Israel, Lebanon and middle-east politics of war

Posted on July 14, 2006
Tags: Politics |

As most of you are aware (especially if you follow oil prices) there’s a serious conflict going on in the middle-east at the moment. I have been following the news on about 8 different sources with concern for my country and people. I left Israel in 1997 but I am still very much in touch with what is going on there. The political divide in Israel is insurmountable on day to day basis, but that changed a few days ago. Nassralla and Hizbollah with their blatant and unprovoked cross border attacks have managed to unite Israel, at least for a while, in the retaliation against Lebanon. The following is obviously written from a biased Israeli point of view, there is no way around it, anyone involved in that region in some way is bound to be partial.

Following Lebanon’s Hizbollah’s incursion into Israeli territory, killing of 4 patrol soldiers and kidnapping of 2 more, Israel has launched a major air and sea operation against Lebanon. As a bit of background, in the year 2000, after about 20 years, Israel finally complied with UN resolution 425 and pulled out of Lebanon, completely, to the last inch, certified by the UN. Since then Hizbollah, an Islamic radical terrorist movement backed by Iran and (ironically UN security council member) Syria, has been sitting on the border launching attacks and kidnapping operations against Israel. Unfortunately, most of the world’s nations do not pay much attention to those attacks against Israel, unti Israel retaliates. And that’s what’s happening now. Since the start of events Israel has launched massive air strikes while Hizbollah launched hundreds of katyusha missiles against civilian towns and cities in Israel all the way from the north border to Haifa killing several people including children in their homes. And the fighting continues with Israel vowing not to let things return to the previous status quo of constant threats and attacks on its sovereign territory.

So where is all of this going? No one can really tell when it comes to middle-east politics. In my opinion from what can be seen so far, things will quiet down in a few days when international pressure on Israel increases to stop attacking back. Which is quite unfortunate. The history of conflicts shows that skirmishes on ethnic background tend to continue for a very long time if no real change to balance of power is realized. I don’t think the conflict will escalate to Syria and Iran. Syria has no real army as such and Bashar can’t afford a war which will undermine his already shaky rule. Iran on the other hand would be looking for any excuse it can to divert attention from its nuclear plans to a small war Israel is involved with. Despite that, I believe Israel’s actions would be limited to Lebanon for the time being.

So what needs to happen instead of going back to the status-quo? We need a showdown. Retaliating and killing some 50 or 100 Hizbollah terrorists isn’t going to change anything. If instead 50,000 are killed with massive, unbearable price paid by those who instigate attacks, then maybe we’ll see some kind of peace followed later on which would allow the other millions of people to finally go on a path of not resolving issues by using violence. I know this sounds ironic, but that’s how human nature and history works. It took massive all-out wars between Israel, Jordan and Egypt to finally reach a state of peace which has lasted 30 years. It was only after Israel suffered major losses in 1973 war, and reached a stage that by the end of the war almost eliminated the Egyptian military and moved its tanks 101Km from Cairo with no Egyptian military between those tanks and Cairo that something clicked and Egypt and Syria realized they will not be able to remove Israel by force. The result was the same on the Syrian front where Israeli forces were stopped by orders from the US an Russia 40Km from Syrian capital Damascus.

Since 1973, Israel weakened, not military-wise but internally. Israelis are tired of wars, weary of casualties and very sensitive to international pressures. Initiating an all out war involving ground forces and hundreds of soldier casualties is almost unthinkable in Israel. Nevertheless, as a Lebanese was quoted saying in the media, there’s only so much you can poke at a tiger without expecting a vicious attack back. Israel needs to make sure the attack is so vicious that those who toy with the idea of constantly disturbing the tiger cannot ignore the memory etched in their minds of the aftermath their actions bring.

Comments

3 Responses to “Israel, Lebanon and middle-east politics of war”

John on July 15th, 2006 5:47 pm

Amen!
William on July 15th, 2006 11:32 pm

At times like these, one misses Yitzhak Rabin…
eyal on July 15th, 2006 11:41 pm

Thanks John.

William - actually I think Ulmert the current PM and Peretz his defence minister are doing a reasonable job. Not so sure about Rabin.. Sharon on the other hand would have been an asset in this situation. He was well known for thinking outside the box in times of conflict.