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sundubuman
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul
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 Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: Could Hezbollah's """"victory"" |
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Just thinking about how so much of Arab/Muslim anger stems from emotion (Korea???) as opposed to rationality.
rationally, Hizbollah did not win anything....after all they want to destroy Israel....which inflicted greater damage on them, and is hardly in retreat...unless being scolded by the UN to cease overflying Lebanese airspace is a form of retreat....
furthermore......now, after 15 years of Oslo idealism, most Israelis agree that they need to strenghten their military and avoid any and all "negotiations" with those intent on their destruction.
However, Arabs, never known for fact-based reasoning, now feel that (emotionally) hizbollah somehow defeated Israel.....
Oh the great victory!!!!!!
Anyhow, after observing the Korean psyche for many years, which I think strangely parallels the Arab psyche (esp. vis-a-vis 'foreigners').......
I'm wondering if this great, stupendous, wonderful, amazing, unheralded "victory" by an Arab cultist terror gang, may actually calm down the insanity of the Arab street. Wounded pride healed via Al-Jazeerah....good medicine.......
any thoughts? |
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beck's
Joined: 02 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 7:46 am Post subject: |
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Hezbollah won because Hezbollah now controls southern Lebanon. The Israelis did not destroy their presence in the south. Israel retreated before Hezbollah's ability to make war was destroyed.
I also think that hezbollah won the media war. At least one Canadian Liberal M.P. is calling for Hezbollah to be taken off of the terrorist list. World opinion, molded by the media, thinks that the Lebanese were the victims in the war. Day after day we were treated to Muslim women crying over perfectly arranged dead bodies miraculously free of the dust created by the exploding rockets. I didn't see one Israeli crying over a dead family member and yet Hezbollah was targeting civilian areas with rockets whose payloads were composed of ball bearings.
Meanwhile Iran, the puppeteer of Hezbollah, continues to enrich uranium. |
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Mitch Comestein
Joined: 13 Jun 2006
Location: South
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:03 am Post subject: |
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| beck's wrote: |
| Hezbollah won because Hezbollah now controls southern Lebanon. The Israelis did not destroy their presence in the south. Israel retreated before Hezbollah's ability to make war was destroyed. |
We don't know that Hezbollah wasn't truly damaged. The UN and Lebanese forces have pushed Israel out, not Hezbollah. They could be completely crippled, but because Israel had to pull out, it appears as if they weren't hurt at all because Israel failed to kill their leader.
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| I also think that hezbollah won the media war. |
That is because of the media completely being biased against Israel. Reuters has always been anti-American/Israeli. They supply most of the world with their news, and most of the world is so anti-Bush that they believe anything that paints Israel or the U.S. in a bad light.
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| Meanwhile Iran, the puppeteer of Hezbollah, continues to enrich uranium. |
Exactly. Like NK, they push people to wait with promises of compromise hoping to attain real nuclear weapons before people realize they've waited too long. |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 9:17 am Post subject: |
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I don't think that people can say that Hizbollah 'won' in any conventional sense. Like Australia playing Brazil in soccer, or Korea vs America in basketball - it's a perverse victory not to get utterly thrashed. "Well we lost the game, but at least they didn't double our score...the losers".
So yeah, Hizbollah have got that kind of a military victory in that they stood up to a much stronger force, and were able to stay standing.
As for the PR victory...
| Mitch Comestein wrote: |
That is because of the media completely being biased against Israel. Reuters has always been anti-American/Israeli. They supply most of the world with their news, and most of the world is so anti-Bush that they believe anything that paints Israel or the U.S. in a bad light.
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The media is completely biased against Israel?? Reuters has always been anti- American/Israeli???
Apart from the sensationalised and blown-out-of-all-proportion accusations from the likes of Little Green Footballs, and Michelle Mali (whatever) what are you basing these claims on? You're on the Sandubmanparrotingpartyline express too?
Here's an article intelligently discussing this issue...
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Executives at news organizations, long steeled to complaints about their Middle East coverage from various sides, said they tried to avoid pandering to critics. �They don�t want you to be balanced in your coverage,� said Mr. Keller of The Times. �They want you to portray the morality of the war as they see it.�
Added Mr. Banner of ABC News: �Our job is not to decide whether or not one side deserves more or less. Our job is to report the news.�
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http://www.freepress.net/news/17057 |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 9:31 am Post subject: |
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However, Arabs, never known for fact-based reasoning, now feel that (emotionally) hizbollah somehow defeated Israel.....
Oh the great victory!!!!!!
Anyhow, after observing the Korean psyche for many years, which I think strangely parallels the Arab psyche (esp. vis-a-vis 'foreigners').......
I'm wondering if this great, stupendous, wonderful, amazing, unheralded "victory" by an Arab cultist terror gang, may actually calm down the insanity of the Arab street. Wounded pride healed via Al-Jazeerah....good medicine.......
any thoughts? |
Thoughts? You are entirely devoid of any of them...........
Once more you show how "unreasonable" you are. Indicating that you know a lot about "Arabs" because you have observed Koreans. Go back to school and learn some methodology.....
Further, you know nothing of Arab culture if you write such broad and racist remarks. Arab culture is NOT insular , any more than America can be said to be so. Please inform yourself about Arab culture and stop with the mere and ignorant self proclaimed statements of a misanthrope.
To end, to wit --- NOBODY WINS. THAT IS WHY WAR IS STUPID AND THOSE LIKE YOU WHO "COUNT" ARE STUPID. this is logical assumption, one + one = 2.
Please go back to school.
DD |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 9:56 am Post subject: |
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Hezbullah "won" this war/battle/campaign in exactly the same way Saddam Hussein "won" the 91 Gulf War.
Iraq didn't win in that it suffered a military defeat and lost the war, but Saddam Hussein became more firmly entrenched as a dictator than ever.
Going up against the world's superpower and surviving more or less intact as dictator was clearly a 'win' for him.
Hezbullah going toe to toe with the military superpower of the region, Israel, and acheiving a stalemate, is as good as a victory. Perhaps not militarily, but in every other way that matters (some of which are more important than a military victory). |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:03 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
To end, to wit --- NOBODY WINS |
That sounds lovely, you should be writing Hallmark cards.
The rest of us have to live in the real world, where there are winners and losers.
Sometimes it it not immediately obvious who is who, and sometimes the victory is pyrrhic, but to say that "it's war, so nobody won" is inaccurate and foolish.
Regardless of who won, clearly the losers are those Lebanese who wished to rebuild their country free from independent militias/terrorists and interventionism of their neighbours [both Syria and Israel]. |
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Mitch Comestein
Joined: 13 Jun 2006
Location: South
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:36 am Post subject: |
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| happeningthang wrote: |
| Mitch Comestein wrote: |
That is because of the media completely being biased against Israel. Reuters has always been anti-American/Israeli. They supply most of the world with their news, and most of the world is so anti-Bush that they believe anything that paints Israel or the U.S. in a bad light.
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The media is completely biased against Israel?? Reuters has always been anti- American/Israeli???
Apart from the sensationalised and blown-out-of-all-proportion accusations from the likes of Little Green Footballs, and Michelle Mali (whatever) what are you basing these claims on? You're on the Sandubmanparrotingpartyline express too? |
Journalists are supposed to be objective and independent, delivering reporting that is as close to the "real truth" as humanly possible. Journalists insist they belong to a profession that does just that. But, sadly, there often seems to be an unwarranted bias against Israel and in favor of Israel's opponents when covering events in the Middle East, a bias that ranges from blatant unfairness to much more subtle misrepresentation of Israel's situation.
This discussion does not include partisan publications that obviously advocate for one side or another. No one expects the Tehran Times (Iran) to have anything postive to say about Israel. Rather, the concern is with the elite media, the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC, among others, organizations that should represent the highest journalistic ethics but frequently fail to do so.
Some examples:
ABC's Nightline, in covering the March 27, 2002 suicide bombing in a Netanya hotel that had occurred just hours earlier, reduced the Israeli dead and wounded to mere statistics, while they gave Arab spokesmen free rein to portray the Palestinians as the real victims of terror attacks. Reporters rarely make clear that most Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism are innocent civilians, while most Palestinian casualties have been killed with weapons in their hands as a result of their participation in violence against Israel.
Andrea Koppel of CNN, in a report about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process which aired on October 16, 2000 said, "When Camp David ended without an agreement, Palestinian despair eventually led to violence." The reference to "dispair" implies little was offered by Israel at Camp David, when in fact most of the Palestinian demands were met. Reporters almost never ask Palestinian representatives, "Why did you resort to terror when an agreement was so close?" They rarely mention that President Clinton blamed Yasser Arafat for the collapse of the Camp David talks.
On a more subtle level, words are often chosen by reporters that bias the impression that news consumers will get from the account. For example, Palestinian terrorist killers are called "activists" or "militants". An Israeli anti-terrorist military operation will be called an "invasion" or "incursion". The term "occupied territories" is almost always used to describe the West Bank and Gaza, even though under the Oslo peace process Israel has withdrawn so that over 90% of the Arab Palestinian population has been governed by the Palestinian Authority for years. Even the nomenclature "West Bank" is misleading since that area that was historically Jewish Judea and Samaria until Jordan invaded and captured it during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
News organizations and individuals have largely accepted the basic propaganda of the Palestinian Arabs. They accept "facts" that are not facts, probably out of ignorance of the history of the region. They refer to the "Palestinian National Authority" even though no such institution exists (Yasser Arafat inserted the word 'National' with no official standing), they say Israel violates international law when no such law applies, they speak of crimes by Israel under the Fourth Geneva Convention even though this is a complete sham, they talk of Palestinian oppression and humiliation in the "occupied territories" even though most Palestinians were better off economically and politically before the Palestinian Authority took over in 1994. And they repeat the Palestinian version of the meaning of UN resolutions like Security Council Resolution 242, an interpretation that the authors of the resolutions have disputed.
AP
Woman Staged at Security Fence, 7 Feb 2004
These examples are only the tip of a massive iceberg of biased reporting against Israel. Reasons have been advanced for such media bias and the best explanation would seem to be some combination of the following factors, operating in a different mix in the case of each individual journalist:
A three-month investigation of the foreign press in Israel concluded that some foreign correspondents do impose their private sympathies on the news they report
Palestinian intimidation of journalists and manipulation of the journalistic process in the areas they control has been rampant, although not well reported. In March 2001, Marwan Barghouti, leader of the PA's Tanzim militia, warned outright that any Israeli journalist who entered PA areas would be killed. Since then, most Israeli journalists either stay home or make sure to be accompanied by well-connected Palestinians. In 2003, Dr. Riyad Al-Hassan, the director general of the PA State Information Service (SIS), admitted in an interview that newspapers and journalists can be subjected to, "Sometimes a little punishment, [laughter] sometimes."
Ignorance of history erases the context of events and makes it easy to accept bogus claims.
Palestinians are perceived as the underdog, skillfully portrayed that way by propagandists. "Children with rocks against Israeli tanks" is a popular image, ignoring the rifles, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, and more that are utilized against Israeli troops by Palestinian fighters lurking in the background.
The open, democratic Israeli society includes vibrant debate that uncovers weaknesses, failures and contradictions. Instead of seeing this as a strength, and a mirror of American values, the press often uses it against Israel. The autocratic, media-suppressed Palestinian Authority has been more successful in "controlling the message".
Because Israel is a western, secular, democratic society, the press and the public have higher expectations of Israel and therefore find fault more quickly when Israel is less than perfect.
I'm basing it on facts like this.
And this...
And this...
But, I guess if you want to take what they are feeding you, you must find some way to justify it, right? |
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beck's
Joined: 02 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:47 am Post subject: |
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| Well said Mitch. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| Mitch Comestein wrote: |
News organizations and individuals have largely accepted the basic propaganda of the Palestinian Arabs. |
Not 100% true- most of them still still call it "Israel" rather than the preferred "Zionist Occupied Palestine".
Just to play devil's advocate for a second:
I'm not disputing anything in your post, but what about those stories that came out during the Intifada were it was shown that Israeli soldiers where at one time deliberately targetting journalists?
I recall seeing a news report on the subject on CBC in the early 90s, and it made a pretty convincing case.
If true, then surely journalists working in the region will remember this history, and I imagine it would make even the most professional of journalists less than 100% objective with regard to IDF operations (to put it mildly).
Is my memory bad? Was the story itself slanted, subjective, propagandized? I don't know, but I'm going to do some digging on it.
edited for clarity and spelling.
Last edited by Bulsajo on Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:35 am; edited 2 times in total |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:26 am Post subject: |
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Good god, man - you're out in IGTG conspiracy zone, you do realise this don't you? Before I address the points you've raised can I just point out this article that was posted earlier...
Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300512.html
Let's just keep that in mind as we go on.
Some quick thoughts before we get into it...
Firstly, where're your links mate? I'm guessing you didn't happen to recall that in" March 27 of 2002 ABC Nightline correspondent said ...blah, blah, blah"....I'm going to assume you looked this stuff up. Where are your sources??
And second...this is it?? The media is "completely biased", Reuters has "always been anti American/Israeli" and all you have to show for this collosal, self-evident conspiracy are two examples years apart and from years ago.
Finally, how can you be so blind as to accept that partisan publications can't be expected to give subjective news or opinions, and then turn around and quote partisan sources as evidence for this conspiracy?
| Mitch Comestein wrote: |
This discussion does not include partisan publications that obviously advocate for one side or another. |
but you base your claims on
But if you want to take what they're feeding you must find some way to justify it, right?? |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:55 am Post subject: |
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Well, I was going to respond to your points Mitch, but I was doing your work of looking for your sources when I found this....
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_media_anti_israel_bias.php
Your entire post...word for word. So, really since you've represented this entire web page (of pro Israeli propaganda) to speak for you, I guess the accusation of you being someone who parrots the party line, is pretty much on mark, hey?
Oh, sorry... you did write links to sites like the one you parroted, and the snide comment at the end.
| Quote: |
| But, I guess if you want to take what they are feeding you, you must find some way to justify it, right? |
You're the one being spoon fed what to say and think. Justify away. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 12:22 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not throwing this out to discredit anyone or to support Palestinians over Israelis;
If I'm saying anything by posting these articles, it's this:
nobody in the Middle East is guilt-free when it comes to journalism and journalistic objectivity.
Are the reporters who covered this sort of story in 2002 still reporting in 2006?
I imagine most of them are.
| Guardian Unlimited, in 2002 wrote: |
Journalists accuse Israel of media violation
Jessica Hodgson
Monday April 22, 2002
Reporters Sans Frontieres, the international pressure group for journalists, has condemned Israel in the strongest terms for its "grim toll of attacks on press freedom".
In an outspoken statement, RSF accused Israel of taking a "racist attitude to the Arab media" and claimed its violations of press freedom were "deliberate". |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,688490,00.html
| The Guardian Observer in 2001 wrote: |
The first casualty of war
Israelis say Western reports are biased. But the media complain Israel is harassing them. Report by Peter Beaumont, Brian Whitaker in Jerusalem and Edward Helmore in New York
Special report: Israel and the Middle East
Sunday June 17, 2001
The Observer
Members of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem sat down over drinks at their annual meeting at the Inbal hotel a few weeks ago to discuss harassment of reporters covering the intifada. There was much to discuss. A few days earlier Josh Hammer, the bureau chief of Newsweek magazine, had been detained by Palestinians while working in Gaza.
Hammer had said he had been well treated and had enjoyed one of the best meals he had eaten in the Middle East.
What was bothering the journalists, however, was not Hammer's brief detention, but the Israeli government's use of the incident as an opportunity to accuse the Palestinian Authority of harassing, threatening and killing journalists as they went about their work in the flashpoints of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The members of the FPA begged furiously to differ. If journalists were facing any intimidation during the present intifada, complained the assembled reporters, it was not from the Palestinians but from the Israeli army, which they accused of directing gunfire at them. Eight journalists in as many months had been wounded, some seriously, including AP photographer Yolah Monakhov, CNN bureau chief Ben Wedeman and French television correspondent Bertrand Aguirre.
In each case the FPA had complained. In each case the Israeli authorities had declined to reply.
That harassment, correspondents say, is not confined to physical threats. It is psychological as well, and from both official and unofficial sources. At its worst it has smacked of the tactics of the Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War. Correspondents the Israeli authorities feel have stepped out of line - including the Guardian's award-winning correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg - have been threatened with having their accreditation removed.
Dossiers of alleged anti-Israeli bias have been sent to editors, and correspondents who have fallen foul of the authorities have complained of being the target of humiliating searches when they leave the country.
On the unofficial front, the attacks on Goldenberg have been nastier and more insidious. She has been abused in the Jewish media as naive, inexperienced and a 'self-hating Jew'. Goldenberg has been forced to change her email address after being bombarded daily with hundreds of complaints about her coverage. She is not alone.
Last week the sense of siege among journalists covering the intifada was ratcheted up another notch as the offices of the BBC in Jerusalem were deluged with calls complaining about the content of a Panorama programme unseen in Britain and Israel alike. It will be shown in the UK tonight.
A new front is opening in the intifada. Faced with increasing international criticism of its handling of the Palestinian uprising, the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon and its allies in the powerful and influential pro-Israeli lobby, have stepped up their efforts against international media reporting the current crisis. News organisations that fall foul of Israel are accused of being pro-Palestinian at best, and at worst anti-Semitic.
'You only have to look at some of the things that are being said about Israel in the international media,' complains one high-ranking Israeli official in the Ministry of Information. 'You only have to look at the Spanish media. Every time they mention the Middle East they talk about "a holocaust". Of course that is going to offend us.
'And what bothers us is the way in which many organisations - especially the news wires and broadcasters - use Palestinian stringers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. So, of course, we think they are biased.'
The BBC, which has faced repeated accusations of bias, has been shocked by the response of the Israeli government to Panorama, which examines the well-documented involvement of Sharon in the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982 when, as Defence Minister, he allowed his country's Christian militia allies to enter the camps.
On the basis only of advance publicity material for the programme, the BBC has been accused of bias in the Israeli press. In London the Israeli embassy has already complained to the corporation's deputy director for news. The Israeli leader's lawyers have warned the BBC it must take account of Sharon's views.
And while some harassment of reporters who are felt to be 'biased' against Israel is not new, correspondents say that what has changed has been the intensity of both the lobbying and the intimidation.
For many years, pro-Israeli organisations have organised letter-writing campaigns to protest against articles and programmes they dislike. With the development of email, this activity has grown enormously. Websites, such as honestreporting.com, target individual journalists and provide ready-written letters of complaint for subscribers to send out.
This weekend the site had already produced a pro forma letter of complaint against tonight's Panorama.
Honestreporting.com also issues awards. One recently went to Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the US magazine New Republic, who 'has consistently stood by Israel's side', and another to Conrad Black, proprietor of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and the Spectator magazine, for lashing out against 'rabidly anti-Israel' journalists and governments.
The intensity of the lobbying, admits Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger - who returned recently from a fact-finding mission to Israel - can have an insidious effect. 'There are all sorts of non-governmental and ad hoc groups who blitz you with letters to complain about allegations of bias in your coverage. It is ignorable stuff on the whole,' he says, though he admits: 'It does get into the bloodstream of the wider debate.
'The pro-Israeli lobby is also very well organised. And the truth is that they do have better access and influence in the media than Palestinian lobbyists.'
It is a lobby too that - despite the accusations of systematic media bias - has powerful allies. Black has never tried to hide his support for the Israeli cause, sending his wife, the journalist Barbara Amiel, to report on it.
The Times under Peter Stothard has also been broadly sympathetic to Israel in its coverage, an editorial line that has been blamed for the departure of its Middle East correspondent Sam Kiley, who is understood to have been uncomfortable with it.
But where the pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby has been most intense has been on media organisations felt to be out of line. Among those groups in Britain are the Conservative Friends of Israel, which invites senior journalists to lunches at the House of Commons. For those working for organisations perceived as being biased against Israel these can be uncomfortable affairs.
One member is the Conservative MP Gillian Shephard, who is at pains to explain the sense of persecution that Israelis and the wider Jewish community feel at the hands of the media.
'Let's not forget that Israel feels under siege. And it literally is. That is what drives the feeling of ultra-sensitivity. They feel that there is bias and there is a conspiracy against them. There is a perception that Israelis are portrayed as instigating the problems and that the historical context of the threat against Israel is forgotten. There is a feeling too that Israel - which is a tiny island of democracy amid much less democratic neighbours - never gets enough credit for what it has achieved.'
It is a view that is not confined to London. In New York, with its large Jewish constituency, questioning Israeli policy in the press is considered close to, if not actually, anti-Semitism and all that entails. Thomas L Friedman, the celebrated New York Times columnist who writes regularly about the Middle East, is in no doubt why it has become such a difficult place to report.
'This is a charged political environment,' he says. 'Everyone wants to own you, and if they can't own you they want to destroy you. That applies just as much to the Arab world as it does to Israel. There is no middle ground. There is no time and no place that someone will put their arm around you and say, "Gosh, I really appreciate your fair and balanced reporting".' |
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,508164,00.html |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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| During the last Israeli invasion of Lebanon, reporters would often feel most confident that their stories would reach their respective papers intact by sending the stories through Damascus censors, rather than those in Tel Aviv....that in itself says something about how Israel attempts to control media... |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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mitch, dude, are you for real?
If your argument is strictly for European media, I'll say you have a fair argument. The Guardian is definitly leaning towards Arabs. I recall the BBC being taken to task as well. American media though? Give me a break.
The economist's take (it also thinks hizballah "won"):
| Quote: |
HASSAN NASRALLAH and Ehud Olmert both say they won. But in asymmetrical warfare, the test of victory is asymmetrical too. Israel's prime minister set himself an absurd aim�the complete demolition of Hizbullah's power in Lebanon�and failed to achieve it. The shrewder Mr Nasrallah said victory would consist merely of surviving, and Hizbullah, however battered, did survive. On the last day it was not just standing, it also fired a record 246 rockets into Israel.
Hizbullah being what it is, Mr Nasrallah lost no time claiming that this was �a strategic, historic victory�; crowds in Tehran chorused that Israel had been �destroyed�. Did Hizbullah not kill 159 Israelis, including 116 Zionist soldiers? Israel being what it is, Mr Olmert's political foes lost no time denouncing the prime minister's failings as Israelis sank into a collective despond about the disappointing showing of their army and the blunting of their country's long-term deterrent power.
Mr Olmert, echoed by George Bush, says that Israel won because it has transformed Lebanon. Under Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the fragile ceasefire, Hizbullah is to withdraw north of the Litani river, make way for the Lebanese army plus a strengthened UN force, and disarm. That would, Israel says, put an end to Hizbullah's �state within state�. And so it would�if it happened. But it may not. Within days of the ceasefire, Mr Nasrallah said it was �too early� to discuss disarming. Syria's president, Bashar Assad, said so too. And the likelihood of the Lebanese army or a UN force trying to disarm Hizbullah against its will is zero. Two years ago, the UN passed a splendid resolution, 1559, demanding the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. If Hizbullah did not comply then, why should it do so now, flushed with self-declared victory and with Israel's army still inside Lebanon?
Lebanon could lose too
The plain fact is that if Hizbullah is ever to give up its weapons and become just another political party, it will be through the pressure of the other Lebanese, not as a direct result of Israel's war (see article). The diplomacy should therefore not be built on the pretence that Israel won a war it didn't. The more that Israel and America claim otherwise, the less able the caught-in-the-middle Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora will be to extract favours from Mr Nasrallah. A better idea would be to deprive Hizbullah of the pretexts it has invented for keeping up its war. It would be useful, for example, if Israel gave up the Shebaa Farms, the bit of Syrian territory Hizbullah says is Lebanon's, and accepted a prisoner swap.
However, Israel needs to save face too. Mr Olmert has no interest in concessions that reinforce the idea that he led his warrior nation to defeat. Israelis feel they dare not let their country look weak. And now come ominous signs that it does. Mr Assad has started talking again about liberating the Golan Heights. Having previously denied arming Hizbullah, Iran this week started to boast about the weapons it sent. If Israel is to give up Shebaa at such a time it must have something big in return, such as the actual removal of Hizbullah's arms�not just their concealment�in the south at least. Since America is not seen as an honest broker, closing such a deal may well require some new mediator. France? Turkey? Germany? Without an agreement, the war could resume at any moment. |
Full article (have to subscribe):
Hizballah claims victory |
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