Israel and U.S., Partners in Lebanon Offensive

Interview with Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, conducted by Scott Harris

As Israel's military offensive against Lebanon entered its third week, nearly 400 Lebanese have been killed, most of them civilians -- with more than 1,500 wounded and an estimated 800,000 Lebanese displaced. Forty-one Israelis have been killed in the conflict thus far, with more than 300 civilians wounded. Many of the Israeli casualties have resulted from missiles fired into northern Israel by the Hezbollah militia.

Jan Egeland U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief condemned the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes in Beirut, saying Israel's "disproportionate response" was a "violation of international humanitarian law." Both the U.S. and Israel have rejected a cease-fire in an apparent effort to give the Israeli army more time to degrade Hezbollah's offensive capability. Rejection of a cease-fire angered many in the Arab world, especially after it was learned that the Bush administration had rushed a shipment of precision bombs to Israel in the early days of the offensive.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice received an angry reception when she made a brief visit to Beirut on July 24, where she heard demands from Lebanese officials for an immediate cease-fire. Discussions about establishing an international force as a buffer between Hezbollah and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon have recently begun. Between the Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who examines the chronology of events -- beyond the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah -- that led to the current conflict in Lebanon.

Phyllis Bennis' latest book is titled, "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power." Contact IPS by calling (202) 234-9382 or visit their website at www.ips-dc.org

Related links:

* United for Peace and Justice at www.unitedforpeace.org * U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation at www.endtheoccupation.org

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The Devil (George Warmonger Bush): "Sorry to Oil the Black Ops in Lebanon, the Bomb Shipments, the Tank Shipments, the Plane Shipments, the Naplam Shipments, the Poison Gas Shipments, the Phosphorus Shipments, and other WMD Shipments to Irgun Zvai Leumi / Likud Terrorist / IDF IAF Nazis in IsraOil and their use in War Crimes on Lebanese Civilians and the Annexation of Lebanon to IsraOil but Oil comes First. Fill her Up ????????"

The Devil (George Warmonger Bush): "Sorry to Oil the Black Ops in Lebanon, the Bomb Shipments, the Tank Shipments, the Plane Shipments, the Naplam Shipments, the Poison Gas Shipments, the Phosphorus Shipments, and other WMD Shipments to Irgun Zvai Leumi / Likud Terrorist / IDF IAF Nazis in IsraOil and their use in War Crimes on Lebanese Civilians and the Annexation of Lebanon to IsraOil but Oil comes First. Fill her Up ????????"

There is an alternative to this unnecessary war

Eisenhower ended the Suez war in 1956, and America could do it now

By Adrian Hamilton:

07/27/06 "The Independent" -- -- Parallels with the past never really work. Historical events are too specific to give themselves easily to analogy. But the coincidence of the 50th anniversary of the Suez crisis (Nasser nationalised the canal on 26 July 1956) and the latest outbreak of war holds some terrible lessons not so much in what is the same as in how much has changed over the past half-century.

The most obvious difference is in the extent to which the US has moved from an arms-length relationship with Israel under President Eisenhower, who threatened to withdraw all aid to Tel Aviv, and even get it expelled from the UN if it didn't withdraw its invading troops from Egypt, to President Bush, who has openly supported Israeli assault on Lebanon and refused to back calls for a ceasefire.

There is, too, as Douglas Hurd pointed out yesterday, a world of difference between the way the international community under the UN cohered around a peaceful settlement in 1957 and the position today, when UN efforts, as we can see from the discussions in Rome, hardly count.

But the greatest, and most dispiriting, difference between then and now lies in the reaction to war itself. In his address to the nation immediately after the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, Eisenhower - who, after all, had come to fame and position through war - utterly condemned the resort to violence. "In all the recent troubles in the Middle East," he said. "there have indeed been injustices suffered by all nations involved. But I do not believe that another instrument of injustice, war, is the remedy for these wrongs."

Richard Nixon later purportedly said that Eisenhower lived to regret condemning the allied invasion, but there is absolutely no evidence for this other than Nixon's word, and even this is dubious. Indeed, Eisenhower in his valedictory address on leaving office in 1961, warning of the power of the "military-industrial complex", re-emphasised his view with even greater vigour.

Now it seems to be taken for granted that war, the most terrible act that man can inflict on this planet, is the first recourse rather than the last, as if there was no alternative.

But there is an alternative. Instead of invading Iraq three years ago, we could have waited until the final report of the inspectors. And if the objective was regime change, then would it have really been impossible to have bribed, seduced or pressured such a change at a fraction of the $200bn that has been spent so far? Or could we not have ended Iraq's isolation and open it up to the kind of influences that brought down the Berlin Wall? It wasn't because there were no alternatives that we went to war. It was just that Bush, Blair and their supporters in the press never considered them.

And the same now with the Lebanese war. If the objective of the Israelis was really the emasculation of the Hizbollah and a secure border, then the incursion into Israeli territory to seize hostages was the perfect opportunity for a diplomatic squeeze. Given Hizbollah's strained relations with the Lebanese government, a UN resolution in place and an Arab world nervous of Iran and the Shia, it was the perfect occasion to rally the international community behind a concrete move to disarm Hizbollah and put in an international force to patrol the border - solutions which are likely, after all, to form the basis of any settlement now.

Instead Israel chose a course which has undermined the Lebanese government, made Hizbollah into heroic freedom fighters, further radicalise Arab politics and put the US firmly into the role of friend-of-Israel and enemy-of-the-Islamic world. On all the evidence so far, the Israeli cabinet never considered any other option than war, with an astonishing 90 per cent of support from a population not one of whom raised the question "Should we be doing this?" At least Suez saw a substantial questioning in the UK.

So, too, with the situation as it has developed to date. There is a viable alternative to letting the war go on until Israel feels it has done its worst, and that is to call an immediate ceasefire. All this talk from Condoleezza Rice, that you cannot call a halt to fighting until an overarching peace can be envisaged, is just specious nonsense - obscene, in fact, when you consider the loss of life and the destruction of Lebanon it entails.

Of course, you can call a halt to the fighting before talking. That is how such wars have ended through the ages. Eisenhower did it in 1956, and America could do it now with the same threats that Eisenhower employed. If Bush, with Blair in support, prefers not rein in Israel, it isn't because he doesn't see the means. It's because he doesn't want to. The question the public should be asking is "why not?". - a.hamilton@independent.co.uk