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HenryTo
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 Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:22 pm Post subject: Israel |
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Israel - Lebanon Deal Still Far Off. Following article courtesy of the NY Times.
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August 11, 2006
The Fighting
Israel Holds Off on Drive to the North
By STEVEN ERLANGER and WARREN HOGE
JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 — Israel warned residents of southern Beirut on Thursday to evacuate their homes even as it held off expanding its military operation while diplomats sought to complete negotiations on a United Nations resolution to halt the fighting.
In New York, ambassadors from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, failed Thursday to reach agreement on the resolution. But John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, said work would continue through the night and that a vote could still be held on Friday.
The ambassadors were focusing on a formula that would have the Israelis depart in phases while the Lebanese Army and a reinforced Unifil, the United Nations force, moves into the area.
A senior Bush administration official said Thursday evening that the French and American positions were close enough that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to New York on Friday morning to try to complete the deal.
But Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, said his country had lost patience with the continuing talks while people were dying and had introduced its own resolution calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire” of 72 hours.
Mr. Bolton dismissed the Russian move as “unhelpful” and added, “We are not playing games here, this is very serious.”
The Israeli Army has thousands of troops massed on the border, waiting for an order from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to take the battle against Hezbollah to the Litani River about 15 miles to the north, to reduce the number of rockets that can reach Israeli cities.
But the order has not been given. Israeli officials are hoping the threat of a major escalation in the fighting will produce a diplomatic solution that will keep Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani River and lead to the dismantling of the militia.
Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said the military effort was intended to promote the diplomatic one. “We are doing everything to allow these two efforts to complement each other,” he told Israel public radio. “We’ll see the military operation as having created the diplomatic climate and a new situation.”
If diplomacy fails, Mr. Peretz said, Israel will “use all of the tools” to win the war against Hezbollah.
But a senior Israeli official said the government was skeptical that the diplomatic wrangling by France and the United States, acting respectively for Lebanon and Israel, would produce a satisfactory resolution.
Israel is insisting on a robust multinational force to operate alongside the Lebanese Army, even if it is a recreation of Unifil with a new, aggressive mandate, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Mr. Churkin said Lebanon had objected to having the resolution create this force under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the full use of military force. Mr. Bolton said France and the United States were still in touch with the Lebanese authorities on this point and hoped to resolve it by Friday.
Israel is also insisting that its troops will not leave southern Lebanon until a multinational force arrives, because the weak Lebanese Army cannot be expected to confront Hezbollah on its own.
Avi Dichter, a senior Israeli cabinet minister, said the timing of a broader offensive “depends to a great extent on what is happening now in New York.”
Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog told Army Radio, “There is a political process under way and our sense of responsibility tells us to give it a bit more time.”
Despite the diplomatic activity, the war did not stop on Thursday. Israeli troops consolidated their hold on Merj ’Uyun, a Christian village from which Hezbollah was firing rockets, Israel said. It was taken overnight with little resistance.
Israeli troops also moved to surround the village of Al Khiam, one source of missile attacks on the towns of Kiryat Shmona and Metulla. An Israeli soldier died in fighting in the village of Qlaia when a tank was hit by a missile.
Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over Beirut advising residents of three southern suburbs — Shiya, Burj al Brajneh and Hayy al Sollom — to leave their homes. The leaflets, signed by “The State of Israel,” said the Israelis “intend to expand their operations in Beirut” and warned of “a painful and strong response.” They further warned the residents: “For your own safety, you must evacuate those neighborhoods immediately and evacuate every place where Hezbollah members or aides exist or carry out terrorist operations.”
Shiya, a poor Shiite area two miles from the center of Beirut, has been bombed or shelled several times. More than 40 people died there on Monday after an apartment building, which Israel said had housed Hezbollah leaders, was bombed at dinnertime.
Israel also fired rockets at a disused radio broadcast tower in the center of Beirut and derelict antennas belonging to Lebanon’s official radio station in Amsheet, north of Beirut, apparently believing that Hezbollah was transmitting its broadcasts from these facilities. Hezbollah fired more than 140 rockets into Israel on Thursday and again killed Israeli Arabs. A rocket landed between houses in the Israeli village of Dir al Assad, near Carmiel, killing Miriam Assadi, 26, and her son Fathi, 5. Another son, 4, was badly wounded, as was her mother-in-law. A neighbor, Nabil Omar, 34, said at a hospital in Nahariya, where he had light shrapnel wounds, that “the rocket fell between our two houses.”
“We didn’t hear anything coming.”
Other rockets caused more fires in the forests of the central Galilee and the Golan Heights. The largest fire broke out near Safed, and the air along the border was hazy with wood smoke on an otherwise clear and sunny day.
On Thursday, Jan Egeland, the chief United Nations humanitarian affairs official, called it “a disgrace” that Israel and Hezbollah would not stop fighting long enough to allow aid to reach civilians trapped in southern Lebanon. The World Food Program warned of an impending food crisis because of population displacement and a disrupted harvest.
Aid agencies have also been warning about the dire situation faced in many hospitals in the south, which are running out of food, medicine and fuel to run generators.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had received assurances from Mr. Olmert that Israel would do “everything possible” to allow aid through, while Doctors Without Borders said it would continue to help those in southern Lebanon despite Israeli warnings that all vehicular traffic south of the Litani River could be fired upon.
Rowan Gillies, president of Doctors Without Borders, said in Beirut, “To forbid all forms of movement, without distinction, will lead to even more civilian deaths and suffering.”
The Israeli government had warnings on Thursday from the left and the right. Upset by the cabinet decision to expand the offensive, Peace Now and the dovish Meretz Party decided to join a demonstration of more pacifist groups outside the Kirya, Israel’s Pentagon, in Tel Aviv.
Yariv Oppenheimer, the leader of Peace Now, said Lebanon’s decision to move its army to the border and the Israeli cabinet vote had changed minds. “This is a just war, but there is a way to finish it and the government is not taking the right way to do it,” he said. “We’re calling for the government to accept the Lebanese initiative, push it forward and use it to finish the war.”
Galia Golan, a founder of Peace Now, said, “Whatever happened in the beginning of the war, people now believe it’s enough, it’s time to stop and find a political path.”
But only 500 to 700 people showed up to demonstrate. Still, a veteran peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, said, “What is happening here today is the beginning of a radical change in political opinion.”
But on the right, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud Party, warned the government that it must accomplish its goal, which is to disarm Hezbollah.
“We must not leave them intact, ready to attack again,” he said in Jerusalem. “I support the government’s goals. I adhere to them, and I hope the government does, too.”
Mr. Netanyahu said he would save any criticism for after the war, but he urged Mr. Olmert to “cut off the tentacle” of Hezbollah and castigated those who did not see Iran’s hand controlling both Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran is working on nuclear weapons, he added, and “eventually after crying wolf you face the wolf, and this wolf has nuclear teeth, and it will bite, of that I’m sure.”
The people of Lebanon, Mr. Netanyahu said, “have to choose — do they line up with Hezbollah or do they line up against Iran and Syria?” It was important for the West, he said, that Israel win this war.
He said his criticisms of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza last summer had proved accurate, and warned Mr. Olmert that plans for another pullback from the West Bank were dead. “It won’t happen,” he said.
In what was regarded as a political attack, the police said a 25-year-old Italian tourist had been killed near a gate to the Old City in East Jerusalem, The Associated Press reported. The man was stabbed in the back by an assailant who then fled.
In Al Ghaziye, Lebanon, a mostly Shiite town south of Sidon, residents buried nine people killed two days ago when houses there were shelled.
Among the dead were the members of the Khalife family: Mahmoud, a pharmacist; his wife, Ibtisam; and their three children, Hussein, 12, Fatima, 5, and Ahmad, 3.
The bodies were first brought to a Husseiniyeh, a Shiite religious center, for the ritual washing. Inside the mosque, most of the furniture had been pushed aside or stacked on a balcony to make room for the bodies.
The bodies were then transported in a gray van to the town cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean. Few mourners gathered, and those who did were distracted by worries about Israeli airstrikes during the service.
When the small body of Fatima arrived, a man asked the imam, “Can we bury her next to her brother?”
“Yes,” he said. “It makes little difference.”
Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem for this article, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.Jad Mouawad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Greg Myre from Nahariya, Israel,and Dina Kraft from Tel Aviv.
Last edited by HenryTo on Wed Aug 24, 2011 12:26 am; edited 1 time in total |
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rffrydr
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 12:33 am Post subject: |
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FYI. Following courtesy of Stratfor:
| Quote: | Israeli-Arab Crisis Approaching
In September, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether to recognize Palestine as an independent and sovereign state with full rights in the United Nations. In many ways, this would appear to be a reasonable and logical step. Whatever the Palestinians once were, they are clearly a nation in the simplest and most important sense — namely, they think of themselves as a nation. Nations are created by historical circumstances, and those circumstances have given rise to a Palestinian nation. Under the principle of the United Nations and the theory of the right to national self-determination, which is the moral foundation of the modern theory of nationalism, a nation has a right to a state, and that state has a place in the family of nations. In this sense, the U.N. vote will be unexceptional.
However, when the United Nations votes on Palestinian statehood, it will intersect with other realities and other historical processes. First, it is one thing to declare a Palestinian state; it is quite another thing to create one. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two views of what the Palestinian nation ought to be, a division not easily overcome. Second, this vote will come at a time when two of Israel’s neighbors are coping with their own internal issues. Syria is in chaos, with an extended and significant resistance against the regime having emerged. Meanwhile, Egypt is struggling with internal tension over the fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the future of the military junta that replaced him. Add to this the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the potential rise of Iranian power, and the potential recognition of a Palestinian state — while perfectly logical in an abstract sense — becomes an event that can force a regional crisis in the midst of ongoing regional crises. It thus is a vote that could have significant consequences.
The Palestinian Divide
Let’s begin with the issue not of the right of a nation to have a state but of the nature of a Palestinian state under current circumstances. The Palestinians are split into two major factions. The first, Fatah, dominates the West Bank. Fatah derives its ideology from the older, secular Pan-Arab movement. Historically, Fatah saw the Palestinians as a state within the Arab nation. The second, Hamas, dominates Gaza. Unlike Fatah, it sees the Palestinians as forming part of a broader Islamist uprising, one in which Hamas is the dominant Islamist force of the Palestinian people.
The Pan-Arab rising is moribund. Where it once threatened the existence of Muslim states, like the Arab monarchies, it is now itself threatened. Mubarak, Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi all represented the old Pan-Arab vision. A much better way to understand the “Arab Spring” is that it represented the decay of such regimes that were vibrant when they came to power in the late 1960s and early 1970s but have fallen into ideological meaninglessness. Fatah is part of this grouping, and while it still speaks for Palestinian nationalism as a secular movement, beyond that it is isolated from broader trends in the region. It is both at odds with rising religiosity and simultaneously mistrusted by the monarchies it tried to overthrow. Yet it controls the Palestinian proto-state, the Palestinian National Authority, and thus will be claiming a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood. Hamas, on the other hand, is very much representative of current trends in the Islamic world and holds significant popular support, yet it is not clear that it holds a majority position in the Palestinian nation.
All nations have ideological divisions, but the Palestinians are divided over the fundamental question of the Palestinian nation’s identity. Fatah sees itself as part of a secular Arab world that is on the defensive. Hamas envisions the Palestinian nation as an Islamic state forming in the context of a region-wide Islamist rising. Neither is in a position to speak authoritatively for the Palestinian people, and the things that divide them cut to the heart of the nation. As important, each has a different view of its future relations with Israel. Fatah has accepted, in practice, the idea of Israel’s permanence as a state and the need of the Palestinians to accommodate themselves to the reality. Hamas has rejected it.
The U.N. decision raises the stakes in this debate within the Palestinian nation that could lead to intense conflict. As vicious as the battle between Hamas and Fatah has been, an uneasy truce has existed over recent years. Now, there could emerge an internationally legitimized state, and control of that state will matter more than ever before. Whoever controls the state defines what the Palestinians are, and it becomes increasingly difficult to suspend the argument for a temporary truce. Rather than settling anything, or putting Israel on the defensive, the vote will compel a Palestinian crisis.
Fatah has an advantage in any vote on Palestinian statehood: It enjoys far more international support than Hamas does. Europeans and Americans see it as friendly to their interests and less hostile to Israel. The Saudis and others may distrust Fatah from past conflicts, but in the end they fear radical Islamists and Iran and so require American support at a time when the Americans have tired of playing in what some Americans call the “sandbox.” However reluctantly, while aiding Hamas, the Saudis are more comfortable with Fatah. And of course, the embattled Arabist regimes, whatever tactical shifts there may have been, spring from the same soil as Fatah. While Fatah is the preferred Palestinian partner for many, Hamas can also use that reality to portray Fatah as colluding with Israel against the Palestinian people during a confrontation.
For its part, Hamas has the support of Islamists in the region, including Shiite Iranians, but that is an explosive mix to base a strategy on. Hamas must break its isolation if it is to counter the tired but real power of Fatah. Symbolic flotillas from Turkey are comforting, but Hamas needs an end to Egyptian hostility to Hamas more than anything.
Egypt’s Role and Fatah on the Defensive
Egypt is the power that geographically isolates Hamas through its treaty with Israel and with its still-functional blockade on Gaza. More than anyone, Hamas needs genuine regime change in Egypt. The new regime it needs is not a liberal democracy but one in which Islamist forces supportive of Hamas, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, come to power.
At the moment, that is not likely. Egypt’s military has retained a remarkable degree of control, its opposition groups are divided between secular and religious elements, and the religious elements are further divided among themselves — as well as penetrated by an Egyptian security apparatus that has made war on them for years. As it stands, Egypt is not likely to evolve in a direction favorable to Hamas. Therefore, Hamas needs to redefine the political situation in Egypt to convert a powerful enemy into a powerful friend.
Though it is not easy for a small movement to redefine a large nation, in this case, it could perhaps happen. There is a broad sense of unhappiness in Egypt over Egypt’s treaty with Israel, an issue that comes to the fore when Israel and the Palestinians are fighting. As in other Arab countries, passions surge in Egypt when the Palestinians are fighting the Israelis.
Under Mubarak, these passions were readily contained in Egypt. Now the Egyptian regime unquestionably is vulnerable, and pro-Palestinian feelings cut across most, if not all, opposition groups. It is a singular, unifying force that might suffice to break the military’s power, or at least to force the military to shift its Israeli policy.
Hamas in conflict with Israel as the United Nations votes for a Palestinian state also places Fatah on the political defensive among the Palestinians. Fatah cooperation with Israel while Gaza is at war would undermine Fatah, possibly pushing Fatah to align with Hamas. Having the U.N. vote take place while Gaza is at war, a vote possibly accompanied by General Assembly condemnation of Israel, could redefine the region.
Last week’s attack on the Eilat road should be understood in this context. Some are hypothesizing that new Islamist groups forming in the Sinai or Palestinian groups in Gaza operating outside Hamas’ control carried out the attack. But while such organizations might formally be separate from Hamas, I find it difficult to believe that Hamas, with an excellent intelligence service inside Gaza and among the Islamist groups in the Sinai, would not at least have known these groups’ broad intentions and would not have been in a position to stop them. Just as Fatah created Black September in the 1970s, a group that appeared separate from Fatah but was in fact covertly part of it, the strategy of creating new organizations to take the blame for conflicts is an old tactic both for the Palestinians and throughout the world.
Hamas’ ideal attack would offer it plausible deniability — allowing it to argue it did not even know an attack was imminent, much less carry it out — and trigger an Israeli attack on Gaza. Such a scenario casts Israel as the aggressor and Hamas as the victim, permitting Hamas to frame the war to maximum effect in Egypt and among the Palestinians, as well as in the wider Islamic world and in Europe.
Regional Implications and Israel’s Dilemma
The matter goes beyond Hamas. The Syrian regime is currently fighting for its life against its majority Sunni population. It has survived thus far, but it needs to redefine the conflict. The Iranians and Hezbollah are among those most concerned with the fall of the Syrian regime. Syria has been Iran’s one significant ally, one strategically positioned to enhance Iranian influence in the Levant. Its fall would be a strategic setback for Iran at a time when Tehran is looking to enhance its position with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Iran, which sees the uprising as engineered by its enemies — the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — understandably wants al Assad to survive.
Meanwhile, the fall of Syria would leave Hezbollah — which is highly dependent on the current Syrian regime and is in large part an extension of Syrian policy in Lebanon — wholly dependent on Iran. And Iran without its Syrian ally is very far away from Hezbollah. Like Tehran, Hezbollah thus also wants al Assad to survive. Hezbollah joining Hamas in a confrontation with Israel would take the focus off the al Assad regime and portray his opponents as undermining resistance to Israel. Joining a war with Israel also would make it easier for Hezbollah to weather the fall of al Assad should his opponents prevail. It would help Hezbollah create a moral foundation for itself independent of Syria. Hezbollah’s ability to force a draw with Israel in 2006 constituted a victory for the radical Islamist group that increased its credibility dramatically.
The 2006 military confrontation was also a victory for Damascus, as it showed the Islamic world that Syria was the only nation-state supporting effective resistance to Israel. It also showed Israel and the United States that Syria alone could control Hezbollah and that forcing Syria out of Lebanon was a strategic error on the part of Israel and the United States.
Faced with this dynamic, it will be difficult for Fatah to maintain its relationship with Israel. Indeed, Fatah could be forced to initiate an intifada, something it would greatly prefer to avoid, as this would undermine what economic development the West Bank has experienced.
Israel therefore conceivably could face conflict in Gaza, a conflict along the Lebanese border and a rising in the West Bank, something it clearly knows. In a rare move, Israel announced plans to call up reserves in September. Though preannouncements of such things are not common, Israel wants to signal resolution.
Israel has two strategies in the face of the potential storm. One is a devastating attack on Gaza followed by rotating forces to the north to deal with Hezbollah and intense suppression of an intifada. Dealing with Gaza fast and hard is the key if the intention is to abort the evolution I laid out. But the problem here is that the three-front scenario I laid out is simply a possibility; there is no certainty here. If Israel initiates conflict in Gaza and fails, it risks making a possibility into a certainty — and Israel has not had many stunning victories for several decades. It could also create a crisis for Egypt’s military rulers, not something the Israelis want.
Israel also simply could absorb the attacks from Hamas to make Israel appear the victim. But seeking sympathy is not likely to work given how Palestinians have managed to shape global opinion. Moreover, we would expect Hamas to repeat its attacks to the point that Israel no longer could decline combat.
War thus benefits Hamas (even if Hamas maintains plausible deniability by having others commit the attacks), a war Hezbollah has good reason to enter at such a stage and that Fatah does not want but could be forced into. Such a war could shift the Egyptian dynamic significantly to Hamas’ advantage, while Iran would certainly want al-Assad to be able to say to Syrians that a war with Israel is no time for a civil war in Syria. Israel would thus find itself fighting three battles simultaneously. The only way to do that is to be intensely aggressive, making moderation strategically difficult.
Israel responded modestly compared to the past after the Eilat incident, mounting only limited attacks on Gaza against mostly members of the Palestinian Resistance Committees, an umbrella group known to have links with Hamas. Nevertheless, Hamas has made clear that its de facto truce with Israel was no longer assured. The issue now is what Hamas is prepared to do and whether Hamas supporters, Saudi Arabia in particular, can force them to control anti-Israeli activities in the region. The Saudis want al Assad to fall, and they do not want a radical regime in Egypt. Above all, they do not want Iran’s hand strengthened. But it is never clear how much influence the Saudis or Egyptians have over Hamas. For Hamas, this is emerging as the perfect moment, and it is hard to believe that even the Saudis can restrain them. As for the Israelis, what will happen depends on what others decide — which is the fundamental strategic problem that Israel has. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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Looks like dimploacy still not doing it. Last time we put a pretty good "mid-east" premium in crude. That would be good right now as the pricing would carry across the board. It could also be shaping up as the final insult for this "alternative asset."
Interesting how "strategy" called for a timing between US presidencies at the height of the lamest of ducks. Politics anyone?
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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Looks like diplomacy won't do it:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/11/mideast.main/index.html
Israeli PM just covering all his bases - especially concerns from his "dovish" critics. This is an interesting snippet:
Also Friday, a U.N. convoy departed the Lebanese army base in Marjeyoun, helping to evacuate Lebanese soldiers and police, Lebanese Internal Security Forces and a U.N. Forces in Lebanon spokesman said.
Two UNIFIL armored personnel carriers escorted the convoy, which consisted of 80 Lebanese security force vehicles carrying more than 350 members of the Lebanese security forces, plus 100 civilian vehicles. |
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