By Mike Karadjis
The merciless bombing of Lebanon by Israel has again, as in 1993, resulted in the flight of 500,000 people from their homes in the south, while hundreds have been killed and wounded. According to medical authorities nearly all are civilians, even if daily we hear of Israel's attack on "Hezbollah bases" in Australia's establishment media. Targets have included an ambulance carrying already wounded people, Palestinian refugee camps and a UN post where refugees were sheltering.
Predictably, the western imperialist powers have condoned this massacre and ethnic cleansing operation carried out by their Israeli client. "I would not describe the Israeli action as disproportionate", said Michael Portillo, British Defence Secretary. The US has given full support to Israel's actions, blocking a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. The US has now proposed a "diplomatic solution" far more in Israel's favour than the cease-fire it brokered in 1993.
The 1993 cease-fire, which Israel has now ripped up, was based on a commitment by both Israel and the Lebanese guerilla group Hezbollah, not to attack each other's civilians. Hezbollah has stuck solidly to its side of the deal. For two years Israeli villagers in northern Israel (an area overwhelmingly Palestinian until massive Israeli ethnic cleansing in the 1970s) lived without Hezbollah launching any of their clumsy Katyusha rockets against them, while the population of southern Lebanon thought they were free from Israel's continual massive bombing with highly advanced weapons.
Of course what the 1993 cease-fire did not deal with was Israel's 18-year illegal occupation of southern Lebanon south of the Litani River. It was not only Hezbollah which would not agree to recognise Israel's annexation of this region, neither would anyone else in Lebanon including the Lebanese government. The failure of the US, the UN or any government to deal with this is the fundamental cause of the current crisis.
Israeli occupation
Israel's occupation has meant that the Lebanese people have continued their long-time military resistance to it. The main organisation leading this resistance in that part of the country is Hezbollah which has strong links to Iran and pushes an Islamic fundamentalist line. These facts have been given prominence by the media to obscure the fact that this is a struggle against foreign occupation supported by Lebanese people of all political stipes.
For example, while the Lebanese government is no fan of Hezbollah's ideology, it blames Israel for the crisis and demands Israeli withdrawal. The new crisis was "triggered on purpose by the Israelis to serve the electoral ambitions of the Israeli government", according to Lebanon's UN ambassador, Samir Moubarak. "If there were no Israeli occupation, there would be no reason for Hezbollah to exist", said Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik al-Hariri.
Media reports have suggested that "stepped up" Hezbollah activity "forced" Israel to respond. But it has not been made clear that the attacks on Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon are a continuation of the legitimate struggle against occupation. There were no rockets launched into Israel until after Israel began its new wave of slaughter of Lebanese civilians, beginning with the bombing of villages on March 30 in which two people were killed.
The latest US move for a cease-fire aims to include Hezbollah's attacks on the occupation forces, rather than just attacks on civilians. This is rejected by Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, and contravenes the UN charter which supports the right of people under occupation to employ military resistance.
The cease-fire being proposed strengthens the US and other western countries de facto recognition of the Israeli occupation. Almost any time this war zone is referred to, we hear of "Israel's security zone" rather than "occupied Lebanon" giving legitimacy to Israel for defending "its" security zone.
In fact, both the Israeli occupation and the bombing of Lebanon go back years before Hezbollah was ever heard of. Massive Israeli bombing, killing large numbers of people and wreaking havoc on the Lebanese economy, began in 1968 and has continued virtually every year since. Noted Jewish anti-Zionist Noam Chomsky presents great detail of this endless war in his book The Fateful Triangle. The permanent occupation of southern Lebanon began after a massive Israeli invasion in 1978, when Israel only withdrew to the Litani River. Three quarters of the population there have been forced to flee from Israeli rule.
Whatever the claims about needing the zone for its "security" (what about Lebanon's security from an aggressive neighbour?), the main reason for Israel's de facto annexation of the region is the water in the Litani. Water is a scarce resource in the Middle East, and Israel has been siphoning the Litani's waters for years. "Why should they buy water when they can steal ours?" asked Lebanon-born Alissar Gazal from the Sydney Arab Feminist Alliance (SAFA), who has relatives living in the region under attack.
Gazal believes another reason for the constant re-invasions of Lebanon and the wanton destruction that goes with them is "to destroy the infrastructure whenever it begins to regrow, because Israel views a stable Lebanon as a potential competitor in the region". Indeed Israel's deputy defence minister Ori Orr, openly stated that he had the destruction of Lebanon on his agenda, claiming that "the Lebanese have to consider if they want Lebanon to develop ... or if investment in Lebanon will stop, and Lebanon will return to its plight of a few years ago".
But if Israel wants to protect its occupation zone and is happy to wreck Lebanon in the process, the other question is why now? The suggestion that it was in response to an increase in Hezbollah resistance is questionable: last year Hezbollah launched 600 operations, while so far only 100 have been launched this year. The real reason for Israel's military attack is the coming election.
Following the recent spate of suicide bombings inside Israel by the Palestinian Islamic organisation, Hamas (which opposes the Israel-PLO Accord), the Israeli Labour government launched a crackdown on the Palestinians blocking the occupied territories, imposing collective punishment on 2 million people for the actions of a handful. Whatever Hamas' aims, Israel's 30 years of brutal occupation, which continues under the "peace process", creates the desperate environment that fuels the suicide bombers. The closure of the territories dramatically worsens this situation.
As PLO leader Yassir Arafat put it: "This urgent matter necessitates taking economic and social measures that will put an end to poverty, deprivation and unemployment, not closure, starvation and economic blockade and denying our workers work and job opportunities. This exhausts us with all these collective penalties, creating a hotbed for extremism and violence."
Israeli elections
The right-wing Israeli Likud Party tries to present Labour's draconian measures as being "soft on terrorism" and will run an election campaign based on being even more uncompromising in the "peace process", to the point of ripping it up if necessary. This Peres cannot do; he has staked his career on it, and his western backers want Israel to continue with the half-baked peace process which, so far, has worked overwhelmingly in Israel's favour by creating new economic openings for it in the region.
Therefore Peres had to find a new front on which to be "tough"; he found it in Lebanon, even though Hezbollah had not attacked Israeli citizens. Further, this pre-election need for "toughness" also explains why Israel has still not signed the long awaited peace deal with Syria by handing back the Golan Heights. As long as Israel stalls on returning Syrian territory, Syria will look favourably on some Hezbollah activity against Israel in southern Lebanon. This way the Syrian regime can remind Israel that it is a major power broker in Lebanon.
There is little doubt that whoever wins the May 29 Israeli elections, a deal with Syria will eventually be done. However, if part of the deal is that Syria rein in Hezbollah and the two countries respect each others' spheres within Lebanon, this may not be so easy.
Despite the impression often given, Hezbollah cannot simply be turned on or off by Syria or Iran. On the contrary, even the Lebanese government says it will not rein in Hezbollah because it has become the "national resistance" against the foreign occupation.
According to Godfrey Jansen in March 29 Middle East International: "If anything the Lebanese are rather proud that south Lebanon is the only active military front against Israel. And not because of pressure from Syria or Iran, as claimed by Israel and the US. Because of Israel's stubborn refusal to leave south Lebanon, it has succeeded in infusing this country with a new nationalist spirit."