15/05/2010 The Zionist entity is trying its best to transfer calming messages to Lebanon and Syria not only through foreign politicians who are lately flooding into the region but also through it media and army officials.
Israeli media has considered then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s decision to withdraw from Lebanon as a right on saying that the 2000 withdrawal was still perceived as justified, despite the war in 2006 and despite the arguments that the hasty retreat exposed Israeli society's vulnerability ("spider webs" is the adjective Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah used in his speech in Bint Jbail two days after the Israeli occupation army's exit).
Moreover, Barak said this week that why this withdrawal didn't happen 10 years earlier.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday that Lebanon was the burning issue on the security agenda in the 1990s, even though the scope of the damage appears modest in comparison to the troubles that came later: the second intifada, from September 2000 on, and the Second Lebanon War in 2006. “Problematic combat norms were inculcated in the Israeli army in Lebanon, and the forces' attention was distracted from other vital areas.”
Barak made a logical decision that also paid off for him politically. On March 1, 1999, the day after Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein was killed by a Hezbollah roadside bomb, Barak declared his intention to leave Lebanon within a year of his government's swearing-in. This announcement helped to tilt the race against Benjamin Netanyahu, and two months later Barak scored a decisive election victory.
It's true that Barak imposed the unilateral withdrawal on the army's officers, but many of them are now prepared to admit that he was right and they were wrong.
Israeli Brig.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Tamir, in his book, describes the Israeli army in Lebanon as a sluggish army that was slow to grasp its situation, and says it waged a war of attrition it could not win. The stay in Lebanon, wrote Tamir, was "a systemic failure that led the IDF to beat a hasty unilateral retreat without a security or political accord."
However, Haaretz added that Hezbollah's victory celebrations fed the Palestinians' conclusion that they could expel Israel from the West Bank by force, and this contributed to the outbreak of the second intifada.
And still, with zero international legitimacy, no diplomatic objective, and no long-term military plan, this was an unwinnable war and it was best to end it.
"The Lebanese tragedy has come to an end. Israel will set a very high threshold for a response throughout Lebanon," Barak promised when the last Israeli soldier left. It was a pledge he did not keep - and some will say that this is where the seeds of the 2006 misadventure were planted.
Haaretz said, “Hezbollah took advantage of the relative quiet to build positions along the border, which served as a convenient point to launch the capture of the two occupation soldiers in 2006. At the same time, it also built up an elaborate inventory of rockets that it fired at Israel during the war. The postwar reckoning included much criticism of Israel's policy of counting on Hezbollah's rockets to rust from disuse. In fact, a very similar process, with even graver potential consequences, has been going on since the end of the war. The Islamic organization has armed itself with approximately 45,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could traverse all of Israel - and this time, too, Israel is sitting by quietly.”
In addition to the erosion of deterrence vis-a-vis Hezbollah, the Israeli army has neglected its intelligence-gathering activities, particularly on the tactical level, along the border. It has allocated too few resources and forces to securing the border and hasn't been serious enough about preparing for the next round in Lebanon. For all of these things, it paid a high price in 2006.
“Now the parties are gearing up for the fourth campaign. The challenge facing the Israeli army now is not resistance attacks on a force holding onto a dubious defense zone, but a potential military campaign involving thousands of rockets and missiles fired at the Israeli home front. Apparently, the enemy's sense that Israel is unpredictable is dampening any interest in risking another confrontation at the present time,” the report added.
Brig.-Gen. Itai Baron, head of the Dado Center for Military Thinking, said this week in a lecture at the Fisher Institute, "In many ways, the other side thought that we lost our heads in the war in Lebanon and in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza."
However, Lebanon could still ignite as an outgrowth of developments on the "main front" - the struggle to halt the Iranian nuclear program. In that case, it's doubtful whether the Israeli army's response will be good enough, despite the intensive effort to make improvements since 2006.
The most important question in the north for now is how Israel can avoid repeating past mistakes, so that the next few years do not bring a new variation of the errors of 2006 ("We can deal with the rockets"), 1996 ("There is no alternative to an IDF presence in the security zone" ) - or, worst of all, 1973 ("A political accord can wait, our intelligence will be able to warn us in time before we are attacked, and if worst comes to worst - we'll break the Arabs' bones").
15/05/2010 Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt said in an interview published in Lebanese daily As-Safir on Saturday that Israel should never be trusted when it says it will not attack Lebanon or Syria.
"Whether this reassurance is serious or not, it is a duty to remain cautious at this stage, particularly that experience with Israel hasn't been encouraging," Jumblatt told As-Safir.
"We can never trust it. Israel can never abandon its aggressive intentions," he said. "Such caution calls for a quick and full coordination between the Lebanese government, the resistance and the army."
He also recalled that despite Israeli assurances in 1982, “Israel invaded Lebanon and reached Beirut under the pretext of an attempt to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London.”
Jumblatt’s comments come two days after Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the press in Beirut that “all concerned parties are willing to work toward peace in the [Middle East].”
Moratinos, who was touring the region this week, passed on the message from officials in Tel Aviv that “Israel has no intention of escalating tensions with Syria and Lebanon, and [Tel Aviv] wants to withdrawal from the Lebanese part of the Ghajar Village and resume negotiations.”
Jumblatt, also the Democratic Gathering bloc leader, expressed caution about the Israeli assurances, saying past experiences with the country have never been encouraging.
Jumblatt said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit to Syria entailed “a very important dimension” and was designed to send “a highly significant message” to the world that Syria cannot be isolated.
Meanwhile, Public Works and Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi is scheduled to visit Damascus on Monday for talks with the assistant of the Syrian president's deputy, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nassif.
Aridi told As Safir that the visit comes as a continuation of discussions and exchange of views in the aftermath of Jumblatt's talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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