The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN
Goliath Pretending to be David
By Jonathan Cook
CounterPunch, August 7, 2006
If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of
Israel's war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security
Council resolution calling for a "cessation of major hostilities"
published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely
one-sided document was drafted, the Hebrew-language media have
reported, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the
Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution
with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had
its man alongside John Bolton [yet another of Israel's men, Eds ] at
the UN building in New York.
The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and
down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper,
was the fear that "demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft
could influence support among Security Council members, who could
demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel." So no
celebration parties till the resolution is passed.
Instead, in a ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes,
Israel submitted to the US a list of requests for amendments to the
resolution. When Israel agrees to forgo these amendments, it will,
of course, be able to take credit for its flexibility and desire to
compromise; Lebanon and Hizbullah, on the other hand, will be cast
as villains, rejecting international peace-making efforts.
The reason for Israel's barely concealed pleasure is that
Hizbullah now faces an international diplomatic and public relations
assault in place of the unsuccessful Israeli military one. Israel,
and the United States, are trying to set a series of traps for
Hizbullah -- and Lebanon too -- that will justify Israel's
reoccupation of south Lebanon, the further ethnic cleansing of the
country, and a widening of the war to include Iran, and possibly
Syria.
The clues have not been hard to decode. The US Secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice, characterized the aim of the resolution as
clarifying who is acting in good faith. "We're going to know who
really did want to stop the violence and who didn't," she said. Or,
in other words, we are going to be able to blame Hizbullah for the
hostilities because we have offered them terms of surrender we know
they will never agree to.
The main sticking point for Hizbullah is to be found in the
resolution's requirement that it must stop fighting and begin a
process of disarmament at a time when Israeli forces are still
occupying Lebanese territory and when there may be a lengthy, if not
interminable, wait for their replacement by international
peacekeepers. Not only that, but the resolution allows Israel to
continue its military operations for defensive purposes: Hizbullah
only has to look to Gaza or the West Bank to see what Israel is
likely to consider falling under the rubric of "defensive".
Hizbullah has been stockpiling weapons since Israel's withdrawal
in May 2000 precisely to create a "balance of deterrence", to make
Israel more cautious about sating its appetite for occupying its
neighbors' lands, particularly when the neighbor is a small country
like Lebanon without a proper army and divided into many sectarian
groups, some of which, for a price, may be willing to collaborate
with Israel.
This time, however, as Israeli troops struggle back towards the
Litani River and their initial goal of creating a "buffer zone"
similar to the one they held on to for nearly two decades, the
Lebanese are rallying behind Hizbullah, convinced that the Shiite
militia is their only protection against Western machinations for a
"new Middle East".
Israel and Washington, however, may hope that, given time, they
can break that national solidarity by provoking a civil war in
Lebanon to deplete local energies, similar to Israel's attempts at
engineering feuds between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied
Palestinian territories. Certainly, it is difficult to make sense
otherwise of Israel's bombing for the first time of Christian
neighborhoods in Beirut and what looks like the intended ethnic
cleansing of Sunni Muslims from Sidon, which was leafletted by
Israeli war planes at the weekend.
On the US-Israeli view, a nation of refugees living in an
open-air prison cut off from the outside world and deprived of food
and aid -- a more ambitious version of the Gaza model -- may
eventually be persuaded to take their wrath out on their Shiite
defenders.
Hizbullah understands that the proposal to bring in a force of
international peacekeepers is another trap. Either the foreign
troops will never arrive, because on these Israeli-imposed terms
there can be no ceasefire, or, if they do arrive, they will quickly
become a proxy occupation army. Israel will have its new South
Lebanon Army, supplied direct this time from the UN and subsidised
by the West. If Hizbullah fights, it will be killing foreign
peacekeepers not Israeli soldiers.
But Israel knows the international force is almost certainly a
non-starter, which seems to be the main reason it has now,
belatedly, become so enthusiastic for it. Senior Israeli government
officials were saying as much in the Hebrew media on Sunday.
Israel's Justice Minister, the increasingly hawkish Haim Ramon,
summed up the view from Tel Aviv: "Even if it is passed, it is
doubtful that Hezbollah will honor the resolution and halt its fire.
Therefore we have to continue fighting, continue hitting anyone we
can hit in Hezbollah, and I assume that as long as that goes on,
Israel's standing, diplomatically and militarily, will improve."
Israel hopes it will be able to keep hitting Hizbullah harder --
at less cost to its troops and civilians, and with improved
diplomatic standing -- because in the next phase, after the
resolution is passed, the Shiite militia will find that one arm has
been tied, figuratively speaking, behind its back.
Not only will Washington and Israel blame Hizbullah for refusing
to agree to the ceasefire but they will seek to use any retaliation
against Israeli "defensive" aggression -- including, presumably,
further invasion -- as a pretext for widening the war and dragging
in the real target of their belligerence: Iran.
This subterfuge was voiced at the weekend by Israel's ambassador
to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who told the BBC that if Hizbullah fired
at Tel Aviv -- which it has threatened to do if Israel continues
attacking Beirut -- this would be tantamount to an "act of war" that
could only have been ordered by Iran. In other words, at some point
soon Israel may stop blaming Hizbullah and turn its fire --
defensively, of course -- on Iran.
This linkage is being carefully prepared by Olmert. On Monday,
according to the Hebrew press, he told some 50 government
spokespeople what message to deliver to the foreign media: "Our
enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its
agent." According to Haaretz, he urged the spokespeople "not to be
ashamed to express emotion and appeal to feelings".
So in the coming days, in the wake of this US-Israeli concoction
of an impossible peace, we are going to be hearing a lot more
nonsense from Israel and the White House about Iran's role in
supposedly initiating and expanding this war, its desire to "wipe
Israel off the map" and the nuclear weapons it is developing so that
it can achieve its aim.
The capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 will be decoupled
from Hizbullah's domestic objectives. No one will talk of those
soldiers as bargaining chips in the prisoner swap Hizbullah has been
demanding; or as an attempt by Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
to deflect US-inspired political pressure on him to disarm his
militia and leave Lebanon defenceless to Israel's long-planned
invasion; or as a populist show of solidarity by Hizbullah with the
oppressed Palestinians of Gaza.
Those real causes of hostilities will be ignored as more, mostly
Lebanese, civilians die, and Israel and the US expand the theatre of
war. Instead we will hear much of the rockets that are still landing
in northern Israel and how they have been supplied by Iran. The fact
that Hizbullah attacks followed rather than precipitated Israel's
massive bombardment of Lebanon will be forgotten. Rockets fired by
Hizbullah to stop Israeli aggression against Lebanon will be retold
as an Iranian-inspired war to destroy the Jewish state. The
nuclear-armed Goliath of Israel will, once again, be transformed
into a plucky little David. Or at least such is the Israeli and U.S.
scenario.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The
Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto
Press, and available in the United States from the University of
Michigan Press. His website is
www.jkcook.net
