by Matthew Chavez
Daily Lobo columnist
In a telling statement on Friday, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton urged "all parties" in the escalating conflict in the Middle East to "accept the principle that governments must exercise sovereign control over their territories." If only U.S. and Israeli leaders adhered to their own pronouncements, the Middle East would not be facing its biggest disaster in a quarter century.
In part, it was the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Palestinian government in Gaza - Israel's abduction of one-third of the Palestinian legislature and one-half of the cabinet - that prompted Hezbollah forces to intervene on behalf of Palestinian sovereignty.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration has been furiously busy campaigning to suppress a crucial historical fact: Israel hit first. There were signs early on that the administration had successfully persuaded its allies to tell the right story. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced last week there is "emerging agreement" among U.S. allies that Hezbollah is responsible for the "most grievous aspects of the current crisis." On Sunday, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for Political Affairs, stated the U.S. position directly: "Hamas started it in Gaza and Hezbollah started it in Lebanon," and subsequent media coverage has generally conformed.
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One cannot be blamed, therefore, for not knowing that Israel started this mess - the Israeli provocation that refutes Burns' claim scarcely made it into the "briefs" section of major newspapers.
One day before Hamas' June 25 ambush, Israeli forces invaded Palestinian territory - breaking a cease-fire - and captured two Palestinian civilians it claimed were Hamas militants. It was the "first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago," the London Observer noted in one of the few stories on the incursion. Regrettably, world leaders promptly fell in line with Washington's distortion of the historical record. In a document released Sunday by the Group of Eight conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, the heads of the industrialized world declared "the immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region," referring to Hezbollah and Hamas.
"Hamas did not hit first," Jonathan Cook, a freelance journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, stated Saturday. Hamas remained faithful to a 16-month cease-fire, Cook said, "during which time Israel fired hundreds of missiles into Gaza, ran an illegal raid into Gaza to capture two Palestinian civilians, blockaded the [Gaza] Strip for many months to prevent food and medicine reaching the population, and [withheld] tax revenues of the Hamas government so that it could not govern Gaza. So, in a very real sense Israel left Hamas with no other choice but to fight back."
As for Hezbollah's ambush in Israel last week, two things are clear. One, it was a disgraceful miscalculation. Two, it provides no rationale - zero - for Israel's campaign of destruction against Lebanon. And for the Bush administration to suggest otherwise, says University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes, who frequently writes on Middle East affairs, is an "unprecedented leap."
"The Bush administration wants people to think that the kidnapping of soldiers by Hezbollah is somehow worse than the killing of over 100 Lebanese civilians," Zunes stated Monday. As of this writing, Israeli attacks have killed more than 300 Lebanese civilians and displaced thousands.
Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies specializing in Middle East affairs, echoed Zunes' point. Bennis said Israeli aggression "has U.S. responsibility everywhere." Despite Washington's efforts to appear neutral, "the U.S. is taking a stand by simply not reigning in Israel, which is using U.S. weapons in violation of international and domestic law," Bennis said, referring to the Arms Export Control Act - a U.S. law that forbids American weapons from being used against civilians.
Bennis told me the U.S.-Israeli objective goes beyond merely dismantling Hezbollah - the goal is to establish "unchallenged control of Lebanon's borders and dominate Lebanon in an unquestioned way for a generation." If Israel's real goal, she added, were to regain its captured soldiers, it would have simply telephoned Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and negotiated a prisoner swap - a common affair between the adversaries. Instead, Israel saw an opportunity for conquest.
Bush, meanwhile, appears to have dispensed with his pro forma objections to Israel's continuing onslaught against civilians. Bush "did not call upon Israel to show restraint" in his most recent comments, breaking from earlier behavior, the New York Times noted Sunday.
Israel's U.S.-backed aggression will achieve the opposite of its stated purposes: Because it primarily targets civilians, the offensive will bolster Islamist militants' claims of providing the best defense against U.S.-Israeli domination. It will consolidate Hamas and Hezbollah's popular power and prestige and will further threaten the security of Israelis and Westerners in the region.
It has become a predictable pattern in foreign affairs that state responses to terrorism, insurgency and resistance encourage the root sources of these phenomena. Nowhere is this rule more evident than in this latest round of U.S.-Israeli aggression against not Hezbollah and Hamas, but against civilians.
