No one can predict the end result of Israel’s airstrikes on Syrian targets in Lebanon yesterday. The Middle East is a powder keg waiting for a spark. Anyone who throws around lighted matches there is not acting a hero, but a fool.
Nonetheless, the development would gratify analysts for one reason: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is living up to their expectations. He would destroy every possibility of peace in the region, they had said. He has taken the first step toward that goal, widening the circle of conflict, pushing the region to the brink of a shooting war.
Whether it will come to that depends on the international community, the US in particular. If it is up to Sharon, he will opt for more bloodshed. He is inspired by the memories of his hour of glory — when he, as his country’s defense minister, pushed deep into Lebanon and had his “greatest hour” masterminding the massacre of Palestinian refugees. An Israeli inquiry judged him psychotic and unfit to hold charge of the Defense Ministry. Now he is in charge not only of that ministry, but the whole country. With all the guns and airships of the region’s superpower under his command, he now has the opportunity to recreate the old glory.
Who can stop him?
Had he not been an Israeli, the international community would have. He is as much of a war criminal as Slobodan Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic is. This is not Arab hyperbole. Impartial observers who judge men and events on their merit, not on nationality, strategic interests or vote blocs, have called him that. But he has no reason to worry. The United States, the “honest broker”, has declared him a peace dove. When US Congress gave him standing ovations and the White House held receptions in his honor to make that status official, who will dare to remember his record. You need a villain? There are the Palestinians. Israel’s military has occupied lands under Palestinian control, has used helicopter gunships and heavy artillery against civilians, has demolished homes and shops, and assassinated PLO officials. US response? “Arafat should control violence.” And when, having nothing to live for, desperate Palestinians decide to end it all with a bomb, injuring or killing an Israeli — then also “Arafat should control violence.” It doesn’t matter who kills or who gets killed, “Arafat should control violence.”
Any wonder the peace dove is on a rampage?
Israel, no one disputes, has the military superiority to get away with such Rambo operations. It also has, if needed, the support of the United States. Is the new policy of provocation a part of a bigger scheme? Has it been decided at the highest level — not necessarily in Tel Aviv — that the way to gain “real” peace in the Middle East is for Israel to ground all others under its heel?
Hezbollah’s missile attack on Israel is not anything new. They have been going ever since 1982. In the two decades past, there were a number of attacks and reprisal between them. To quote one such action as “provocative attacks, which are quite deliberate and which have produced this escalation,” to justify Israel’s misadventure smacks of dishonesty — even if it is done by David Satterfield, US ambassador to Lebanon.
