for the “field-test” of tactics that might be used against Iran, huh?
I note that the many Iranian commentators whose work I read, who include many democrats and reformers, are nearly all united in saying that any US military attack against Iran will cause the Iranian population– including them themselves and other dissidents and reformers inside and outside the country– to rally much more strongly around their existing national government than they have for many years, too.
Honestly, though, I don’t think anyone needed a “field test” of the use of widespread anti-infrastructure bombing tactics to be able to reach the conclusion that they would be (a) politically extremely counter-productive, as well as (b) of limited operational value against a well-prepared opponent. My parents stayed in London for much of the Blitz: Bush and Cheney had only to talk to members of the older generation of Londoners (or indeed, of Dresdeners) to find out that air bombardment by foreigners causes a population to rally ever closer round the national flag, not to seek that particular moment in history to rally for deepseated political change.
Worth noting, too: While many Israelis were apparently stunned to discover over the past month that– notably unlike the western powers during their 1999 air assault against Serbia– their own population at home was vulnerable to a hail of rockets launched by Hizbullah in return for the Israeli air assault against Lebanon, the US’s military planners presumably understand quite well that (1) Iran has quite substantial missile and other forces arrayed along its lengthy coast on the northeast of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, and (2) that the supply lines and logistics bases for the US military presence in Iraq and in other Gulf countries are all concentrated either within or on the southwest coast of that same body of water.
… Oh, and did I mention that, number (3), a significant portion of the world’s internationally traded oil supplies also pass through the Gulf, on ships that load at vast terminals arrayed along its southwest coast and then pass through the extremely narrow Straits of Hormuz, which are bordered on one side by Iran?
(Re #2 in that list, Hersh notes that within the Bush administration D. Rumsfeld has acted with uncharacteristic self-restraint throughout the Israeli assault on Lebanon so far. Hersh quotes an un-named “U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel” as saying, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and [Rumsfeld] 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.” Well, if Rumsfeld felt that Israel’s war on Lebanon put the US forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy, imagine what effect a US assault on Iran would have on them… )
So altogether, I don’t think Israel’s field test of an airpower-focused assault has gone very well for Cheyney and the other mad-eyed militarists within the Bush administration, do you? Israel’s spectacular failure in achieving either the dismantlement-by-force of Hizbullah’s military capacity or its dismantlement-by-politics (i.e., by turning the Lebanese population against Hizbullah) means that Iran’s leaders must be feeling very relieved indeed today. Indeed, just today, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran would not accept the suspension of uranium enrichment.that had been called for in a recent Security Council resolution. That Islamic Republic News Agency report linked to there tells us that the Speaker, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel

    said the recent resolution passed last week by the United Nations Security Council on Iran’s nuclear case has no legal and logical justification.
    …[H]e reiterated that the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have witnessed no deviation from civil and peaceful activities in Iran’s nuclear program.
    “We believe that the balance between rights and duties should be observed in international organizations,” he said, stressing that the international bodies should not dictate anything to countries while refusing to recognize their rights.
    “If Iran is to be deprived of its inalienable rights, there will be no reason for the country to remain a member of the international bodies and the IAEA,” he added.

Well, I for one am very concerned about both the possibility of nuclear proliferation and the current presence of actual nuclear weapons within the Middle East. Let us all of us work to make the whole region into a zone quite verifiably free of all weapons of mass destruction.
That would include requiring the extremely belligerent government of Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, and the extremely belligerent US to take all its nuclear weapons-bearing ships completely out of the Gulf and the Middle East area as a whole. And yes, of course it would also require Iran and all other states of the region to submit completely to IAEA or even IAEA-plus inspections; and would require all these actors to comply in full with the conventions against chemical and biological weapons.
Colonial-style militarism and double standards really have no place in the kind of 21st century I seek to build. All of these conflict and concerns– every single one of them!– can certainly be resolved through negotiation and other nonviolent means, if only (1) we all make every effort to discover, develop, and actually use such forms of conflict resolution, and (2) we base all these efforts on a simple and strong commitment to the equality of all human beings. There are no states or peoples that have any legitimate claim to be given any “special” treatment. All the peoples of the Middle East have long histories of suffering. The challenge now is to help them– and the rest of us!– to get out of the well-turned cycles of increasingly lethal violence.

So what was this war all about, again?

Aluf Benn, writes in today’s Haaretz:

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday met with the parents of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser and told them that Israel will negotiate with Hezbollah over their release. Defense Minister Amir Peretz also attended the meeting.
    Olmert gave the parents an update on the UN resolution and on the steps Israel is taking in order to release the three abducted soldiers (including IDF soldier Gilad Shalit abducted on the Gaza-Israel border). The prime minister said that Israel is doing its utmost to bring about the release of the two, who were kidnapped by Hezbollah on July 12 on Israel’s northern border.
    The UN resolution on cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon calls for the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers, but is not included as a binding section in the resolution.
    A senior diplomatic source said Israel has no information on the fate of Regev and Goldwasser, but it is assumed they are still alive. The source said the IDF has launched high-risk operations to obtain information on the abductees, but they were all unsuccessful.
    The source said also that Israel did not condition the cease-fire on the release of the soldiers because it would have led to the continuation of the fighting and the loss of more life…

Olmert the humanitarian. (Irony alert, there.)
Well, I am delighted he has decided to subscribe to the UN ceasefire– even if only in his own very unsweet time. But imagine how much death, devastation, heartache, and hatred he could have avoided if he had decided to negotiate with Hizbullah on July 12 not August 12.
The tragedy of this is beyond words.
(There’s a lot more to say about today’s news. But I’m using my friend Ann Kerr’s landline to connect. I’m blocking her phone, and need to stop doing so. I rely on commenters to flesh out the picture here– thanks!)

Al-Qaeda regroups in Pakistan/Afghanistan…

The revelations Thursday about the British and Pakistani intel services having uncovered and “taken down” a plot to blow many western airliners up over the highseas came as Bill and I were flying to California. We heard nothing of the plot before boarding the small plane in Charlottesville. But when we boarded the big transcontinental flight from Dulles to LA, passengers coming into Dulles were already having to go through extensive security checks.
As someone who flies quite frequently and whose loved ones and friends also fly frequently, I am extremely happy that all necessary and sensible steps are taken to safeguard the security of the air travel system around the world. None of us has yet had the opportunity to examine in full the evidence the British and Pakistanis had against the alleged authors of those plots, but they sounded very, very scary.
It is notable that it was solid police work that succeeded in preventing those murderous acts from being committed.
What a contrast with the situations in Iraq and Lebanon, where the UK, US, their allies, and Israel have all tried to use massive military force against opponents while claiming that these opponents either were terrorists or gave support to terrorists… And far from bringing an end to violence and threats of violence, those military acts had these features:

    (1) They were themselves acts of massive, and wildly indiscriminate violence that murdered hundreds of civilians(in Lebanon) and many thousands (in Iraq),
    (2) They significantly distracted the attention and resources of decisionmakers away from pursuing the very necessary tasks of stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan and its quite unctrolled border area with Pakistan, and
    (3) They also sowed the seeds for radically increased anti-western hatred among the very community– the worldwide Muslim community– where, as western leaders must surely understand, an important battle of ideas against the proponents of Al-Qaeda violence must be fought and won.

The US, UK, their allies, and Israel have all seemed addicted to the use of militaristic violence. In the UK, there are also those who pursue the smarter path using solid police work to investigate reports of terrorist planning… But how much less inclination to join those plots would there have been if the Blair government had not also joined the US in its military adventure in Iraq, and had not supported the Israeli government in so many of its oppressive and violent acts in palestine and Lebanon– but if instead, he had coolly pursued a policy stressing nonviolent resolution of conflicts and human equality?
Well, recourse to military force to “solve” outstanding problems should surely have gotten a bad reputation by now, after all we have witnessed in Iraq and Lebanon. I believe it’s time to stress that point as hard and as fast as we can…
(I’ll be flying home on Sunday night. Let’s hope the air travel system stays safe.)

Ceasefire resolution for Lebanon

Lebanon has a ceasefire resolution. I am happy that there is a chance of the killing being ended soon because of it– But this is clearly only a chance, since the Israeli government has said it won’t stop its military operations that are now pushing ever deeper into Lebanon until 7 a.m. local time Monday, at the earliest, and Hizbullah’s leader has said that Hizbullah will continue fighting as long as Israeli soldiers remained in Lebanon.
The Israeli forces don’t seem to be doing too well. Eleven have been killed inside Lebanon so far today, and “dozens” wounded. It looks as if the ground operations they’ve been undertaking have taken them into a series of well-prepared Hizbullah traps.
A poll conducted by Haaretz on Wednesday found that,

    Only 20 percent of respondents said that if the war ended today, it would be possible to declare Israel the winner. Some 30 percent said that Israel is losing, while 44 percent said that neither side is winning.
    However, many people said that they had trouble answering this question, as they lacked relevant data.
    Only 39 percent of the respondents backed the cabinet’s decision to expand the ground operation.

This does not look like good news for Olmert, to say the least.
Meanwhile, the popularity of Hizbullah and its leader Sayed Hassan Nasrullah, has continued to increase throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds– mainly because of Hizbullah’s ability to keep fighting despite the month of extremely lethal Israeli assaults.
The text of the ceasefire resolution as passed still looks to me to be very favorable to Israel. One very good aspect of it is, of course, the call for a “full cessation of hostilities”– even if, in Israel’s case that is then described only as, “the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations.” But as we all know, everything Israel has done in Lebanon over the past month has been fully “defensive”– right? (Irony alert.)
The resolution, number 1701, also calls for a total Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which is excellent. But again, it qualifies this by saying that upon full cessation of hostilities the government of Lebanon and Unifil should deploy their forces together throughout the South, and the government of Israel should, “as that deployment begins, … withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel.” In other words, it doesn’t call (as resolution 425 did, back in 1978) for Israel to withdraw “forthwith”… but it allows Israel to stay in Lebanon until UNIFIL is ready to deploy, alongside the Lebanese Army, into the south. Beefing up UNIFIL from its present troop level of 2,000 to its projected level of 15,000 will take some weeks.
For all that time the IOF is in Lebanon, there will be a very high risk of renewed fighting. Plus, what on earth further havoc might they wreak on the infrastructure in the areas under their control?
One of the many other problems with the resolution (as I read it on the BBC website) is that in clause 15 (a) it seems to forbid “the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories… ” So not only Hizbullah but also the Government of Lebanon is apparently to be starved of any new arms supply? So how are the government forces supposed to act effectively in South Lebanon or anywhere else in the coming period?
Israel, of course, is subject to no such arms embargo, even as it proceeds with its evidently very lethal operations inside and against Lebanon…
Again, one good aspect of the resolution is that it does now (clause 18) “[Stress] the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973.”
This is a very positive provision to include in the resolution. Not nearly as strong as what I’d advocated for in my CSM column of last Thursday. But it is important that the resolution has given at least some recognition to the fact that the violencebetween Lebanon and Israel is integrally linked to the broader Arab-Israeli peace process.
Let’s hope that future resolutions related to this region go much further in mandating a speedy resolution of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of those wellknown resolutions.

My CSM column on the need for speedy, comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace

The Christian Science Monitor of Thursday carries my column on what to do about Lebanon (also here.) The editors there titled it For a lasting Middle East peace, look back to 1967 UN plan. That’s not quite how I would have titled it, but I guess it’s okay…
In the most operational part of the column I write:

    Israel’s government and people need to find a way other than coercive military force to build a relationship that is sustainable over the long term with these neighbors [i.e., the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples] and thus to enjoy at last the sense of security that they (and all the peoples of the region) so deeply crave. And Americans, who have a long and close relationship with Israel and aspire to have good relations with the Lebanese and Palestinians, should understand that the region’s most urgent needs are to win a complete and fully monitored cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon (and, if possible, between Israel and the militants in Gaza), and to link that cease-fire to an explicit plan to have the United Nations convene an authoritative peace conference within, say, two weeks that aims to find a speedy resolution to all the unresolved strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the draft I sent to my editor there Monday, I had the “plan” part there organized under two separate “bullet points”. But I guess that space considerations prompted her to consolidate the lines of text. So what I would have preferred is this:

    the region’s most urgent needs are:
    * to win a complete and fully monitored cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon (and, if possible, between Israel and the militants in Gaza), and
    * to link that cease-fire to an explicit plan to have the United Nations convene an authoritative peace conference within, say, two weeks that aims to find a speedy resolution to all the unresolved strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Is this pie-in-the-sky? I think not. It strikes me firstly that it would be infinitely preferable to the endless prolongation of the violent conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and the Lebanese, and secondly– as I argue in the column– that nailing down final peace agreements on all three remaining fronts really is quite do-able once you get your head around the possibility.
Think how close the Israelis and Syrians– and therefore also Israel and the Lebanese– came to resolving their conflict back in 1996 or 2000. (You can read my 2000 book about much of that diplomacy, to get all the fascinating details.) Or think how close the Israelis and Palestinians came in late 2000. Nailing down these agreements really is a much closer proposition than it might appear… and nearly everyone realizes what– if they are to be sustainable over the long term– they would look like… That is, very close to a total “land for peace” deal on all fronts. Which, yes, was indeed the content of the security Council’s famous resolution 242 of 1967.
So what I am arguing is Yes, let’s go for the very speedy, very complete ceasefire, as called for in the Siniora plan. But let’s tie that ceasefire not just to a promise to resolve the Lebanon issue– an issue that, quite frankly, is just about impossible to resolve sustainably on its own, given the country’s chronic political fragility… But let’s tie it instead to a firm promise to resolve the Syria-Israel dispute and the Palestine-Israel dispute as well as the Lebanon-Israel dispute. Why not pursue such a bold vision?
What on earth is there to stop all these strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict from being resolved in very short order???
Back in 1991, an earlier round of very committed diplomats and world leaders pledged themselves to just that goal. (And yes, before that, in 1973, as well… though with– on Henry Kissinger’s part– notably less sincerity.) The diplomacy that flowed from the Madrid Peace conference of 1991 did not succeed, it is true, in resolving all outstanding strands of the Arab-Israeli dispute. But it did resolve the Jordanian-Israeli dispute; and, as noted above, the post-Madrid diplomacy laid a considerable amount of the groundwork for a final peace settlement on both the Palestinian and the Syrian fronts, too.
I assure you: If the Syrian-Israeli conflict is resolved and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is resolved, Lebanon will make peace with Israel in a jiffy.
So okay, maybe you have concerns with my approach. You may say, “Wouldn’t it overload the Lebanese ceasefire to have it organically linked (as per my formulation above) to the promise to convene a speedy conference dedicated to negotiating a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace?” Yes, it might– a little. But right now, the ceasefire doesn’t look as though it’s going to be happening terrifically soon, anyway. So as we sit out the agonzing wait for it, why not start planning how it can be tied to an effort to build a really worthwhile regional peace, rather than a Lebanon-only stabilization effort that– especially in the absence of any incentives for the Syrians– is anyway almost certainly doomed to be short-lived?
You may say, “Wouldn’t promising a speedy and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace effort somehow reward the Hizbullah and Hamas militants for their intransigence and use of violence, and reward Syria for having supported them?”
I would say a couple of things to this: First: the real hardliners in Hamas and Hizbullah would certainly not feel “rewarded” by such a peace effort. These are the people who hate the idea of any peace that leaves a thriving Israel in place at all, and would want to fight to the end. But the majority of supporters and fighters within these organizations could be won over to supporting a regional peace effort– provided it were sufficiently balanced to give independent Palestine and independent lebanon a real chance to thrive (alongside the thriving Israel.)
Surely, the idea should be to try to structure the incentives so that as many Palestinians, lebanese, and Syrians as possible want to make peace, rather than to continue to fight??
Secondly, I’d say we have to get completely away from the idea that securing a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace is something that is only in the interests of the Arabs. Of course it is not! It is something that’s in the interests of the vast majority of Israelis, as well. Yes, some proportion of those Israelis who have been living as (illegal) settlers on occupied Arab land, whether in Golan or the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, would have to be prepared to see those homes coming under (or, in the case of Golan, returning to) the soveriengty of an Arab state. The fate of all those settlers would certainly be part of the peace negotiations… But all those issues have already been extensively negotiated before, back in the 1990s… No need to re-invent the wheel there…
Anyway, that’s the big outline of my argument. A few other people– Brent Scowcroft, Jimmy Carter, etc– have already started to argue in the US discourse that this current crisis should prompt the world to renew its search for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. I applaud the boldness of their vision and willingness to speak out and articulate it! I think that what I add to the argument is the idea that the promise of the very rapid convening of the regnional peace conference should be embedded within the ceasefire resolution itself.
Oh, and I also make the point in the column that the US faces quite enough challenges elsewhere in the world right now– including in Iraq and Afghanistan– that surely it should welcome any move that promises the speedy de-escalation of Arab-Israeli tensions… Plus, I draw out an extended comparison of the current crisis, as it faces the US, with the Suez crisis of 1956, as it affected Britain. I don’t recall that either Scowcroft or Jimmy Carter did that…
Anyway, I’m off to California in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Tell me (courteously, as always!) what you think of the column.

Israel’s attack force: woes and goals

I know that in every war, the soldiers like to kvetch and complain. But it strikes me the complaining is notably loud, notably early among Israel’s attack force going into Lebanon.
HaAretz’s Roni Singer-Heruti writes in Thursday’s paper:

    “I feel like we’ve been thrown into the field and told to get along,” Ram Dagan, who serves with a combat unit called up to the Lebanese border 10 days ago, said on his first leave. “I’m not talking about showers, not even about the food that’s lacking, but about basic equipment to protect us. The helmets we’ve been issued are old-fashioned and hardly can be closed, and the body armor is 30 years old. It doesn’t close on the sides or on the neck. We don’t have a place to take shelter from rocket attack, and we are under fire all the time. We’ve been told that when we come under fire we should go into the APCs. But there are too many soldiers and not enough APCs. And anyway, they’re not missile-proof,” he said…

There’s more.
This is yet more evidence to me that the current assault against Lebanon was not long pre-planned but is being conducted by the strategically illiterate Olmert and Peretz almost completely on-the-fly and day-to-day.
I’ve been trying to define what the IDF/IOF’s actual war aims are as they conduct their horrendously lethal business in Lebanon. I think that, inasmuch as Olmert and Peretz are not merely acting out of childish pique and machismo (though let’s not misunderestimate that portion of their motivation) they probably are determined to try to “re-establish the credibility of the Israeli deterrent”. But they’ve already notably failed in doing so. The battering they gave Lebanon on July 12 did not cause Hizbullah to hold its fire on Juoly 13; and so on and on and on, every day since then.
Hizbullah, of course, is equally determined to to makes its point about not being deterred by Israel’s much greater display and use of lethal might.
Personally, I think Hizbullah has amply made its point by now and could simply retire from the battlefield with good grace, having proven that it is not beaten and not cowed, and therefore that the fates of Israel and its Arab neighbors are indeed tied together in interdependence rather than the region being in a situation where Israel can exercize its colonial domination as it desires over all its neighbors, quite unchecked from any quarter.
Israel, I believe, has failed to make its point. But that uncomfortable fact likely won’t stop Olmert and Peretz from proceeding and proceeding, digging themselves deeper into the mud of the Lebanese quagmire and the opprobrium of the civilized world with each week that passes.
There is a model for this, of course: the Bush administration “staying the course” on a road headed for a quite evident brick wall in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Hizbullah continues to say that it supports Fouad Siniora’s very sensible seven-point peace plan. Siniora spelled out the plan— once again– for a Washington readership in today’s WaPo.
Here’s what he wrote:

    The plan, which also received the full support of the 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, included an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive cease-fire and called for:
    * The release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners and detainees through the International Committee of the Red Cross.
    * The withdrawal of the Israeli army behind the “blue line.”
    * A commitment from the U.N. Security Council to place the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba Hills areas under U.N. jurisdiction until border delineation and Lebanese sovereignty over them are fully settled. Further, Israel must surrender all maps of remaining land mines in southern Lebanon to the United Nations.
    * Extension of the Lebanese government’s authority over its territory through its legitimate armed forces, with no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state, as stipulated in the Taif accord. We have indicated that the Lebanese armed forces are ready and able to deploy in southern Lebanon, alongside the U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border.
    * The supplementing of the U.N. international force operating in southern Lebanon and its enhancement in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, as needed, to undertake urgent humanitarian and relief work and guarantee stability and security in the south so that those who fled their homes can return.
    * Action by the United Nations on the necessary measures to once again put into effect the 1949 armistice agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel and to ensure adherence to its provisions, as well as to explore possible amendments to or development of those provisions as necessary.
    * The commitment of the international community to support Lebanon on all levels, including relief, reconstruction and development needs.
    As part of this comprehensive plan, and empowered by strong domestic political support and the unanimous backing of the cabinet, the Lebanese government decided to deploy the Lebanese armed forces in southern Lebanon as the sole domestic military force in the area, alongside U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border.
    Israel responded by slaughtering more civilians in the biblical town of Qana. Such horrible scenes have been repeated daily for nearly four weeks and continue even as I write these words.
    The resolution to this war must respect international law and U.N. resolutions, not just those selected by Israel, a state that deserves its reputation as a pariah because of its consistent disdain for and rejection of international law and the wishes of the international community for over half a century…

What on earth is there to object to in any of the seven points, or in the call for an “immediate, unconditional and comprehensive cease-fire”? I believe the Siniora plan and the Siniora government should receive strong and immediate backing from all who want the suffering– on both sides of the international border– to end.
(And then all those suffering Israeli soldiers can finally return to the comforts of their homes…. While the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese whose neighborhoods and infrastructure have been obliterated by the IDF/IOF soldiers’ work get to return to– what? Well, at least to an opportunity to rebuild their homes and their lives.)

My upcoming book: paperback and hardcover

I’ve been working with the good folks at Paradigm Publishers who will be releasing the hardcover edition of my book Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes NEXT MONTH, here in the US. This is so exciting.
I received a confirmation from them yesterday that they will be releasing the paperback in January. It will cost a fraction of the hardcover price of $70. Here is Paradigm’s web-page about the book. (I’m not sure what the $63.75 figure there means– it must be some kind of a trade-discounted price for the hardcover. The paperback will be under $25.)
The book deals with important issues in transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding, and includes the first ever comparative study of the utility of international war-crimes courts. If any JWN readers would like to write or commission reviews of the book– or even better, to organize some kind of a discussion event at which its main themes and arguments can be examined and discussed– please contact Patricia Giminez at Paradigm. You can click on a form to do that if you go here.

Creating space for humanitarian and nonviolent action in S. Lebanon

Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has taken the heroic step of putting his life on the line in order to go visit the besieged city of Tyre in south Lebanon.

    “Our main concern is access to south Lebanon,” he told reporters in the southern city of Tyre, which he could only reach after walking along a thin log to cross the Litani River after two bridges were destroyed by Israeli strikes.
    Desperately needed humanitarian aid has not been able to reach those in the south after Israeli strikes destroyed dozens of roads and bridges in the area.
    “Our other main concern is the respect of basic rules of humanitarian law in the conduct of hostilities,” he said, noting that 100,000 people in Lebanon were living in dire conditions.
    “You cannot rid yourself of your responsibility by dropping leaflets,” he said.
    The Israeli military on Tuesday dropped flyers on south Lebanon, warning it would strike any vehicle travelling south of the Litani river, an area that includes the port of Tyre.
    Kellenberger insisted that all sides should make the “distinction between civilians and combatants, between civilian objectives and military objectives.”

You can learn more about the ICRC’s efforts in Lebanon by following the links on this page.
The ICRC is a key actor in internationational humanitarian affairs since it has been the “depositary body” for the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, and many other crucial treaties in the field of international humanitarian law. Very often, it works quietly and behind the scenes, careful to keep its ability to gain access to vulnerable populations, including POWs, by not angering the governments who control access to these persons.
Kellenberger and his secretariat must have decided that the need for humanitarian access to the scores or hundreds of thousands of beleaguered south Lebanese citizens whose entire region has now been declared a “free-fire zone” by Israel has become so dire that heroic, demonstrative action is necessary.
Another group seeking to create space for nonviolent, humanitarian action in south Lebanon is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has sponsored many previous heroic acts of witness in Palestine.
Today, a respected friend in Beirut sent me this important announcement:

    Press Release-Lebanon: An Open Country for Civil Resistance
    Beirut August 7, 2006
    Press Contacts:
    Rasha Salti, +961 3 970855
    Huwaida Arraf, +961 70 974452
    Samah Idriss, +961 3 381349
    Wadih Al Asmar, +961 70 950780
    On August 12, at 7 am, Lebanese from throughout the country and international supporters who have come to Lebanon to express solidarity will gather in Martyr’s Square in Beirut to form a civilian convoy to the south of Lebanon. Hundreds of Lebanese and international civilians will express their solidarity with the inhabitants of the heavily destroyed south who have been bravely withstanding the assault of the Israeli military. This campaign is endorsed by more than 200 Lebanese and international organizations. This growing coalition of national and international non-governmental organizations hereby launches a campaign of civil resistance for the purpose of challenging the cruel and ruthless use of massive military force by Israel, the regional superpower, upon the people of Lebanon.
    August 12 marks the start of this Campaign of Resistance, declaring Lebanon an Open Country for Civil Resistance. August 12 also marks both the international day of protest against the Israeli aggression.
    “In the face of Israel’s systematic killing of our people, the indiscriminate bombing of our towns, the scorching of our villages, and the attempted destruction of our civil infrastructure, we say No! In the face of the forced expulsion of a quarter of our population from their homes throughout Lebanon, and the complicity of governments and international bodies, we re-affirm the acts of civil resistance that began from the first day of the Israeli assault, and we stress and add the urgent need to act!,” said Rasha Salti, one of the organizers of this national event.
    After August 12, the campaign will continue with a series of civil actions, leading to an August 19 civilian march to reclaim the South. “Working together, in solidarity, we will overcome the complacency, inaction, and complicity of the international community and we will deny Israel its goal of removing Lebanese from their land and destroying the fabric of our country,” explained Samah Idriss, writer and co-organizer of this campaign.
    “An international civilian presence in Lebanon is not only an act of solidarity with the Lebanese people in the face of unparalleled Israeli aggression, it is an act of moral courage to defy the will of those who would seek to alienate the West from the rest and create a new Middle East out of the rubble and blood of the region,” said Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and campaign co-organizer. “After having witnessed the wholesale destruction of villages by Israel’s air force and navy and having visited the victims (so-called displaced) of Israel’s policy of cleansing Lebanese civilians from their homes,” continued Arraf, “it is imperative to go south and reach those who have stayed behind to resist by steadfastly remaining on their land.”
    If you are in Lebanon and want to sign up and join the convoy, contact either:
    Rasha Salti. Email: convois.citoyens.sud.liban@gmail.com. Tel: +961 3 970 855
    Rania Masri. Email: rania.masri@balamand.edu.lb. Tel: +961 3 135 279
    or +961 6 930 250 xt. 5683 or xt. 3933
    If you are outside Lebanon and want to sign up and join the convoy, you should know:
    1) You need to obtain a visa for Lebanon and for Syria if your plan is to enter Lebanon from Syria.
    2) We don’t have the funds to cover for the cost of your travel, however we can help with finding accomodations.
    For questions and help for all internationals please contact Adam Shapiro at: adamsop@hotmail.com
    You can also sign up on our website: www.lebanonsolidarity.org [They have Arabic and Spanish versions of their announcement there, too. ~HC]
    This campaign is thus far endorsed by more than 200 organizations,
    including: The Arab NGOs Network for Development (ANND), International
    Solidarity Movement (ISM), Cultural Center for Southern Lebanon, Norwegian
    People’s Aid, Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, Lebanese Association for
    Democratic Elections, Frontiers, Kafa, Nahwa al-Muwatiniya, Spring Hints,
    Hayya Bina, Lebanese Transparency Association, Amam05, Lebanese Center for
    Civic Education, Let’s Build Trust, CRTD-A, Solida, National Association
    for Vocational Training and Social Services, Lebanese Development Pioneers,
    Nadi Li Koul Alnas, and Lecorvaw.

This looks like an extremely important initiative. Well-organized, nonviolent nationalist mass action is the very best way for Lebanon to win its liberation while guarding its national unity and building the basis for a sustainable, robust national society. I am going to find out what else all of us can do to help this initiative.