Let’s quit being coy and start dealing with the elephant we’ve all been ignoring as it trashes the living room: Israel is a big fat bully.
Technically, most of the blame for the chronic conflict in the middle east belongs to the British. During World War I, the British issued the Balfour Declaration supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Since the international Zionist movement was not particularly strong, and the British Zionist movement quite small, the British government was more strongly motivated by the idea that “international Jewry” would support the Allied Powers during the war than by any particular ideological conviction. At the end of WWI, Britain and France divided the territories of the Ottoman Empire, outside of Turkey itself, between them. France got the territories that became Syria and Lebanon, and Britain took Palestine. (The countries of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, along with Syria and Lebanon, did not exist as we know them until they were created by the Allied Powers after World War I.) It’s interesting to note that Britain appears to have promised to give the territory of Palestine to its Arab allies in exchange for their support against the Ottoman Empire during the war. This is part of the T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) apocrypha --- Lawrence was a British military intelligence officer who was sent to the area that became Saudi Arabia to secure the cooperation of the Arab nationalist movement, led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca. The aim of the Arab nationalist movement was to overthrow Ottoman rule and create a single, unified Arab state extending from Aleppo (in what is now Syria) to Aden (in Yemen, the southernmost point of the Arabian Peninsula). That the British made some sort of deal with the Arab nationalist movement is clear --- after the war, the British made Hussein’s sons Abdullah and Faisal, who led his military forces, the rulers of Jordan and Iraq, respectively. But the competing colonial aspirations of the British and French in the region were a far greater concern to the British government than the aspirations of the Arab nationalist movement or any promises made to them. In order to keep French influence out of Palestine, the British pushed the Allied governments to implement the Balfour Declaration. At the request of Arab representatives, the U.S. sent an investigative commission to the region, which returned to the U.S. with reports of widespread local opposition to living under a Jewish government. Nevertheless, in 1920 Britain was granted a Mandate over the area of Palestine (which then included not only what became the state of Israel but also the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and all of the territory that would become Jordan) with the specific goals of both creating a Jewish homeland and protecting the interests of its Arab residents. Thus, Winston Churchill created the countries of the Levant, named as their rulers men without ties to the territories they were to rule, and begat the middle eastern conflict. By 1947, unable to balance the interests of Jewish settlers and Arab residents and widely hated by both, Britain turned the whole mess over to the United Nations.
Skip forward 59 years. Lebanon has finally emerged from almost three decades of war, corruption, and chaos, and has finally freed itself from Syrian control. Not much more than a year ago, Lebanon held free, democratic elections (still a rarity in the region), and was addressing the problems of government corruption and economic recovery. Most difficult, and most important, was the work of disarming one of the last of the militias left over from the Lebanese war of 1975-1990, a Shi’ite Islamist group funded by Iran and backed by Syria: Hizbullah. There is no doubt that Hisbullah is a terrorist organization, and there is no doubt that they created the current conflict with Israel by taking hostage two Israeli soldiers on July 12, in an attempt to secure a prisoner exchange. Historically, Israel has made such exchanges; however, the main prisoner that Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has requested was involved in a terrorist attack on the town of Nahariya so vicious that no reasonable opinion on either Arab or Israeli side condones his ever being freed. So the prisoner exchange was likely not the real reason Hizballah initiated these hostilities. Most likely, Hizbullah intends to demonstrate that guerilla-style “insurgent” tactics can stymie one of the best-armed countries in the world, rallying support among anti-Western, increasingly radical Muslim circles.
However, Israel’s response --- to send missiles into Lebanon, leveling civilian targets and Lebanese military installations (remember, the government of Lebanon is not responsible for Hizbullah’s actions; it has been in power for about a year, and has been working to disarm them), killing hundreds of civilians --- transcends self-defense and could, if anyone wanted, be interpreted as an act of war against Lebanon. This week’s Newsweek (August 7, 2006) gives the death toll as 52 Israelis dead, mostly soldiers, and 450 Lebanese dead, mostly civilians. Hizbullah is, apparently, largely unaffected. Meanwhile, simply by continuing to strike back at Israel, Hizbullah is winning the war of public opinion. Lebanese and Palestinians, indeed, Arabs from many states, who were not Hizbullah supporters before this crisis are being radicalized by mounting civilian casualties. Israel is not only not defeating Hizbullah, it’s strengthening it.
Meanwhile, the United States is, once again, jumping in with both feet squarely on the side most likely to alienate the greatest number of people in the region. Last week’s Newsweek (July 31, 2006) says, “On the diplomatic front, the administration blocked calls at the United Nations and elsewhere for an immediate end to the fighting….On the military front, the administration started rushing new shipments of precision-guided munitions to Israel from an inventory that includes 5,000-pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs.” Apparently, Bush thinks that if he stalls long enough, Israel will eventually cripple Hizbullah. No one in the Arab world shares this belief. And while we stall, hundreds of Lebanese are dying and thousands more are becoming refugees. If you discover a nest of rats under your neighbor’s porch, you don’t solve the problem by burning down your neighbor’s house. We need to reexamine our half-century-old policy of supporting Israel in even its most egregious actions and throw our weight behind an immediate cease-fire. We’ve got to stop being willfully blind, stop fuelling the flames in the middle east, and start using what international influence we have left to accomplish something in the region besides filling body bags.
Sources: Newsweek (7/31/06, p. 22 and 8/7/06, p. 22); www.mideastweb.org; Wikipedia, esp. “Arab Revolt” and “Israel”; www.brookings.edu, “Lebanon at the Crossroads.”