Bombing The Future

As more than 700 Lebanese lay dead in Israel’s latest Lebanese war, the vast majority of them civilians, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked of the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East — a ‘democratic’ Middle East that was meant to have been born with the occupation of Iraq, whose mayhem has been overshadowed, after three increasingly bloody years, by the catastrophe in Lebanon.

A week later, when the death toll had risen to 1,000, the US Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, expressed regret that the ‘terrible violence’ in Lebanon ‘has extinguished the hope of many Lebanese that this summer season heralded a return to normality’.

But Lebanon was already enjoying normality and had been, in the now-devastated south, ever since the Israeli army withdrew in May 2000. Lebanon, Welch said, ‘faces even greater economic challenges than ever before’ ­— challenges, through relentless bombardment of the national infrastructure, whose cost is estimated at more than $3.5bn.

There were ‘strains’, Welch said, ‘to the social fabric of the country’ — strains imposed by Israeli bombardments that have driven a million Lebanese to live as refugees in the lands of others whose resources are not infinite and whose own security is far from guaranteed. For if there is one thing that can be predicted with certainty, it is that Israel’s war is escalating inexorably: from the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers on 12 July, to bombardment of Beirut and eastern Lebanon on 13 July; from assurances of a short, sharp air war, to the dispatch of seven brigades into south Lebanon; from attacks on bridges and factories, in line with statements that Lebanon would be bombed back 50 years, to charges that Hezbollah was storing rockets in ‘churches and mosques’ and attacks on civilian targets in Christian Jounieh, Christian Kesrouan, Christian Hadath.

What next? Regional war? Syria has already mobilised its reserves and its Foreign Minister, Walid al Moallem, has declared: ‘We welcome regional war!’ ­— knowing full well that it will not be chosen by Syria, but imposed upon it at a time not of its choosing.

An extension of the conflict to Iran, with air strikes by Israel or the US on nuclear or other facilities? A decision by Iran to stop exporting oil and to close, perhaps, the Strait of Hormuz, through which most Persian Gulf oil flows? New terrorist attacks, by al Qaeda cadres feeling upstaged by the ‘heretic’ Shi’ites, against countries like Britain that have allied themselves with the US in support of what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called war crimes committed in Lebanon?

As President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, one of America’s staunchest allies, said: ‘What is happening in the region is destructive chaos, not creative chaos.’ It is an opinion that even Israelis share. In the words of a columnist in the Ha’artez newspaper: ‘There is the danger that we are seeing a tipping point, in Iraq as well as in Lebanon, which will embolden radical Islam, and Iran in particular, to extend the battlefield of jihad indefinitely… This is World War III, and we’re losing.’

Although confined within Lebanon’s borders at time of going to press, this war is, of course, already a regional war. For Tel Aviv, Washington and London, Hezbollah is nothing but a stalking horse for Iran, closely related to Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions. Destroy Hezbollah, the reasoning goes, and you remove one of Iran’s front-line weapons against the day when jaw-jaw is deemed to have failed and war-war becomes necessary (forgetting the fact, all-important to the Arab and Islamic worlds, that in nuclear terms Israel is the original sinner in the Middle East, with its arsenal of nuclear weapons and its aggressive, military mindset).

For US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Hezbollah is still defined by the terrorist attacks, the suicide car bombs and hostage-taking, that grew out of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The invasion killed 19,000 people — most of them civilians and many of them Shi’ites.

It drove out Yasser Arafat’s Palestinians, but brought in Hezbollah after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini despatched 1,500 Revolutionary Guards to fight Israel and spread Iran’s Islamic revolution.

In an ‘Open Letter’ published in February 1985, Hezbollah announced its existence. It was not ‘a bunch of fanatical terrorists whose sole aim is to dynamite bars and destroy slot machines’. It existed ‘to repel aggression and defend our religion… America, its Atlantic Pact allies, and the Zionist entity in the holy land of Palestine attacked us and continue to do so without respite… They invaded our country, destroyed our villages, cut our children’s throats, violated our sanctuaries… In a single night the Israelis and the Phalangists executed thousands of our sons, women and children in Sabra and Shatila’, Beirut’s Palestinian camps.

As it turns 21, Hezbollah is no longer the Iranian creation of the 1980s. It is an ally of Iran, but not its puppet. It still demands the right of return for all Palestinians, but has softened early rhetoric about the ‘obliteration’ of Israel. In 2006, few Lebanese dispute that Hezbollah has a genuine Lebanese life of its own, however little they like it.

Led by an articulate and charismatic cleric, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah lives in the mainstream of Lebanese politics: it has two ministers and 14 MPs and since the civil war ended in 1990 has been the only party to demand social justice in preference to showcase reconstruction projects. It does not seek to establish an Islamic state and no longer endeavors to impose Islamic morals, even in Shi’ite areas.

Daniel Byman, director of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and a former CIA analyst, says Hezbollah has not been linked to a single attack on a Western target in the last decade. (Some would argue it is longer.)

In its war with Israel, Byman says, Hezbollah has, until Israel flattened a wide swathe of Beirut’s Shi’ite suburbs, targeted soldiers. Tanya Reinhart, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Media Studies at Tel Aviv University, points out that Israel enjoyed ‘full calm’ in the wake of its army’s withdrawal from south Lebanon.

‘Ceasefire violations of the type committed now by Hezbollah (with the 12 July operation) have occurred before,’ she says, ‘initiated by either side, and more frequently by Israel.’

Until 12 July, Hezbollah was primarily a Lebanese problem, categorically refusing to integrate its army into the regular Lebanese army. Tragically, for many Lebanese, Hezbollah can now claim that its reasoning — that Israel wished the destruction of Lebanon — has been vindicated by the events of the last month.

‘Break Hezbollah?’ the L’Orient le Jour newspaper that is fiercely critical of Hezbollah asked a month into the war. ‘Israel has put a million people, a quarter of the population, on the roads. What Israel is doing, in reality, is methodically and systematically destroying Lebanon.’

It is impossible to say how, or when, this war will end. The longer it lasts, the smaller is the chance that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s weak but democratic government will be able to resist Syrian and Iranian encroachment in a failed state; the greater the chance of sectarian unrest when the violence abates and the Lebanese survey the wreckage of their lives.

In the wider Middle East, there will be much-deepened hatred of America and its British ‘poodle’, as well as of the Arab leaders who are accused of standing with America, and by extension with Israel, against one of their own.

Sub-state groups like Hezbollah and Hamas will proliferate. The Arab street, already galvanized emotionally and psychologically, may move, at last, against the corrupt and inert rulers whose impotence has opened the way for American — and Iranian — intervention in the region.

The new Middle Eastern order in the throes of violent delivery in Lebanon will be an unstable and belligerent one, born of bloodshed and inured to it.

Julie Flint is an international journalist who has lived in Beirut since 1981. She reports for The Guardian, The Observer and ABC News.