[Peace-discuss] The Real Aim

[Lisa Chason]

The Real Aim

By: Uri Avnery

07/15/06 -- THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a
puppet government.

That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed.
But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have
never really given up on it.

As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out
in full coordination with the US.

As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the
Lebanese elite.

That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.

ON THE eve of the 1982 invasion, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told
Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear
provocation", which would be accepted by the world.

The provocation indeed took place - exactly at the appropriate time - when
Abu-Nidal's terror gang tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in
London. This had no connection with Lebanon, and even less with the PLO (the
enemy of Abu-Nidal), but it served its purpose.

This time, the necessary provocation has been provided by the capture of the
two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Everyone knows that they cannot be freed
except through an exchange of prisoners. But the huge military campaign that
has been ready to go for months was sold to the Israeli and international
public as a rescue operation.

(Strangely enough, the very same thing happened two weeks earlier in the
Gaza Strip. Hamas and its partners captured a soldier, which provided the
excuse for a massive operation that had been prepared for a long time and
whose aim is to destroy the Palestinian government.)


THE DECLARED aim of the Lebanon operation is to push Hizbullah away from the
border, so as to make it impossible for them to capture more soldiers and to
launch rockets at Israeli towns. The invasion of the Gaza strip is also
officially aimed at getting Ashkelon and Sderot out of the range of the
Qassams.

That resembles the 1982 "Operation Peace for Gallilee". Then, the public and
the Knesset were told that the aim of the war was to "push the Katyushas 40
km away from the border".

That was a deliberate lie. For 11 months before the war, not a single
Katyusha rocket (nor a single shot) had been fired over the border. From the
beginning, the aim of the operation was to reach Beirut and install a
Quisling dictator. As I have recounted more than once, Sharon himself told
me so nine months before the war, and I duly published it at the time, with
his consent (but unattributed).

Of course, the present operation also has several secondary aims, which do
not include the freeing of the prisoners. Everybody understands that that
cannot be achieved by military means. But it is probably possible to destroy
some of the thousands of missiles that Hizbullah has accumulated over the
years. For this end, the army chiefs are ready to endanger the inhabitants
of the Israeli towns that are exposed to the rockets. They believe that that
is worthwhile, like an exchange of chess figures.

Another secondary aim is to rehabilitate the "deterrent power" of the army.
That is a codeword for the restoration of the army's injured pride that has
suffered a severe blow from the daring military actions of Hamas in the
south and Hizbullah in the north. 


OFFICIALLY, THE Israeli government demands that the Government of Lebanon
disarm Hizbullah and remove it from the border region.

That is clearly impossible under the present Lebanese regime, a delicate
fabric of ethno-religious communities. The slightest shock can bring the
whole structure crashing down and throw the state into total anarchy -
especially after the Americans succeeded in driving out the Syrian army, the
only element that has for years provided some stability.

The idea of installing a Quisling in Lebanon is nothing new. In 1955, David
Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and installing him as
dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on complete ignorance
of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it. But 27 years later, Ariel Sharon tried
to put it into effect nevertheless. Bashir Gemayel was indeed installed as
president, only to be murdered soon afterwards. His brother, Amin, succeeded
him and signed a peace agreement with Israel, but was driven out of office.
(The same brother is now publicly supporting the Israeli operation.)

The calculation now is that if the Israeli Air Force rains heavy enough
blows on the Lebanese population - paralysing the sea- and airports,
destroying the infrastructure, bombarding residential neighborhoods, cutting
the Beirut-Damascus highroad etc. - the public will get furious with
Hizbullah and pressure the Lebanese government into fulfilling Israel's
demands. Since the present government cannot even dream of doing so, a
dictatorship will be set up with Israel's support.

That is the military logic. I have my doubts. It can be assumed that most
Lebanese will react as any other people on earth would: with fury and hatred
towards the invader. That happened in 1982, when the Shiites in the south of
Lebanon, until then as docile as a doormat, stood up against the Israeli
occupiers and created the Hizbullah, which has become the strongest force in
the country. If the Lebanese elite now becomes tainted as collaborators with
Israel, it will be swept off the map. (By the way, have the Qassams and
Katyushas caused the Israeli population to exert pressure on our government
to give up? Quite the contrary.)

The American policy is full of contradictions. President Bush wants "regime
change" in the Middle East, but the present Lebanese regime has only
recently been set up by under American pressure. In the meantime, Bush has
succeeded only in breaking up Iraq and causing a civil war (as foretold
here). He may get the same in Lebanon, if he does not stop the Israeli army
in time. Moreover, a devastating blow against Hizbullah may arouse fury not
only in Iran, but also among the Shiites in Iraq, on whose support all of
Bush's plans for a pro-American regime are built.

So what's the answer? Not by accident, Hizbullah has carried out its
soldier-snatching raid at a time when the Palestinians are crying out for
succor. The Palestinian cause is popular all over the Arab word. By showing
that they are a friend in need, when all other Arabs are failing dismally,
Hizbullah hopes to increase its popularity. If an Israeli-Palestinian
agreement had been achieved by now, Hizbullah would be no more than a local
Lebanese phenomenon, irrelevant to our situation. 

LESS THAN three months after its formation, the Olmert-Peretz government has
succeeded in plunging Israel into a two-front war, whose aims are
unrealistic and whose results cannot be foreseen.

If Olmert hopes to be seen as Mister Macho-Macho, a Sharon # 2, he will be
disappointed. The same goes for the desperate attempts of Peretz to be taken
seriously as an imposing Mister Security. Everybody understands that this
campaign - both in Gaza and in Lebanon - has been planned by the army and
dictated by the army. The man who makes the decisions in Israel now is Dan
Halutz. It is no accident that the job in Lebanon has been turned over to
the Air Force.

The public is not enthusiastic about the war. It is resigned to it, in stoic
fatalism, because it is being told that there is no alternative. And indeed,
who can be against it? Who does not want to liberate the "kidnapped
soldiers"? Who does not want to remove the Katyushas and rehabilitate
deterrence? No politician dares to criticize the operation (except the Arab
MKs, who are ignored by the Jewish public). In the media, the generals reign
supreme, and not only those in uniform. There is almost no former general
who is not being invited by the media to comment, explain and justify, all
speaking in one voice.

(As an illustration: Israel's most popular TV channel invited me to an
interview about the war, after hearing that I had taken part in an anti-war
demonstration. I was quite surprised. But not for long - an hour before the
broadcast, an apologetic talk-show host called and said that there had been
a terrible mistake - they really meant to invite Professor Shlomo Avineri, a
former Director General of the Foreign Office who can be counted on to
justify any act of the government, whatever it may be, in lofty academic
language.)

"Inter arma silent Musae" - when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent.
Or, rather: when the guns roar, the brain ceases to function.


AND JUST a small thought: when the State of Israel was founded in the middle
of a cruel war, a poster was plastered on the walls: "All the country - a
front! All the people - an army!"

58 Years have passed, and the same slogan is still as valid as it was then.
What does that say about generations of statesmen and generals?

Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli
peace movement, "Gush Shalom".

 

 

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