[News] No escaping the consequences of this war
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Aug 9 11:30:36 EDT 2006
No escaping the consequences of this war
Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Lebanon, 9 August 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5460.shtml
[]
Christian Palestinians demonstrate after the Sunday mass in the West
Bank town of Beit Sahour against the Israeli invasions to Lebanon and
Gaza by performing a mock funeral with three coffins marked as United
Nations, Arab League and International Conscience, 6 August 2006. The
procession marched quietly through the streets and at the city center
the coffins were buried as priest held a mass.
(<http://www.maannews.net/en/>MaanImages/Magnus Johansson)
When the orgy of destruction stops and the dust of battle settles,
leaders in most countries of the region and worldwide will retreat
behind safe doors to assess the outcome. Israel's latest war has
placed the region at the doorstep of a new, and a totally different
era. Hardly any country will escape the consequences.
Israel may have the most on its post-war menu. The war has shaken the
foundations of matters once taken for granted. It has underlined that
Israel's security cannot be guaranteed by military superiority alone,
even with unlimited support from a superpower. Even the growing
trend, over recent decades, of Arab recognition of the Jewish state
and the formal agreements with a few Arab states may now have to be
gradually downgraded. Israel cannot expect the so-called peace
process to move any further with so much more innocent Arab blood
spilled by its new massacres in Palestine and Lebanon. The Israeli
apartheid system has totally and finally disqualified itself from
ever becoming part of this region.
Israel intended its Lebanon war, as well as its constant bombardment
of defenceless people in Gaza, to be a way to reassert its military
superiority and rebuild its army's self-esteem after they were shaken
by military attacks from Hamas and Hizbollah. But it achieved the
opposite: Whatever confidence existed has now been lost as Israel's
army has emerged as nothing more than a cowardly bunch that drops
bombs on apartment blocks and refugee camps from great heights, and
even when engaged in ground battles can be defeated by sophisticated,
modern and determined resistance forces. Although it has killed a
thousand people and destroyed almost every road bridge in Lebanon,
the Israeli army has not dented the ability of Hizbollah to launch
retaliatory ballistic missiles at Israeli cities, causing significant
losses and paralyzing a million Israelis in shelters. Israeli
planners will now likely choose between two options, either deceptive
or difficult.
One is to continue to blame the alleged inherent wickedness and
anti-Semitism of Arabs and Muslims, whom Israel views as uncivilized
and inferior to its "Western civilization" and "Jewish values" for
the increased resistance it is facing, and therefore respond with
increased force and brutality, higher walls or more complex and
expensive weapons. This is the choice Israel has always taken, and it
has never done anything to improve Israel's security. The current war
is no more than a re-run of similar attempts by Israel to destroy the
resistance in Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 1996. Like those attempts, it
will also fail.
The second choice for Israel is to finally recognize a very simple
principle: Peace cannot be built on injustice. Israel has been trying
to invent an environment of peace and security for itself and its
people in the midst of an ocean of anger, rejection, turmoil,
injustice, and lawlessness caused by its aggression, colonialism and
unrestricted violence against the people of the region, including the
assassination and kidnapping of their elected political
representatives. All these "extremist movements," Hamas and
Hizbollah, and we will witness the rise of others soon, are the
natural outcome of decades of misreading the region and mistreating
its people. There is no prerequisite for putting an end to the raging
cycle of violence, the mounting loss of life, the endless suffering
and the mad destruction, other than Israel abandoning the mentality
of expansionism and colonization and denying all the rights of
others. Israel cannot be secure as long as it chooses to rob the
region's people of their land and rights and subject them to total
humiliation. The more Israel continues to deceive itself that it is
an innocent victim surrounded by uncivilized savages who deserve
nothing but its bombs, the harder it will be to break out of this
impasse. Time is definitely not in Israel's favour, and if there is a
bit of opportunity left for it to make up for decades of blunder, in
fact a whole history of blood, crime, abuse and shame, it will soon
be lost if not quickly seized.
[]
What is the point of keeping the Arab League when it failed to even
hold a high level meeting to discuss a major aggression and total
destruction of a member state?
[]
Members of the Arab League also have much to consider. The Lebanon
war has further exposed the lack of unity prevailing among Arab
states. What is the point of keeping the Arab League when it failed
to even hold a high level meeting to discuss a major aggression and
total destruction of a member state? What is the meaning of the Arab
Common Defence Pact when Arab leaders rushed to declare their
opposition to risking their own tranquillity by helping other Arab
countries under attack? It is an utter shame that the Arab foreign
ministers waited for nearly a month before agreeing to meet in
Beirut, the capital of a besieged and destroyed Lebanon to offer
support. What kind of "support" is that after so much destruction?
What dignity and honor do they have, when their journey could only be
possible with permission from Israel, which controls the skies over
Lebanon? Is it not proof of the worthlessness of such a feeble
demonstration of failure that Israel permitted it to go ahead?
Watching the veil of embarrassment and shame covering the faces of
the Arab foreign ministers as they watched the prime minister of
Lebanon sobbing and wiping his tears while delivering his opening
speech, I wondered if he was mourning the destruction and death in
his country, or of the Arab League. Elsewhere, as far away as
Casablanca, demonstrators held mock funerals for the organization,
displaying just how much public confidence is left in it.
Time is also running out for the Arab regimes who have for so long
ignored the feelings of their people, building up layers of
humiliation, anger and disgust as a result of defeatism, corruption,
incompetence, hypocrisy and oppression. If they have managed so far
to dismiss the rising forces of resistance and rejection as extremist
trends of terrorism, this may not be possible any more. The victory
of the resistance in Lebanon is going to change the equation
drastically and it will gradually weaken Arab officialdom as outdated
and defeated.
And for the so-called "international community," which trailed
blindly behind the forces led by US and Israeli thinking, justifying
all their injustices and rationalizations of lawlessness, it is time
to realize that the victims of the prevailing chaos will not for long
remain restricted to Arabs and Muslims, so easily demonised as
"terrorists." The precedents tested on Arab and Muslim peoples and
countries will soon be used elsewhere, and no one will be spared the
consequences of America and Israel's, with European collaboration,
undoing of all the achievements in international law and human rights
since World War II. All of us must stand up to the horrors being
committed in the name of this "war on terror," a war of the rich
against the poor, of the privileged against the disenfranchised, of
the white North against people of color in the global south, if we
are to stop the flames from leaping higher and engulfing us all.
EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative
of Jordan at the United Nations.
The Freedom Archives
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(415) 863-9977
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