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Note: This is the third and final  installment in Franklin Lamb’s three-part series.

Dahiyeh

“Absolutely not! Without a credible deterrent force, there is no real Lebanese sovereignty. Israel came very close to getting nearly all it wanted with the 1983 May 17th agreement. Had Hezbollah not prevented this, Lebanon today would be colonized with near confederation status with Israel. The Bush administration’s democracy and ‘save the Christians’ crusade back-fired when each election resulted in Islamist victories while his war in Iraq and support for Israel is making refugees of a high percentage of Christians. It is now Hezbollah and its allies who are protecting the Christians and want free elections in the Middle East, not the Bush administration”.

– American student interviewed as part of a survey of 27 Lebanese institutions of higher education on whether Hezbollah should immediately disarm.

As noted previously, the US government is not obsessed by Hezbollah’s deterrent capability. It appears prepared to back off from this issue and signal to Hezbollah that it can keep its weapons if they use them only in legitimate self defense against a foreign attack.

This seemingly sharp change of policy is similar to Secretary of State Rice’s apparent switch from Bush administration demands regarding an immediate election of a Lebanese president to her April 14, 2008 statement that it is really not necessary after all. Beirut’s pro-government

An Nahar newspaper reported this week that an Arab diplomat quoted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as telling the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that the absence of a president in Lebanon was not a problem and that her top priority was to keep Premier Fouad Siniora as head of the executive body: “What’s wrong with keeping the situation in Lebanon as it is? Our priority is to keep Fouad Siniora as head of the democratically elected government…and that he acts according to the powers granted to him and the president,” the source, according to Beirut’s As Safir daily, quoted Rice.

The new US rationale creates a legal fiction to avoid the “resistance/militia” problem presented by UNSC Resolutions 1559 and 1701 and would align the US position with the views of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the current Prime Minister Siniora as well as a majority in Parliament, the Lebanese public the United Nations membership. To wit:

The 2005 Lebanese cabinet statement: “The government considers that Lebanon’s resistance is a sincere and natural expression of the Lebanese people’s right to defend its land and dignity in the face of Israeli aggression threats, and ambitions as well as it’s right to continue its actions to free Lebanese territory.”

Hassan Nasrallah, in his speech at Bint Jbeil on May 25, 2005, explained that during meetings with Prime Minister Rafic Hariri that they had become friends and that Hariri offered to write out is his own handwriting a statement regarding the right of the resistance to bear arms.

According to Nasrallah: “I told him, “Forgive me, please; I do not want you to do that; I will accept your word. Just say it and it will be enough. He (PM Rafic Hariri) then said to me, word for word, ‘After a careful examination of the resistance’s experience, performance, wisdom, equilibrium, and efficiency, I came to believe in it. I can also tell you that if I become prime minister again, I will not implement that paragraph in Resolution 1559. I agree that the resistance and its weapons must stay until a comprehensive settlement is reached in the region.”

His son, Saad Hariri confirmed this to CNN when he stated that Hezbollah was not an armed militia but an armed resistance movement for all of Lebanon. Moreover, the State Department Office of the General Council knows the legal and political effect of the February 2006 Siniora declaration that his government will not call Hezbollah “by any name other than the resistance”.

A recent survey of an important segment of Lebanese opinion confirms that the general Lebanese public favors Hezbollah retaining its deterrent capability pending a just resolution of the Question of Palestine.

As part of a research project on Hezbollah, an admittedly unscientific survey of 27 Lebanese institutions of higher learning was undertaken, conducted over a four month period. The following questions were posed to randomly approached students, faculty and staff from, among others, the American University of Science and Technology, University of Balamand, American University of Beirut, Arab Open University, University of Saint Joseph, Beirut Arab University, Islamic University of Lebanon, Lebanese American University.

Survey Questions

1. Do you favor Hezbollah retaining its armed military wing and its weapons for the time being?

2. If yes, why?

3. If no, why not?

Of those surveyed, 12 per cent thought Hezbollah should immediately turn its weapons over to the Lebanese Army after agreement with the Government and with international guarantees in place that Israel would not attack Lebanon again. The main reasons given were variations on the idea that a sovereign country should have only one source of authority and control over its military and deterrence capability.

The remaining 88 per cent surveyed thought that Hezbollah should retain its weapons for the time being and offered a range of reasons:
Hezbollah is currently the only force In Lebanon capable of deterring Israeli aggression;

Having Hezbollah as a deterrent force at this time is in Lebanon’s national interest given US and Israel provocations such as the 6th fleet, numerous threats, Israeli over flights, assassinations etc.;

Israel continues to interfere with our water sources and threatens war over Lebanon’s use of our own Wazzani and Hasbani Rivers;

UN Security Council Resolution 425 has not yet been implemented as Israel continues to occupy the Shebaa farms, the village of Ghajar, and other parcels of Lebanese land;

Israel cannot be trusted not to invade Lebanon at will and US ‘guarantees’ are worthless as Lebanon and the world saw in 1982 when the US ‘guaranteed’ the safety of the Palestinian Refugee Camps including Sabra-Shatila;

Israel still has not released our Lebanese hostages and prisoners and arrests our citizens along the northern border of Palestine at will;

Hezbollah has a national and moral duty to retain a military capacity to support the liberation of Palestine, the central cause for Arabs;

Without facing a credible deterrent, Israel would never consider giving back the occupied Golan Heights to Syria;

Without Hezbollah being able to contain and deter Zionist Israel, Lebanon’s resources would be siphoned by Israel including its water, its land, and its independence;

Hezbollah is the only Party with broad enough support, moral suasion, and substance to maintain stability and prevent a US/Israeli encouraged civil war;

Hezbollah keeps the US from repeating the 1982-83 intervention and disaster;

Some American students studying in Lebanon identified with the views expressed by a student from New York: “A strong Hezbollah provides moral support to resistance and liberation efforts in the Middle East and human rights causes in the West. For example, the American people have a daunting task in breaking the Zionist hold on its government and its media. But it is slowly being achieved by education and the American people learning the facts of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Lebanon. Hezbollah’s success inspires and encourages this movement”;

“There is no other group to protect Lebanon. UNIFIL has never been respected by Israel and the Lebanese army is too weak and will likely remain so because the Bush administration and Israel worry its arms may be used to defend Lebanon against, God forbid, Israel!”;

Hezbollah helps protect UNIFIL and even the US Embassy from al Qaeda kidnappings and attacks;

A strong Hezbollah provides inspiration and moral support for increasing numbers of Lebanese, Europeans and Americans who reject the Bush administration aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and its funding of Israeli aggression with its killing in Lebanon and Palestine;

In the early 1980s Lebanese President Amin Gemayel moved against the weapons in Muslim west Beirut but did not disturb the Phalangist arms in Christian east Beirut. In addition, Gemayel ordered the army to remove Shia from their homes on the outskirts of Beirut shortly after he was inaugurated. We need a settlement before we feel trust and confidence to give up the security we now have;

Hezbollah’s strength gives the Palestinians hope whereas leaders of Arabs states have failed to join the liberation/resistance struggle either in Palestine or Lebanon, some as a result of being bought off such as Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf or threatened;

Given the long history of discrimination against Lebanon’s Shia population, Hezbollah’s vigor gives the community confidence as they rebuild their lives and try to get the government to deliver services to their areas;

Our citizens continue to die in the South from US/Israeli landmines and cluster bombs and Israel still refuses to give the UN demining teams maps to help clear them;

The Lebanese army is weak and the US/Israel project is intent on keeping it weak;

Israel’s threat to transfer the Palestinian population must be resisted and only Hezbollah currently has the power and credibility to do this;

The Lebanese Resistances’ strength has a stabilizing and calming affect on Lebanon because it will not allow others to provoke another civil war;

The question of Hezbollah’s weapons should be referred to the new government following the coming elections and the selection of a President;

The Bush administration push to disarm the Lebanese Resistance is an Israeli decision to help Israel, not to help the Lebanese people.

A recent editorial in the conservative Beirut Daily Star reflects the views of much of Lebanon’s academic community:

During all the years that Hezbollah conducted low-intensity warfare against Israeli occupation forces in South Lebanon (and perhaps even in 2006), there were many instances in which its capacity to exact a heavier toll deterred or limited escalation by the Jewish state… Hezbollah came into existence as the direct result of Israeli aggression. Today the party serves a far wider variety of social, political and economic purposes, but it was born of a refusal to acquiesce in Israel’s continual abuse and bullying of this country. …

The history matters more than anything else because solving a problem requires an understanding of cause and effect – and because the historical behavior that created the situation has not changed: The Israelis have not, for example, fully vacated the Lebanese territory they occupy, stopped violating Lebanese airspace, or provided badly needed firing data that might help demining crews clear unexploded ordnance that has killed or wounded 300 Lebanese since the end of the 2006 war.

By stressing Hezbollah’s guns today instead of the decades of innumerable depredations to which they have been a response, therefore, the Security Council tries to put the cart before the horse.

The bottom line is that Hezbollah will not grant impunity for the Israelis to run roughshod over the Lebanese as they have the Palestinians. The sooner the Security Council absorbs that immutable fact, the sooner it can get to work on the source of the conflict. If not, it becomes even more important for March 14 to do so because if Israel retains its “free pass,” this country and its government is going to need all the strength they can muster.”

“Believe it or not there are some plusses for the Bush administration if Hezbollah is strong”, explained a Senate Intelligence Committee Staffer during an email exchange recently:

“It seems they (the Bush administration) don’t see any really good options right now nor do they see certain long term American benefits if Hezbollah disarms. Some see a strong Hezbollah as a deterrent to regional interference in Lebanon. Hezbollah might be the stabilizing factor in the region the international community is looking for. Being Lebanese nationalists, if need be in the finally analysis they [Hezbollah] can be counted on to stand up to Syria, Israel or Iran for the good of their people and country.”

She continued:

“The terrorism case against Hezbollah is weak and the Administration does not feel it has solid grounds to pursue it. Believe it or not some of us were a little embarrassed back in October of 2001 when then National Security advisor Rice was new on the job and expressed surprise to the international media that so many in Lebanon supported Hezbollah which she claimed, without offering any proof, “has killed innocent people”.

The next question for Rice from a reporter was to ask her about the US bombing that very same day by the Bush administration of the Sultanpur Mosque in Jalalabad which killed more than 200 family worshippers.

Rice said she had no knowledge of that and would get back to the reporter who, the last I heard, was still waiting her reply.

“The point,” the staffer wrote, “ is their [Hezbollah’s] record is better than ours and given our credibility problem the US does not want to touch the ‘you are worse than we are pissing contest’. Hezbollah has not attacked us for almost 25 years, really since they went public in 1985. We discount the early and wild 1980s a bit because they weren’t really organized and we were also playing pretty rough over there (in Lebanon) when we used the New Jersey and tried to hit Fadlallah and some other stuff. We don’t need to fight Hezbollah. There are plenty of other actors out there who constitute a real threat to us and we know Hezbollah, like us, can’t always choose associates which sometimes geopolitical conditions impose.”

For nearly a quarter century the feelers from the American side have been variations of selected boilerplate tenders. Recent Middle East realities have added some others.

What the Bush administration wants from Hezbollah

A public announcement of, and adherence to, a Hezbollah policy that separates Islam from terrorism in the minds of the western public, i.e. between religions on the one hand and terrorist activity on the other. This, the US argues, will allow for acceptance of Hezbollah in the West and allow for normalizing relations;

In a switch from sponsoring salafists against Hezbollah, Washington now wants a “security cooperation understanding” with Hezbollah whereby it would monitor al Qaeda and provide the US with information about groups or individuals Hezbollah may have information about. For example, those who are apt to strike inside the US;

Hezbollah is to agree to stay away from the Blue Line from Naqoura to Khiam and further up opposite Shebaa Farms;

To end its encouragement of and support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad;

Remove itself from activity regarding Syria and the Golan Heights and leave that issue to the parties directly concerned

Desist from making an issue of the Shebaa Farms and Ghajar and leave it to the US and the UN to see that Israel withdraws;

Pull back from Iran and concentrate on its own role as a political party operating strictly for, of and by Lebanon.

Further, that:

Hezbollah must separate itself from the Arab-Israeli conflict including Jerusalem;

Hezbollah should commit to Lebanon not taking more than its “equitable share” of the Lebanese rivers and water sources including the Wazzani, which, argues the Bush administration, supplies 30 per cent of “Israel’s Jordan River” (!)

Hezbollah must agree not to interfere with the naturalization or relocation of Palestinians in Lebanon or with transferring groups of them internationally to suitable countries for ‘proper settlement’ as a resolution of the Right of Return issue.

What does Hezbollah get in return?

An offer Hezbollah will refuse

“Nobody can impose terms on us, or commit us to anything we do not believe in. Let me be clear: Israel won’t get through politics what it didn’t get through war, even if the UN resolution gave this to Israel. What they couldn’t do through war, they want to do by peaceful means? It doesn’t work like that.”

– Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem, Al-Manar television, 15 August 2006

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr (“just call me Joe–anything but Sue” as he does his Johnny Cash imitation) Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and twice Presidential Candidate, is a friendly, loquacious and knowledgeable fellow. Having served on that Committee for nearly a quarter century and traveled widely, Biden thinks of himself as someone who can be confronted with ‘deal breakers’ at the negotiation table and work out mutually acceptable solutions. He apparently believes that if Barack Obama becomes president, US policy in the region may change.

Some members of Biden’s committee staff generally favor engagement with Hezbollah (privately) if the Party would agree. “The Party of God, not the Zionist controlled Democratic Party”, one staffer hastens to add.

When asked what they conclude the US would be willing to extend Hezbollah based on earlier feelers and offers and what they learned from Committee Staff discussions with White House Congressional liaison personnel, State Department contacts, and their own tuition, the following emerge:

Rebuilding Lebanon and Keeping Israel At Bay

• “The US will consider funding a ‘Marshall Plan’ type operation for rebuilding South Lebanon and guarantee [that word again!] that Israel stays out. The US would be prepared to transfer directly to Hezbollah designated bank accounts “enormous sums of money to spend on the territories Israel destroyed, and equivalent sums to improve other deprived areas of the country”

A Congressional media operative noted this off the record by email:

• “Just ask Egypt and Jordan how we can sweeten a deal! Hezbollah should not worry about losing Iranian funding. We’ve got a lot more than they do!”
   

International Legitimacy

• The Bush administration would anoint Hezbollah with the US imprimatur of ‘international legitimacy’, repeal the relevant targeting Executive orders and remove Hezbollah’s Information Unit (Al Manar TV, Radio Noor etc), its Construction Company (Jihad al Bina), its social service agencies and its financial institutions from the US Treasury and State department Terrorism lists.

Cluster Bomb Maps

The US will force Israel to turn over maps of planted land mines, cluster bomb maps and firing logs which the international community has been demanding for the past 18 months following the end of the 2006 July War. Hezbollah is greatly concerned about the unexploded ordnance terrorizing its popular base in the South. The Tyre based UN Mine Action Coordination Committee has so far uncovered 966 civilian locations where Israel dropped US cluster bombs covering an area of 39 million square meters. UNMACC Program Manager in Tyre Chris Clark estimates that de-miners have been able to locate and disarm 143,000 US-supplied cluster bombs, but another million or more may remain. Since the end of the fighting in mid August 2006, the total number of people injured or killed is 296 according to Dalia Farren, Director of Media Relations at UNMACC.

To date the Bush administration has not demanded the maps from Israel, despite Lebanese continuing to die, because the State Department Office of General Counsel produced a Legal Memorandum which warns that if Israel releases the demanded information it will effectively constitute a self-indictment for War Crimes.

UNIFIL knows this but has chosen to keep quiet while routinely renewing its public demands knowing that Israel will not comply unless the US forces it. The Pentagon has no problem with “cutting the bastards (Israel) loose on this one and forcing them to ‘fess up”, according to a Congressional source.

A clarifying comment from one of the aforementioned Memorandum’s authors:

“The Winograd Commission claims that Israel used cluster bombs in accordance with international and US law has no support from the July 2006 record. Israel committed serial war crimes as well as wholesale violations of American law that no other country would be allowed to do.

In 1982 President Reagan cut off cluster bombs to Israel for 6 years. This time President Bush won’t touch the issue and Congress has buried the US Arms Export Act violations, hoping the public won’t demand its application. Some US officials complain that they have a hard time looking their Lebanese-American constituents in the eye. We are not proud of what’s become of their little country because of our weapons.”

Releasing Lebanese Prisoners in Israeli Jails and Territorial Sovereignty
The US would obtain the release of all Hezbollah detainees and prisoners from Israeli jails;

The US will force the return of Shebaa Farms, Ghajar, end Israeli over flights of Lebanese territory and violations of Lebanese sovereignty.

From Opposition to Government

The US would secure a bigger role for Hezbollah in the Lebanese Government while establishing normal relations with the party, lifting all US travel constraints imposed on its members and supporters while cooperating with Hezbollah in forming a new government based on the results of the 2009 elections while encouraging a new census, the first once since 1933.

As a Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Lebanese specialist recently emailed:

Do you really think Lebanon’s hereditary tribal government is going to change? More than one-third of Lebanon’s Parliament constitutes family hand-me-down seats. If you agree that the Lebanese people are fed up with the ‘warlords’ how do you think we feel? There ought to be a one person, one vote system to elect their leaders. For me personally, dealing with a group that keeps its word would be a welcomed relief in my office. Hezbollah is quintessentially nationalist and can handle Iran and Syria. You get my meaning”.

One staffer on the House subcommittee on the Middle East explained as background:
“Personally, and I certainly don’t speak for the White House, I see the whole of Lebanon on the table. The right deal and Hezbollah can have it as far as I am concerned. What is the right deal? Our Committee Staff mainly believes Hamas will offer essentially a perpetual cease fire to Israel in exchange for all, repeat, all of the Palestine taken in 1967 and a return to the June 4, 1967 border with Jerusalem at its capital. That includes a full right of return for the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees. That means no checkpoints, no settlements, no outposts, no Israeli presence and no excuses!”

If Hamas can accept this, then Hezbollah’s past statements regarding acceptance of a solution to the Question of Palestine arrived at by the Palestinians might mean peace.

Hezbollah’s Response

Hezbollah accepts dialogue as a matter of principle and axiom. Historically, the Shia culture generally and Hezbollah in particular is comfortable with discussions and exchanging ideas with friends and foes ranging from issues of war and peace to social problems to religion and ways to improve peoples lives. It is prepared for dialogue over the question of Palestine, the bloodstream issue and central cause of Arabs and Muslims and increasingly people around the World.

However, Hezbollah has consistently rejected most US feelers because, as Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has stated, “our acquiescence to America’s demands would simply have meant abandoning our faith, our people and our history.”

As far back as November 16, 2001, Hassan Nasrallah explained Hezbollah’s past objections to US offers to the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-Aam:
“As for their demand that we sever our connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that would mean the total elimination of Hezbollah’s head and heart, a complete disregard for the martyrs’ blood and a betrayal of their families’ tears, of our people and of their sacrifice. It would also mean giving up our religious and legal duty to come to the assistance of Palestine”.

According to Hezbollah, the US has tried several times “to place us in a state of confrontation with what they called “Sunni fundamentalism”.

They tried to provoke us along these lines, on the grounds that, in the future, Sunni fundamentalism will pose the gravest threat to Shiism”. The Bush administration, according to Hezbollah, also tried to get Iran to attack the Taliban and provoke a Shia-Sunni confrontation. But Iran did not fall into the trap.

With respect to the bargaining chip of pulling back from the Palestinian cause, Hezbollah considers that it has, in the words of Nasrallah, “a moral, humanitarian, religious, patriotic, and national duty towards the Palestinians”.

Hezbollah believes that peace will come to Palestine and the region not through a phony ‘peace process’ trying to buy off the Palestinian or Lebanese Resistance but when the occupation ends. It really is that simple. And until the Bush administration or its successor in Washington really understand this, negotiations will remain just talk.

One Hezbollah acquaintance stated: “We need to ensure at the beginning of negotiations that the occupation ends. Then peace can be made between states. An occupied people cannot make peace with its occupiers”.

With respect to the current ‘situation’ in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s international relations officer, Nawaf Moussawi stated recently that the “most dangerous thing in US policies currently [has been] their engagement in the blatant disruption of attempts at dialogue and consensus among Lebanese political forces.” Moussawi added that the US was engaged in “deepening political and sectarian divides within each confession in order to ignite mobile civil wars.” He stressed that the freedom of Lebanon could only come through its “self-defense capabilities, including those of the resistance” and that independence could only be attained through consensus and unity.

What the Hezbollah leadership discusses in its Shura Council becomes public knowledge only when Hezbollah wants it to. But until today Hezbollah views US proposals with deep suspicion and as calculated to advance Israel’s agenda in the region.

Hezbollah is no stranger to the Bush Administration carrot and stick pattern of wooing and then harshly threatening if overtures are spurned. Hezbollah respects the American people but views most of the recent American governments proposals “as nothing but a political bomb meant to destroy Hezbollah, since they cannot of course destroy us by dropping a nuclear bomb on us,” as Hezbollah’s Secretary General Nasrallah has said.

Regarding the future, Nasrallah told the Kuwaiti Daily Al-Rai Al-Aam,

“We are not at all worried. We are holding fast to the options that our legitimate, religious, national, humane, and moral commitments impose on us, and do not think that the US will carry out military operations in this region. At any rate, they do not have valid pretexts for doing so, and we stand firm in our positions, our path, and our convictions.”

Many in Washington would favor dialogue with Hezbollah. It remains to be seen if ‘bridge builders’ can make that happen and if we are going to see some serious changes in US foreign policy starting with the Middle East.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon. The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s use of American Weapons against Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.com.uk or Lebanese Bookstores (soon also in Arabic).In the USA, the title is available at www.LebaneseBooks.com, and currently enjoys Free Standard Shipping. Hezbollah: A Brief Guide for Beginners is expected soon in Arabic and English. Franklin Lamb  can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

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April 24 – Note: This is the second installment in Franklin Lamb’s extraordinary three-part series.

“These fools do not learn from their past mistakes. When they withdrew from Lebanon, they continued to occupy the Shebaa Farms and kept our brothers in custody. Had they released them when they left Lebanon, there would not now be a ‘prisoner issue’ between Lebanon and the enemy. They opened the door for us.”

Hassan Nasrallah, January 2004, during a welcome home ceremony for Lebanese and Arab detainees as a result of a Hezbollah-Israel swap.

Dahiyeh

As discussed below, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the Bush administration is prepared to concede that Hezbollah keep its weapons. Even though it encourages its marionettes to foment this issue, and does so itself publicly, the Bush Administration knows that Hezbollah is not going to disarm until the Question of Palestine is settled to the satisfaction of the Palestinians. Yet it feels that focusing on Hezbollah’s militia is still a good pre-negotiation bargaining chip.

The word ‘militia’ with respect to Hezbollah requires a brief clarification.

The term Hezbollah ‘militia’ is used by the Bush administration as a substitute for the internationally (except in Israel) accepted term Lebanese Resistance. In private or in front of Zionist groups the Bush administration simply refers to ‘Hezbollah terrorists’ to describe the Lebanese Resistance. The Bush administration has not been able to bring itself to utter the R-word in public. Indeed, the noun Resistance is banned from even the US Embassy Press office here in Beirut ever since former US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman exclaimed in frustration at last year’s Embassy Staff Christmas party (reportedly after a couple of glasses of holiday ‘punch’): “even hearing that word gives me gas! … F—k the Resistance!!”, he repeated twice as the Ambassador moved center stage in front of the staff decorated Christmas tree to lead the guests, with his arms raised and keeping time to the music, in the singing of his favorite Carol: “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.

Those in Lebanon who miss the former US Ambassador may be relieved to know that while Jeffrey did not get the Gulf posting some at the State Department thought he was angling for, he is evidently content to be back in Washington.

As a reward for his three years service in Beirut, Elliot Abrams got him named #2 in the Welch Club, serving directly under David Welch with the new crisp title: Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near Eastern Affairs.

This post puts Feltman on the front line regarding Hezbollah and in close contact with his long time soul mate, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Kristen Silverberg. Silverberg came out this week with more threats for those who may be indicted and brought before the Hariri Tribunal, a cause long championed by Feltman. Kristen emphasized that Secretary of State Rice had pledged that “The court will try the suspects in Hariri’s assassination and related crimes.” The “related crimes” language was chosen to signal Hezbollah that its suspected activities in the 1980s and 1990s may be fair game for the Tribunal and its leadership could theoretically be indicted and arrest warrants issued. This is a squeeze presumably calculated to make Hezbollah more receptive to ‘offers’.

To reinforce this latter point, Samir Geagea carried the identical threat when he briefed the media on his return from Washington on April Fools Day. The tribunal, according to Geagea, “wouldn’t just deal with the Hariri assassination, but would also shed light on what has happened in Lebanon in the past 30 years.” (Beirut media wags have suggested Geagea may know something about that subject).

Geagea advised the media that he also raised the issue of Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails and “we were surprised by the answer from the State Department that Hezbollah is negotiating with Israel on this issue!” Geagea may not have been aware that Washington was using him in the role of ‘good cop’ on this issue. The point regarding Hezbollah ‘handling that issue’ was emphasized to Geagea, according to a Congressional source who attended an Israeli lobby reception for Geagea, in order to signal Hezbollah. The message Geagea unwittingly carried was that the US realizes that on certain issues vital to Lebanon, Hezbollah is best suited to carry the file and that the US respects Hezbollah’s competence and, indeed right, to get Lebanon’s prisoners released since no one else can do the job. The same source opined “that the US is increasingly inclined to use Hezbollah against Israel and vice versa”.

To maintain pressure on Hezbollah, each month US Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad repeats his ‘bad cop’ tirade against Hezbollah at Turtle Bay. His skit is to demand from the 15-member Security Council, during its monthly meeting on the Middle East that: “Hezbollah must immediately disarm! I would like to underscore our deep concern about the illegal arms transfers across the Syrian-Lebanese border, and in particular claims by Hezbollah that it has replenished its military capacity since the summer 2006 war. Hezbollah must disarm, and it must do so now, in accordance with resolutions 1559 and 1701.”

This month Khalilzad was joined with a nearly identical and simultaneous statement by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack and, perhaps out of politeness, none of the Security Council members mentioned Israeli violations of UNSC 1701. Not to be eclipsed by Silverberg, Khalilzad then urged member states to “generously support” the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The irony of his strident call to implement all of UNSC Resolutions 1559 and 1701 (which Israel has failed to do) was not lost on the Security Council members given recollections that in 1978 the Israeli army invaded south Lebanon and the Security Council issued Resolution 425 demanding Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal form Lebanese territory. Under US pressure the Security Council was paralyzed and for 30 years did nothing to implement the resolution. Nor did the Security Council invoke Chapter Seven of the UN Charter which would have allowed the UN to take military action to enforce 425.

While nothing effective was done to implement SCR 425 for 30 years or for 41 years concerning UNSCR 242 and more than a dozen others, the Bush administration supports the Israeli claim that the matter is now closed. Of course it is not closed and according to 174 countries out of 193 members of the UN whose delegates were polled by students from Columbia University, UNSCR 425 is not fully implemented since Israel still occupies the Lebanese territory of Shebaa Farms and Ghajar village.

Some UN members point out that it took only seven months for the key provision of UNSC 1559 regarding the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the “disarming of militias” to be implemented under threat of Chapter 7 military action (the next and seventh UNSC monitoring and progress report which will focus on Syria and Hezbollah will be issued on April 28): seven months to implement 1559 in contrast to 30 years for 425 or 41 for 242 both still not implemented. Why? A delegate from China surprised some by providing the short answer: Because 425 and 242 targeted Israel and 1559 favored Israel.

President Bush also does not pass up many opportunities to keep political pressure on the Lebanese Resistance. On the 25th anniversary of the bombing at the US Embassy in Beirut last week he told the world: “The people of Lebanon have spent the better part of three decades living under the threat of violence, assassinations, and other forms of intimidation. Since the Beirut attack, we and citizens of many countries have suffered more attacks at the hands of Hezbollah and other terrorists.”

One week before, the strong Zionist supporter of Israel and Islamophobe, MEP Jana Ken of the Liberal Group urged the European Parliament on April 9, 2008 to put “it [Hezbollah] in the list of terrorist organizations in order to contain Hezbollah’s influence and its activities and in order to curb its power over the Islamic world.” Within hours, US-inspired charges were leveled by Bulgaria that Hezbollah has benefited from drug smuggling revenue across from its territories.

Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, in a memo to the Bulgarian Embassy in Beirut, said the charge made by the Bulgarian parliament’s security committee is “totally denied by us.” The memo added: “We hope that it is not motivated by Zionist agitation with the aim of hurting the image of resistance movements.” It called on “Bulgarian parliamentarians to be more accurate in this respect.”
Another “let’s squeeze Hezbollah” tactic of the Bush administration is to periodically issue Anti- Hezbollah Warnings for U.S. Citizens. On an average of every seven months, David Welch, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs will try to pressure Hezbollah with yet another Lebanon Travel Warning for U.S. Citizens designed to lead the world to believe that Hezbollah is dangerous for Americans.

The latest is dated April 22, 2008 and is directed: “(t)o US citizens in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing political tensions and the threat of attacks against Western interests. This Travel Warning informs U.S. citizens of current safety and security concerns”. The US government “continues to strongly urge that Americans defer travel to Lebanon and that American citizens in Lebanon consider leaving immediately or consider carefully the risks of remaining.”

The statement says that “Hezbollah has threatened retaliatory actions for the assassination of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in Syria Feb. 12, 2008.” Finally, it warns that “Prominent members of Hezbollah have intimated that they hold the United States partially responsible for Mughniyeh’s death, and it is possible that someone may lash out against U.S. interests or persons.”

No sooner had he tried to frighten Americans in Lebanon than Welch warned the general public here on 22 April that “Another hot summer awaits the Lebanese after political efforts to settle the Lebanon crisis reached a deadlock, including the Arab League initiative.” Welch was quoted at a news conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday, further warning that “Tourism (in Lebanon) is expected to drop due to tensions in the country”.

Against this pressure background, what is the Bush offer and why now?

US allies are urging the Bush administration to open dialogue with Hezbollah and efforts to isolate Hezbollah have failed.

British Defense Secretary Des Browne in a newspaper interview published in the March 30 2008 UK Daily Telegraph agreed with Jonathan Powell, formerly Tony Blair’s top adviser, that Hezbollah should be engaged in discussions. The efforts to politically isolate Hezbollah along with Hamas have failed. Just last week the French Embassy in Beirut invited Hezbollah’s foreign affairs representative to lunch. President Carter’s meetings with Hamas will accelerate the process.

In addition, pro-Hezbollah sentiment is growing in Jordan and Egypt as reflected in legislation introduced in the Jordanian Parliament this week to abrogate the Oct. 26, 1994 Treaty with Israel. While the proposal will not pass this year, the Bush administration is being advised that both Jordan and Egypt will likely abrogate their treaties with Israel following anticipated rebellions against the Abdullah and Mubarak regimes.

Nearly two-thirds of the 27 Countries that make up the European Union are said to believe that it is doubtful whether there really is a viable military option – American, Israeli or combined – for destroying Hezbollah. The Party is too integrated and has support all over Lebanon and the region. Even if there were, the war in Iraq has effectively eliminated it. The American military’s strength has been exhausted in Iraq and Afghanistan and it has inadequate force to devote to a particularly dangerous third front. This is perhaps the greatest consequence of the neocon adventure in Iraq, where after five years there is no end in sight. The United States may be stuck in Iraq for years to come, regardless of who the next president is or how many casualties it takes. Israel may end up as the main victim of the Iraq adventure it instigated.

‘Essential’ Bush administration/Israeli projects have failed in Lebanon.

Neither the Sunni-Shia conflict, the Kleiaat airbase, the Al Qaeda affiliates, a civil war nor the planned and supported July 2006 destruction of Hezbollah has been realized.

A brief comment on one of its projects. The Bush Administration and their Welch Club allies brought al Qaeda elements from Iraq to Lebanon and Syria, starting in 2005, for two purposes. One was to fight Hezbollah and thus weaken Iranian influence in the region and the second was to ignite another Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Syria like the April 1981 attack on the Alawite village of Hama or overthrow the Bashar Assad government.

When Al Qaeda arrived in Lebanon they did what all motivated al Qaeda types do when they arrive in a staging country to organize jihad. They frequented mosques, prayed more than the required five times a day, held late night study and planning sessions, and went shopping. The women shopped at BHV, Spinneys, local shops and the Beirut Mall for baby needs and school supplies and the men went shopping for weapons and fighters. Based on interviews with some who associated with Fatah al Islam during the past 18 months, it appears that many in Lebanon today think they were the good guys in the conflict at Nahr al Bared. Many salafists thought they were coming to Lebanon to fight UNIFIL, perhaps bomb some western and Arab Embassies, try to ignite a war with Israel and generally do what they like to do best.

However, it soon became clear to Fatah al-Islam that they were expected by local pay-masters to fight Hezbollah instead. The salafists demurred because they understood for the first time that they were brought to Lebanon to be used against Syria and Iran.

During discussions the main reason they refused to fight Hezbollah was made clear. Most al Qaeda partisans take seriously the Islamic injunction against fighting fellow Muslims unless in self-defense while others feel apostates are fair game. They also admire Hezbollah, who they report has been reaching out to Sunnis, and don’t want to fight them, because as one commented: “we are on the same side working in Lebanon to liberate Palestine, so we must not fight each other.”

Their analysis is nearly identical to the one just offered on 4/23/08, in an audio message posted on the Internet by Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Dr. Zawahiri announced that:”Lebanon will play a pivotal role in the Islamists’ fight against the Crusaders and Jews. Lebanon is a Muslim frontline fort. It will have a pivotal role, God willing, in future battles with the Crusaders and the Jews. I call upon the jihadist generation in Lebanon to prepare to reach Palestine, and to banish the invading Crusader forces which are claimed to be peace keeping forces in Lebanon,” he said in reference to the U.N. forces deployed along the borders with Israel. From this observer’s impression, they are indeed organizing for that role.

These young people generally appear very modest, clean cut, polite, smart and serious; one imagines, rather like the image of Mohammad Atta to his neighbors in Hamburg. They are less interested in talking about what they say is ‘minor jihad’ i.e. violently fighting their enemies and prefer to discuss “greater jihad” which is an introspective concept of individual self improvement, becoming a better person by pure thoughts, good deeds, study, and following the teachings of the Koran.

In some ways they remind one of Maoists during the Chinese Cultural Revolution period, sitting around discussing the concept of “the new Maoist man”, the guidance found in the little Red Book, engaging in self-criticism, inner struggle trying to follow the correct path in life, and the Islamic imperative of self improvement. This is different from the western perception of them as being religious fanatics in the Hagee Christian Zionist mold.

No viable civil war option

Another reason the White House wants to put out ‘feelers’ to Hezbollah is that it has concluded that it is not likely to be able to ignite a Lebanese Civil war and what was thought by the Welch Club to be perhaps its most promising project, is not going to happen anytime soon.

Even foreign visitors based in Beirut who talk with exhausted and traumatized middle aged former militiamen who did the fighting and killing between 1975 and 1992 sense this. One is struck by how many of these former killers (one fellow confessed to this observer to killing more than 130 men, women and children just because they were Muslims) feel remorse, seek absolution, and speak out against renewed fighting. Many are warning Lebanon’s youth not to repeat their mistakes despite some heated galvanizing rhetoric from certain ‘leaders’. They want a better life for their children.

During the 15 year Lebanese civil war more than 150,000 were killed. In a civil war usually one side wins. There are social, political, economic, cultural changes as a result. This did not happen with the Lebanese civil war. Things ended after 17 years of fighting much where they began. There were no winners in Lebanon.

Everyone lost. Those who following the Taif agreement first thought they won came to realize that they also lost. Much of Lebanon was destroyed, almost annihilated and it lost its regional position. All the militias committed massacres against other sects and some even against their own. The cliché that “Lebanon was used as a battleground for foreigners to fight their battles” is not accurate.

The Lebanese used the willing outsiders to fight their internal battles. Lebanese militias were probably more violent and ruthless than those who gave them arms and money.

Following the war, rather than create a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the instigators of the civil war–many of whom are still ‘leaders’ today–gave themselves a blanket amnesty. Some continue to agitate on the same issues with the same self evident and self righteous ‘truths’ that festered 30 years ago. Few in their confessions have confidence anymore in these warlords and prefer that they just keep quiet.

“We fought for nothing and we lost everything. Lebanon went mad and we killed because others were not like us. Show me a family in Lebanon who did not lose a loved one! We have nothing but our sorrow and tears to show for it. We were betrayed and cheated by those we killed and died for. Our young people must not become the next lost generation or the next war generation!” a sandwich shop owner in Alay commented.

With these widespread sentiments in Lebanon today it is tough to ignite internal war, although ‘incidents’ require only a few thousand dollars. Moreover, a civil war would require Hezbollah’s involvement and that organization has repeatedly made it clear it will not fight fellow Lebanese. “Our weapons are for use against Israel and not for use against our countrymen”, is a commonly heard sentiment from Hezbollah members.

When Hezbollah took many casualties during fights with Amal in the late 1980s (“a very black page in Shia history” according to one Hezbollah source), rather than engage in all-out war against their fellow Lebanese today they will take casualties again without answering– ‘a thousand casualties’ Hasan Nasrallah stated– if necessary to keep the peace. (NB. Regarding clashes with Amal eighteen years ago, Hezbollah did finally lose patience and crushed Amal in south Beirut and the intra-Shia conflict ended with an agreement on November 9, 1990).

The Lebanese Association for Human Rights recently organized events for the April 13 anniversary of the 1975 Ain al-Rummaneh killing of 27 passengers on a Palestinian bus; a massacre that ignited, within hours, the Lebanese civil war. “We want those who lived the civil war to tell the younger ones of what awaits them if a new conflict erupts,” Association Member Ziad Khaled 32, stated. “We also want to forewarn our politicians that we won’t follow them into a new war.”

A Regional War is Unlikely

Despite the media hype these days, many Middle East analysts as well as the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by former presidential candidate Joe Biden (D-Del), consider that the Bush administration and Israel are not likely to ignite a regional war, however tempting that may be, before Bush leaves office.
Someone on Capitol Hill put it bluntly: “If Barack Obama wins, no regional war. If John McCain (“bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!”) wins, move to Alaska ’cause all hell may break loose.”

The Committee Staff thinking mirrors that of Middle East specialists that the unpredictability factor and the potential very high cost create a strong deterrence. According to one Committee source, “It’s like the old MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) Doctrine during the Cold War. MAD actually kept the peace. It worked because the parties knew they would lose too much. In this region it is the fear in Israel and Washington that will keep the peace for the foreseeable future. We do not see a war coming either inside Lebanon or in the Region. Of course I could be wrong!”

Another Committee source emailed:

“The Russians disagree with our analysis. Russian military intelligence services remind us that heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran with our Naval presence in the Persian Gulf have reached the level that existed before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and this suggests that Bush (Cheney) may act in the next few months and leave the mess for the next administration.”

Indeed, General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences did claim last week that the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran “that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.” The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are being deployed in the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been based since December 2006, and recently fitted

The CIA and the Pentagon Weigh In

“Those bastards [the Israeli military] know the rules and what the US Arms Export Control Act requires! The CBU 58’s are decades out of date! We [the US] have not even had them in our weapons inventory since we last used them in 1991 during Desert Storm. They are now complete junk and I am amazed that any of them after 35 years even detonated. By using them this time in Lebanon, Israel was illegally dropping landmines.”

–Pentagon official commenting on Israel’s use of American weapons against civilians in Lebanon during the July 2006 war (chap. II, The Price We Pay)

It has been a fact that, since at least 1982, perhaps the harshest and most frustrated American critics of Israel are those who work in Langley, Virginia, at CIA Headquarters and especially those across the 14th Street Bridge from the White House, on the banks of the Potomac River, who work at the Pentagon.

Harshest because, as fed up Pentagon employees have long protested, they work with Israel closely on weapons supply matters and they know first hand how consistently the US is lied to and cheated by Israeli weapons procurement officials. Frustrated because they are prohibited by law, politics and the ever watching Israel lobby from disclosing the regular chicanery they witness to the public.

American researchers, including the late indefatigable Janet Stevens, learned about Pentagon attitudes toward Israel decades ago when she methodically wrote down serial numbers found on US cluster bomb canisters and other ordnance during the 75 day Israeli siege of West Beirut, now less than two months shy of a quarter century ago.

Janet’s motivation was transparent. She wanted proof to offer to skeptical Beirut media (‘Hotel Journalism’ as she used to call it) who were blithely repeating Israeli denials regarding its use of American weapons. Many hunkered down in the Commodore Hotel Bar waiting for Israeli press releases rather than venture out into the dangerous streets of Beirut. Janet made a ‘deal’ with Pentagon contacts that they could have the scores of serial numbers she catalogued (which the Pentagon wanted in order to learn how far down its stockpile of US cluster bombs and ordnance Israel had dipped during its 1982 invasion) if the Naval Ordnance Disposal Unit working at the Indian Head, Maryland Navel Base would provide Janet with diagrams of the US cluster bombs and information on how to disarm them. It was agreed and the information Janet received was used to make public information posters for Beirut citizens warning of the danger and how to defuse the US cluster bomblets. (In those days the humanitarian work such as being done today by Qatar, UAE, UNICEF and other public information projects re cluster bombs were not functioning as well in Beirut—but Norwegian Aid, Oxfam, the Menonites and a few others were here).

Even some in the French, British and Italian contingents of the so-called ‘Multi-National Peacekeeping Force’ (MNF) used Janet’s posters because the US Marine contingent was not allowed to share their technical information concerning US weapons with their allies. (Copies of these posters distributed around Beirut are reproduced in the 1984 volume, Israel’s War in Lebanon, F. Lamb, Ed, South End Press).

Whereas in 2006 Israel saturated South Lebanon with four types of US cluster bombs, in 1982 Israel used all seven types that President Nixon had ordered transferred to Israel from the US stockpiles in Subic Bay, Philippines meant to supply US troops who were increasingly under pressure in Vietnam. Nixon later admitted he erred, but reported that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, fearing military collapse in the face of Egypt’s 8th army during the 1973 October war, had threatened to use nuclear weapons in the Sinai unless the US rescued Israel.

Increasing Pentagon anger in 1982-83 was the fact that US marine and navy ordnance disposal specialists based at the US Marine barracks were taking casualties from unexploded American cluster bombs, which Israel continued to deny using (an acquaintance of Janet’s, Corporal David Reagan, was killed next to his barracks on the edge of Beirut airport on September 30th, 1982 by an M-43 ‘birdie’ US cluster bomb and three of his platoon were wounded).

Researchers in West Beirut during the 11 week 1982 siege continued to catch the Israeli government’s serial lies as their officials maintained that US cluster bombs were not used against civilians in Lebanon. Janet knew differently and proved her claims with detailed lists of geographic place names, dates and types of US cluster bombs Israel dropped around Beirut on civilian areas.

This observer distinctly recalls even during heavy bombing and shelling in West Beirut when not a soul, stray cat or terrified bird dare venture out, Janet would say: “Yala! (Let’s go!) I heard from one of the guys [fighters defending Beirut] Israel fired 155’s nearby [155 mm shells holding 143 US cluster bomblets] with ‘birdies’!”
(‘Birdie’ was the nickname for the M-43 Raytheon manufactured cluster bomb which was widely used by Israel against civilians in 1978, 1982, and to a lesser extent in 1993, and 1996 but not at all, according to this observer’s research during 2006, contrary to some inaccurate reports).

Janet would lead the way through the smoke, deafening blast noise and debris along Hamra streets while her companion tried to keep up wondering to himself: “Why do I always do what this woman says?”

The Reagan administration had access to Janet’s work also through the media. President Reagan, after confronting Israeli PM Begin in late June of ’82, with what he and Secretary of State George Shultz believed was irrefutable evidence, was shocked by Begin’s complete denial and his aggressive demeanor toward Reagan. As the President later recounted, Begin pointed his finger at him and shouted that Reagan’s accusations amounted to “a blood libel against every Jew everywhere”.

Reagan later explained that at the time of his meeting with Begin that he did not know what “blood libel” meant, but that he subsequently learned “that the man had looked me straight in the eyes and lied to me”.

Reagan immediately cut off shipments of US cluster bombs to Israel and the ban lasted for 6 years, until in 1988 George H. Bush, in a tough race for the White House, and under pressure form the Israel lobby, got Reagan to lift the ban. George W. Bush has refused to re-impose it despite the July 2006 experience.

The Pentagon’s distrust of Israel reached new depths following the July 2006 war with Israel’s use of the now ancient Lockheed Martin CBU-58 A/B cluster bomb unit. This bomb which was first used in Vietnam consists of a large canister which is designed to open in flight dropping 650 baseball sized bombs called BLU (Bomb Live Unit) 61 or 63 depending on the fusing, shocked and enraged some in the Pentagon.

As reported in the recent volume, The Price We Pay, the Pentagon at first did not believe reports that Israel still had any CBU-58’s because they had been told that Israel used up their stockpile of the type in 1982. The CBU-58, it should be noted, was among those sent to Israel by Nixon from Vietnam in 1973!

Each one has a yellow tag on the ‘mother bomb canister’ that clearly states that the shelf life is ‘365 days’. Every one used by Israel and examined in Lebanon by this researcher following the July 2006 war showed this 365 days warning plus a manufacture date of March or August 1973.

Thus, according to the Pentagon and UN deminers, Israel dropped US bombs in 2006 that were up to 35 years out of date. This guaranteed, according to Pentagon specialists, that nearly 75 per cent of the CBU-58’s that Israel dropped were duds and now lie around South Lebanon as land mines. Other US cluster bombs Israel used (M-42’s and M-77’s) had lower dud rates as widely reported by the United Nations and various researchers on the scene.

Pentagon anger and frustration was strongly expressed in the autumn of 2006 by Pentagon officials (see The Price We Pay, Chap. II). As one official who oversees arms shipments from US stockpiles to Israel commented:

“Those bastards (the Israeli military) know the rules and what the US Arms Export Control Act requires! The CBU 58’s are decades out of date! We (the US) have not even had them in our weapons inventory since we last used them in 1991 during Desert Storm. They are now complete junk and I am amazed that any of them after 35 years even detonated. By using them this time in Lebanon Israel was illegally dropping landmines.”

When asked why Israel would use them if they didn’t function as designed, the official replied:

“They were emptying their closets of old shit so they can get the new M-26’s. We (the Pentagon) don’t resupply them (the Israelis) until their stockpile goes down to a certain level. They told us they didn’t have any CBU-58’s which are purely anti-personnel. The M-26 is the rocket fired cluster bomb [Ed: He was referring to the Honeywell manufactured Multiple Launch Rocket System that fires 7,728 M-77 bomblets up to 35 miles in less than one minute] the Israelis used across South Lebanon and will use again during their next war. We suspended shipments of the M-26 during the July war after we learned about the CBU-58 and Israeli lies about what they were doing with the M-26’s in their inventory.”

Some in the Pentagon are urging engagement with Hezbollah following the realization that Israel performed poorly in its latest attack on Lebanon. This included major military surprises such as the vulnerability of Israeli armor to Hezbollah anti-tank rockets which resulted in dozens of tanks hit and the greatest proportion of Israeli casualties among tank crews. On the first day of its ground offensive 27 Israeli troops were killed.

A recent Pentagon funded study of Israel’s July 2006 performance reached the following summarized conclusions:

* Israel erred in going to war over two captured soldiers.

* “Israel disregarded the central American tenet of precision targeting—that fewer weapons and less physical destruction can achieve desired effects with far less “collateral” damage, human and political.”

* “Israel’s military strategy was deeply flawed. Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects. Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”

* “The IDF seemed to satisfy itself with conventional measures of “success”—accumulating suspect statistics of Hezbollah launchers and rockets hit, dead fighters, and destroyed Hezbollah “structures.” Israel may have satisfied itself that every building and structure it was attacking in Beirut and every civilian home in the south was associated with Hezbollah, but the cumulative impact was far less impressive militarily and far more politically damaging than the planners and commanders projected.”

* “Hundreds if not thousands of civilian buildings were falsely and promiscuously labeled Hezbollah “structures” and attacked in the name of degrading or destroying that organization”.

* “Israel expanded its attacks on civilian targets to exact punishment on Hezbollah supporters and the government and people of Lebanon. Israel doggedly explained its action by reiterating again and again that Hezbollah fighters were “terrorists” and that Hezbollah was ultimately responsible for any damage caused, but outside of a small circle of supporters, Israel increasingly was objectified, by US military analysts, as the aggressor.”

* “The argument we hear from the Israeli government is dubious i.e. that it had no alternative—that these otherwise civilian homes and buildings had to be attacked because of the nature of Hezbollah and its use of Lebanese society as a human shield.”

* “Hezbollah’s resilience demonstrated that the organization had deep roots and enormous popular support in Lebanon, and yet Israeli political and military leaders seemed to believe their own propaganda that Hezbollah had no Lebanese support, was weak, and was losing. From this stemmed a wholly conventional and false measure of success that Israel seemed content to apply: Hezbollah’s six years of investment and effort to build up infrastructure in Lebanon was gone, the routes of Syrian and Iranian resupply were disrupted, 70–80 percent of the long-range and 50 percent of the short-range launchers were destroyed, half of the stock of actual rockets and missiles was destroyed or expended, and more than 600 Hezbollah fighters were dead. Destruction of the organization’s support infrastructure—roads and bridges, fuel, communications, media, even financial institutions—accumulated. The Pentagon knew that this was not true. Israel failed to make a holistic analysis of the military benefit relative to the human and political impact”.

* “From a military standpoint, a different course should have been followed. Airpower as it was employed by Israel is not that alternative. (Added to this is the speculation that Hezbollah’s recently mentioned ‘Surprise for Israel” includes surface to air missiles that can destroy Israeli aircraft when they attack Lebanon).

Israel also failed to protect its tank crews.

The potency of infantry anti-armor weapons have plagued the Israelis since the 1973 Ramadan War when Russian-made wire guided Sagger missiles were fired in barrages at Israeli tanks by Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal.

In July 2006 Hezbollah used the Russian AT-13 Metis or Saxhorn, the modern tube-launched successor to the Sagger which can punch through 18 inches (46cm) of Merkava IV tank armor.

Israel’s ‘reactive armor’–which consists of explosive pads or bricks on the outside of a tank or vehicle–is designed to explode outwards when hit by an incoming missile, disrupting the effect of the missile warhead. But these enhancements have not proved sufficiently effective against the most modern anti-tank systems operated by determined fighters on the ground. Hezbollah adapted and used tandem charges whereby the first warhead triggers the Israeli ‘reactive armor’ and the second penetrates the tank. Hezbollah’s RPG-29, a shoulder-fired weapon designed with a tandem charge proved devastating to Israeli tanks. Military analysts speculate that were Israel to launch a major ground assault on Lebanon it would lose hundreds of tanks from tandem charge weapons including the Kornet which is accurate from three miles away, includes tandem charges, and can penetrate 1,200 cm of hardened armor. A reporter from the London Daily Telegraph reported seeing Kornet missile casings laying around Mar al Ras, Eita Shaab, and Aitayoun.

Next: in the third and final installment, Bait, Hook and Switch: the US offer and the quid pro quo.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

Source

Note: This is the first installment in a series of three.

“The Bush administration parking a flotilla from its US 6th fleet off the coast of Lebanon was made necessary, it claims, to demonstrate Washington’s ‘commitment to stability in the region’. This provocation, aimed at Hezbollah and also Syria, is the equivalent of a Sicilian fish wrapped in newspaper with a white rose—left on a doorstep: “This is business. It is not personal. Here is an offer you cannot refuse“.

– Italian officer seconded to UNIFIL outside his Tebnine HQ, South Lebanon

Recent US back channel feelers to Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah’s decision makers are sometimes present, reflect US calculations that given current trends in the Middle East, Hezbollah will play a major regional role.

According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the efforts to date have run tepid and less ‘qualitative’ than informal Iran-USA contacts. US diplomat Thomas Pickering has revealed that he has been a participant in secret Iran-US ‘back channel’ discussions for the past five years. The subjects discussed include Iran’s nuclear program, the broader relationship between the two and US relations with Hezbollah. Other participants include former US diplomat William Luers and MIT nuclear expert Jim Walsh. While “unofficial”, the discussions, organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the UN Association of the USA, are thought to be useful.

Dismissive of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain’s pledge to “drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon”, serious US officials want to engage the Lebanese Resistance partly because they are concerned with Israel remaining a Jewish state in the region.

The Bush administration no longer believes there is a viable military option – American, Israeli or combined – for destroying Hezbollah. The Party is deeply embedded in much of Lebanon and has broad support in the region. Recent reports indicate that some of its administrative staff is moving offices into Sunni areas including Tripoli and north Lebanon and that more Sunni, Christians and Druze are joining the Lebanese Resistance under Hezbollah leadership.
Even if there had been a US military option against Hezbollah, the war in Iraq has effectively eliminated it. American military strength has been exhausted in Iraq and Afghanistan and it has inadequate force to devote to a particularly dangerous third front. This is perhaps the greatest damage done by the Bush adventure in Iraq, where after five years there is no end in sight. The United States may be in Iraq for years to come with Israel ending up a victim of the Iraq adventure it instigated.

Doubts about Israel’s future

CIA and Israeli demographers such as Sergio Della-Pergola estimate that in the next 10 years Jews will be less that 45 per cent of the population in Palestine i.e. between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. This sets up the South African Apartheid model of a minority occupying population ruling the indigenous majority.
According to an Israeli academic who has studied Israel’s 60 year history and the growing conflict between Zionism and Judaism relative to Israel’s future prospects:

“We should have taken Uganda when Britain offered it to our Zionist leadership in 1903. Ben Gurion’s plan took over Palestine in stages. Given the growing strength of the Palestinian Resistance, it is likely to be taken back in the same piecemeal fashion. Every Jew in Israel knows it may cease to exist and have considered what is best for their children — more Israelis are moving to the US where currently over 500,000 are living”

Many US policy makers and Israelis are realizing that the safest place for Jews is in the US and that Israel is the least safe place as it continues to lose international legitimacy. A survey commissioned for the Israeli Interdisciplinary Centre found that 14 per cent of Jews in Israel would likely leave the country if a hostile state acquired nuclear arms.

US intelligence assessments of Israel include pessimistic conclusions based on sentiments by Israeli Jews to the effect that ‘We don’t really believe in this country’s existence anymore and will never be accepted in this region. Americans accept the Jews so why do we need Israel which has been squandering not only the lives of our children but increasingly undermining global respect for Judaism.’

The experienced observer, Robert Fisk, of the UK Independent recently reflected these sentiments to Rachel Cooke of the London Observer. As Cooke writes, “When Fisk first arrived in Beirut, he believed that Israel would survive. Now he is not so sure. The Israeli press is, he says, self-delusional. The army is ’shabby, a rabble; they don’t always obey orders, and they don’t always turn up’. In South Lebanon in 2006, they got ‘chucked out by Hizbollah,’. He wonders whether, if Israel’s borders were really threatened – ‘as opposed to false threats’ … Israel’s best bet (for survival) will be to go back to its international borders”.

Others have reminded Fisk that the real Zionist vision does not recognize any maps. It is a vision of a state without borders – a state that expands at all times according to its demographic, military and political power.

Can Hezbollah save Israel?

Edward Abington, Jr, the US consul general in Arab East Jerusalem during the Clinton administration, said he returned to Washington “convinced more than ever that the two-state solution is dead as a doornail”. Abington, noting that 40 per cent of the West Bank is closed to Palestinians, claims that, “There is absolutely no willingness on the part of the IDF to change the situation on the ground from the stranglehold they now have.”

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared pessimistic as she told a House Foreign Affairs Committee several months ago that she is concerned that “we will lose the window for a two-state solution”.

Some in the Bush administration believe that history is on Hezbollah’s side given the swelling Lebanese resistance trend over the region including Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan (the latter two with growing and serious Islamist problems with Hosni Mubarak looking fearfully over his shoulder at the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s parent organization. Jordan’s King Abdullah, likewise, cannot ignore the rise of the Islamists in his own mostly Palestinian population), Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. They recommend engagement with Hezbollah, viewed as pragmatic and in many ways the most secular movement in Lebanon, since trying to weaken or destroy Hezbollah is not working. Pressure to engage with Hezbollah will likely increase following Jimmy Carter’s meetings with Hamas and perhaps Hezbollah representatives.

US feelers to Hezbollah to ‘let bygones be bygones’ have a long history. Yet in the past, when Hezbollah rejected US feelers which sometimes firmed into offers, the movement would experience the tightening of US pressure such as the terrorism lists, searching for Hezbollah financial assets, trying to incite Lebanese ‘warlords’ or al Qaeda type jihadist salafists against it, as well as sundry threats and assassination attempts.

The Khomeini Paradigm

A forerunner of the recent US-Israeli feelers to Hezbollah can be found back in the days of the Imam Khomeini-led Iranian Revolution. The Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and the Shah’s intelligence service, Savak, worked closely to end the Iranian revolt from its earliest beginnings. In June of 1963 a crowd of unarmed Iranian men, women and children peacefully demonstrating in Tehran were attacked by government forces and more than 5,000 were killed.

This demonstration of savagery shocked the Kennedy administration, and revealed the weakness of the Shah’s tyranny which eventually led to its collapse. Over time, the US government realized that the Iranian Resistance could not be defeated and made Khomeini an offer it was said at the time, “he won’t be able to refuse”. The offer included that the Shah would be summarily stripped of all his political power if Khomeini would allow him to become “just a figurehead like Queen Elizabeth of England”.
Khomeini rejected the offer and argued that such a ‘compromise’ would “keep the US-Israeli hegemonic knife in Iran’s body” and it would grow until the Shah’s tyranny returned.

Similarly, the past quarter century in Lebanon has seen the US and Israel offer (demand) the May 17th capitulation treaty before it would even consider a partial Israeli withdrawal from any of the 801 villages it occupied in 1982. Due to the persistence of the Lebanese Resistance, Israel suffered a series of retreats while offering first a treaty, then ’security arrangements’ downgraded to ’security negotiations’, then ‘an offer of security guarantees’ and now that Hezbollah just disarm and leave them alone.

US overtures to Hezbollah began following the March 8, 1985 US-organized Bir Abed Massacre (see below). The ‘offers’ continued subsequent to Hezbollah’s success in expelling Israel from 55 per cent of South Lebanon (and 168 villages) on April 30, 1985, the end date of a three month process whereby Israel was forced out of Sidon, Tyre, Nabataea, some Western Bekaa villages and other areas. More feelers were sent to Dahiyeh after Israel was driven from its ‘permanent security zone’ on May 24, 2000, and yet again following the 9/11 attack organized by Hezbollah’s mortal enemy, Al Qaeda, which along with Israel, initially hoped Hezbollah would be blamed. Hezbollah’s continuing resistance activities in October 2000 at Shebaa Farms, and recently the results of the July 2006 defeat of Israel, led to other feelers.

The March 8, 1985 Bir Abed Massacre and a US Offer

An initial US offer to Hezbollah followed a massive US terrorist attack in Lebanon and its aftermath is instructive regarding the occasional American disposition to achieve a modus operandi or perhaps vivendi with Hezbollah.

In December of 1984, the Reagan administration was furious with the March 5, 1984 cancellation of the May 17th Agreement, which required the US to conduct 35 negotiation sessions just to fulfill Israeli conditions and controls regarding the treaty. Israel and the White House blamed the yet to be publicly announced Hezbollah, as well as Syrian President Hafez al Assad, for the collapse of the Israel-Lebanon ‘Agreement’. Suspicions also existed that this ‘new religious group’, one of more than 30 civil war era militias operating in Lebanon at the time (fascinating political posters from 30 of these groups are now on exhibition at Planet Discovery Hall in Beirut as part of the April 13 anniversary of the 1975-90 civil war) may have been involved in actions against the US.

(CIA agent Robert Baer, now a contributor to Time Magazine, was given the job of finding out who bombed the US Embassy on April 18, 1983. During his March 2008 visit to Lebanon, Baer reminded reporters that his final report delivered to the White House more than 20 years ago concluded there was no proof to charge anyone, including Imad Mughniyeh, with either the April Embassy or the October 1983 Marine barracks attack. His conclusions are just as valid today, he advised interlocutors at the Beirut Vendome Hotel last month).

The unpleasant fact for the Reagan administration was that Gunboat diplomacy had been defeated by car bombs in Lebanon. The Reagan administration and especially CIA Director William Casey were left hungry for revenge — against someone.

Casey won approval for NSDD-166, a secret directive that inaugurated a new era of direct infusions of advanced U.S. military technology into the Middle East, which was to become the greatest technology transfer of terrorist techniques in history.

By January of 1985, according to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward in Veil, his book on Casey’s career, he worked out with the Saudis a plan to use a car bomb to eliminate an Israeli recommended ‘liability’. Lebanese agents led by a former British SAS officer and financed by $15 million arranged by Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar, were activated.

According to Woodward, Casey told his staff: “I’m going to solve the big problem by essentially getting tougher than or as tough as the terrorists in using their weapon, the car bomb.”

With its new authority, the CIA set up ‘counterterrorism units’ similar to those Bush authorized in 2007. Casey quickly funded the “Foreign Work and Analysis Unit” (FWAU) inside Lebanon which had the assassination of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah as its first priority. Others targeted for death were Lebanese former Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss, Imad Mughniyeh and Walid Jumblatt, then supporting the PLO. The FWAU conducted a car bombing campaign in Muslim areas of Beirut and targeted the Cinema Salwa, Beirut’s Raouche Market, Sabra Street, the Abu Nawwas restaurant, and the Druze Social Centre, among others, killing at least 280 civilians and wounding nearly 1,150. This mayhem was designed to ignite further internal strife and to send the Lebanese Resistance a message and offer: ‘Support a new May 17 agreement with Israel and we can help you.’ When this ‘offer’ was unanswered, and on the Mossad’s recommendation to Casey, Fadlallah was targeted on March 8, 1985.

The Bir Abed Massacre was caused by an enormous car bomb outside Fadlallah’s home as he was conducting a religious studies class for women. Had a neighborhood woman not detained him with questions, Fadallah would have been at nearly the exact spot where the rigged vehicle exploded according to Hezbollah investigators.

The blast killed 83 people, mainly school girls, women and children, and wounded 283. The attempted assassination of Fadlallah, who is to this day Lebanon’s most respected senior Shi’ite cleric and social worker, enraged Lebanon, including Dahiyeh’s two century old Christian community, long beneficiaries of his social services and respectful of his calls for religious dialogue and tolerance. Six months later, on September 12, in what appeared to be a tit for tat operation, the supposedly impregnable perimeter defenses of the new U.S. embassy in eastern Beirut was attacked killing 23 employees and visitors.

Eleven local individuals confessed to various roles in the Bir Abed bombing. The terrorist attack was based on now admitted faulty Israeli supplied “intelligence”. Israel had advised the Reagan administration that Fadlallah was the founder, spiritual leader, and chief of operations for Hezbollah and was behind attacks on the US Embassy and the Marine barracks as well as the kidnappings of western hostages. Not one of the claims was true as the White House was later to learn. But at the time, CIA Director William Casey was beside himself that the US had, less than a year earlier, been forced out of Lebanon by what he told the President were “third rate rabble-rousers”.

President Reagan, by way of acknowledging the US error and American regrets, signed off on a reported nearly $20 million dollar secret “offer” to Sayeed Fadlallah, conveyed through a current Lebanese political leader, who was not at the time a member of Parliament, to help support the Senior cleric’s orphanages and social service centers. A US condition of the cash was that there was to be no paper trail. Fadallah rejected the offer stating he would not be part of a private arrangement which he could not disclose to his community.

Despite the Fadlallah fiasco, Casey remained an enthusiast for using urban terrorism to advance American goals. A year after the Bir Abed massacre, U.S. Special Forces experts started a five year program focusing on high-tech explosives and taught state-of-the-art sabotage techniques, distributed sabotage training manuals in different languages, offered instruction on how to make cheap electronic bomb detonators including the fabrication of ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil) and car bombs. Huge quantities of CIA-supplied plastic explosives as well as thousands of advanced E-cell delay detonators (some CIA knockoffs) still flow around the Middle East.

The US educational initiative, in contrast to Bekaa Valley ‘extension courses’ which did train motivated Lebanese anxious to resist the Israeli occupation, opened full scholarship bomb makers “Graduate Schools” and trained thousands of mujahidin and future al Qaeda cadres. Some of the ‘graduates’ drove the Soviets from Afghanistan. More recently, others supplied salafists for Nahr al Bared and Ein el Helwe and are today setting up networks in Lebanon.

The Bush administration has clearly lost control of this blowback and some officials think engaging Hezbollah offers a solution.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com