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New
Delhi, 05 September 2006
The
story of Goliath crushing his foes is well known. The Israeli army,
the most professional and well equipped force in the Middle East
with nuclear might, tried for a third time to tame the Hezbollah,
which is now revered in Lebanon and has been armed for the last 15
years by Syria and Iran and funded by Iran. This time around, Israel
found it was no more a cake walk, and what changed the scene were
the rockets and missiles that rained down on Israel's southern
towns. The Israelis ran away and the Chief of Defence Staff of
Israel admitted the weakness of Israel. Net centric warfare alone
cannot win wars and boots on the ground that Gen JJ Singh keeps
talikng about matter. Speaking at the IED Conference held in
Washington DC in April 06, our correspondent had explained to the
big brass of USA that Iran, Pakistan and China had jointly mastered
cruise missiles (from the KH 55 Ukrainian missiles and AQ Khan's
transfers via Dubai) and so USA may find the going rough if it
decided to take on Iran. Cruise missiles are very difficult to
intercept. This lesson is now going to come home. Leaders of
developing countries see missiles as signs of virility as they are
cheap and easy to 'reverse engineer', especially the sub sonic ones
like the Babur of Pakistan. Our guess is that the nature of war will
change as lessons are learnt and Goliath type tactics may prove
inadequate. George Galloway had a fascinating piece on the war in
Lebanon in the Guardian of 31 Aug. reproduced below.
Hizbollah Has Changed the Middle East
The defeat of the regional superpower could yet open the way to a
wider settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict
By George Galloway
The
Guardian,
Thursday, August 31, 2006
As the
smoke clears from the battlefield of the 34-day war in Lebanon, it
would be a mistake to count the cost only in fallen masonry and
fresh graves. All is changed, changed utterly, by the defeat that
the whole of Israel is now debating, from the cabinet through the
lively press to the embittered reservists at the falafel stall.
Practically the only person in the world who claims Israel won the
war is George Bush - and we all know his definition of the words
"mission accomplished".
Reports that the Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, expressed
regret this week at having underestimated Israel's reponse to the
capture of two of its soldiers were misleading. In fact, Nasrallah
thanked God that the attack came when the resistance movement was
prepared, as he was convinced Israel would have otherwise invaded
later in the year at a time of its choosing.
If the
fierce thicket of the Iraqi resistance stopped the Bush war
spreading to Syria then the extraordinary Hizbullah victory has
surely made the world think again about an attack on Iran. But the
main - and maybe the most welcome - shift in the 40-year-old
paradigm of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the puncturing of the
belief in a permanent and unchallengeable Israeli military
superiority over its neighbours and the hubris this has induced in
Israeli leaders - from the sleek Shimon Peres through the roughhouse
of Binyamin Netanyahu to the stumbling Mr Magoo premiership of Ehud
Olmert.
The
myth of invincibility is a soufflé that cannot rise twice. Over the
past week I have picked my way through the rubble of Dahia in
downtown Beirut, now resembling London's East End at the height of
the blitz, and across the south of Lebanon in towns such as Bint
Jbeil whose centres look as if they have been hit by an earthquake.
Here the litter of banned weapons lies like a legal time bomb -
evidence of war crimes alleged by the UN and Amnesty International
that in a genuine system of international justice would put Israel
in the dock at The Hague. This, together with the beating Israel has
received in international public opinion, is the collateral damage
suffered alongside military humiliation.
Israel
announced the capture of Bint Jbeil several times, but in truth it
never held the town - or anywhere else for that matter - throughout
the war. Despite raining down thousands of tons of high explosive on
homes, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, ambulances, UN posts, oil
storage depots, electricity plants and virtually every petrol
station south of Beirut (the bombers seemed to have a crazed thirst
for petrol stations, while telling the world that they were kindly
inviting the residents of south Lebanon to get into their cars and
leave their homes for a little while), the Israelis were given a
severe mauling by Hizbullah fighters when it came to boots on the
ground.
Paradoxically, some believe that all this has blown open a window in
which it is possible to glimpse the possibility of a comprehensive
settlement of the near-century-old conflicts which lie behind the
recent war. Now that the status quo ante has been swept away, we may
even see an FW de Klerk moment emerge in Israel (and among its
indispensable international backers).
The
leader of the white tribes of apartheid South Africa waited until
the critical mass of opposition threatened to overwhelm the position
of the previously invincible minority, and sold the transfer of
power on the basis that a settlement later, under more severe
duress, would be less favourable. Israel's trajectory is now heading
towards such a moment.
A
comprehensive settlement now would of course look much like it has
for decades: Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967; respect
for the legal rights of Palestinian refugees to return; the
emergence of a real Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its
capital - a contiguous state with an Arab border, with no Zionist
settlements and military roads, and with internationally guaranteed
Palestinian control over its land, air, sea and water. In exchange
there would be Arab recognition, normalisation and, in time,
acceptance of Israel into the Middle East as something other than a
settler garrison of the imperial west.
Just
as you can't be a little bit pregnant, a settlement can't be a
little bit comprehensive. Attempts - like the one more than a decade
ago in Oslo - to obfuscate, shave and sculpt such a package to the
point of unrecognisability will founder on the new reality.
The
Arab world is waking up to its potential power. It has seen the
Iraqis confound Anglo-American efforts to recolonise their country,
the unbreakability, whatever the cost, of the Palestinian
resistance, and now the success of Hizbullah. If there is no
settlement there can only be war, war and more war, until one day it
is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence
brings the whole state down on their heads. Nor is it only Israel
that will pay the price for continued conflict: the enduring
injustice of Palestinian dispossession has already poisoned
western-Muslim relations and helped spill violence and hatred on to
our own streets. There is still time to choose peace. But make no
mistake, with the victory of Hizbullah, a terrible beauty is born.
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