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Professor Pan
Zhenqiang*
THE UNITED STATES HAS A VITAL ROLE TO PLAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST BUT
THE PROBLEM IS HOW?
The Middle East is now engulfed in the
war flames again. As if Iraq has not been devastating enough to the
people of the region, this time the fighting between Israel and the
Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon threatens to be even worse in its
dark consequence: the increasing Lebanese and Israeli civilian
casualties and sufferings, the continuing destruction of civil
infrastructures and the looming prospect of the spill-over to the
whole region.
The conflict was triggered by an
incident, which had in fact routinely occurred before in the
decades-long Israeli- Arab confrontation. The Hezbollah captured two
Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12
apparently in an attempt to swap the Israeli soldiers for three
Lebanses held in Israeli jails. The Hezbollah had evidently seemed
to expect the usual limited response from Israel like sending
commandos into Lebanon, seizing Hezbollah officials and briefly
targeting specific strongholds in southern Lebanon. Then a European
country like Germany would come up quietly to act as a mediator. The
deal being done, everthying turned back to normal. But this time,
determined to crush the Hezbollah and end the cross-border clashes
for good by exploiting the incident, Israel clearly wants to change
the rules of the game and launched an all-out offensive on the
Hezbollah in Southern lebanon that immediately produced impact
beyond the two warring parties.
This is, indeed, the latest version of
an asymmetrical warfare. Backed by the United States, Israel has the
overwhelming military superiority, and indeed showed immense freedom
of action in its operations. Since the war started on July 12, Tel
Aviv has continued fierce airstrikes at the Lebanese villages, and
destroyed any infrastructures or buildings that were suspected to be
the hiding places of the Hezbollah fighters. In the meantime, the
Israeli ground force began the incursion into the Lebanon in the
hope of creating a buffer zone to prevent the Hezbollah from rocket
launching to its territory. But like any fighting in a foreign
country, the Israelis have many disadvantages. The terrain in
Southern Lebanon is friendlier towards the guerillas, who use the
tactics of hit and run on its own territory. Secondly, although the
Hezbollah seems to be taken by surprise by the Israeli sudden
massive campaigns, it has strategically made meticulous preparation
for this showdown since the pullout of the Israeli troops from
Lebanon in 2000. As a result, the Hezbollah has been able to
mobilize thousands of trained reservists or volunteers to join in
the battles allegedly equipped with over ten thousand of rockets and
laser-guided antitank artillery pieces ready for use. Moreover, the
Hezbollah has evidently powerful backing from Syria and Iran, who
have provided generous support in terms of resources and weapons.
This explains why the guerrillas under the heavy Israeli military
pressure were still able to rain hundreds of rockets onto Northern
Israel; which even reached targets in the city of Haifa, the third
largest in Israel. "We will never lay down arms", vowed Mahmoud
Komati, deputy chief of the Hezbollah's political arm, stressing
that the Hezbollah has even more powerful rockets to strike deeper
into the Israeli territory.
Innocent civilian people have become
the biggest victims. As of August 3, when the fighting went into the
fourth week, more than 750,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the
fighting. Many thousands more are still believed holed up in the
south, taking refuge in schools, hospitals or basements of apartment
buildings amid the fighting - many of them too afraid to flee.
According to Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, at least more
than 900 people have been killed, 3,000 injured in Lebanon. One
third of the casualties were children under 12. On the Israeli side,
51 have also been killed in the rocket attack by the Hezbollah
guerillas. On July 30, an Israeli airstrike on a three-story
building in the south Lebanese village of Qana killed 56 people;
almost all of them were women and children. This has so far been the
worst single death toll of one air raid by the Israeli.
During the course of the Israeli air
campaigns, even the UN personnel were victimized. On the early
morning of July 26th, an Israeli air bombing on a building of the
United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) in Southern Lebanon killed 4
UN observers including one from China. The whole international
community was shocked by the indiscriminate slaughter. The UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan accused that Israel appeared to have
struck the UN post deliberately although Israel vehemently denies
the accusation.
The fighting has also threatened to
generate a grave environmental disaster in the Middle East.
According to a Western media report, a black coat of oil now covers
the Lebanese capital's once-beautiful sandy Mediterranean shore,
spilled from a power plant that was knocked down by Israeli
warplanes. About 80 miles of Lebanon's shores had been affected by a
spill of more that 110,000 barrels of oil from the Jiyeh plant,
about 12 miles south of Beirut, the city's mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss,
said. The plant was in flames after it was hit in Isreali air raids,
cutting electricity to many areas in the capital and south Lebanon.
The green Line Association, a Lebanese environmental group, said in
a press release that four of the six fuel tanks at Jiyeh's power
plant have burned completely, while the fifth, which is the main
cause of the spill, is still burning. It said the Lebanese
Environment Ministry was worried that the sixth tank, which is
underground, will explode. Arris said if the spill is not contained
soon it will spread to the rest of the Mediterranean.(i)
The Israeli unscrupulous air raids
with no regard to proportion and discrimination, have sparked
extensive international outrage and calls for a swift end to the
fighting. Demand for an immediate ceasefire has particularly
gathered momentum after the Israeli bombing raid on Qana. However,
the international effort has so far all been continuously resisted
by Israel and its greatest supporter-the United States.
There seem good reasons for Israel to
be so defiant of the international pressure. The US invasion of Iraq
has fundamentally changed the strategic landscape in the Middle East
in the favor of the US and Israeli side. The Arab countries
including the Palestinian forces have been further reduced in
strength. The outside powers like Russian and EU have been deprived
of their traditional clout in the region. The UN has also largely
been marginalized. In Washington, Tel Aviv has now an ally in the
White House who seems more pro-Israel than any of the previous
administrations. All of these contributed to a new imbalance in the
Middle East which helps set a stage for Israel to have a military
free hand in the fighting virtually with impunity, and a more
ambitious design to achieve its strategic goal of ensuring security
based on the military dominance. Thus, for all the tough resistance
by Hezbollah guerillas, the Israel arrogance has not abated, and
will not in the future unless Washington changes its policy. "There
is no cease-fire, there will be no cease-fire". Israeli Prime
Minister Olmert declared. "We are determined to succeed in this
struggle. We will not give up on our goal to live a life free of
terror."(ii) To that end, Israel's Security Cabinet approved widening
the ground offensive in Lebanon, planed to call up more reserve
soldiers to support its expanded ground operation. Three
divisions-meaning at least a further 15,000 reservists are now
called up. The Israelis have also imposed a tight land, air and
naval blockade on Lebanon, and to hit all the main highways leading
to the Syrian border, the last vital routes to that country, in
order to pressure the Lebanese government to accept Israel's
conditions for the end of the war.
At the same time, Israel continued its
airstrike at Gaza strip in the name of pounding another self-defined
terrorist group-Hamas. An Israeli air strike even flattened the
Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City. The Israeli
military has since killed more than 85 Palestinians in Gaza, about
half of them civilians. The situation has made Israel fight at two
fronts simultaneously.
Will the bloodshed come to an end in
the coming weeks? Only the United States can perhaps provide the
answer. In fact it is the US backing that has sustained the Israeli
unscrupulous military actions; it is, therefore, only the US that
can eventually rein in Israel. The problem is that the Bush
administration, seems to believe that the Israeli massive campaigns
may work more in its own interests, and thus see the overlapping of
the gains with Israel out of the routing of Hezbollah through
military strikes.
Washington does not even care to hide
its strategic calculations in its full support of Israel. The
overall view in Washington seems that the war in Lebanon serves to
provide the US a golden chance to further push its grand design to
prepare a new Middle East based on the Western value.
In the first place, like Israel, the
Bush administration also sees the fighting as a component part of
the war against terror. The two most influential Arab militant
groups (Hezbollah and Hamas) in the region are both vehemently
anti-American and anti-Semitist. To reduce and eliminate them is,
therefore, an essential step to remove one of the last regional
non-state actors against the US-type democratization in the region,
and strengthen the hands of those pro-Western, moderate Arab
countries. Secondly, the Bush administration also sees the close
ties of the Hezbollah with Syria and Iran, both of whom are the
leading Islamic countries against the US and Israel in the region.
The war in Lebanon is naturally thought another way of weakening the
influence of the two Islamic militant countries. Pressuring them to
change their course of policies. Finally,the war in Lebanon may
also, in its view, provide a chance for the US to remove the
non-efficient role of the United Nations, and to replace it with a
combat-capable, Western-led international peacekeeping force to
police the Middle East.
The above motivations evedently drove
Washington to provide not only specific support like supplying
precision guided munitions for Israel in the air raids in Lebanon,
but also, more importantly, a moral cover to shield Israel from the
international pressure and condemnation on Tel Aviv's military
actions. "Israel is exercising its right to defend itself", US
President Push stressed. As for the immediate ceasefire the
overwhelming majority of the international community demands, the US
Secretary of State Condi Rice retorted rather scornfully "I have no
interest in diplomacy for the sake of returing Lebanon and Israel to
the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake. What we're
seeing here, in a sense, is the growing- the birth pangs of a new
Middle East and, whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're
pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old
one". Thus, In the US perspective, andy peace deal must ensure that
Hezbollah is crippled, and Iran and Syria must stop backing the
Shiite militant group with money and weapons. To the dismay and
frustration of many countries, the US also blocked any moves in the
UN Security Council to halt Israel's excessive retaliatory actions,
and bring the fighting to the end. The Council was not even able to
express its anger and condemnation to the killing of the large
number of the Lebanese innocent civilians as well as the UN
peace-keeping staffs in the Israeli airstrikes.
The US policy has undoubtedly poured
oil to the region already on fire. But it may perhaps be out of the
US expectation that the subsequent development of the situation in
the past three weeks has not been playing on the US wishful script.
The fighting seemed to drag on without any sings of paralyzing the
Hezbollah in sight. Instead, the increasing casualties of the
Lebanese civilians have dramatically fuelled the wrath of the
international community, the Arab world in particular. The public
sympathy seems shifted more and more to the militant organization.
The usually pro-US moderates in the Middle East are now in an
embarrassing dilemma towards the war. They were initially angry at
the Hezbollah "provocations" that led to the fighting. But faced
with an Arab country being brutally bullied with heavy losses of the
Arab civilians, they simply cannot afford to share the US and
Israeli position. Consequently, as Jordan's king Abdullah II put it
that the prolonged fighting had "weakened" moderates in the Middle
East. Even the US allies feel a growing rift with Washington in
terms of the US strategy towards the region. The Bush administration
has evidently not reaped what it had hoped for. All it has gained is
the mounting international pressure for the change of its policy.
The change of the US policy may
probably be on the horizon althouth long overdue. According to the
recent media report, the US is beginning to talk about an immediate
ceasefire without the linkage of disarming the Hezbollah. It seems
also working earnestly with other members of the UN Security Council
for a resolution that may lead to the end of the fighting through a
meaningful ceasefire, and also may prepare the way for the
arrangement for the sustained peace in the region.
Hopefully, all these are the good news
as only the US has the leverage to fundamentally influence the
security in the Middle East for better or worse.Thus peace and
stability in the region would remain a dream without a US positives
role. It is therefore at least steps in a right direction for the US
to have a better grasp of the real situation in the Middle East, to
shift to work together with the international community to rein in
Israel, and to make arrangements that would ensure peace based on
mutual compromise and mutual benefit.
Possible hurdles, however, would
abound ahead as far as the US policy goes. The first is Washington's
strong aversion to both Hezbollah and Hamas which are labelled as
terrorist groups in the anti-terror vocabulary of the Bush
administration. But the fact is that they are not only radical
militant groups; they are also both elected political forces in
their own countries respectively, enjoying immense support from the
grass-root population. It would, therefore be most likely a futile
exercise to achieve the lasting peace in the Middle East on the
assumption of totally dismantling or disarming these groups without
addressing their deep grievance and legitimate demands. Secondly,
Washington's continuous reluctance to include both Syria and Iran as
equal partners into the international effort for the lasting
settlement of the conflict may also contribute to prolonging than
ending the fighting in the end. Last but not the least, the nature,
mandate, and compositon of the future international peacekeeping
force to be deployed along the Israeli-Lebanese border could be
another bone of contention.
The US seems to strongly prefer a
force, whose mission is not only monitoring the ceasefire along the
borderline, but also implementing the UNSR 1559, namely, disarming
the Hezbollah guerillas, even by force if necessary. To that end,
the US hopes that this international force should be led by the
NATO, immediately deployed before the ceasefire, and be strong
enough to be able to engage any resistance from the Hezbollah side
if necessary. The Bush administration als offered to help the
Lebanese government to strengthen its armed force and be able to
have the complete control of its own territory.
Obviously, the aim of all the US ideas
is still eliminating Hezbollah, and enhancing its own presence in
Lebanon. But the US suggestion, disigned only to meet its own
concern and interests has found little sympathy from other
countries. Few openly supported the US proposal during the UN
Security Council consultations. Others like the Orgniazation of the
Islamic Conference demanded dispatching the UN peacekeeping force,
chiefly comprised of the Islamic countries as an alternative. The
debate looks taking still more time to reach agreement, which is
also acceptable to all the major players concerned. But during the
long process, innocent people from both Lebanon and Israel would
continue to live in agony, and many more even pay their lives.
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* Vice - Chairman, Shanghai Institute for International Strategic
Studies
I Scheherezade FaramarZi, “Oil
from bombed Plant Covers Lebanon Shore”, AP News Release, July 28,
2006.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060728/ap_on_re_mi_ea_/mideast_fighing_oil_spill.
II
Ravi Nessman and Hamza Hendawi, “srael Approves wider ground
Offensive”, AP new release, August 1, 2006.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/2006081ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_isreal&printer.
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