Rice
begins Mideast Tour
To Promote US-Israeli War Aims
By Patrick Martin
25 July 2006
World Socialist Web
US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Beirut, Lebanon Monday,
the first stop in a trip whose purpose is to shore up the joint US-Israeli
military campaign against Hezbollah and give more time for the Israeli
military to use American bombs and weapons to devastate Lebanon.
Rice visits Israel not, as
media accounts suggest, to act as a moderating influence on the Zionist
regime. Rather, following the logic of Bush administration foreign policy,
Rice will pressure the Israelis to intensify the violence in south Lebanon
so as to create the optimum conditions for joint Israeli and American
pressure against the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad.
Inadvertently indicating
the real rationale of US policy, Rice declared on her arrival in Lebanon
that the US government sought to create a “new Middle East.”
Washington has encouraged the assault on Lebanon and supplied Israel
with the necessary arms and international backing because the Bush administration
sees this escalation as a way of breaking out of the strategic stalemate
in Iraq and weakening both Syria and Iran.
There is a strong element
of recklessness and disorientation in this perspective. The contradictions
in US foreign policy are evident: the Bush administration is seeking
to consolidate a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq at the same time
that it attempts to liquidate the Shiite-based Hezbollah in Lebanon
and prepares for war with the Shiite fundamentalist rulers of Iran.
Iraq’s US-backed prime
minister, Nouri Maliki, has issued repeated denunciations of the Israeli
attack on Hezbollah, and important sections of the Shiite clergy have
called on him to postpone this week’s planned trip to Washington
to protest the rain of US bombs and missiles—delivered by Israel’s
US-built warplanes—on the Shiite population of south Lebanon.
These contradictions are
kept largely out of public view by the servile American media, but they
are well known in official circles in Washington, and some criticism
is being voiced within the foreign policy establishment. Robert Malley,
a former Clinton administration Mideast expert, noted that Rice’s
trip makes no sense as diplomacy, since, according to the Bush administration,
there are six parties to the current conflict—Israel, the Palestinian
Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran—and the US government
refuses to talk to four of them.
Even more scathing was the
assessment by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski,
who ridiculed Rice’s rhetoric about the birth of a new Middle
East. In an interview with the German press, he warned, “That
was not a very happy formulation. Labor pains sometimes end in the death
of the infant. One must try to know what these labor pains are actually
producing. Otherwise one is merely speculating, and playing a form of
Russian Roulette with history. This could all end for the United States
in a disaster in the Middle East.”
Rice’s first stop in
the region was an unscheduled visit to Beirut on her way to Jerusalem.
Her aim was to prop up the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora,
installed last year after the US-backed campaign to force Syrian troops
to withdraw from Lebanon. Rice is seeking to organize whatever coalition
of Lebanese political forces can be cobbled together to support the
destruction of Hezbollah.
Two weeks into the joint
US-Israeli war against the people of Lebanon, the direct military assault
is clearly facing a crisis, with Israeli troops encountering unexpectedly
tough resistance on the ground, and saturation bombing of south Lebanon
so far failing to stop Hezbollah forces from launching rockets against
towns in northern Israel.
A large force of Israeli
soldiers from the Golani division fought their way into the Hezbollah
stronghold of Bint Jbail on Monday. Hezbollah fighters remained in control
of the town, but the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), equipped with tanks
and armored bulldozers, took control of a key hilltop. The intensity
of the fighting is demonstrated in the casualty totals: four Israeli
soldiers killed and 20 wounded, with only two Hezbollah fighters taken
prisoner. At least one Israeli tank was in flames.
“Air power alone is
proving insufficient to rout the guerrillas, who are proving tough opponents
on the ground as well,” said one report by the Associated Press.
The dispatch continued: “[S]mall-scale pinpoint operations to
root out guerrilla positions along the border are proving far more daunting
than expected, according to soldiers returning from battle. The troops
complain of difficult terrain and being surprised by Hezbollah guerrillas
who pop out from behind bushes firing automatic weapons or rocket-propelled
grenades.”
A second Associated Press
writer described the scene as follows: “The heavy guns thundered
before dawn Monday, sending deadly shells crashing down into the Lebanese
border town and paving the way for the advancing Israeli tanks and troops.
By daybreak, bloody and bruised soldiers, shock etched deep in their
faces, were streaming back over the border into Israel.... Two Israeli
soldiers were killed and at least 20 were wounded Monday, the army said,
as guerrillas in the town, a Hezbollah stronghold, issued a withering
barrage of bullets, anti-tank missiles and mortar shells.”
The determination of the
resistance has clearly stunned both Israeli commanders and the rank-and-file
soldiers of the IDF. The Associated Press account described the use
of an IDF tank as an improvised ambulance: “Having brought back
his wounded comrades, a tank driver sat on the turret clutching his
head between his gloved hands and crying while two crew members tried
to console him.”
At a hospital in northern
Israel where wounded soldiers were being taken, 21-year-old Yishai Green,
lying in his bed, gave this description of the battle for Bint Jbail:
“It’s a real mess and I am not allowed to talk about it.”
The Israeli military command
seemed to be struggling to grasp the scale of the resistance. Maj. Gen.
Gadi Eizenkot, IDF chief of operations, initially said 100-200 Hezbollah
fighters were dug in at Bint Jbail. Later the overall commander of the
IDF, Dan Halutz, estimated the Hezbollah force at over 500.
Despite the biggest Israeli
ground offensive since the war began July 12, with Israeli troops making
penetrations into Lebanese territory of up to five miles, along a 40-mile
stretch of border, Hezbollah units were able to launch nearly 100 rockets,
keeping up the pace of firing that they have maintained for the past
two weeks.
Whatever the outcome of the
current border battles—and no one can doubt that, with overwhelming
firepower and control of the air, the IDF will eventually prevail in
any such tactical conflict—there are clear indications that from
a strategic standpoint the long-planned US-Israeli military operation
is in difficulty.
The expectation that heavy
bombing alone would suffice to cripple Hezbollah has clearly not been
fulfilled. Substantial resistance remains, no prominent Hezbollah leaders
have been killed, and the missile firings continue unabated.
The principal impact on Lebanon
has been to destroy, not Hezbollah, but the bulk of the country’s
civilian infrastructure, painstakingly rebuilt over the last 15 years
after the widespread devastation of the civil war. According to media
accounts Monday evening, some 90 percent of Lebanese paved roads and
95 percent of bridges—a vital feature in the mountainous terrain—have
been rendered unusable by Israeli bombs.
One of the most flagrant
attacks on infrastructure came Sunday night, with the destruction of
two television towers in the Lebanese highlands, populated by the Maronite
Christians who were courted by the Israelis in their previous invasions
of Lebanon. While one tower was used to broadcast the Hezbollah network,
the other was operated by the Maronite-based Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.
The only reason for its destruction was to take down any source of on-the-spot
reporting about the devastating impact of Israel’s bombing campaign.
This reflects the belief
on the part of the Olmert government in Israel that such reporting will
inflame international opposition to the bombing. But a more direct concern
is the impact of such reports on Israeli public opinion.
Despite the claims of virtual
unanimity within the populace in support of the bombing campaign, the
Israeli political establishment knows the history of the 1982 invasion
of Lebanon and the subsequent growth of popular outrage over the mass
murders committed by the IDF and its Lebanese allies in the fascistic
Phalange. Then-defense minister Ariel Sharon, the organizer of the invasion,
was subsequently found partially responsible for these crimes by an
Israeli commission and forced to step down.
The current assault on Lebanon
is already a war crime of similar dimensions. Although the American
media uncritically parrots Israeli and Bush administration propaganda,
portraying Hezbollah as a terrorist organization engaged in wanton attacks
on civilians, while Israel targets the terrorist combatants and seeks
to avoid civilian casualties, the real state of affairs can be seen
in the following figures:
As of Monday there were 39
Israeli deaths, of which 22 were soldiers killed in combat and 17 were
civilians. On the Lebanese side, there are at least 384 deaths, of which
only 31 are Lebanese army soldiers (most blown up in their barracks
by Israeli bombs) or Hezbollah guerrillas, while 353 are civilians.
In other words, 42 percent
of Israeli casualties are civilians, while 91 percent of Lebanese casualties
are civilians. Israel, moreover, is using US-built laser-guided bombs
and other weapons that are far more precise in their targeting than
the relatively primitive Katyusha rockets of Hezbollah. If these weapons
are killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians, it is part of a deliberate
policy.
As the scale of the death
and destruction inflicted on the Lebanese people becomes apparent—and
as the casualty toll among Israeli troops begins to mount as well—a
sharp swing in Israeli public opinion is inevitable.
The military mobilization
will also have a huge direct effect on the Israeli population. Some
18,000 military reservists have been called up—the equivalent
of mobilizing 750,000 new soldiers in the United States. Nearly ten
percent of the entire Israeli population, men, women and children, is
enlisted in either the IDF or in its reserve forces. As the Los Angeles
Times noted, such a mobilization has in the past sparked internal resistance
to military actions like the punitive operations in Palestinian towns
on the West Bank: “Perhaps due to the perspective that age and
experience bring, reservists are likelier than their counterparts in
the regular army to question whether Israeli military actions are justified
by the threat the country faces.”
The Israeli government is
in evident crisis over Olmert’s decision, taken without consulting
the cabinet, to launch a full-scale military response to an incident—the
kidnapping of two solders—that in the past would have been handled
through back-channel negotiations. There is no consensus within the
cabinet as to what the next step is to be if, as is universally expected,
Hezbollah continues to reject demands to return the two soldiers, withdraw
from the border region and dismantle its stockpile of rockets.
Already the Olmert government
has shifted its position on the introduction of an international force
into the border region, a sign of weakness and internal disarray. Government
spokesmen who initially rejected any international force now suggest
that a NATO force would be acceptable.
However, it is entirely possible
that the Israeli response to its difficulties, under pressure from Rice
and the Bush administration, will be to escalate its violence in Lebanon
and adopt an even more provocative posture toward Syria and Iran.