[Peace-discuss] Just Foreign Policy News, July 28, 2006

Fri Jul 28 15:50:15 CDT 2006

Just Foreign Policy News
July 28, 2006

In this issue:
1) Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
2) Mideast Fight Enters 17th Day as Rice Vows to Return
3) Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast
4) Israel Approves Call-Up, but Sets No Deployment
5) Sergeant Tells of Plot to Kill Iraqi Detainees
6) Israeli Attacks Kill Up to 12 in Lebanon
7) Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model
8) Europe May Be Drawn Into Mideast Conflict
9) Hizbollah Fires Long - Range Rocket Into Israel
10) In Israel's Sights, Lebanon Truckers Face Death
11) Blair to Press Bush for UN Resolution on Lebanon
12) Iran: Hezbollah Got No Military Support
13) Rice on the Defensive After Rome Summit
14) Key UN Members Said to Reach Informal Deal on Iran
15) China Links US Mideast Stance to Iran Measure
16) Bolton's U.N. Post Sparks Partisan Debate
17) Is Iran Behind the War in Lebanon?
18) On Israel, We Must Never Be Silent
19) Down the Memory Hole

Summary:
At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments like Saudi
Arabia criticized Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing
what the US and Israel took as a green light to continue the fight,
the New York Times notes. Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and
Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more
than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is
surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's
leader into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.
The Saudis and Jordan are scrambling to distance themselves from
Washington. An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and
poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the
US and Secretary of State Rice for trumpeting American plans for a
"new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and
repression. American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to
take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what
matters more is what they tell the US in private, which the Americans
still see as a wink and a nod.

In a multinational conference on the Middle East crisis in Rome on
Wednesday, Rice had successfully argued for language in a joint
communique calling for a "sustainable" cease-fire including political
elements, rather than an immediate one, a stance that had the effect
of buying time for Israel to pursue its military campaign against
Hezbollah. Israeli officials said later that in fact, the declaration
gave Israel the world's permission to continue strikes in Lebanon
against Hezbollah targets. But a State Department spokesman said that
such an interpretation of the Rome declaration was "outrageous," and
that the United States was working for a durable end to the conflict.

President Bush said today that Secretary of State Rice would be
dispatched to the Middle East on Saturday with a plan for a
multinational force that would help Lebanon's army take over from
Hezbollah in the southern part of the country. Bush spoke this
afternoon at a press conference with Prime Minister Blair of Britain.
Both leaders called for the need to impose United Nations resolution
1559, which calls for disarming Hezbollah and deploying the Lebanese
Army to the border. Blair said the plan includes bringing forward a
United Nations meeting to Monday about an international stabilization
force that will allow Lebanon's government to deploy its own army in
the south.

A United Nations official said there would be an investigation into
why four UN observers were killed on Tuesday despite repeated warnings
that the firing was coming too close to the observation post. "Why did
they go on firing?" said the deputy secretary general at the United
Nations, Mark Malloch Brown, on CNN. At the United Nations on
Thursday, the Security Council adopted a statement that expressed
shock and distress at the killings of the observers but avoided the
direct criticism of Israel and its motives that had been in earlier
drafts. The statement underlined "the importance of insuring that U.N.
personnel are not the object of attack," but it turned aside Mr.
Annan's request that the United Nations be permitted to join in the
Israeli investigation of the incident.

China on Thursday warned the United States that its opposition to a
statement condemning a deadly attack on a U.N. post in Lebanon could
jeopardize U.N. negotiations on Iran's nuclear ambitions. The United
States was blocking a U.N. Security Council statement on Israel's
attack on the outpost in southern Lebanon, despite what council
diplomats called many compromises by Beijing. "This is a serious
matter,'' China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, told reporters. "It
is an attack on the U.N. peacekeepers.'' Wang said nearly every
delegation in the council was frustrated over the U.S. position.
"Definitely this frustration will have its negative impact,'' Wang
said. "I believe it will affect it negatively.''

The Israeli government on Thursday approved call-ups for as many as
30,000 reserve troops, suggesting that it may be gearing up for a
protracted battle. The security cabinet nonetheless ruled out a major
military escalation for now, opting to maintain a focus on
wide-ranging airstrikes and limited ground incursions along the
border.

At least 10 people were reported killed today in villages near the
coastal town of Tyre in southern Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes
were most intense. Israeli jets also hit several buildings near the
town of Nabatiyeh, killing three people and wounding nine, according
to Lebanese security officials cited by the Associated Press.

Hospitals in Lebanon have received the bodies of more than 400 people
killed in the fighting, and the country's health minister, Muhammad
Khalifeh, said an estimated 150 to 200 bodies were still under the
rubble. "We have not been able to pull them out because the areas they
died in are still under fire," Mr. Khalifeh told Reuters.

The Israeli military said it has killed more than 200 Hezbollah
militants since the fighting began with a cross-border raid on July
12. Hezbollah has given only occasional figures, putting the number at
around 30.

Hezbollah maintained its rocket fire on northern Israel today. About
50 rockets hit northern Israel as of the afternoon, though only a few
minor injuries were reported.
Fifty-two Israelis have been killed in fighting so far, including 19
civilians who died in rocket attacks.

Food and other aid continued to trickle into Lebanon. While supplies
are beginning to arrive, some foreign truck drivers have refused to
travel to areas being bombed. At the Arida border crossing with Syria
in northern Lebanon, Turkish trucks bringing food stopped to transfer
their supplies to Lebanese-owned trucks in a laborious process that
took more than an hour a truck.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told Prime Minister Romano
Prodi of Italy on Thursday that he believed a solution could soon be
reached in the case involving the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped
and taken to the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants on June 25.
However, Palestinian factions said they were not aware of an imminent
deal. In Gaza, where 23 Palestinians were killed Wednesday, Israeli
troops and Palestinian militants again clashed along the eastern edge
of Gaza City on Thursday, but on a smaller scale. Still, four
Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman, Palestinian
medical workers said. Nearly 150 Palestinians have been killed since
Israel launched its offensive a month ago to retrieve its captured
soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. The death toll includes a
large number of militants and civilians, according to Palestinian
monitoring groups.

In a sworn statement, Sgt. Lemuel Lemus said he had witnessed a
deliberate plot by his fellow soldiers to kill three handcuffed Iraqi
prisoners and a cover-up in which one soldier cut another to bolster
their story, the New York Times reports. The squad leader threatened
to kill anyone who talked. As with similar cases being investigated in
Iraq, Sergeant Lemus's narrative has raised questions about the rules
under which American troops operate and the possible culpability of
commanders. Four soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder
in the case. Lawyers for two of them, who dispute Sergeant Lemus's
account, say the soldiers were given an order by a decorated colonel
on the day in question to "kill all military-age men" they
encountered. The colonel, Michael Steele, led the 1993 mission in
Somalia made famous by the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

U.S. allies pressed Washington to speed efforts to secure a cease-fire
in the Lebanon crisis, AP reports. In France, President Jacques Chirac
said his country will press for the rapid adoption of a U.N. Security
Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, his
office said.

The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction
giant, from a project to build a high-tech children's hospital in the
southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year
behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150
percent, the New York Times reports. Called the Basra Children's
Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first
lady and Secretary of State Rice, and was designed to house
sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer. Now it becomes
the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects
in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. David Snider, a
spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development,
the State Department agency in charge of the project, said that
technically, Bechtel's contract was not being terminated because the
contract did not actually require the company to complete the
hospital. "They are under a 'term contract,' which means their job is
over when their money ends," Mr. Snider said. So despite not finishing
the hospital, he said, "they did complete the contract."

Europe may be drawn into a big role in the proposed multinational
force for south Lebanon, AP reports. But with troops already stretched
from Afghanistan to Congo, Europeans are hardly clamoring for another
Mideast entanglement. Along with the promise of a stronger European
military profile, any involvement in the fight between Israel and
Hezbollah militants holds the danger of a blow to the continent's
credibility. The former colonial powers of Europe have a troubled
history in the region.

Trucks, vans and cars have been a daily target for the Israeli
military in its war with Hizbollah, killing dozens on the roads and
hindering delivery of food supplies to villages in need of
replenishment, Reuters reports. Israel says it hits vehicles carrying
Hizbollah weapons. Many drivers have stopped working. An aid agency
offered one driver $1,000 to take food to the southern city of Tyre,
which has been heavily pounded in the war which began on July 12. He
refused despite the financial hardship caused by losing his source of
income. "I said no way. I'm not taking the truck out. A colleague did
that and they incinerated his truck and killed him.'' The United
Nations has said targeting of commercial trucks, together with
destruction of roads and bridges, has seriously hampered relief
operations for 750,000 displaced people.

Iran's foreign ministry on Friday denied allegations that Tehran has
provided military support to Hezbollah in its fight against Israel, a
day after President Bush sharply criticized Iran's role in the bloody
fighting. ''Our support has been spiritual. If we had military
support, we would announce it. ... We don't have any hidden
business,'' ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

For the past year, Secretary of State Rice has worked assiduously to
resurrect the importance of traditional diplomacy and building
consensus among world leaders after America's go-it-alone approach to
Iraq, the New York Times reports. She has managed to hold together a
fragile coalition of countries seeking to curb Iran's nuclear program
by offering to end America's three-decade-long refusal to talk to
Tehran if it suspends its uranium-enrichment program. But in the space
of one hour in Rome on Wednesday, the public rewards of that hard work
— the view around the world that the United States may now be more
willing to play nice with others — may have been undone. Once again,
it seemed, the United States had reverted to its my-way-or-the-highway
approach, and Rice was on the defensive. Reports of the Rome meeting
uniformly painted her as isolated in one corner, refusing to yield to
impassioned calls for an immediate cease-fire to end mounting civilian
casualties in Lebanon.

Key U.N. Security Council members agreed informally on Thursday on a
resolution demanding Iran suspend nuclear enrichment and reprocessing
work and threatening to consider sanctions if it refuses, Reuters
reported. The draft text must first be approved by governments of the
five Security Council members with veto power as well as Germany. But
on Thursday, two diplomats close to the negotiations told Reuters
there was "provisional agreement'' among the six. If true, a vote
could be scheduled for Monday after the full Security Council receives
the draft.

The Bush administration and GOP leaders on Thursday renewed their push
for Senate approval of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador. Democrats
maintained he is too brash and ineffective to be confirmed. The sharp
division all but guaranteed that lawmakers were headed toward another
partisan showdown in the full Senate, although Democrats would not say
whether their opposition would amount to a filibuster, as it did last
year.

An issue brief by Trita Parsi and Gareth Porter for the National
Iranian American Council casts doubts on the claims by
neoconservatives in Washington that Iran was behind the Hezbollah
capture two Israeli soldiers that provided the trigger for Israel's
assault on Lebanon. They argue that the new escalation will likely
damage Iran's interests by degrading Hezbollah's military capabilities
and by increasing the threat from the United States.

Responding to the contoversy around his criticism of Israel's policies
towards the Palestinians, New York Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini
writes that there are a growing number of people in the Jewish
community who are willing to speak up, out of love for Israel, about
the occupation. Tasini notes that his father fought in the Israeli war
of independence and that several of his close relatives have been
killed in Israel's wars or in terror attacks. He reaffirms his support
for a two-state solution and reiterates his concern that Israel has
engaged in torture and war crimes. A friend of Israel, he writes,
would understand that employing collective punishment against people
in Lebanon only embitters a population, possibly for generations, and
that even a short-term military victory will be empty if it leaves
behind a shattered country.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting takes the Washington Post, New York
Times and Los Angeles Times to task for editorializing that Hamas in
Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking
violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and
unavoidable. FAIR notes that this overlooks key events, such as the
kidnapping of two Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF the day before the
Hamas raid, or the assassination of a Palestinian leader in Lebanon in
May, attributed by Lebanese authories to Israel. These incidents went
largely unreported in the U.S. FAIR notes that with the exception of
the San Fransisco Chronicle, which reported on July 21 that Israel's
campaign in Lebanon has been planned for more than a year, the U.S.
media have largely promoted the view that the conflict started on July
12.

Articles:
1) Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
Neil MacFarquhar
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28arabs.html

2) Mideast Fight Enters 17th Day as Rice Vows to Return
Greg Myre And Christine Hauser
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/28cnd-mideast.html

3) Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast
Christine Hauser
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-mideast.html

4) Israel Approves Call-Up, but Sets No Deployment
Greg Myre
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html

5) Sergeant Tells of Plot to Kill Iraqi Detainees
Robert F. Worth
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28abuse.html

6) Israeli Attacks Kill Up to 12 in Lebanon
Associated Press
July 28, 2006
Filed at 1:49 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Lebanon-Israel.html

7) Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model
James Glanz
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28basra.html

8) Europe May Be Drawn Into Mideast Conflict
Associated Press
July 27, 2006
Filed at 4:45 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Fighting-Drawing-in-Europe-LH1.html

9) Hizbollah Fires Long - Range Rocket Into Israel
Reuters
July 28, 2006
Filed at 12:32 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-rockets.html

10) In Israel's Sights, Lebanon Truckers Face Death
Reuters
July 28, 2006
Filed at 8:45 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-lebanon-truckers.html

11) Blair to Press Bush for UN Resolution on Lebanon
Reuters
July 28, 2006
Filed at 5:52 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-britain-usa.html

12) Iran: Hezbollah Got No Military Support
Associated Press
July 28, 2006
Filed at 7:00 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Fighting-Iran.html

13) Rice on the Defensive After Rome Summit
Helene Cooper
New York Times
July 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/29ricecnd.html

14) Key UN Members Said to Reach Informal Deal on Iran
Reuters
July 27, 2006
Filed at 6:50 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nuclear-iran-un.html

15) China Links US Mideast Stance to Iran Measure
Reuters
July 27, 2006
Filed at 2:35 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-un-council.html

16) Bolton's U.N. Post Sparks Partisan Debate
Associated Press
July 28, 2006
Filed at 8:26 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-UN-Ambassador.html

17) Is Iran Behind the War in Lebanon?
Dr. Trita Parsi and Dr. Gareth Porter
National Iranian American Council website
July 24, 2006
http://www.niacouncil.org/pressreleases/press399.asp

18) On Israel, We Must Never Be Silent
Jonathan Tasini
Thursday, July 27, 2006
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0727-22.htm

19) Down the Memory Hole
Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
July 28, 2006
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2928

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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org