Is Israel Preparing To Attack Lebanon?
By Salim Nazzal
25 January, 2010
Countercurrents.org
The headlines of the London based Al Sharq Al awsat last week reported high alertness in the Lebanese resistance towards a possible Israeli attack. The paper added too that Syria has called some of its reserved forces apparently for the same reason.
While no news has come from Syria to confirm or to contradict this news, the Lebanese resistance repeated what it said earlier that “whether Israel is preparing for a sudden attack or not, the resistance is alert all the time, and ready to teach Israel a lesson like that in 2006”
In the Israeli war on Lebanon July 2006, Israel was severely humiliated and met by fierce resistance from the Lebanese army, Lebanese resistance fighters, and the local villagers of south Lebanon. This victory had enormous optimistic impact among the Arab masses where the question of defeating Israel represents the strongest characteristics in the current Arab culture.
The war on Gaza, despite the big tragedies in terms of civilian’s loss, has consolidated in the view of most Arab observers the culture of resisting Israel among Arab masses.
The general secretary of Hezbollah anticipated in a speech that the next war with Israel will be a decisive one. Nasralla did not give details about what he means by the word “decisive”, but he said that the war might change the general political view in the Middle East which is a vague term that can carry several meanings.
The Israeli circles have given contradicted speeches about this question, Yose peeled, the minister without portfolio , said for instance that Israel is not concerned about war with any of its neighbors, other Israeli officials did not exclude the possibility of the war now or in the future as an official put it.
The Israeli army it must be mentioned is made of 30 percent regular personnel and about 70 reservists who could be called to action within 18 hours. In the meantime, the commander of the international forces in south Lebanon Unifil Major General Claudio Graziano said that Israel violates the united nation resolution, especially the 1701 and insulting Lebanon.
The blockage in the political settlement in the region and the apparent failure of the American mediator George Mitchell after the rejection of Israel to freeze building settlements in Jerusalem, and the Netanyahu speech that parts of the west bank will be Jewish forever, and the Obama speech that the situation is far complicated than assumed earlier, gives additional evidence to the direction the region might be heading to.
In the view of most Arab observers, Israel has a long history of exploiting any minor event to launch a war as in the year 1982 for example, when Israel exploited an assumed attack on its ambassador in London to attack and to occupy most of Lebanon.
The evidence which Arab observers based their view upon regarding the Israeli preparation for a war is the wide scale military exercises of the last months of the last year, described as the largest in the history of the state of Israel.
This month Israel made exercises on biological weapons, which raised fears among Arabs that this might be an indication that Israel might cause biological or chemical or even nuclear disasters in the region. This fear is based on the fact that Israel is ruled by a coalition of ultra right wing fascists and Jewish racists known for their hatred culture towards non Jews.
The proof is the influence of racist Jewish Rabbis whose writings and teachings represent the guiding principle for a great sector of the current Israeli government.
As an example, the Rabbis Yitzhak Shapiro and Yousef Blitzer, consider that Non Jews are “uncompassionate by nature”. Thusly, their justification to kill none Jews is to “curb their evil inclination”. This school of Jewish racism represents the spiritual source for the settlers in the west bank which goes as far as to advocate the murder of “the children of Jewish enemies” on the base “they will harm Jews when they grow up”.
The history of the Zionist state proves that the Israeli army meets short with the minimum standards of morality. In the Gaza war for instance, and despite of the huge gap between the Palestinian resistance, with its pre world war one guns, and the high tech Israeli army, Israel used the forbidden white phosphorus which killed more than 400 Palestinian infants and children.
However, this analysis does not include the repeated Israeli threats to attack Iran. If we add this factor, it will confirm the view that the coming wars might put the whole region in unprecedented dangers. This must alarm the greater powers who used the appeasement policy towards Israel to pressurize Israel to confine to peaceful solutions.
Nevertheless, whether the war will be this spring, or in summer as been rumored, on this or on that front, or on all, Arab observers predict that Israel will meet fierce resistance in any place it might try to occupy whether in Lebanon, Syria or Palestine. Those observers base their view on the result of the fierce resistance in Lebanon and Palestine in the July war 2006 in Lebanon and the Gaza war, 2009.
The major conclusion is the fact that the time Israel wins wars and dance in the streets while Arab crying has gone forever. Besides, what Israel must be sure of that the more wars it launches, the more it murder, the more it helps in building up colossal mountains of rejection towards it from the natives of the region.
Dr. Salim Nazzal, a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East. He has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.
