When Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora visited the White
House on April 18, President Bush assured him that “there’s
no question in my mind that Lebanon can serve as a great example for
what is possible in the broader Middle East.”
Nevertheless, three months later, the President allowed Lebanon to
serve as a heartbreaking example for the contradictions in his Middle
East policies. After Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed Beirut and
its southern suburbs, the President rejected the Prime Minister’s
pleas for a cease-fire, and White House spokesman Tony Snow explained: "The
president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
When the full extent of the humanitarian disaster in Lebanon became
apparent, the President still did not ask for a ceasefire. Instead,
he volunteered up to $150 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to assist
the victims of Israel’s assault.
The Bush administration and most Congressmen fully identify themselves
with the official Israeli view that any resistance against the Israeli
occupation by the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah makes
them “terrorist organizations”--even if no terrorist acts
are committed. Israeli authorities routinely capture, imprison, or
kill resisting Palestinians and insist that any capture of Israeli
soldiers justifies devastating military responses. Presently, 9,599
Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, most of them without trial,
while Palestinians stand accused of holding one Israeli soldier.
Although Hezbollah’s militia is concentrated mainly along Lebanon’s
southern border where it took two Israeli soldiers prisoner, Israel’s
armed forces immediately launched a massive attack upon Lebanon’s
capital even though it is located five hours to the north by car. According
to Associated Press, after fifteen days of war, an estimated 600 persons
had died in Lebanon, most of them civilians. An estimated 700, 000
were reported homeless. Saniora told Secretary Rice that Israel's bombardment
had taken his country "backwards 50 years."
Hezbollah inflicted 52 deaths, 19 of civilians, upon Israel. In the
meantime, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed since Israeli
forces moved back into the Palestinian territory. Overall, the casualty
ratio between Arabs and Israelis stands at about 10 to 1. One wonders
how many more terrorists this open-ended massacre might breed.
While Israel’s air force was bombing Lebanon’s capital,
Beirut (population 1.8 million), Hezbollah countered with hundreds
of rockets aimed at Israel’s third largest city, Haifa (population
865,000). Since both sides deliberately or recklessly killed and maimed
non-combatants, both sides terrorized their victims.
When asked why he did not demand a ceasefire, President Bush explained: “Sometimes
it requires tragic situations to help bring clarity in the international
community.” (sic) The clarity of which he apparently dreams is
a Middle East without Arab resistance to whatever policies Israel and
the U.S. impose upon them.
It is indeed a tragedy that advanced civilizations such as Israel and
Lebanon should be diminished by wanton destruction. Until 1948, Haifa
had been--for hundreds of years--a mosaic of peaceful coexistence between
Jews, Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, and Baha’i. Beirut evolved
as an even more cosmopolitan conglomerate of Sunni and Shi’ite
Muslims, Christians (Maronite, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant),
Druze, and Jews.
Between 1975 and 1989, Beirut was divided between Muslim West Beirut
and the Christian East and torn apart by a most destructive, fratricidal
civil war. During a study visit of Lebanon six years ago, however,
I experienced first hand how much economic and social progress this
country of four million had made within a decade, and how Beirut has
been reunited and rebuilt. In its way of life, as in its architecture,
Lebanon again displayed its traditional balance between roughly 40
percent Christians, 35 percent Shi’ites, and 25 percent Sunnis.
"
It is time for a new Middle East," Secretary Rice suggested during
her four-hour visit to Beirut. That certainly is most desirable. It
is only possible, however, if Israel ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories so that the militias of Hamas
and Hezbollah have no more reason to exist.