In the first part of this article which appeared yesterday I said Terje Roed-Larsen’s visit to Lebanon was not a fact-finding mission because the Norwegian diplomat and UN secretary-general’s special representative on Middle East is not only the Israeli Labor Party’s man on the conflict with the Palestinians, he is also the spokesman of the Israeli position with respect to the Lebanese resistance.
Roed-Larsen is the one who is after blood money to compensate for Barak’s loss of honor after withdrawing from Lebanon and the one who was called in to supervise the implementation of Resolution 1559. Larsen has not only drawn a red line at crossing the blue line, he regards the Lebanese resistance as a local militia. He is also a foremost exponent of that now old term, “the New Middle East”, by which is meant, at best, the normalization of Arab relations, i.e. according inter-Arab relations no more priority than bilateral relations between individual Arab states and Israel. Larsen was the sworn enemy of Yasser Arafat, who spoiled the Oslo recipe and refused to behave as he was supposed to. He is filled with a mixture of hatred and bitterness against “Arab extremists” and harbors low expectations of, and disappointment with, “Arab moderates” who should always demonstrate that they are up to the Israeli establishment’s expectations.
That’s what it’s all about; the rest is décor. We’ll see Larsen in the garb of mediator, which hardly suits him since he is not an arbitrator and nowhere near the middle. And, we’ll be inundated with details about cease-fires, truces, and preparations for implementing 1559.
The resistance isn’t playing the role of victim. It didn’t ask for international sympathy with the victims but for solidarity among freedom-seeking peoples. These are the rules of another game, a language that Arab regimes have forgotten, if they ever really knew it, though they owe their own existence to such a discourse. I am speaking of the language of liberation movements that exact a payment for colonization from the colonizer. Resistance movements attempt to exact a price that their adversaries cannot afford and that the societies of their adversaries do not wish to pay, and they try to encumber their adversaries in a manner that inhibits the full use of force. This is how resistance movements try to neutralize military superiority.
The resistance was not being unduly reckless; it did not even select the timing. It was Israel that chose to open a broad battlefront against the resistance. It feared that putting off an inevitable battle with the Lebanese resistance would only give the resistance time to grow stronger and increase its arsenal. One reason why Israel chose this time in particular was that it already knew how some key Arab regimes would react. The situation, therefore, is the opposite of what is being portrayed: The charge that the resistance has courted disaster betrays the existence of an Arab camp that regards robust resistance in Lebanon and Palestine as an adventure.
The US, meanwhile, is futilely trying to regulate Israel’s cowardly assault against civilians and its destruction of civilian infrastructure. It wants Israel to target the resistance and the society that supports it without jeopardizing the American project in Lebanon. It wants Israel to bully and blackmail America’s allies without crushing them, alienating them completely or driving their supporters into the arms of the resistance. The difference between the Israel and the US, here, maybe tactical, but it is important. It is one of degree, of pushing or not pushing people over the edge.
Whereas the US wants Israel to promote the American project in Lebanon rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater, Israel wants the US, Washington’s allies and all the international agencies at their disposal, to negotiate with the Lebanese government a cease-fire that fulfils several conditions. The first is to disarm Hezbollah, the second to deploy the official Lebanese Army in the south and substitute the international force with a proper NATO force, the third to release the Israeli captives. But it is the first condition that is the one that counts; meeting this will be sufficient for Israel to agree to a cease-fire. The political order that emerges from the rubble of Israel’s destruction will see to the rest. Israel, in other words, has decided to settle internal Lebanese dialogue by force of arms.
A NATO force accepted by the government without the consent of the people will be considered an occupation force and will be the next target of the resistance thus creating a new Iraq, a fragmented Lebanon. If the Lebanese government agrees to the proposed settlement that includes dismantling Hezbollah a process of attrition will start also from the inside aimed at getting Lebanese society to pressure the resistance into conceding. This is how internal strife is ignited and it is part of the plan.
Israel decided that this would not only be a good time to go on the offensive but that the battle would be decisive. If the Israeli terrorist project and military adventure is not to prevail, it is not just the resilience of the resistance that matters but also the unity of the Lebanese against Israeli aggression and its political aims.
— Dr. Azmi Bishara is member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and founding member of the National Democratic Assembly (NDA), representing the Arab minority in Israel under the banner of national, democratic values.
