Now we Israelis are entering a most crucial period, a forking of destinies, when our actions or inactions are liable to determine our future and that of our children for many years to come. The hardest fighting in Lebanon is playing out right now, as a small resistance force — 2,000 warriors at the beginning of the war, and probably much less now — takes its stand against the onslaught of a 30,000-strong fully equipped army, attacking in spite of the cease-fire resolution. If they survive, they win.
The US-drafted and Israel-approved Security Council resolution is profoundly unfair: The UN troops will be stationed — not in Galilee to protect weak Lebanon from Jewish fury, but in south Lebanon in order to protect the strong neighbor. The defender, not the aggressor, will be disarmed. This is unfair, but not unfair enough for the Jews: The moment the resolution was accepted, the Israeli Army swept forward, in order to grasp as much territory as possible before the official cease-fire deadline. It was a foul trick, going against the spirit of the UN resolution, but within its letter: “It is kosher, but stinks”, say the Jews about such dishonesty. In a clarification given by an IDF Northern Command officer, Israel intends to surround south Lebanon and keep fighting there after the cease-fire as well, calling it “mopping-up of terrorists”. Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, also pledged to fight the invader on the ground, while accepting the cease-fire.
Thus there is little chance that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing fighting will be over soon. Israeli troops are being constantly re-supplied by Washington. The US participation in the war is not limited to full diplomatic support and military supplies to Israel. Endangering their own troops in Iraq, the Pentagon moved its spy satellite from its positions above Baghdad to the skies of Lebanon, a move which necessitated a massive transfer of US soldiers to Baghdad.
Moreover, important Jewish American friends of Israel in Washington called upon the Israeli government to fight and win, for a nonvictorious Israel is of no use to the empire. Pro-war forces in the US have woken up to the danger and intensified their efforts to spread the war to the whole region.
These forces have many allies in Israel, whose leadership is brooding over its military defeat in what was supposed to be a short, brilliant campaign, and is looking for a scapegoat. Generals blame the government; ministers blame the army; intelligence officers implausibly claim they knew it would happen. At the same time an ad at the masthead of the liberal Haaretz newspaper calls out to “Ehud (Olmert) and Amir (Peretz), please nuke Iran!”
This request may still be fulfilled, although blitzkrieg did not work out so well in Lebanon. The missiles of Hezbollah presented a counter-threat to Israel to be activated in case of Israeli-American attack on Iran and Syria. Now, with the threat of missiles removed, and after a good rest and rearmament, the Israelis may try to continue with their plans to thrash Damascus and Tehran. It was for this purpose that they agreed to the cease-fire.
Cease-fire is a secret weapon of Israel. The weapon was utilized for first time in 1948, when the UN declared it twice, connected with the weapons embargo. Both times the nascent Jewish state used it to its full: delivery of weapons to the Palestinians was embargoed, while the Jews received fresh supplies of weapons from the ostensibly Stalinist, but predominantly Jewish, government in Prague. The cease-fire was unleashed in 1973, when it saved the Jewish state from looming defeat. The cease-fire fall-back strategy was built into Israeli war plans since the very beginning of the War in Lebanon II. The Jews bombed civilians in Lebanon. While the Qana massacre is the most notorious, there were dozens of Qanas, as the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 was only the most notorious among many others. The Israeli civilian population suffered as well, and the Palestinians of Galilee (“Israeli Arabs”) suffered most, because Israeli artillery shelled Lebanon from their shelter-less villages.
When the world conscience demanded an end to the slaughter of innocents, Israel presented an ultimatum via its allied superpower, the US, to wit: If you wish us to cease killing, please, do our job for us, disarm the resistance, embargo their supply of weapons, recolonize Lebanon, so that when we shall be able to resume the war, Lebanon will fall into our hands like ripe fruit. Only the Hezbollah fighters’ steadfastness and courage moved the French to improve upon the Israeli-American draft a bit; though it remained as generous as Shylock’s loan agreement.
The Lebanese and Palestinians still can achieve victory, despite Israel and America’s sheer might. But in real politics we do not have to push for victory, we may be satisfied with modus vivendi. More and more Israelis are coming to their senses, even the Peace Now movement which supported the war from the beginning. The main danger still comes from the extreme American Zionists.
The Israeli government should not be rewarded for its nastiness. The Security Council resolutions on Lebanon call for disarming forces unauthorized by the Beirut government. Thus, the Lebanese leadership should integrate Hezbollah into their state and army machinery and thus undermine the Zionist plot. This was understood by the Maronite President of Lebanon, Emile Lahoud, who answered the usual Zionist complaints from a Western journalist in a fashion clearly supportive of Hezbollah: “Hezbollah is the force that was able to liberate the land of the south in the year 2000. Our army is national, and the resistance is national. You want the national army to disarm the national resistance, which is complementary to the army but without having the same operation room? No way”.
— Israel Shamir is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist. Shamir lives in Jaffa.
