[LCM Articles] Rami Khouri on the situation in Lebanon/Israel/Palestine

[Philippe Charles Saad]

Friends,
a very bright, concise and precise view of the situation.
Please read.


*The Road Back to Beirut*
by Rami G. Khouri
19 July 2006

AMMAN, Jordan -- I must be one of the few people in the world trying to get
into Beirut, rather than flee the city that is being bombarded daily by
Israel, with explicit American approval. Israelis should grasp the
significance of this, if they ever wish to find peace and a normal life in
this region.

My wife and I were on a personal trip in Europe when the fighting broke out
last week, and we could not return directly to our home in Beirut. So we
have returned to our previous home in Amman in order to find a reasonably
safe land route back into Lebanon. I want to return mainly because
steadfastness in the face of the Israeli assault is the sincerest -- perhaps
the only -- form of resistance available to those of us who do not know how
to use a gun, and prefer not to do so in any case, for there is no military
solution to this conflict.

Of the many dimensions of Israel's current fighting with Palestinians and
Lebanese, the most significant in my view is the continuing, long-term
evolution of Arab public attitudes to Israel. The three critical aspects of
this are: a steady loss of fear by ordinary Arabs in the face of Israel's
military superiority; a determined and continuous quest for more effective
means of technical and military resistance against Israeli occupation and
subjugation of Palestinians and other Arabs; and, a strong political
backlash against the prevailing governing elites in the Arab world who have
quietly acquiesced in the face of Israeli-American dictates.

The Lebanon and Palestine situations today reveal a key political and
psychological dynamic that defines several hundred million Arabs, and a few
billion other like-minded folks around the world. It is that peace and quiet
in the Middle East require three things: Arabs and Israelis must be treated
equally; domestically and internationally the rule of law must define the
actions of governments and all members of society; and the core conflict
between Palestine and Israel must be resolved in a fair, legal and
sustainable manner.

Because these principles are ignored, we continue to suffer outbreaks of
military savagery by Israelis and Arabs alike, for the sixth decade in a
row. The flurry of international diplomacy this week to calm things down was
impressive for its range and energy. But it will fail if it only aims to
place an international buffer force between Hizbullah and Israel, and leave
the rest of the Arab-Israeli situation as it is.

Protecting Israel has long been the primary focus and aim of Western
diplomacy, which is why it has not succeeded. For decades now Israel has
established buffer zones, occupation zones, red lines, blue lines, green
lines, interdiction zones, killing fields, surrogate army zones, scorched
earth, and every other conceivable kind of zone between it and Arabs who
fight its occupation and colonial policies -- all without success. Here is
why: Protecting Israelis while leaving Arabs to a fate of humiliation,
occupation, degradation and subservient acquiescence to Israeli-American
dictates only guarantees that those Arabs will regroup, plan a resistance
strategy and come back one day to fight for their land, their humanity,
their dignity and the prospect that their children can have a normal life
one day.


In the past two decades, with every diplomatic move to protect Israel's
borders and drive back Arab foes, the response has been a common quest to
strike Israel from afar -- because the core dispute in Palestine remains
unresolved. Three Arab parties to date developed missiles of various sorts
that can strike Israel from greater and greater distances. Iraq, Hamas and
Hizbullah have all fired rockets and missiles at Israel, making the concept
of buffer zones militarily obsolete and politically irrelevant. New buffer
zones imposed by the international community to protect Israel, while
leaving Arab grievances to rot, will only prompt a greater determination by
the next generation of young Arab men and women to develop the means to
fight back, some day, in some way that we cannot now predict.

Piecemeal solutions and stopgap measures will not work any more. Ending
these kinds of military eruptions requires a more determined effort to
resolve the core conflict between Israel and Palestine. This would then make
it easier to address equally pressing issues within Arab countries, such as
Hizbullah's status as an armed resistance group or militia inside Lebanon,
which itself is a consequence of Israeli attacks against Lebanon and the
unresolved Palestine issue.

In Israel's determination to protect itself and the parallel Arab
determination to fight back, we have the makings of perpetual war -- or, for
those willing to be even-handed for once, an opening for a diplomatic
solution that responds simultaneously to the legitimate rights of both
sides.

In the meantime, I keep looking for a reasonably safe route back to our home
in Beirut. Standing with the people of Lebanon in their moment of pain is
the highest form of solidarity I can think of, and also the only meaningful
form of defiance and resistance to Israel that I -- and several hundred
million other Arabs -- can practice at the moment.

*Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based* Daily Star*,
published throughout the Middle East with the* International Herald Tribune.


-- 
Philippe Charles Saad
473 Adams Street, Apt 1
Dorchester, MA 02122
+1 617 230 6670
psaad at alum.mit.edu
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