“Birth
Pangs of the New Middle East” Lead to Stillbirth
By Siddique Malik
Louisville, KY
During
her July 2006 diplomatic mission to the Middle
East, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, expressed
hope for a strife-free new Middle East. It is
a grand wish, but it will remain unfulfilled unless
all parties in and involved with the region rewire
their thinking and refine their attitudes.
The most sophisticated and the only democratic
direct party in the deadly squabble is Israel,
so it behooves it to demonstrate utmost responsibility.
Unfortunately, Israel’s conduct has been
any thing but responsible. While responding to
Hezbollah’s terrorism, Israel should have
gone out of its way to ensure that Lebanese civilians
remain virtually unscathed. Instead, it decided
to launch an all-out war against Lebanon, making
no distinction between a terrorist and a toddler.
Why could Israel not launch precise, surgical
attacks against Hezbollah with smart bombs, ensuring
minimum or no collateral damage and maximum damage
to Hezbollah? If it did not have reliable intelligence
for surgical hits to be fruitful, how did it pick
its targets for its extensive, non-surgical hits
that it carried out? If it didn’t have enough
smart ammunition (hard to believe), all it had
to was make a phone call.
Obviously, Israel’s main objective was to
torment the people of Lebanon, and not destroy
Hezbollah. Or, perhaps Israel’s objective
was to virtually scream at the World capitals
to make them establish an international force
to be stationed in Southern Lebanon, the bastion
of Hezbollah. These screams showed some result.
At the Rome conference that took place on July
26, 2006, the day after Rice ended her above-mentioned
trip, the participants including Arab countries
like Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed on the need
for such a force. No country has, yet, committed
troops, but the unanimity of thought was definitely
a great diplomatic victory for Israel. This development
should have increased Israel’s cognizance
of its burden of responsibility towards Lebanese
civilians, not diminished it.
Moreover, Rice ensured that the Rome gathering
did not ask for immediate ceasefire (this was
to be demanded in the Security Council Resolution
1701, passed 17 days later), causing Israel to
interpret this scenario as the world’s tacit
approval of Israel’s so-called anti-Hezbollah
drive. Later, the State Department clarified that
America did not intend the Rome declaration to
be a blanket approval of Israel’s actions,
but the arrangement of certain words in a resolution
(something, upon which Rice insisted) spoke louder
than the clarifications. A clarification over
an honest mistake, a slip of the tongue or a confusing
sentence, is plausible, but not over the outcome
of laborious diplomatic confabulations.
Therefore, the blame for innocent deaths in Lebanon
must be shared by many entities; first of all,
by Israel because it did not make its case through
slow but often sure diplomatic channels before
taking the quick and easy military way out; by
the World (especially Western European and Muslim
countries, but not the USA) because they were
so glib towards Israel’s security needs
vis-à-vis Hezbollah that Israel had to
trigger a humanitarian nightmare in Lebanon for
its desperation to be fathomed; and by Washington
because it failed to instill responsibility in
Israeli leaders.
It was unwise of Israel to inflict collective
punishment on the people of Lebanon to the extent
of not even sparing some cars carrying women and
children on the highway to the north, or a group
of children and other innocent people taking refuge
in a basement. Granted, Hezbollah’s main
supporters are the Lebanese Shiites but this support
has its genesis in the social services networks
that Hezbollah has established in the south, as
part of its strategy to establish a foothold in
the area.
Most of these Shiites are not Hezbollah fighters.
When Israel chose to ignore this crucial aspect
of the complicated Middle East puzzle, it ensured
that Hezbollah, for years, would have a steady
stream of vengeful recruits. Hezbollah will, now,
be more than compensated for fighters it has lost
in the recent conflict. Israeli causalities in
the operation, thus, would have died, in vain.
For their own sake, the people of Israel must
question their government’s cold-blooded
acts of terrorism and deploying Israeli soldiers
without a solid war plan. Their prime minister
has brought their country a very bad name, and
triggered the death of more Israeli civilians
and soldiers than Hezbollah could imagine in its
wildest dreams.
Israel’s conduct was perplexing. Did it
want Hezbollah to flourish? Why did it not think
of the tough spot in which its action in Lebanon
would put its ally, America, vis-à-vis
the Muslim world, especially at a time when the
success of the war against terrorism hinged upon
America’s standing among Muslims?
Why did the US government not raise a red flag
when Israeli action was being contemplated? Did
the US administration raise any concern during
Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert’s visit
to Washington towards the end of May 2006? Surely,
the speed with which Israel reacted to Hezbollah’s
acts of terrorism suggested that Israel had planned
her action long time ago. If Olmert did not bring
it up during this visit, did America, later, complain
about this secretiveness? Answers to these questions
have a direct bearing upon America’s national
security, and Americans deserve these answers.
Another act of pouring oil over fire is Israeli
and American antagonism towards democracy in the
Palestinian territory. For a long time, both Israel
and the USA refused to deal with Yasser Arafat’s
Fatah movement because of its undemocratic and
often corrupt practices. Arafat is now dead. Fatah
was defeated in the last elections bringing the
political wing of Hamas (a terrorist organization
like Hezbollah) into power. Instead of respecting
the aphorism “people are never wrong”,
and giving the new government a chance to function,
Israel and the USA decided to strangle it, by
cutting off aid, on which the territory desperately
depended.
The Palestinian people continue to suffer in this
logjam. Also, Israel has arrested some of Hamas’s
cabinet ministers and legislators. Of course,
Hamas’s militant wing continued with its
deadly activities, but why did Israel impede Hamas’s
political wing? Even after the political wing
showed an inclination towards recognizing Israel
and accepting the two-state concept (a revolution
for an entity like Hamas), Israel continued with
its anti-democracy behavior. It was a chance for
Israel to alienate Hamas’s political wing
from its militant wing, and let the former subsequently
overwhelm the latter (remember, Northern Ireland
situation and the IRA?). Israel blew the epochal
opportunity, as the USA stood by idly.
What do the USA and Israel want, never-ending
turmoil in the Middle East?
Of course, one of the reasons for the Middle East
conflict is the Muslim world’s intellectual
dereliction. It is so easy for a demagogue, a
manipulator of religion, a fascist or a cultist
to get Muslims rally around him, by spewing hatred.
The solution to this terrible problem will not
come from those who benefit from this situation,
such as Hezbollah’s Hasan Nesrallah, Iraq’s
Moqtada al-Sadr, Pakistan’s politico-religious
demons, Osama bin-laden whose tentacles have spread
as far as Leeds, London, Toronto, Miami, etc.
This solution will come from Muslim intelligentsia
and the Muslim world’s phantom silent majority.
Clearly, they need to determine the reason why
a handful of cultists can so easily and effectively
use the hatred demon in manipulating many Muslims.
It no longer suffices to state, “It’s
the work of a few fanatics”. The cult leaders
are definitely a few, but it cannot be denied
that they can easily find many sympathizers, if
not active fighters. But being near such a dangerous
threshold should be socially and morally unacceptable.
Muslims’ Hezbollah syndrome will not vanish
because of the general devastation caused by Israeli
use of the US supplied bombs, but by the power
of uninhibited arguments within the Muslim world.
Therefore, “the new Middle East” is
hardly around the corner.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
