NEW DIPLOMACY: BOMBS, FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES

The admission by the Bush administration that it speeded up the transport of laser-guided bombs to Israel and was sending $30 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon spoke to a new kind of diplomacy. Cynics might say it enables the Israelis to kill more civilians in Lebanon while the US provides medical help and food to those fortunate to survive the relentless Israeli bombardment of the country.
That bombardment has been aimed at destroying the whole infrastructure of Lebanon in order to send it back to the Stone Age. In the process there has been a substantial loss of civilian lives with children representing over 30% of all killed and injured. Meanwhile, efforts by Israel to compare the damage and loss of life in Lebanon to that caused by Hizbullah rockers in the Israeli city of Haifa have failed to persuade the UN, the international Red Cross and many European nations that Israel’s use of force is proportionate to the hurt it has suffered.
In the past week Israel began to face severe public relations setbacks in its strategy to justify the killing of civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, claiming they occurred because Hizbullah and Hamas hid among civilians. One of those setbacks was the publication across the world wide web of Israeli children signing missiles that were ready to be dropped on Lebanon. The signing took place near the northern border with Lebanon on July 17 when parents took their children to an artillery site where rows upon rows of 155mm artillery shells were lined up for use. Photographers from Associated Press and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz were there when young girls wrote messages such as “from Israel with love” or drew a Star of David on the tips of many of the shells. When the photos hit the Internet online bloggers were outraged and Israeli Defence Forces’ officials were left grasping for explanations. One IDF spokesman said soldiers were at the scene but did not sanction the event.
The bigger setback for Israel began with evidence that its F-16s were deliberately targeting ambulances carrying wounded civilians, a crime in international law and a matter the UN will be forces to investigate before the conflict ends. In one Israeli attack, covered by BBC World television news, Red Cross ambulance crews described how missiles were fired at two of their minibuses, killing some of their staff and civilians they were transporting. Television footage showed damage to both vehicles from missile strikes and how a missile slammed through the roof of one of them. Each vehicle had flashing lights and a large red cross painted on the roof, as well as red crosses on the sides. That was to alert F-16 pilots and those who operated pilot-less drones of the type devised by the CIA. The Red Crescent, the Middle East alternative to the Red Cross, has complained that its vehicles too have been attacked by Israeli fighters, claiming lives.
In another incident, close to the village of Taire near the border with Israel a USA-made Hellfire missile from an Israeli helicopter slammed in a minibus carrying civilians fleeing an Israeli onslaught. The whole village was ordered to flee and the minibus that was struck was the last vehicle in a large convoy carrying families away from the scene. The minibus in question was a bit slow leaving the village and was trying to catch up with the main convoy of vehicles when it was attacked. Three members of one family died instantly and 13 others were injured, many of them seriously as the minibus plummeted of the road into a ditch.
Meanwhile in Tyre, an historical seaside town, Israeli warplanes pounded the center as well as roads leading into and out of it. The Red Cross said that ten vehicles making their way to the town were attacked from the air with missiles and three or four hit. Red Cross officials said ambulances, normally not targeted in war, were not safe from Israeli strikes. And to further highlight the public relations disasters facing Tel Aviv the British Foreign Minister, Kim Howells, visited Beirut and openly condemned Israel’s policy of destroying the country’s infrastructure and the growing casualty toll in Lebanon, especially the exceptionally high death toll among children. His visit coincided with warnings from the UN that in the future people up the Israeli chain of command could face international war crimes.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, said indiscriminating shelling of cities constituted a “foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians.” She warned about what she called the bombarding of sites with “alleged military significance” that resulted in civilian deaths. That was understood at a reference to Israel’s heavy bombardment of factories, gas stations, banks, railways, roads, bridges, television stations and apartment blocks. She hinted that those engaged in deliberately causing civilians casualties should “closely examine their personal exposure.”
In tandem with her comments, there was an international clamor for Israeli to stop its use of excessive force. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called for an immediate ceasefire and openly condemned Israeli tactics. The White House appeared unperturbed by the growing criticism l and even played down the Iraqi PM’s condemnation with the absurd response that his outburst proved democracy was working in Iraq. At the same time Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region with a curious diplomatic strategy. She made it clear the White House was not in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, thus creating the impression that she supported Israel’s desire to continue to destroy Lebanon. As expected, she had no plans to talk to three of the main players, Iran, Syria and Hizbullah but announced a humanitarian aid package. Most of that will have to be ferried by sea into the shattered remains of Beirut while America permits Israel to continue to bomb that city and most other centers in the country.
While her visit took place stories circulated that the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah were not seized in Israel as the Israelis claimed, but in Lebanon, and that they were Special Forces operatives on a covert mission. Should that prove true it will be at odds with the Israeli version of events – the one it has used to justify the invasion of Lebanon – that the soldiers were seized during a Hizbullah raid on Lebanon. If the soldiers were indeed part of a covert Special Forces team that entered Lebanon, such a strategy would not be contrary to ongoing Israeli secret missions in many Arab countries. In the event Special Forces anywhere in the world are captured on enemy soil they have no status and are prized possession, not least because of the information they hold about unlawful operations. If the two Israelis captured by Hizbullah were Special Forces operating in Lebanon it is more than likely they will soon appear in a video, having been forced or tortured to confess to their identities and their role in Lebanon. It could be that Israel has gone to every effort to ensure these men are freed and not taken out of Lebanon because of what they could divulge. In such as conflict as this nothing can be ruled out and what is s aid officially is often designed to deceive.
But the final setback and global humiliation for Israel was not killing unarmed UN observers in a compound in Lebanon but the massacre of 56 civilians, many of them children in the biblical town of Cana, the place where Jesus was said to have performed his first miracle of turning water into wine.
The bombing of a building in which the civilians sheltered highlighted the careless and oft times deliberate targeting of civilian centers. It also exposed the fraudulent thesis that the deaths of civilians in Lebanon or in Gaza are the fault of Hezbollah and Hamas. That spurious argument, used by both the US and Israel, is employed to conceal the true agenda in Gaza and Lebanon. The agenda is to punish both populations and in Lebanon to drive Shias out of territory close to the border with Israel. It supposes if you bomb enough of the infrastructure and kill enough civilians in the process, they will blame radicals like Hezbollah for their plight and relocate, leaving Hezbollah without centers of power. That is an absurd thesis. Anyone who doubts that this strategy has been employed need only look at the use of Israeli military might in built up areas like Gaza and the West Bank and now in towns, cities and villages throughout Lebanon.
Israel will be the eventual loser because it will not lessen but rather increase opposition to its Middle East policies and reap a global backlash. Already there is mounting antipathy towards Israel in a majority of nations across the globe. The problem for the US is that by using Israel as a proxy to carry out a crazy neo-conservative driven policy in the Middle East it has weakened its international stature. Today George Bush is one of the most detested world leaders and that erodes America’s traditional role as a crucial peace maker. It also raises the question of whether states that use terror tactics can be called terrorists. The Israeli tendency to admit a mistake looks hollow when there are hundreds of them in the form of dead Lebanese or Palestinian children. Israel is not satisfied that there is a universal recognition that it is entitled to defend itself but there is a fault line within the Israeli body politic. There is a tendency in Israel for people to build a militaristic society that needs an enemy without for its continued existence. That can lead to a policy of over reaction at the slightest hint of trouble and reinforces a feeling of victimization. Israel’s security can be guaranteed but it must look to ways other than laser-guided bombs to build relationships with its neighbors. It cannot exploit the kidnapping of several soldiers to unleash its massive military might on Palestinians and Lebanese. Its new Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is just the kind of man a militaristic society should fear. His ratings were like George Bush’s before the crisis in Lebanon began and he has exploited the conflict to make himself look strong. He has heightened and fed off the genuine siege mentality within every Israeli to unleash horror on his neighbors. Israelis may well regret they ever elected him just as a majority of Americans are beginning to wonder how they ever elected George Bush