Uri Avnery Has Got It Right

Uri Avnery

15.7.06

"The Real Aim

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 code-word 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 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 (in Israel) 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?"

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