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Subject: [>-<] Israel's Attack Was Premeditated


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> Monbiot.com » Israel's Attack Was Premeditated
>
> Posted August 8, 2006
>
> Hizbullah's capture of Israeli soldiers provided the excuse for an
> assault planned for months.
>
>
> By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th August 2006
>
>
>
> Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to
> agree about one fact: that it was a response, however
> disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated
> this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the
> first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask
> peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important
> question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.
>
> Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there
> have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two
> countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)
> reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily
> basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006(1). These
> incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population,
> particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over
> populated areas". On some occasions Hizbullah tried to shoot them down
> with anti-aircraft guns.
>
> In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shot at unarmed
> Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding
> 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three
> Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and
> mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy
> artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed
> three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two
> Hizbullah fighters in 2005 and two Lebanese people and three Israeli
> soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel
> several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah.
> But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military
> escalation"(2).
>
> On May 26th this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and
> Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of
> Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of
> Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency(3). In June a man named
> Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been
> working for Mossad since 1994(4). Militants in southern Lebanon
> responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into
> Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on
> the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and
> several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border
> region "remained tense and volatile", UNIFIL says it was "generally
> quiet" until July 12th(5).
>
> There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two
> Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in
> Israel or in Lebanon(6), but it now seems pretty clear that they were
> seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems
> to have forgotten that they were supposed to have be found sneaking
> around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab. Now it
> states simply that "the Islamic Resistance captured two Israeli
> soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine"(7). Three other
> Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some
> dispute about when, on July 12th, Hizbullah first fired its rockets;
> but UNIFIL makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time
> as the raid - 9 am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a
> diversion. No one was hit.
>
> But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were
> captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners
> of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon(8) and
> (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention(9)) never
> released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners,
> it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its
> men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli
> government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what
> happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have
> been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.
>
> On July 12th, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But
> that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of
> small incursions and attacks over the past six years, by both sides.
> So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded
> it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that
> day. The assault had been planned for months.
>
> The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "More than a year ago, a
> senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on
> an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and
> think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in
> revealing detail."(10) The attack, he said, would last for three
> weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion.
> Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan
> University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948,
> this was the one for which Israel was most prepared . By 2004, the
> military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're
> seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two,
> it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."(11)
>
> A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by
> Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out
> Hizbullah(12). The New Statesman's editor John Kampfner says he was
> told by more than one official source that the United States
> government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military
> action in Lebanon(13). The Bush administration told the British
> government(14).
>
> Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an
> appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah
> had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current
> rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert
> that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could
> claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter
> incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of
> doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli
> border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the
> rocket attack on July 12th were unjustified, stupid and provocative,
> like just about everything that has taken place around the border for
> the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an
> invasion of Israel or constitutes an existential threat to the state
> is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have
> been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.
>
> So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done.
> First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied
> territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed
> groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the
> persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of
> war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to
> defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on
> Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much
> more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my
> challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to
> contend that this programme would have caused more death and
> destruction than the current adventure has done?
>
> www.monbiot.com
>
> References:
>
> 1. UNIFIL, August 2006. Lebanon - UNIFIL - Background.
> http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html
>
> 2. ibid.
>
> 3. See FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), 28th July 2006. Down
> the Memory Hole: Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by
> leading papers. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2928
>
> 4. Nicholas Blanford, 15th June 2006. Lebanon exposes deadly Israeli
> spy ring. The Times.
>
> 5. UNIFIL, 21st July 2006. Report of the Secretary-General on the United 
> Nations
>
> Interim Force in Lebanon (For the period from 21 January 2006 to 18
> July 2006). UN Security Council.
>
> http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/437/22/IMG/N0643722.pdf?OpenElement
>
> 6. See for example Joshua Frank, 25th July 2006. Kidnapped in Israel;
> Captured in Lebanon?
>
> http://www.palestinechronicle.org/story-07250662242.htm and
> http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/israeli_solders.html
>
> 7. Hizbullah, quoted by Big News Network.com, 4th August 2006.
> Hezbollah not to blame for war, reports show.
> http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=b9f8e9f0e04f1f52
>
> 8. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
>
> 9. They are listed by the Khiam Center, at:
>
> http://www.khiamcenter.org/names%20of%20leb%20detainees%20and%20missing.doc
>
> 10. Matthew Kalman, 21st July 2006. Israel set war plan more than a year 
> ago:
>
> Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military
> strength in Lebanon. San Francisco Chronicle.
>
> 11. Quoted by Matthew Kalman, ibid.
>
> 12. Robin Wright, 16th July 2006. Strikes Are Called Part of Broad
> Strategy: U.S., Israel Aim to Weaken Hezbollah, Region's Militants.
> Washington Post. My attention was drawn to this article by Tanya
> Reinhart, 28th July 2006. Israel's "New Middle East".
> www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/treinhart17.htm
>
> 13. John Kampfner, pers comm.
>
> 14. John Kampfner, 7th August 2006. Blood on his hands. New Statesman.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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