| Unprovoked Attack by Hizbullah? |
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| The Guardian |
| Tuesday, August 8,
2006 |
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Fadi Dahaineh mourns over the bodies
of his wife and son killed in an
Israeli air strike (Hussein Malla /
AP). |
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Israel responded to an
unprovoked attack by Hizbullah, right? Wrong
The assault on Lebanon was premeditated - the
soldiers' capture simply provided the excuse. It
was also unnecessary
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Whatever
we
think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to
agree about one fact: that it was a response, however
disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah.
I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote
that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so,
the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like
me, what would you have done? It's an important
question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is
flawed.
Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May
2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the
"blue line" between the two countries. The United
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that
Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily
basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until
2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the
civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights
that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On
some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with
anti-aircraft guns.
In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at
unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing
three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed
the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On
several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar
rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with
heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment.
Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three
Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah
fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three
Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired
from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and
2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN
records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military
escalation".
On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad -
Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in
the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in
Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh
confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been
working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern
Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by
launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was
lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the
border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed
and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded.
But while the border region "remained tense and
volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until
July 12.
There has been a heated debate on the internet about
whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah
that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it
now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel.
This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to
have forgotten that they were supposed to have been
found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese
village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the
Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the
border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli
soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also
some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first
fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the
firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am.
Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No
one was hit.
But there is no serious debate about why the two
soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to
exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the
Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach
of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never
released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over
the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any
more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the
likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli
government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all
know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33
Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million
Lebanese displaced from their homes.
On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first
shots. But that act of aggression was simply one
instance in a long sequence of small incursions and
attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why
was the Israeli response so different from all that
preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to
the events of that day. The assault had been planned for
months.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a
year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving
PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to
US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks,
setting out the plan for the current operation in
revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for
three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate
in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of
political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper
that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the
one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the
military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks
that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and,
in the last year or two, it's been simulated and
rehearsed across the board".
A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post
that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a
"unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New
Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by
more than one official source that the US government
knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military
action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the
British government.
Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply
waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also
unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building
up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket
attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could
assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by
Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with
justification - that it was trying to deter incursions
by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of
doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back
from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and
disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12
were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just
about everything that has taken place around the border
for the past six years. But the suggestion that
Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it
constitutes an existential threat to the state is
preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts
of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them
reactive.
So it is not hard to answer the question of what we
would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by
withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine
and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in
Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular
the persistent flights across the border. Third, release
the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated
in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while
maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm
Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more
feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is
my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli
government: do you dare to contend that this programme
would have caused more death and destruction than the
current adventure has done?
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