Israel Admits Error, but in ... Retaliation their Fighter Jets Strike Lebanon Anyway

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Yesterday ... an israeli buldozer was at work on lebanese territory, clearing explosives. Common sense suggests that the Israeli army has nothing to do in Lebanon, a neighbour country, much less uninvited - it's simply not their turf. So thought Hizbollah and blew up the dozer with an anti-tank missile, killing one soldier.

Israel admitted to have acted illegally, to have been on lebanese soil, but bombed lebanon in retaliation anyway. Makes sense.

Anyone still surprised why the peace process stalls there? The whole story here ...

[ January 21, 2004, 15:37: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Peace Process? That's an oxymoron correct?

 

Peace process... that's a laugh.

 

Israels originally and mostly defensive wars have produced a wing of extremist boneheads.

Another striking example - the Shaba Farms:
It is about a small stip of land - a 14km-long and 2km-wide strip along the Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian border. The Hizbollah claims that it is occupied Lebanese soil. Israel denies this, and is supported by the United Nations. Knockout victory for Israel, then? Not quite. Even Israel concedes the area is occupied, but it claims to have taken it from Syria, not from Lebanon, and that it should therefore be negotiated with Syria. Great excuse to keep the fighting going, isn't it. Syria, for its part, says it has given it to Lebanon. Anyway, all parties agree that the area is indeed occupied by Israel. Violent resistance to occupation is considered morally and legally legitimate; it does not matter who carries it out. (Otherwise, the liberation of the Netherlands in World War II should have been left exclusively to Dutch forces, etc. – obviously absurd.)

So, when israeli fighter aircraft overfly the Shaba farms (they regularly do) and Hizbollah opens fire because they are entering lebanese or syrian airspace - in any case it is that of a foreign country - Israels bombs the Beeka valley in retaliation (despite having been the, well, agressor in first place). Worse, when Hizbollah anti-air fire, provoked by Israeli intrusions, drops down on an israeli settlements - that's Hizbollah agression, of course.

Sharon would never use that as an exuse, right? And he would never provoke such incidents to remind everyone that Hizbollah is evil ... in a sense of: The aircraft don't fly there by themselves, the pilots get orders and their commanders get orders - from politicians.
Practically, Hizbollah has very much dedicated itself to just defending Lebanon, nothing more, nothing less.

More on that absurdity can be found in Ran HaCohen's article "A Case for Hizbollah?".

[ January 27, 2004, 15:29: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Ragusa wrote

Not true. Hizbolla leader Nasralla has said in various speeches that beyond it's main goal to drive out the Israeli occupation of land belonging to Lebanon is driving out the "Zionist entity" (as he likes referring to Israel) out of the area. He has said that Hizbolla will share the effort of other muslim organisations to eliminate Israel as a country, and establish A Palestine country instead. Muslim terrorists are regularly being trained at Hizbolla's barracks and training camps. Bombing camps where you know terrorists are training to kill Israeli civilians is a legitimate defensive action in my opinion.

However, occupying land that does not belong to you is not. Israel first invaded Lebanon in the 80's to pursue 2 major goals. One was to hunt down terrorists and the terrorist H.Q. of the PLO which was then located in Beirut. The second was to create a buffer zone that gives protection to the Israeli citizens living next to the border with Lebanon. Back then the hizbolla's rockets had a much more limited range than today, so establishing this zone prevented rockets from reaching Israeli land, plus helped prevent ground attacks on bordering towns and villages. Israel's big mistake was to keep occupying this zone for more than ten years, even after the zone lost it's original defensive objectives.

All the occupied land arguments today originate in the six day war and the Yom-Kippur war in '67 and '73. Much like the independence war, Israel was attacked by all neighbouring arab countries, defended itself and won. Lands were taken from Syria,Jordan and Egypt. If you calim that if the arab countries would have won(not eliminating Israel but managed to take some land from Israel) and then would promptly give land taken back, I have to disagree but this is not really on topic.

When Israel signed the peace treaty with Egypt it gave back the land that was taken in the war. When Israel signed the peace treaty with Jordan no land was given back, only minor adjustments to create fixed border lines were made. The west bank which was under Jordanian control was not demanded, I guess because Jordan itself didn't want to deal with the Palestinian problem, and cleverly passed the problem on to Israel. Jordan has always had problems with it's palestinians, and being a muslim country was able to handle them with much more fierce solutions (killing thousands of Palestinians revolting in refugee camps) without getting international criticism. The Palestinians are surly entitled to their own country being established in the west bank, and I hope this day will come soon for two reasons. First and most importantly to give Palestinians the chance of living as a normal people, along side Israel. Second, to finally show us which people truly want a Palestinian country, and which people simply don't want there to be an Israel (which bring us back to the Hizbolla).

The issues with Syria and Lebanon will hopefully be solved when a peace treaty wil be signed, probably involving the return of land to Syria, and then fixed borders will be established between Israel and it's northern neighbours. Maybe then Syria will remove it's army forces residing in Lebanon, but this is not really my concern as an Israeli.

I think Lebanon has much bigger problems today then an Israeli bulldozer removing land mines. The struggle between muslims and christians there is fierce, as the one between pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian parties. I think that throughout Israel's short history it was always very convinient for muslim countries to move public attention away from their internal problems and towards Israel, blaming all those nations' problems originate in Israel.

I guess the whole point of this post is to try and show the situatuin is very far from simple. Trying to show Israel as the sole aggressor and war-pursuer is very misleading. Israel has made mistakes as have it's muslim neighbours. Solving these problems with more violence is stupid, but currently it seems to me that leaders on both sides don't agree with me.

 

Despite its name, the Hizbollah - The Army of God - are definitely no saints. But then - Mother Teresa would not have been able to drive the Israeli army out of Lebanon after almost 20 years of ruthless occupation as Ran HaCohen put it.

Whatever Hizbollah's goals as an organisation are, they have been pretty calm once Israel was forced out of Lebanon. That was what I meant with 'dedicated', and admittedly, that is a misleading term.
They usually limited their actions to defense of Lebanon and occasional acts of retaliation and escalation. They rarely struck first - but then again - who knows who started when and when who started to count?

Israel's continuous demonstrations of power in violation of Lebanese and Syrian airspace or territory don't make things easier. And the increase of settlements under Sharon's rule, aned the militant settlers movement sure make it worse.
An ideological approach, relying on superior firepower and repression, to quell palestinian terror sure isn't helpful.
The whole middle east, the wars and the struggle for peace are a very complex issue that has frustrated and disillusioned generations of diplomats and kept historians and proagandists alike busy for decades.
So I limited myself to lining out some of the less known and especially striking absurdities there - the reality of palestinian occupation is quite present in the public focus already.

 

Funny you only found absurdities that portray Israel as the the evil side.
In my opinion the biggest absurdity (can you say that?) is that this whole shi**y situation between us and the Palestinians has been going on for such a long time without resolve, while both sides pay a heavy price. Extremist opinions and "leaders" usually rely on religious reasons for their ideologies - Jewish settlers claiming to settle holy land promised to them. Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of their holy Jihad (and 72 virgins in heaven - yeah right).
Aren't religions supposed to be first and foremost about the importance of human lives, respecting your fellow man and such?

 

The absurdities painting the palestinians evil, their ruthless suicide bombings for instance, receive enough attention. Just as that suicide bombers misinterprete the koran and that it probably spoke about 72 raisins rather than about virgins, recent research pointed out a translation error.

AsiaTimes's columnist Spengler once pointed out his point of view, that a conflict is only over when at least the diehards on one side are dead. But I think duking it out the way such as Sharon does it atm is counterproductive as punishment and again punishment doesn't encourage to make peace. That's how palestinian and israeli violence amplify each other in their endless circle of violence.
In the end, it was a Jew who shot Rabin. And the palestinian bombings in the following elections helped both the palestinian and israeli radicals.

I don't believe in a self ruling free market, and I am not persuaded by those who say "Give war a chance".

 

And while Hezbollah is talking about a truce, Al Aqsa blows up a bus in Jerusalem, 10 people dead. There will NEVER be peace in that region.