[Peace-discuss] Ceasefire on paper, fire on the ground

Sat Aug 12 18:24:27 CDT 2006

From: The Other Israel (TOI), a group/publication from within Israel that is
consistently clear on the issues, imho - Lisa

Ceasefire on paper, fire on the ground

TOI-Billboard, August 12, 2006
--The Other Israel's weekly comment

--Overview of this week's Occupation Magazine's daily picks attached 

So, it goes on. 

For the past week and more we had lived under the illusion that when the UN
Security Council solemnly resolves to cease the fire, the fire will indeed
cease. The media certainly helped create this feeling, reporting extensively
and minutely on the the ups and downs of the negotiations between the French
and the Americans. And when on Friday the news from New York told of an
approaching breakthrough, commentators started talking of the war as if it
already were a thing of the past. And a great variety of nationalists and
demagogues started crying and howling over "the surrender" and "the
betrayal". 

They could have saved their breath. Olmert and his Defence Minister Amir
Peretz heard last night's news from New York while closeted in the Army's
Supreme Headquarters, with the generals making the final preparations for
what seems the biggest ground offensive in this war. And after midnight the
headlines on the internet websites seemed taken directly from Orwell:
"Government to approve UN Ceasefire resolution, major ground offensive into
Lebanon goes ahead on schedule". 

Looking carefully at the text approved at that hallowed hall of
international diplomacy, things become a bit clearer. For the framers of
that new UN Security Council Resolution, 1701 (a number which we will
undoubtedly hear quoted ad nauseam in the coming weeks and months) - have
left a loophole in their "cessation of hostilities". Or rather a gaping
opening wide enough to allow the passage of hundreds of tanks and fighter
airplanes and tens of thousands of soldiers, the full four divisions
reported to be now charging northwards. 

The fifteen members of the Security Council have solemnly and unanimously
determined that "the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to
international peace and security" and therefore called for "the immediate
cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations". However, as
anybody knows who had ever attended a lesson in Basic Civics at a Tel-Aviv
elementary school, the Israeli Defence Forces never have and never will
conduct any offensive military operation. Each and every one of their
operations, in this war as in its predecessors, is purely defensive and is
conducted solely in order to defend a peace-loving population against
unprovoked aggression, for which reason the IDF coat of arms is the Sword
and Olive Branch, and third grade pupils are required to paste that coat of
arms in their copybooks and write under it the caption "our army hates war
and wants only peace". 

So, it continues. The number of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon has tripled in
the past twenty-four hours, according to Chief of Staff Halutz, all of
course involved in the purely defensive race to conquer all the territory up
to the Litani River, which the generals expect to take "four days to a week"
and then involve "several weeks of mopping up" (not that the army was very
effective in "mopping up" the limited parts of Lebanon which it already
invaded two and three weeks ago). So far, at least 19 people are reported
killed since the diplomats affixed their signatures to that solemn document,
and a Lebanese contact just informed us that the villages east of Saida,
left untouched since the war broke out, had today gotten a lethal "visit"
from the Israeli Air Force. 

And so, we must continue as well. A few hours from now, there will be
hundreds of us answering the call of Yesh Gvul to climb the hill overlooking
Military Prison 6 at Atlit, shouting words of greetings and solidarity and
warm support into the plainly visible prison courtyard - to the five
soldiers who preferred imprisonment over participation in the Lebanese folly
and madness, and also for their fellow-prisoners and guards. Climbing that
hill is a tradition dating back to the First Lebanon War, a tradition which
it seems we need to revive, like so much else. 

At least, the stifling atmosphere of "national unity" which characterized
the past weeks seems to have decisively dissipated. "The Big Three" of
Israeli literature - "Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman - have come
out against the war, three weeks after they had endorsed it in public. (Some
60 younger authors, who opposed the war from the first minute, had been
constantly snapping at these three's heels). Also, the magnitude of the
Lebanon invasion and its similarity to the fiasco of 1982 (except that the
guerrillas now seem much better organized and armed...) at last nudged
mainstream groups such as Peace Now and the Meretz Party out of their
complacency and the "support from the left" which many of their leaders gave
to this vicious war on its inception. On Thursday they were in their
hundreds in front of the Ministry of Defence, with big signs reading "There
is No Military Solution!", and cracks start to appear in the Labor Party
support for the mad careering of Party Leader and Defence Minister Amir
Peretz - once a staunch dove and militant trade unionist, now the the most
hawkish of hawks. 

As things stand, it seems that all of us - radicals and moderates, those who
opposed the madness from its inception and the latecomers - will still have
to go and protest again and again. And meanwhile, the occupation and
oppression of the Palestinians are still there, to any who tended to forget.
Yesterday afternoon, the weekly anti-Wall procession at Bil'in was viciously
attacked by the army and Border Guard troops. Limor, a young Israeli
activist, was hit in the head by one of the misnamed "rubber bullets" -
which is actually made of metal. After emergency surgery at Tel-Hashomer
hospital, he is now under medically induced coma, and only when he wakes up
will it be possible to asses the permanent damage. Due to Lebanon, the case
got very meagre media attention; updates will appear on the International
Solidarity Movement website http://www.palsolidarity.org 

Occupation Magazine

 <http://www.kibush.co.il/> http://www.kibush.co.il/  (articles and action
news, look at it daily - includes a useful archive)

ISM website

 <http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/> http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/
(informing especially about joint Palestinian-Israeli-international
anti-Wall struggle in the villages) 

Robert Rosenberg's summary of "peace" issues in the Israeli media

 <http://www.ariga.com/> http://www.ariga.com/  (on workdays)

 <http://www.theheadlines.org/> http://www.theheadlines.org/ (a variety of
papers, followed dayly by Shadi Fadda)

 <http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml>
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml (Palestinian press agency, including
own research)

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php (Palestinian on-line News agency that
publishes news and articles in English from it's own as well as other
sources, including from the Hebrew press)

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