|
|
|
|
|
|
|
U.$. Secretary of State of Condoleeza Rice apparently worked for a week "non-stop" to create a cease-fire for I$rael and Lebanon after more than 34 days fighting. 2000 UN troops are already in place to stop the fighting and 3500 French troops are on the way in addition to 13,000 Lebanese troops headed to southern Lebanon where Hezbollah has held control. As of August 17, I$rael is blaming the United Nations and Lebanon for not occupying southern Lebanon fast enough for I$rael to really withdraw;(1) thus, there is some thought that the fighting will continue or even expand as I$rael has started blaming Iran and Syria again for re-arming Hezbollah.
Hezbollah stands for "Party of God." It is an Islamic organization of the Shiite beliefs. Hezbollah has two I$raeli soldiers hostage that served as I$rael's pretext for killing 1000 Lebanese and causing billions of dollars in infrastructural damage to Lebanon.
Two weeks ago, U.$. Heritage Foundation-style reactionaries including neo- conservative Daniel Pipes joined to urge on I$rael to disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and set the terms for what it wanted in Lebanon.(2) Yet a Heritage Foundation reactionary named James Phillips found himself in the August 17 Toronto Star echoing Lebanese, "'If Israel couldn't disarm Hezbollah, I doubt the Lebanese government, even backed by an international force, could do it.'"(3)
In his own way, Phillips was still urging on I$rael to do battle with Hezbollah instead of going on with the UN cease-fire. It is apparent that the result of the battle and the conclusions to be drawn are not going to be I$rael's liking.
Why did the war end if it has ended?
At the very least, the united $tates and I$rael have signalled a willingness to pause their attacks. There are many making the reasons for the cease-fire deliberately unclear-- the fog of war and politics.
MIM also cannot report with certainty, but in this situation historically, military analysts usually cut through the smoke to see what happened in the ground warfare.
I$rael went in with the goal of finding its two troops, eliminating the Hezbollah missile stockpiles in Lebanon and killing Hezbollah leaders. It failed in all goals, but it still called a cease-fire. That the united $tates gave I$rael the green light for five weeks to do its dirtiest is not surprising. What I$rael did not accomplish is the surprise.
Admittedly, there is much political uncertainty in the air. For example, the Bush administration surely does not want August 22nd to pass without focus on Iran directly, with the subject of Iran's nuclear weapons program and Iran's potential deal offered by the European Union at stake. Then too, there is the complication of how Hezbollah's rising fortunes raise the power of Iraq's majority Shiite population too. Already the Bush administration is leaving itself some wiggle room to leave Iraq completely if there is a "civil war," by which the Bush administration means fighting among their own puppets in the regime they installed. In reality, if I$rael inflames the Iraqi people too much, we may see them unite better to oust U.$. troops.
While Iraq and Iran are very important to the Lebanon situation, it is a general rule of warfare, especially ground warfare of this sort, that an imperialist will put aside many inconveniences not to be seen as losing, inept or weak. So we doubt any conspiracy theory in this regard.
Ranging close to a conspiracy theory is how a top I$raeli military leader sold his piddly $27,500 stock portfolio before the war.(4) More smoke in the air is the Jerusalem Post's attempt to blame an I$raeli anti-militarist campaign called "Four Mothers" for the failures in Lebanon in 2000.(5) The story goes that I$rael's military was fine in 2000 and again in 2006, but the I$raeli brass were afraid of the political impact once Jewish mothers realized how many 18-year-olds had died--roughly 100 when they stopped the war, compared with 20 per year during the previous occupation of Lebanon.
As a theory of the war's end, the Jerusalem Post's angle is disinformation; albeit, there is always a portion of the unintended who believe disinformation campaigns. The bottom line crockery here is that to have stopped Hezbollah from re-supply and the like, I$rael would have had to have controlled all Lebanon-- a tall order and one that would not have stopped there. It's always possible to say that had I$rael controlled all the territory of all the Arab lands, there would be no issue of re-supply or Hezbollah control--a true but fatuous statement.
In this case, the dynamics of the ground warfare in Lebanon 2006 and I$rael's connected failure to meet its goals seem to be the reason for the end of the war. It appears that I$rael realized that it could continue the war and of course its troops were still largely unscathed, but I$rael also realized that the cost of the war was much higher than expected. It was I$rael that needed the time to re-think.
We know that I$rael did not stop the war when the G-8 (a meeting of the world's economic leaders held under Russian auspices this year) under Russian President Putin's guidance gave it permission to attack, just without a "disproportionate" response.(6) The killing of dozens of civilians in a single bombing attack on Qana in Lebanon, with mostly children as victims also did not stop the war early on.(7) It dragged on weeks more.
The best explanation we saw for why the war ended came from the hard-core activists of the Democratic Party--the Daily Kos.(8) Lebanon's army is a joke and estimates of Hezbollah's size have it outnumbered by I$rael by one hundredfold. Even officially the war in Lebanon was between only hundreds of Hezbollah against thousands of I$raelis. Yet, it appears that $5000 of military hardware guarantee the knock-out of a $3 million tank, possibly the world's greatest tank, the Merkava that I$rael has spent $6.5 billion on.
$5000 buys 10 missiles which can be carried by six people. Assuming as I$rael says that 8 will miss the target or otherwise fail, the remaining two missiles will destroy the Merkava tank. If there are any leftover missiles they have devastating use against I$raelis holed up in houses or behind other structures. So if one cannot take cover behind a tank, then I$rael's usual procedures for military movement are up in smoke.
We have to discount the show-and-tell and the tattling on the Russians. Anti-tank weapons have been around since the 1973 Mideast war. What is in question is which anti-tank missiles and modified by whom are really the ones causing the trouble. That is another point where I$raelis needed time to study and re-think. There appear to be old Soviet ones, European "Milan" and recent Russian ones being discussed. There is even a report of Amerikan anti-tank missiles having been fired against I$raelis.(9)
I$rael admits to have had 20 tanks destroyed and many more damaged. It means that missiles penetrated 60 or 70 tons of steel and killed the tank occupants in the case of 30 people.(10)
For public opinion matters, I$rael's military can still claim that most of its tanks defended I$raeli soldiers including tank crews quite well. There is no reason for utter panic. However, at a cost-level, if it is true what various sources are reporting, then I$rael cannot fight a sustainable war of the kind Hezbollah engaged it. Even if I$rael could clear all of southern Lebanon and a few thousand Hezbollah fighters, it would remain true that Arab youth everywhere would now be interested in anti-tank weapons. For that matter one need not be terribly able-bodied as the best anti-tank missiles weigh less than 14 kilograms and some less than 10. The physical facts of anti-tank missiles make it hard to see how their re-supply can be stopped even by bombing highways.
I$rael claims that for some missions it sent troops en masse without armoured vehicles or tanks, because it would be a waste of ammunition for the Hezbollah to fire their missiles just at troops.(11) In other words, I$rael would be back to fighting battles of humyn swarms. They would have better equipment, but their advantage would be reduced and also in some sense, again unsustainable. That is without mentioning that Iran appears to have copied Chinese cruise missiles and some sort of missile managed to kill four I$raeli sailors off the coast of Lebanon, so the war spread to the sea as well.
Timing
This is a good moment to stop the war for the imperialists. There is the matter of diplomatic dealings with Iran going on and a need for the imperialists to stoke public opinion regarding nuclear weapons.
Also, the timing is good because even an I$raeli loss tends to boost the chances of propagandists playing on the fears of Amerikan voters. The victory of Hezbollah will in the short-run be taken by the Amerikan public as a justification for "getting tough on" "defense." Though MIM has tried since 9/11 to tell Amerikans that it cannot win its war against the Third World, we can count on the fact that that message will not get through by November, 2006.
The fear of Iran will boost Republican chances in the November elections, if Bu$h can stoke the fear without having too many terribly obvious catastrophes. Haaretz claims that I$rael has two years to prepare for the next war, one that will include a regional power (fill in the blank of with Syria, Iran or Egypt, probably Syria/Iran.)(12) Perhaps Haaretz is pointing to another green light from lame duck Bush as he exits office in 2008.
Russians
The Palestinians are calling I$rael's attack on the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 their Stalingrad and some Lebanese are calling Lebanon 2006 their Leningrad. Meanwhile, the same missiles that rained down on Hitler's armies are now raining down on I$rael--Katyusha rockets. It is a terrible historical and psychological irony that the rockets that saved the Jews and Soviet peoples are now killing Zionists.
The Russians are claiming that their latest anti-tank missiles are not involved in the Lebanon situation, because they track their weapons and uphold their diplomatic bargains.(13) So again there is some smoke in the air to clear. Either I$rael is blaming Russia for political reasons or Russia is secretly flexing serious geopolitical muscle as some Turkish writers suggest(14) or perhaps a little of both. What is important is the imperialist tensions.
MIM Notes along with some Turkish writers that Russia did indeed omit Hezbollah and Hamas from its list of terrorist groups, despite having a long list of Islamic ones to contend with. There is even a claim that Syria granted Russia naval base rights and that Syria is really the only such base that Russia has.
Anti-missile missiles
Defenses against the poor man's missile are also possible. The most famous is the Patriot missile.
Yet it appears that these anti-missile systems are also costly. Stalin-era Katyusha rockets are raining down on I$rael. Those rockets are cheap. Anti-missile missiles run to the cost of millions--and if they did not, it would be just one more problem for the imperialists who depend on their control of capital, including expensive weapons systems in the hands of trusted exploiter minorities. The united $tates and I$rael are not prepared to fight the type of war of 1776--when people with the economic equivalent of muskets got together to drive out colonialists. If the economics of the situation permits that sort of battle, then the united $tates and I$rael are the losers.
The I$raeli air force may not be able to counter-attack if the rockets have timers that allow the people firing to escape. Cheap, light and mobile--these sorts of weapons are evening out the technology edge of the I$raelis and Amerikans.
Polls in I$rael show that more than half the public want their Defense Minister Peretz to resign for failure. These issues that we are pointing to though are not something that he could have prevented.(15) From the beginning, the Olmert's cabinet member Justice Minister Haim Ramon pointed the way to the ongoing nature of I$rael's response--bombing:
"Our great advantage against Hezbollah is firepower, not hand-to-hand combat."(16) Unable to win diplomatically or with conventional military means, I$rael is increasingly left in the position of terrorist seeking to destroy other countries' economies and populations wholesale. "Fail, make trouble and fail again," Mao said is the formula for imperialists. They will do anything but acknowledge the class roots of warfare.
Amerikan and I$raeli imperialism often threaten entire countries with annihilation, but this war showed that there is still a dialectical relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppressor spreads war mercilessly, but spreading war means its democratization. One cannot predict in advance the physics and engineering of an anti-tank rocket. Whether explosive material exists to damage thick armor and how much would explosives have to weigh to take out a 63 ton tank is not readily apparent. Yet somehow the answer this time shows once again that the oppressor cannot just oppress and annihilate. The people are yet again decisive, not expensive high-tech weapons. The international proletariat needs to wake up to its own power too, because leaving questions of war in the hands of the imperialists runs the high risk of planet destruction. The sooner the international proletariat wakes up and brings force to bear on the question, the greater the chances the Western petty-bourgeoisie will see there is no other way out of its predicament but socialism.
Notes:
1. http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1717328.htm
2. On August 2nd, Heritage Foundation web-published its summation of its leaders from a July 26th discussion:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm1184.cfm
Heritage considers itself a "conservative" "think tank."
3. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1155765012274&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home
4. "Israeli military leader under fire over stock sale," http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15289039.htm
The sale would tend to point to the idea that Lieutenant General Halutz knew the war would go badly; however,
many I$raelis could be found voicing military respect for Hezbollah before the war as well.
5. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525822476&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
6. "G-8 leaders call on Islamic militants, Israel to back down," http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15053227.htm
7. http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1706422.htm
8. "The bankruptcy of high-cost weapons strategy," http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/7/1532/34915
9. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004555105 ;
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060815.wmilidraw0815/BNStory/Front
10. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525881698&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
11. "Hizbollah tactics put Israelis on closer footing," ://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060810/
12. By Avraham Tal, "Preparing for the next war now," http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/751455.html
13. "Russia denies sending anti-tank weapons to Hizbollah, ministry" http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060810/52496375.html,
"Israel ready to blame the whole world for its shameful war in Lebanon," http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/83977-0/
14. Melih Can, "Did the Russians have a hand in stopping Israel," http://www.zaman.com/?bl=commentary&alt=&trh=20060817&hn=35726
15. "Israel to scrutinise military conduct,"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1851600,00.html shows devastating results for I$raeli government
in multiple polls.
16. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=866c9064-0f12-43ef-abf7-48fdcf596415&k=38536