Controlling Lebanon
Zionist leaders’ interest in Lebanon goes back to November 1918 when they indicated to British mandate officials that they wished Israel’s northern border to include the whole of the Litani River, all of which currently runs in Lebanon. Their proposal emphasized the "vital importance of controlling all water resources up to their sources."23 At the 1919 Peace Conference, however, the French demanded and won the battle for the present boundaries of Lebanon that included the entire length of the Litani River and the headwaters of the Hasbani and Wazzani Rivers. Never reconciled to this arrangement, the first and subsequent Israeli governments began considering plans to create a puppet state in Lebanon. Sharett’s “Diary” records a February 27, 1954 meeting among Ben Gurion, Sharett, Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon and Dayan where Ben Gurion argued “this is the time…to push Lebanon, that is the Maronites in that country, to proclaim a Christian State.” When Sharett retorted that the Christians in Lebanon were “weak” and in no position to foment a revolution, Ben Gurion roared: “We ought to send envoys and spend money.” When Sharett replied that there was no money, Ben Gurion’s answer was:
The money must be found, if not in the Treasury then at the Jewish Agency! For such a project it is worthwhile throwing away one hundred thousand, half a million, a million dollars. When this happens a decisive change will take place in the Middle East, a new era will start.24
In another high-level meeting on Lebanon in May 1954, Moshe Dayan provided a guide as to how control of Lebanon would be accomplished. According to Dayan, Israel needed only to find a Lebanese officer, “even just a Major” who would serve as a puppet and with Israel’s help “create a Christian regime…. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon [and] the territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel and everything will be all right.”25
To fulfill these plans, Israel had to wait nearly 15 years, but, as Prof. Naseer Aruri writes:
Consider what actually happened later, during the 1960s, '70s, '80s: In 1967, Israel’s war against three Arab states not only gave Israel possession of eastern Palestine (the West Bank), Gaza, the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights, but also enabled Israel to capture the headwaters of the Jordan and Banias rivers. In addition, Israel destroyed Jordan's East Ghor Canal and its Khaled Dam on the Yarmuk River, which flows into Israel’s Nahariva Pool. In the 1978 "Litani Operation," Israel established firm control over the Wazzani River, which flows into the Jordan, as well as almost the entire length of the Hasbani River. And in the 1982 "Operation Peace for Galilee," the entire length of the Litani River came under Israeli control.26
To the first governments in Israel, Lebanon seemed an obvious early target in part for its important water resources and in part because it seemed politically weaker than the other neighboring Arab countries. But Israeli plans for Lebanon had to be postponed until after 1967. Rokach explains that, well into the 60s:
Israel was dependent on France for arms supplies and could not have acted openly against France's wishes. The end of France's colonial war against Algeria and De Gaulle's growing impatience with Israel's arrogance led to the termination of the French-Israeli special relationship in 1967, and to its substitution by the exclusive U.S.-Israel one. 27
The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) cost about 100,000 lives and destroyed a vital secular government and civil society that is still reeling from the onslaught. Christians were pitted against Lebanese Moslems, and the situation was further complicated by the presence of 350,000 Palestinians and the PLO.28 Israel’s contribution to the war was massive. Israeli attacks on Lebanon began as early as 1968 and continued through 1982 and after. “Before the Lebanese army disintegrated in 1976, it had given a figure of 1.4 Israeli violations of Lebanese territory per day from 1968-74.”29 According to author Rosemary Sayigh, such “attacks continued to escalate and were a major factor in bringing about the Civil War of 1975/6.” London Guardian correspondent Irene Beeson reported that “150 or more towns and villages in South Lebanon…have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968.” She described the history of the village of Khiyam, bombed from 1968. By the time Israel invaded ten years later, only 32 of its 30,000 inhabitants remained. “[T]hey were massacred in cold blood” by Lebanese proxy forces that Israel had established in the south.30
Dissolving the Arab States
Israel’s strategic plan to dissolve the Arab states by breaking them down into smaller sectarian units was laid out openly in an 1982 essay by Oded Yinon, an Israeli strategist. Oded pointed to the “real civil war” taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the ruling Shi’ite Alawi minority in Syria. He emphasized the Sunni–Shi’ite split in Iraq: “Sixty five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power.” He made similar analyses of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf principalities, Iran, Turkey, and Sudan and wrote that the entire region “extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey…is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.” Oded looked forward to Lebanon’s dissolution into five provinces serving as a precedent for the entire Middle East, but he noted that Iraq’s dissolution:
is even more important for us than that of Syria… In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious line as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. 31
It’s clear that the recent U.S. war against Iraq has advanced a key aim of the most grandiose Israeli dreams for regional hegemony. From the point of view of Israeli goals, the U.S. has begun to implement what Israel Shahak, the late Israeli author and government critic, called “the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime…for the Middle East. [The plan] is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. (Emphasis in original.) Shahak also noted “the strong connection with the Neo-Conservative thought in the USA.” 32
The neoconservatives (or neocons), typically Republican zealots close to Israel’s Likud party, are getting a great deal of media attention nowadays because they have been installed in key positions in George W. Bush’s government and they seem for the most part to be the voice of the administration, intermittently moderated by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Many of today’s neocons were liberals:
who drifted to the right when the Democratic Party moved to the anti-war McGovernite left. And concern for Israel loomed large in their change. As political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg puts it: “One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes [e.g., Palestinian rights].” In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations…neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security. 33
The twin ascendancy of the right-wing regimes of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Ronald Reagan led to the brutal 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that claimed an estimated 17,000 to 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinian lives, the great majority of whom were civilians.34 The pretext for the invasion was the threat to Israeli security by PLO cross-border raids and shelling. But even at the time, observers were quick to point out that the border had been quiet for eleven months due to a cease-fire negotiated by Reagan emissary Philip Habib. Indeed the months of quiet made the Israelis desperate for a pretext to begin the war. If Israeli security was not the reason for the Israeli invasion, how are we to explain it? Once again the documentary evidence reveals that the Israeli campaign against Lebanon was undertaken for political and not security purposes.
In his book on the events surrounding the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, “The Fateful Triangle,” Noam Chomsky devotes ten pages to “The Reasons for the Invasion of Lebanon.” He begins by noting that one obvious purpose was “to disperse the refugees once again and to destroy the organization that represents Palestinian nationalism…” According to one senior Israeli diplomat, “the PLO are dead people politically.” Israeli political analyst Yoel Marcus wrote that Israel went to war to destroy “support for the PLO on the part of the overwhelming majority of the population—and its growing international status.” 35 By the late 70s, the PLO was moving away from “armed resistance” and beginning to gain traction as a legitimate political organization representing the Palestinian people.
Chomsky details some of the reasons for the familiar Israeli “panic” whenever they perceive the “threat of a peaceful political settlement” that might be difficult to contain. As a consequence of the July 1981 Israeli bombing campaign, a Saudi Arabian peace plan and subsequent Syrian peace initiatives had emerged. However, the most “ominous” development from the Israeli point of view was that the PLO was scrupulously observing the ceasefire, despite many Israeli provocations. Arafat’s success in imposing discipline on the many PLO factions, according to Yehoshua Porath, a leading Israeli scholar, constituted:
a veritable catastrophe in the eyes of the Israeli government” since it indicated that the PLO “might agree in the future to a more far-reaching arrangement,” in which case Israel could no longer evade a political settlement on the grounds that the PLO is nothing but “a wild gang of murderers.” [The Israeli government hopes that] a stricken PLO, lacking a logistic and territorial base, will return to its earlier terrorism…and murder many Israelis… 36
A Case Study in Divergent Interests
Israel’s two-week bombing campaign against Lebanon in July 1981, a prelude to the 1982 war, is an extreme case of Israeli terrorism. The episode is also an instructive example of the divergence between U.S. and Israeli policy goals in Lebanon. The U.S. was interested in a stable Lebanon in order to pacify its Arab allies, and to beat back the Soviet challenge in the region. In direct opposition to American policy objectives, Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon were determined to destabilize Lebanon and create a puppet, Christian-led government.
The highly sensitive issue of dual loyalty arises when U.S. and Israeli Middle East policy objectives diverge and when elements in the U.S. prefer Israeli interests over and above U.S. interests. Indeed, in such cases, the term dual loyalty is something of a misnomer in that it tends to suggest a balanced approach while Israel’s partisans in the U.S. invariably prefer Israel’s interest over and above America’s. Author Stephen Green’s chapter on the two week 1981 bombing campaign does not directly raise the dual loyalty issue. Nonetheless, he pointedly highlights the role played by The New York Times (and by extension the rest of the major media) that contributed to a conspiracy of silence in favor of Israeli interests.
The Israeli campaign against Lebanon that began in 1968 rose by an order of magnitude with the 1978 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, significantly dubbed, “Operation Litani,” involving 25,000 Israeli troops, including two mechanized divisions and an armored brigade. The operation resulted in the deaths of a thousand Palestinians and Lebanese. 37
In 1979 Israel announced a new “pre-emptive” security policy for Israel: Israel would henceforth strike at will at suspected PLO facilities, and would not wait for PLO raids to occur on Israeli territory. As the violence continued to escalate, Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel, in April 1981, maneuvered the Israelis into a crisis by attacking the Syrians. After the Israeli Air Force predictably came to his aid, the Syrians installed SAM-6 anti-aircraft missiles and SCUD tactical ballistic missiles in the outskirts of Damascus. Author Green explains that the “Israeli fighter bombers already had U.S. supplied electronic countermeasures” which could foil the SAMs “and the Scuds were so inaccurate as to pose no serious threat to Israeli population centers or military installations.” This did not deter Prime Minister Menachem Begin from threatening “the destruction of the Soviet missiles,” raising the possibility of war between the major powers. 38
At this point U.S. policy seemed confused and contradictory. On the one hand, President Reagan sent Special Ambassador Philip Habib to mediate the crisis. On the other hand, Secretary of State Alexander Haig traveled to the region to give the Israelis notice of a “basic change in attitude” which allowed the Israelis greater “flexibility” to continue “with air strikes and ground assaults against Palestinian guerilla bases in Lebanese territory.” 39
The Israelis began to strike Lebanon in earnest on July 10, 1981, just after Menachem Begin was reelected prime minister and Ariel Sharon was named defense minister. According to U.S. Ambassador Robert Dillon, the raids could not have come at a worse time. His confidential state department telegram of July 16 reported more of an outcry against the U.S. than was usually the case when the Israelis hit south Lebanon, perhaps because Ambassador Habib was in Lebanon and Israel, and state department counselor Robert McFarlane was in Tel Aviv.40
On July 16, Israel dramatically escalated its attacks, destroying five bridges across South Lebanon, the Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp near Sidon, and the American owned and managed Medreco oil refinery complex at Zahrani. The New York Times, in its coverage of the July 16 strikes, did not mention the American refinery. The next day Israeli planes carried the destruction to downtown Beirut. Green quotes from Dillon’s report:
The damage was massive. The Fakhani-Tariq Al-Jadidah area near the Shatila refugee camp was the hardest hit. A number of buildings were completely leveled and the devastation is reminiscent of World War II. The PLO offices that were the targets of the raids were evidently located on the lower floors of the buildings. 41
Ambassador Dillon estimated that casualty figures for Beirut alone from April 1 to July 17, 1981 were 438 dead and 2,479 wounded. Once again the American refinery had been struck. Three storage tanks had been hit “and the refinery has been shut down.” Israeli planes struck every day afterwards through July 23 with infrastructure targets high on the list including bridges, highways, electrical stations, and water pumping stations. The American Medreco refinery was hit again on the 18th and on the 22nd and was put out of commission for an estimated two weeks, resulting in shortages of gasoline and oil and power shortages in Beirut and in south Lebanon. “Israel using U.S. weapons was now waging total war on the land and people of Lebanon.” Green observes:
The New York Times did mention the Israeli attacks on the Medreco refinery in its coverage on July 19 and 23. Neither article, however mentioned that the refinery was U.S. owned and operated. Not once in the Times’s extensive coverage of the shelling and bombing in Lebanon in July 1981 was the American ownership of the refinery revealed. 42
Green continues his overview of coverage by the U.S.’s paper of record by pointing out that at a period of “mounting criticism of Israel in Europe and at the U.N.,” The Times began covering Israeli civilian deaths in great detail while not mentioning by “name, age or circumstance” one of the hundreds of Lebanese civilian deaths or the thousands wounded. In addition, Green wonders why the Israelis devoted so much firepower to the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure, and what it had to do with PLO attacks on northern Galilee. 43
Green, in effect, answers his question when he records that at the time of these Israeli raids Ambassador Philip Habib’s mission was broadened from attempting to defuse “the Syrian Israeli missile crisis” to “the resolution of the Lebanese civil war and a stable Lebanon.” At the same time, he notes that the clear purpose of the Israeli raids was “the destabilization of the government and economy of Lebanon. In this, Israel was working directly against stated U.S. policy.” 44
Why did The New York Times deliberately screen its readers from the knowledge that the Medreco oil refinery that Israel deliberately attacked on five occasions during the July 1981 bombardment was American owned and operated? Was The Times sensitive to the adverse reaction that might be aroused in its readership and advertisers to news unfavorable to Israel? Did the Jewish ownership of The Times and/or its support of Zionism play a role in suppressing unfavorable coverage of Israel? While it may be impossible to resolve such questions, the episode shows the complicity of the media in support of Israel’s goals and against the larger interests of U.S. policy and presumably against the interests of most Americans in a stable Lebanon and a peaceful Middle East. Significantly, a year later, as part of the fallout from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Secretary of State Alexander Haig was forced to resign apparently because he was seen as placing Israel’s interest in “fighting terror” ahead of America’s interest in reducing hostilities in the Middle East.
A Road Map to ?
The resignation of Alexander Haig in 1982 is evidence that the Reagan administration’s irresponsibility in raising no effective objections to Israeli excesses in Lebanon had limits. The U.S. government at that time was sufficiently flexible and rational to pull back when it was necessary and was able to focus on the simple idea that a peaceful Middle East was in American interests. Today, a similar awareness is evidently lacking. The disappearance of the Soviet Union as a counterweight to U.S. interests in the Middle East has allowed the current U.S. regime a free hand to ally itself completely with the Sharon government’s repressive and brutal policies.
Prime Minister Sharon has used his political skills to unite the Israeli public behind dramatic restrictions on the ability of the Palestinians to pursue civil life. Despite the current incarnation of the “peace process,” inaptly named the “road map,” never have the Palestinians been so threatened by Israeli policies. Through a combination of intimidation and effective use of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. and the complete subservience of Congress, Ariel Sharon, for example, has not been called to account for the March 2003 bulldozer murder of Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen, who was one of three international peace activists killed or seriously wounded by the Israeli army within a month’s time.
Palestinians cannot get to schools, businesses, or pursue normal economic life. They must face checkpoints without end, “targeted assassinations,” tanks, sharpshooters, F-16s and Apache helicopters in their population centers. A “security wall” currently being erected in the West Bank is gobbling up thousands of acres of Palestinian olive groves, farms, factories, and is affecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a hundred villages or communities located in between the wall and Israel’s 1967 borders or nearby. 45 All this while the world focuses on the “Road Map” which many observers view as little more than a distraction and a public relations ploy. 46
It seems clear that the Israeli government will continue to do everything it can to prevent the replacement of Palestinian infrastructure destroyed by the IDF in the West Bank during their Spring 2002 campaign. Without reconstruction, without a viable economy, what can the future possibly hold for the Palestinians? An indication of what the Israelis have in store for the Palestinians, is the uninhibited talk of “transfer” even by a member of Sharon’s cabinet.” 47 As prime minister, Sharon knows better than to espouse such views. However, in 1988, as trade minister and member of the inner cabinet during the first intifada, he warned that the Palestinian uprising “would lead inevitably to war with the Arab states and the necessary expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the Galilee.” 48
Many observers feared that the war on Iraq might have provided a sufficient screen for the mass expulsion of many of the more than 3.5 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. But Israel was not attacked and the American advance on Baghdad was so rapid that no opportunity was provided for mass expulsions. Nevertheless, time is on the side of the Israelis and they are masters of creating and making use of opportunities. After they were forced by President Eisenhower to return the Sinai and Gaza in 1956, they waited until the political scene was primed in 1967. Once again time is on their side as the “war on terror” continues and U.S. policy makers continually make threats against Iran and Syria, both high on Israel’s enemies list.
Prospects for peace seem slim and growing slimmer. One indicator of the difficulties that lie ahead is National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice’s comment in Tel Aviv in mid-May 2003. Ms. Rice said that the “security of Israel is the key to the security of the world.” As one close observer of right wing influence on U.S. policy put it, this goes far beyond even the “neocon claim that the security interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical.” 49
End Notes
1For history of Zionist conquest and occupation, see Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict;” for documentation of specific acts of Zionist terrorism, e.g., letter bombs, kidnapping, bombing cafes, theaters, markets, see Issa Nakhleh’s “Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem,” pp. 65-230.
2Stephen Green, “Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel,” pp. 38-40.
3Baylis Thomas, “A Concise History of Israel,” p. 93, note 39.
4Green, “Taking Sides,” p. 40.
5Written by Prof. Yehuda Lapidot, on the Irgun Website:
http://www.etzel.org/english/index.html.
6Thus, according to Irgun accounts, when the attack took place on July 22, the Haganah had officially withdrawn its approval.
7According to the Irgun, from the time of the first call at 12:10 pm, 22 minutes were allowed for the evacuation.
8R. Curtiss in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: www.wrmea.com/backissues/031885/850318011.html.
9Livia Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” pp. 5-6.
10Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 11.
11Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 13.
12Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 13.
13Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 29.
14Rachel Corrie in e-mail to her family, cited in Harper’s “This Happens Every Day,” June 2003.
15Green, “Taking Sides,” pp. 94-123.
16”A dangerous liquidation,” in Yediot Achronot, Nov. 25, 2001.
17Donald Neff, “Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East,” p. 33.
18Ehud Ya’ari, in Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 62.
19Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” pp. 39-40.
20Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p.47.
21Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 47.
22D. Neff, “Warriors at Suez,” pp. 365-68 and 371-76.
23Nasser Aruri, Preface in “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. xiv.
24Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 22.
25Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 26.
26N. Aruri, Preface in “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” pp. xiv-xv.
27Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism,” p. 59, Note 6.
28Rosemary Sayigh, in “Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon,” writes that 110,000 Palestinians were forced to flee northern Palestine in 1948, and the PLO was forced to relocate to Lebanon from Jordan in 1970-71.
29Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle,” 1983 edition, p. 191.
30Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle,” p. 191.
31Oded Yinon, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” published in Hebrew in “Kivunim,” Feb. 1982, by the World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, and in English as “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East,” by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, with Foreward by Israel Shahak. Available at: www.geocities.com/roundtable_texts/zionistplan.html.
32Shahak, Foreward in “The Zionist Plan.”
33Stephen Sniegoski, “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel,” Feb. 2003, at: www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.html.
34For discussion of the estimates, see Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims,” p. 727, fn. 247.
35Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle,” pp. 198, 199.
36Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle,” p. 200.
37Stephen Green, “Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East 1968-1987,” p. 155.
38Green, “Living by the Sword,” pp. 155, 156.
39David Shipler, The New York Times, April 18, 1981, quoted in Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 157.
40Confidential State Department telegram, July 16, 1981, cited in Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 158.
41Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 161.
42Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 162.
43Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 163.
44Green, “Living by the Sword,” p. 164.
45Neve Gordon, “Can bad fences make good neighbors,” Guardian Weekly, May 29-June 4, 2003.
46See Jeffrey Blankfort, “AIPAC Hijacks the Roadmap: How Israel’s U.S. Lobby Is Stacking the Deck,” May 27, 2003 on the web:
http://www.counterpunch.org/blackfort05272003.html.
47Benny Elon, Israel’s tourism minister, in Jordan Times, Feb. 7, 2003: “We must not fear bringing up again the idea of a transfer and of open discussion of the various possibilities that it offers.”
48Quoted in Ralph Schoenman, “The Hidden History of Zionism,” p. 10.
49Stephen Sniegoski, e-mail head note to news article in Jewish Press: “Rice: Israel’s Security Is Key to World Security,” May 18, 2003 (www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=2380).
Any criticism of Israel will always be greeted with howls of "Anti-Semitism." The US has inexplicably linked its foreign policy to that of Israel. When not delivered directly by Israel itself, America's association with that state has led to little but death, misery, and suffering. It is well past time for Americans to re-evaluate their country's unequivocal support of the brutal and exclusionary state of Israel.
The US does not have a moral obligation to support Israel, nor does it have valid strategic reason to continue to do so. Withdrawing financial and military backing for Israel would completely alter the perception of the United States in the Middle-East. Israel would be forced to resolve its problems based on its own strengths and weaknesses, not those of the United States by proxy.
The word "valid" is so subjective. What is valid to one may not be valid to another. Who can say what is valid and what is not valid when it comes to the support of Israel? The people, that's who. And not just some small, vocal minority of the people, but the people as a whole. If the people as a whole did not want the US to support Israel, I have every reason to believe they would voice their objections by the tens and hundreds of millions, marching in the streets demanding that the US divest. Such is not the case. Until that day, the US should continue to support Israel.
when have the people ever agreed on anything? The millions who opposed washington's war were dismissed by the white house and their neo-con masters. Your remarks are pointless, just one more tactic of evasion
It's going to be a bumpy night.