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Lebanese citizens demonstrate support for Hassan Nassrala
My heart is
with the Goldwasser and Regev families, who can finally mourn on the graves of
their loved ones. My heart is with the family of Samir Kuntar who can, after
thirty years, embrace him in his home. Goldwasser, Regev and Kuntar were
prisoners of war who, in accordance with the laws of combat, were entitled to
return home as quickly as possible. However, my feelings are not at all
representative of those in my society. If in Lebanon
the happiness was widespread amongst both political circles and on the street,
in Israel
despondency affected both of these groups. “Yet again we were forced to give in
to terror, again we were defeated” – we endlessly hear and read these types of
statements in the media, despite attempts by Israeli government speakers to
present the prisoner exchange as an Israeli achievement. There is also, of
course, a racist undertone to Israeli statements: the Jewish ‘value to life’
and the contempt for human life by all others. A reminder: in the last Lebanon war, it
was not Olmert but Nasrallah who pushed for a cease-fire, despite the latter’s
victory in the battlefield, in order to prevent additional casualties amongst
the civilian population.
This racism
is further notable in the almost complete inability of the various Israeli commentators
to correctly describe - and even less so to understand - what is happening on
the other side of the border. Happiness and national solidarity were experienced
by the entire Lebanese society, including the pro-American Prime Minister
Siniora. Israelis explain the Hizbullah achievement as resulting from “pressure
exerted by it on the people”, and the restrained response of Sheikh Nasrallah as
stemming from fear of Israeli responses.
Yet restraint
is the ultimate symbol of the Hizbullah and the modest lifestyles of its
leaders are known to every child in Lebanon, but Israeli commentators
and politicians refuse to see this. They refuse, as this would undermine their
racist perceptions – Arabs are hotheads while Westerners (us, the Israelis) are
restrained and considered. The fact that reality is exactly the opposite
changes neither their perception nor their analysis. And because of this we
will be surprised time and time again, not understanding what is happening.
Even a simple feeling like national patriotism surprises the Israelis in
relation to an Arab state! The restraint and judgment of the Hizbullah are even
more striking because if the organisation would follow in the wake of Israeli
arrogance, the Hizbullah could easily declare that “we will not conduct any
negotiations with a corrupt prime minister, whose credibility is doubted by a
majority of his people, and as such his days in office are numbered…” And here
is an additional blow to the racist Israeli perception: the corruption is not
on the Arab side, and the honesty and modesty of the leaders of the Shiite
organization contrast strongly with the high number of corruption charges
currently leveled at the Israeli leadership.
The
agreement between the Israeli government and Hizbullah is a victory for the
Shiite organization, and no one disagrees with this. Yet again the organization
broke the formal and unrealistic position of every government in Israel, which
begins with “we will never speak with…” A wise person knows that in politics,
just as in love, there exists no “never”. Who can forget the eleventh
commandment “We will never speak with the PLO”, which lasted until Rabin began
the Oslo
process and spoke directly with PLO leaders? Today we hear that “we will never
speak with Hamas!” Yet Israel
is speaking with Hamas, and we will speak more with it in the future for if
not, we will be forced to speak with Al Qaida.
Moreoever,
as the commentator Aluf Benn noted in his article “Israeli Diplomacy: The
Summer of Talk (Haaretz, 17 July), negotiations with the Hizbullah
signify the end of the rejectionist policy of the Israeli-American axis, even
before George Bush and Ehud Olmert step off the political stage. Talks with the
Hamas have already commenced and, despite disapproval from Washington,
even with Syria.
And the United States is
conducting negotiations for nuclear demilitarization with Iran, with whom
Bush also vowed never to speak. The alternative to talks and political negotiations
is war, and this has been the choice of the neo-conservatives throughout the
previous two decades: to solve political conflicts and to promote
economic-political interests through force. The Washington defeat in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the Israeli defeat in Lebanon and the inability to break the
Palestinian national resistance in the occupied territories, has brought the
United States to reconsider its strategic perceptions, as testified to in the
Baker-Hamilton document.
As is its
way, Israel
will lag behind its American patron by two or three years, such that it is
possible that in approximately 2011, we will be witness to a significant
political development, and Israeli agreement to the peace offer proposed a
decade earlier by the Arab League.
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