_______________________________

WEEKDAY PRESS PICKS FROM
THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
AND ELECTRONIC IRAQ

http://electronicIntifada.net
http://electronicIraq.net
http://electronicLebanon.net

_______________________________

18 July 2006

NOTE: For additional eyewitness accounts, commentary and other coverage of the Israeli attack on Lebanon, stay tuned to http://electronicLebanon.net

NEWS:
1) Israel massacres 11 small children playing near Tyre (Guardian)
2) At least 46 civilians killed in new Israeli bombing (Daily Star)
3) 'It is madness. Why is no one doing anything to stop this?' (Times)
4) Amid attacks, health workers warn of waning supplies (IRIN)
5) Annan's UN force proposal dismissed as pro-Israel (Guardian)
6) EU refuses to call for ceasefire in Israel attack on Lebanon (Reuters)
7) Jewish state fails to protect its Palestinian citizens (Ind)
8) Diaries: Gaza under Darkness (Rami Almeghari/EI)

9) At least 45 Iraqi workers killed in Kufa car bomb (BBC)
10) Gunmen kill 56 in sectarian attack on Iraqi market town (Independent)
11) Japan withdraws last troops from Iraq (BBC)

ANALYSIS & VIEWS:
12) "The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel" (Christison/Counterpunch)
13) Israeli onslaught will strengthen Hizbullah's appeal (Daily Star)
14) It's not too late to say enough (Yitzhak Laor/Haaretz)
15) Thoughts While Getting Out of Missile Range (Am Johal/EI)
16) Israelis are dying: it must be an escalation (Jonathan Cook/EI)
17) Israel Violates US Law With Attack on Lebanon (Thalif Deen/IPS)
18) Ineffective EU watches as US and Israel dictate (Guardian)
19) If Israel has right to use force, so do its neighbors (A. Khalidi/Guard)

Ali Abunimah

**********************************************************

(1) 'Is Hizbullah here? Only children here.' City mourns air strike dead

Israeli attacks on Lebanon port hit canal near Palestinian
refugee camp

By Clancy Chassay in Tyre

The Guardian
18 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1822978,00.html

The Israeli army fires heavy artillery into southern
Lebanon. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

Twelve-year-old Nour lay heavily bandaged and fighting for
her life in a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of
Tyre. She is one of many children killed and injured in
Israeli air strikes on this Mediterranean port in past
days.

"We are praying for her," said Fatima, a laboratory
technician doubling as a nurse at Jabal Amal hospital,
which is overloaded with the victims of the air strikes.
Ali, the doctor treating Nour, said he did not know
whether she would survive her injuries. "She has large
burns all over her body, she is losing a lot of fluids.
She probably won't live; her life is now in God's hands."

More ambulances streamed into the hospital and doctors
hurried to treat the victims of the latest bombing.
Whatever the Israelis' intended target, the bomb fell on a
small water canal next to the Qasmia refugee camp, home to
about 500 Palestinians. Its victims were 11 children
taking an afternoon swim in the canal.

The first blast left a crater nearly four metres deep,
burying many of the swimmers deep under the orange earth.
Seven of the children were injured, three critically.
Three others have not been found.

The scene was littered with small plastic sandals, several
caked in blood. Ismael, the father of one of the children,
sat on the edge of the crater, his head in his hands
weeping. "Children! Children!" he roared through his
tears, "Children here! My son here." He stood and looked
down into the crater: "Is Hizbullah here? Only children
here," he said, referring to the militant Islamist group
that kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and which Israel says
it is targeting in the wave of attacks.

Another man staggered around behind Ismael, also unable to
control his grief.

The children were taken to the intensive care unit, many
caked in earth, having been buried deep in the ground. The
victims of the blast joined scores of injured from
previous attacks across the south of the country.

Ahmed Mrouwe, the hospital's director, said more than 200
wounded people had been brought into the hospital - one of
three in the area. "We have received 196 wounded and 25
dead; the majority of them are children and women."

It was the one of the bloodiest days so far in Lebanon,
with 41 dead. In Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, an
Israeli air strike on a road bridge hit two vehicles,
killing 10 civilians and wounding at least seven, medical
sources told Reuters.

They said both vehicles had been crossing the Rmeileh
bridge, heading from the south towards Beirut. Leaflets
dropped from Israeli planes have been urging residents in
Hizbullah-controlled areas of the south to leave.

Nine of the dead were in one vehicle. A woman died in the
other vehicle and six members of her family were wounded.

Canada said seven of its nationals had been killed in an
Israeli strike while holidaying in the southern Lebanese
village of Aitaroun. It was targeted again overnight with
six killed, according to local television reports.

Early morning attacks left two men dead in the port of
Beirut, and eight Lebanese soldiers were killed in a
rocket attack on an army position near Tripoli in the
north of the country.

An annex of the hospital in Tyre had been bombed the day
before. The attack came as doctors were tending to victims
of a strike on a 12-storey residential building, which
also housed the civil defence offices, in Tyre. That
attack left 21 dead, including several children. Dr Mrouwe
said nine people in one family had been killed; only the
father had survived.

At the site of the strike, rubble lay strewn hundreds of
metres from the building. The face of the building had
been ripped off, revealing the insides of homes. Furniture
dangled out over the charred wreckage of a cargo truck
flipped on its side by the force of the blast.

Huge chunks of cement bricks lay scattered between dozens
of crumpled cars. One resident, Mohammed, said he had seen
the blast from his house nearby. Amal, his sister's
friend, had been killed in the attack; she had just turned
five.

At the hospital, small children were grouped in clusters
throughout its corridors, many displaced by the strikes on
their homes. In one room, a 50-year-old woman lay
motionless in her hospital bed, burns covering much of her
body. She had narrowly survived the attack on the
building. She did not know it yet, but her son had died in
the operating theatre earlier that morning.

Asked how it compared to 1996 when Israel launched an
attack on the south, killing scores of civilians, Dr
Mrouwe said: "It's incomparable, incomparable. In 1996 the
majority [of casualties] were fighters. This time we have
yet to receive any fighters."

Drones circled overhead almost continuously throughout the
day, interrupted by distant roar of fighter planes above.

Dr Mrouwe said: "We only want one of the human rights, we
don't need democracy - we just want to live."

**********************************************************

(2) Olmert vows to continue assault as Lebanese death toll
passes 200

The Daily Star
18 July 2006

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&
categ_id=2&article_id=74048

Israel continued its bombardment of Lebanon Monday,
targeting the South, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut's
southern suburbs, leading to the death of at least 46
Lebanese and pushing the overall death toll to over 200
since Wednesday. The latest strikes came as Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert said the fighting in Lebanon would
end when the two soldiers captured by Hizbullah on
Wednesday were freed, rocket attacks on Israel stopped and
the Lebanese Army deployed along the border.

Delivering a speech to Israel's Parliament, Olmert said
Israel would have no mercy on militants who attack its
cities with rockets.

"We shall seek out every installation, hit every terrorist
helping to attack Israeli citizens, destroy the entire
terrorist infrastructure, in every place. We shall
continue this until Hizbullah does the basic and fair
things required of it by every civilized person," he said.

Israeli officials have said publicly that Israel would not
stop fighting until Hizbullah is dismantled. But Olmert's
comments Monday seemed to be a softening of that position.

Israel's deputy armed forces chief of staff, Major Moshe
Kaplinsky, said Monday that his country's armed offensive
in Lebanon would last "at least another week."

The Lebanese resistance group has so far rejected the
Israeli conditions. A senior member of Hamas rejected a
cease-fire on terms dictated by Israel.

"We accept no conditions for a cease-fire, whatever the
pressure," Abdullah Kasir, a member of Hizbullah's central
committee, told AFP.

The commander in chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said
Israel could end the conflict with Lebanon by agree-ing to
a prisoner swap proposed by Hizbullah.

Beginning in the early hours of Monday morning, Israeli
warplanes hit coastal targets in Beirut, the North and the
South.

Homes in Baalbek belonging to Hizbullah members were
damaged by over 60 strikes, killing 11 people.

Hizbullah announced that one of its fighters was killed
Monday, raising the total of resistance fighters killed in
the ongoing crisis to three.

In Beirut, several thunderous blasts echoed over the
capital and black smoke rose from a blazing fuel-storage
depot. Civilian installations, gas stations and factories
throughout the country, mainly in the South, were also
hit.

The bodies of nine civilians, including six children, were
pulled Monday from the rubble of a building hit in Israeli
air strikes on the southern port city of Tyre the previous
day.

In the deadliest strike Monday, an Israeli missile fired
at a mini-bus, killing 12 civilians as they were driving
through the seaside town of Rmeileh, south of Beirut.

Meanwhile, an unidentified object fell to the ground in
Kfarshima, near Beirut, causing six casualties. Lebanese
TV stations broadcast video images of burning debris
falling over Beirut and claimed an Israeli aircraft had
been downed. However, the Lebanese Army ruled out the
object was an Israeli airplane.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said no jet or
helicopter had been lost but an unmanned drone may have
been downed.

According to the Israeli military, an air strike hit a
Hizbullah launcher on Monday as the guerrilla group was
preparing to fire a long-range, Iranian-made rocket into
Israel.

The strike caused the launcher to malfunction, and
attempts to dispatch the missile, thought to have a range
of up to 160 kilometers, failed and the missile fell to
earth, General Ran Shmueli told reporters.

He said the failed launch was likely the source of reports
in Lebanon that an Israeli aircraft had been hit over
Beirut and brought down.

Shmueli described the rocket as a Zelzal, an Iranian-made
missile thought to have a range of between 120 and 160
kilometers.

Earlier Monday, Israeli raids destroyed two army posts on
the northern Lebanese coast, killing at least six Lebanese
soldiers.

Two civilians were also killed when Israel bombed Beirut
Port.

Israeli also targeted the Chouf area, where a power
station was hit near a factory in Sibleen.

Israel's assaults have led to the displacement of at least
58,000 people, with over 14,000 heading to Beirut and the
remainder to mountain areas inland, according to official
figures.

More than 5,000 families sought refuge in Sidon, according
to the city's Mayor Abdel-Rahman al-Bizri, while over
1,000 families were sheltered in schools across the North.

Tens of thousands are stranded in the South, trying to
leave following Israeli warnings to evacuate but fearing
the roads are too dangerous.

It took UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon all day Sunday
to evacuate 283 remaining villagers in the Marwaheen area
because of intense fighting, a UNIFIL spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Hizbullah fired dozens of rockets at Haifa
Monday. A three-story building in the city partially
collapsed, wounding two people.

Israel decided to close the port in Haifa after the
attacks, the Transport Ministry said.

Hizbullah's rockets also struck northern Israeli towns
beyond Haifa.

Some 50 rockets fell across the region, hitting Naharia,
Akka and Safad, causing only light casualties. The
projectiles reached as far south as the Arab towns of
Afula and Nazareth for the first time.

Since the start of the conflict, a total of 24 Israelis
have been killed, including 12 civilians.

Hizbullah also said it had repelled Israeli commandos from
entering the country at several points.

The Israeli Army said it had no ground forces in Southern
Lebanon, although an army spokesman said some soldiers had
crossed the border overnight to destroy Hizbullah
positions and then returned to Israel. - With agencies

**********************************************************

(3) 'It is madness. Why is no one doing anything to stop
this?'

By Nicholas Blanford in Tyre

The Times
18 July 2006

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2274521,00.html

AS DIRECTOR of the Jabel Amel hospital in Tyre, Ahmad
Mrowe is no stranger to the violence that has racked this
area for decades.

But as casualties soared and even ambulances and his own
hospital were targeted by Israeli warplanes, the doctor
said that the latest Israeli onslaught was the worst he
had ever seen. "It is incomparable, much worse than
anything before," he said, as he stood in a sweltering
corridor packed with relatives of the victims.

A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in southern Lebanon
where the Israeli war machine, determined to destroy
Hezbollah once and for all, has been pounding the scruffy
villages that dot these stony hills and valleys.

It has warned Lebanese civilians to leave the area, and
tens of thousands have been streaming north in battered
cars, eight, nine or ten to a vehicle, to escape the
fighting. But the Israelis have also destroyed the main
roads and all the bridges over the Litani river, forcing
many of the refugees to abandon their cars and wade
across.

Jan Egeland, the UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, spoke
yesterday of an imminent humanitarian crisis and feared
that the destruction of water, sewage and other
infrastructure could compound the problem. The UN force in
southern Lebanon said it could no longer deliver aid
because the Israelis had failed to guarantee its convoys
safe passage.

The Israeli offensive has been largely conducted away from
the eyes of the foreign media, which have been stuck north
of the Litani. To reach Tyre, normally an hour's drive
from Beirut down the coastal highway, required a tortuous
and tense five-hour ordeal via the Chouf mountains
yesterday. The winding mountain roads were clogged with
traffic coming the other way as refugees inched to the
relative safety of Beirut, where commandeered schools were
overflowing with the displaced.

But beyond the southern market town of Nabatieh, the roads
were ominously empty and the skies filled with the roar of
Israeli jets and the whine of drones. A nerve-racking
half-hour drive along an old road beside the Litani led to
a newly built earthen causeway across the river, now the
only lifeline connecting the south to the rest of the
country.

The Israeli military said that it was hunting down
Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, but it is the civilian
population that is bearing the brunt of the conflict.
Survivors interviewed by The Times said that Israel was
bombing homes, schools, the centres of villages and towns
and vehicles including ambulances. Even the Jabel Amel
hospital was struck early on Sunday morning by a missile
that demolished an entire wing and killed a family of
nine.

Dr Mrowe said: "We have recovered five of the bodies.
There are another four under the rubble. If they hit the
hospital again it will be a massacre."

By late yesterday his hospital alone had received 196
casualties, 25 of them dead.

One young boy, Walid Abu Zeidi, writhed on his hospital
bed, his small body daubed with iodine and his arm wrapped
in a bandage. He and his friends had been swimming in the
Litani when a missile exploded nearby. "I saw the flash of
the missile, then I was thrown down," he said. In the
basement corridors other children sat, wide-eyed with
fright, with their mothers and sisters.

Nimr Rmeity, 3, had a bandage wrapped around his head. He
was struck by shrapnel on Sunday when a missile blew up a
nearby house, killing his uncle and wounding 16 others.

A family from Shaytieh, south of Tyre, sat in numb silence
next to each other. "This is Israeli terror, but we will
resist," a headscarfed teenage girl said softly.

Hundreds of foreign tourists who were visiting Tyre's
archaeological ruins are also trapped. "What are the
Israelis doing? It is madness. Why isn't the world doing
anything to stop this?" asked Anne-Marie Casales, a French
woman on holiday with her teenage daughter and son.

The bombing has generated fear and deep anger that the
West has not intervened to halt the bloodshed. "Bush and
Blair are breeding future generations of suicide bombers
here. You will see. Is it right to destroy a country for
just two soldiers?" asked Mustafa Safieddine.

Israeli warplanes renewed attacks on Beirut's southern
suburbs late last night. Strikes also killed at least six
people in a southern Lebanon village.

**********************************************************

(4) Amid attacks, health workers warn of waning supplies

IRIN
17 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5061.shtml

BEIRUT - Local health workers say they face difficulties
reaching the injured in southern Lebanon following furious
Israeli artillery barrages and air strikes that came in
response to the 12 July kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers
by Hizbullah.

"We're cooperating with NGOs and other humanitarian
associations to help us cope with the situation," Minister
of Health Muhammad Jawad Khalifa told IRIN. "But we're
experiencing difficulties in accessing affected areas to
help the injured." Khalifa added that 175 deaths and 500
injuries had been reported since the bombing began on 12
July.

Hizbullah has been fighting back with rockets fired at
Israel, killing 12 people. The militant group says it will
release the two soldiers in exchange for Lebanese
prisoners held in Israel.

Dr Abdel Rahim Hennawi, director of the Hammoud Medical
Centre in Sidon, 45 km south of Beirut, expressed
particular concern about the lack of dialysis treatment.

"We were known for having the best facilities for dialysis
in southern Lebanon," he said. "Now we're short of
bloodline solutions because the roads are closed, and
patients keep coming in." Hennawi added that the centre
had received 48 injury patients from towns and villages in
the south, mostly consisting of burns or head, abdomen and
limb injuries.

Health institutions in the capital have also warned of
waning medical supplies amid rising numbers of casualties.
"We've received injured civilians from Haret Hreyk a
southern suburb of the capital, as well as the bodies of
two civilians killed this morning in raids on Beirut
harbour," said one official at Beirut's Rafik Hariri
University Hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official added that, should the Israeli attacks
continue, supplies would be exhausted within a few days.
"We're being assisted by the health ministry because the
emergency service wasn't ready to receive patients," he
said. "We're coping, but we can't predict what will happen
in the future."

Meanwhile, Lebanese Doctors Syndicate head, Dr Mario Aoun,
called on the country's thousands of doctors and medical
workers to report to the university hospital to help treat
the injured. "We weren't expecting the rising number of
victims, but we're trying to cope with the disaster," said
Aoun, adding that a special crisis unit was working to
transport doctors to medical facilities in affected areas.

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news
and information service, but may not necessarily reflect
the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN
material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge;
refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is
a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs.

**********************************************************

(5) Proposal met with hostility

By Richard Norton-Taylor

The Guardian
18 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1822956,00.html

The idea of a large multinational security force deployed
to southern Lebanon, envisaged by Kofi Annan, Tony Blair,
and other EU leaders, was met with caution yesterday.

Observers pointed to the failure of the existing
2,000-strong UN force, Unifil, which has been deployed
there since 1978 and questioned whether Hizbullah would
accept the mandate of a new one. "I think it's unworkable
at this stage. It would be seen as siding almost certainly
with Israel and regarded by Hizbullah as a target," said
Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of the London-based
thinktank, Chatham House.

Mr Blair said yesterday the mission of any new UN force
would have to be clearer than the existing one and it
would operate once hostilities had ceased. If a deployment
were agreed, it would have to be bigger than Unifil.
Romano Prodi, Italy's prime minister, said yesterday it
should be at least 10,000-strong. It would also have to
establish a deep buffer zone inside Lebanonto prevent the
firing of Hizbullah's long range rockets.

Mr Blair discussed the idea of a new UN force with Mr
Annan at the St Petersburg G8 summit, and said details of
how such a force might operate could become clearer by the
end of the week. But the US and Israel said such a force
was premature. Britain would also be unlikely to
participate, defence sources said yesterday, not least
because of its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.


**********************************************************

(6) EU urges Mideast restraint, not ceasefire

By Mark John

Reuters
17 July 2006

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union followed the Group
of Eight powers on Monday in urging all sides to rein in
violence in the Middle East while stopping short of
explicit demands for an immediate ceasefire.

As fresh Israeli air strikes killed 23 people in Lebanon
and Hizbollah announced more rocket attacks, EU foreign
ministers discussed a draft statement urging Hizbollah to
halt attacks on Israel, and Israel to avoid a
"disproportionate" reaction.

"A de-escalation of the current situation is imperative
... The (EU) Council urges all parties concerned to create
the conditions for a sustainable cessation of violence,"
said the statement, obtained by Reuters.


"While recognising Israel's security concerns and its
legitimate right to self-defence, the EU calls on Israel
not to act in a disproportionate manner and with measures
contrary to international humanitarian law," it said.

It condemned the July 12 abduction of two Israeli soldiers
by Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah and urged "the
cessation of all attacks on Israeli towns and cities".

EU president Finland said it had asked Israel to guarantee
the safety of thousands of EU citizens still in Lebanon.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, arriving from talks
in Lebanon, told reporters a ceasefire was not viable for
now.

"That is something everyone would like to have ... but we
are still a little bit far from that situation," he said.

"TWENTY EYES FOR AN EYE"

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner
said only that such a move would be needed "in the end"
while British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said
conditions on the ground would have to ensure it could be
sustained.

"It isn't enough just to call for a ceasefire ... It is
how you could maintain that. That's the issue we'll be
discussing," she said, citing a British-backed proposal
for the deployment of a multilateral security force there.

G8 leaders meeting in Russia on Sunday declared Israel had
a right to self-defence and told Hizbollah to free the
captured Israeli soldiers and end attacks on Israel. They
did not demand an immediate ceasefire.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot told reporters in
Brussels the G8 text was "well balanced" but Luxembourg
Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn highlighted differences by
noting that the G8 declaration "doesn't go far enough for
many people".


Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, chairing EU
talks, accused Israel in a blog on the Finnish EU
presidency Web site last week of applying the principle of
"20 eyes for one eye".

Ferrero-Waldner said there had been no discussion of any
impact on an 11-year-old "association agreement" setting
out the EU's ties with Israel, but noted the accord
required both parties to respect human rights.

Ferrero-Waldner also announced an additional aid package
of 20 million euros ($25 million) to provide food and cash
subsidies to more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees and
non-refugees deprived of their main sources of livelihood.

She said the EU would also provide fuel for water pumping
stations and water treatment plants under an emergency aid
mechanism agreed to by the quartet of Middle-East peace
brokers.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Ingrid Melander
and Paul Taylor)

**********************************************************

(7) Israel's Arab citizens caught in a war they never wanted

By Donald Macintyre in Majd el Krum

The Independent
18 July 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/
article1183353.ece

Hassan Nasrullah, the leader of Hizbollah, has spoken of
having more "surprises"in store for Israel after the
deluge of rockets which culminated in the killing of eight
Israeli civilians in Haifa in a single attack on Sunday.

But few residents of northern Israel can have been as
"surprised" as those in the Arab village of Majd el Krum
when it was hit by a volley of six Katyushas.

"We never saw anything like this," said Inas Ayub, 25.
"There was no warning and we never expected anything like
it."

Mrs Ayub lives next door to the fortunately empty house
her brother-in-law Mahmoud is building for his son, part
of whose roof and top floor was blown away by a direct hit
from a Hizbollah rocket. She described how she was sitting
inside her house with her two sons, one-year-old Mohammed
and Liaan, three, when "I heard a very loud explosion. It
was very strong. I took my sons downstairs. I started to
scream because I saw that all the windows were broken and
the front yard was full of rubble. Then I fainted."

This experience - though traumatic for the Ayub family -
is trifling compared to the death and destruction in
Lebanon they were seeing on their television screen
yesterday. But it is especially vexing for the Muslim
inhabitants here who, while reluctant to talk politics,
mainly proclaim their neutrality in a war in which they
have no part.

As the vulnerability of the village to a repeat of last
Thursday's Katyusha attack was underlined by a volley of
rockets on Karmiel three kilometres away, Mrs Ayub said
that Hizbollah appeared not "to make a difference between
Jews and Arabs. But we all eat from the same plate."

Najib Sjeer, 63, a former deputy superintendent of
schools, echoed the frequent complaints about
discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens by saying
there were no warning sirens in the village and no
shelters in the schools. While the village had not been
caught up in a war since 1948, he added: "There are no
public shelters. We have no protection.

"We are a part of Israel but Israel does not see us as
part of the country," he said.

Mr Sjeer did not directly apportion blame for the war but
declared: "Israel has planned to destroy Hizbollah for a
long time and now they have found an excuse. This is not
about the two soldiers who were kidnapped. Basically this
is to destroy south Lebanon. If you shoot at a bus with 20
civilians you are not just going after Hizbollah."

Mr Sjeer insisted that the village would not be deterred
from its normal life by the rocket volley. "Yesterday we
had a big wedding here, and it would have been a disaster
if there had been a rocket. But we have faith here. If it
happens it won't be because of Nasrallah or Olmert or
Peretz. Everything is from Allah."

Aslan Hammoud, 18, returned home yesterday from hospital
having had three pieces of shrapnel removed from his
shoulder after being wounded by a Katyusha which landed
across the road from his family's home and pet shop. Part
of the rocket was still embedded in the car park opposite
the house. His father Mahmoud, 43, explained that as one
of the relatively few residents to have built his house
with an official permit, the family does have a secure
room in the basement, but none of the family had been in
it when the Katyusha landed without warning.

Mr Sjeer, like Mrs Ayub, said he did not believe that
Hizbollah distinguished between Jewish and Arab villages.
"They don't ask for people's ID cards before firing," he
said. But Mahmoud Hammoud was convinced there was a reason
why there had so far been no repeat of the Katyusha attack
here. "This is a Muslim town and that is why I believe
they have stopped shooting in this direction."

Maybe. But yesterday a Katyusha landed on Abu Snen, an
Arab village seven miles away.

**********************************************************

(8) Gaza under darkness

By Rami Almeghari

The Electronic Intifada
17 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5063.shtml

"I have lost a total of $1,000 US dollars since the power
supply has been cut, the number of my customers has
decreased to minimum, I stay idle at my shop for long
hours; what shall I do?" asked 31-year-old Alaa' Salahat,
a local vendor of frozen foods from the central Gaza Strip
refugee camp of Maghazi. He spoke of his experience while
sitting in the darkness with only a kerosene lamp
illuminating the worry lines in his face. Why such
darkness? Because three weeks ago, Israeli aircrafts
bombarded Gaza's power plant.

"This is really a very terrible situation; we are
civilians - what does Israel want? This is really a
collective punishment against an entire people," said
Alaa'.

"When I get back home each day having earned only a few
shekels [Israeli currency - 5 shekels = $1 US] in my
pocket, I rush to find candles to light the house for my
wife. We stay idle, until our turn for electricity current
comes. This 'luxury' happens no more than three nights a
week," he continued.

"This is a really unbearable situation that nobody on this
earth can tolerate. What do the Israelis want us to do? To
die, to give up, or what? However, we are steadfast. You
know why we are steadfast? Because we know we have the
same right to exist as the Israelis. These are our
ancestors' lands, and we will remain living here - even if
it is difficult, even if we don't want to stay. Because
this is our land." At this last sentence, Alaa' emphasized
each word, to make sure I understood what he meant.

In the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, where the
same problem exists, a Palestinian mother, Taraji Qdaih,
32, said, "For a very long time, we have been calling on
the world to help us get rid of the Israeli occupation,
but all our appeals fall on deaf ears. The Israelis are
committing massacres; from the girl Huda Ghalia's family,
massacred on Beit Lahia beach a few weeks ago, to the
missiles fired at us from the air by night and day. And
there is not any condemnation from the world at all. Yet
when an Israeli soldier has been held, all the countries
want to intervene to free him without any concessions. We
are always the ones blamed, we are always the ones
blamed."

Visiting the ruins of the bombed power plant brings to
light the reality of Israeli shelling. Dr. Derar Abu Sasi,
the plant's operations director said during a visit to his
wrecked office at the base of the plant, "We only have one
power plant in Gaza. Now that Israel has destroyed it, we
can't produce a single megawatt, or even a kilowatt for
our customers. The Israeli bombs destroyed all four main
transformers, the only transformers that feed Gaza
residents with electricity."

Israeli warplanes have been bombarding and destroying
major infrastructure in the Gaza Strip such as
governmental buildings for three weeks straight - the
latest was the foreign affairs ministry, hit early in the
morning of Monday, July 17, for the second time in a week.
Water treatment plants and greenhouses, bridges and homes,
have also been the major targets of Israeli bombs in
'Operation Summer Rain,' the code name for the Israeli
military invasion of Gaza that began 27 June.

Israeli leaders claim that their actions across Gaza are
intended at freeing an Israeli soldier who has been held
by some Palestinian resistance groups for the past three
weeks after he was captured in an unprecedented resistance
attack on an Israeli army base south of the Gaza Strip.

The United States, Israel's strategic ally, has considered
Israel's ongoing attacks on Gaza Strip as 'self defense,'
while the death toll amongst Palestinians since then has
risen to nearly 100, with over 300 others wounded, some of
them are very critical. Some of the injured have lost
limbs or have been paralyzed for life. In contrast, a sole
Israeli soldier was killed in the Gaza invasion, and
although Israeli forces at first blamed Palestinian
resistance fighters, they later determined that the
soldier had been shot by 'friendly fire.'

Rami Almeghari is currently a Senior Translator at the
Translation Department of the Gaza-based State Information
Service (SIS) and former Editor in Chief of the SIS-linked
International Press Center's English site. He can be
contacted at rami_almeghari@hotmail.com

**********************************************************

(9) Car bomber hits Iraqi labourers

BBC News
18 July 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5189832.stm

A car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Kufa has killed 45 people and wounded about 60 others, police and hospital officials say.
The bomb hit a crowd of labourers as they gathered close to a Shia shrine in the centre of the city at 0730 local time (0330 GMT), officials said.

The labourers were reportedly waiting to be given jobs for the day.

Shia Muslims in Kufa, 160km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, have been the frequent targets of attacks.

A witness for Reuters news agency said policemen who arrived at the scene were pelted with stones by supporters of a radical Shia cleric.

Police reportedly fired shots in the air to disperse the crowds and at least two people were wounded by gunfire, the witness said.

"It is very chaotic now. Police are shooting into the air and the crowds are running," the witness told Reuters.


**********************************************************

(10) Gunmen kill 56 in sectarian attack on Iraqi market town

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

The Indepedent
18 July 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/
article1183357.ece

Gunmen killed 56 people and injured 67 in a massacre in a
market town south of Baghdad yesterday, in the latest
sectarian Sunni-Shia violence which is engulfing the
capital and its environs.

The attack on Mahmoudiya, a large agricultural town with a
mixed population, started at 9am when 30 to 40 men stormed
the crowded market and began firing indiscriminately,
after overrunning an army checkpoint and killing three
soldiers. Some of the gunmen also threw grenades that set
fire to stalls and parked cars in the market. Police said
that most of those killed in the attacks were Shia.

Ali Mahmoud, an off-duty security guard who saw the
attacks, said: "We heard shots and then people were
running in panic, shouting, 'The terrorists are coming!'.
They attacked a cafe near the Mohammed al-Amin mosque.
They were killing men, women and children."

As mass killings become more common in and around Baghdad,
the city of six million people is breaking up into a dozen
or more enclaves, which are becoming either solidly Shia
or solidly Sunni. Shia gunmen slaughtered 42 Sunni in the
al-Jihad district of Baghdad on 9 July after dragging them
from cars or stopping them at checkpoints. They were
identified by a glance at their identity cards and shot
dead.

The streets of Baghdad were largely empty yesterday as
people are either too frightened to go out, cannot afford
the increasingly expensive fuel for their cars or have
fled the country. Many shops are closed, or open for just
two or three hours a day.

Mr Mahmoud, a Shia, said that many Sunni were also hit by
bullets, but the attack was immediately portrayed on
television as sectarian. The Shia television station
al-Forat quoted Shia spokesmen blaming the attacks on
Sunni religious extremists and pointing to the failure of
mainstream Sunni politicians to stop them.

As news of the massacre spread, members of parliament from
the faction loyal to the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr walked out of parliament. They said the incident
began with an ambush of a Shia funeral cortege travelling
through the town from Baghdad to the Shia holy city of
Najaf.

The poor market towns circling Baghdad have seen frequent
sectarian killings in the past three years. But since the
Shia shrine in Samarra was blown up on 22 February,
individual tit-for-tat killings have been replaced by
tit-for-tat pogroms, confidently carried out by dozens of
gunmen without police or army interference. On Sunday a
suicide bomber killed 25 Shia in a cafe in Tuz Karmatu, a
Turkoman town south of Kirkuk.

In northern Baghdad, in the al-Qadamiyah district, a Shia
bastion, some 10 or 12 headless bodies of Shia are said by
local witnesses to be washed up on the banks of the Tigris
every day. They complained that when they retaliated
against the Sunni they came under fire from a US
helicopter gunship. Most of the fighting is in west
Baghdad, which is mixed. Aside from the Sunni enclave of
al-Adhamiyah, east Baghdad is predominantly Shia.

As the Sunni insurgents become embroiled in fighting the
Shia, there have been fewer attacks on US soldiers, with
casualties dropping to fewer than one a day. Sunni
political leaders are also increasingly looking to US
troops for protection from Shia militiamen. But since
neither the US nor Iraqi troops or police can provide
security, Iraqis look increasingly to their own militias
to secure their districts from attacks.

**********************************************************

(11) Japan troops withdraw from Iraq

BBC News
18 July 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/5189806.stm

The final batch of Japanese soldiers has left Iraq, ending
the country's first foray into an active foreign war zone
since World War II

About 220 soldiers arrived in Kuwait on military transport
planes.

A total of 600 non-combat troops had been working on
reconstruction projects in southern Iraq since February
2004, protected by UK and Australian forces.

The decision was unpopular with the Japanese public, many
of whom said it violated Japan's pacifist constitution.

"Our ground forces have bravely completed their mission
and have now safely withdrawn to Kuwait," Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters in Russia, after
the G8 summit.

"We carried out our humanitarian and reconstruction tasks
without firing a single shot - in fact, without pointing a
gun at anyone."

The soldiers were greeted in Kuwait by Japan's defence
chief Fukushiro Nukaga. They are due to return to Japan in
about a week, according to the Associated Press.

Humanitarian role

The Japanese constitution, drafted by the US in 1947, bans
the use of force to settle international disputes.

The troops in Iraq were therefore engaged in work such as
repairing buildings and providing medical training, rather
than direct combat.

The decision to withdraw was prompted by plans for the UK
and Australia to hand over responsibility for security in
the area around the Japanese base at Samawa to Iraqi
forces.

No Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded in Iraq, but
Mr Koizumi faced a political crisis in 2004 when three aid
workers were taken hostage by insurgents, who demanded
that Japanese troops withdraw.

The three were eventually released unharmed, but another
five Japanese citizens have been killed by militants.

Japan has gradually been expanding its role on the
international stage in recent years.

It deployed nearly 1,000 troops to Indonesia to help with
humanitarian aid following the December 2004 tsunami.


****************
ANALYSIS & VIEWS
****************

(12) "The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel"

Atrocities in the Promised Land

By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON former CIA analyst

Counterpunch

18 July 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the
horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for
years, against the Palestinians. The tragedy of Gaza has
been described a hundred times over, as have the tragedies
of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin -- 60
years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism. But
the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel,
in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media.
Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot
penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the
political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the
U.S., and increasingly now in Canada and Europe, from
seeing, from caring.

But it needs to be said now, loudly: those who devise and
carry out Israeli policies have made Israel into a
monster, and it has come time for all of us -- all
Israelis, all Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, all
Americans who do nothing to end U.S. support for Israel
and its murderous policies -- to recognize that we stain
ourselves morally by continuing to sit by while Israel
carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.

A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or
religion over all others will eventually become
psychologically dysfunctional. Narcissistically obsessed
with its own image, it must strive to maintain its racial
superiority at all costs and will inevitably come to view
any resistance to this imagined superiority as an
existential threat. Indeed, any other people automatically
becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its own
existence. As it seeks to protect itself against phantom
threats, the racist state becomes increasingly paranoid,
its society closed and insular, intellectually limited.
Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it. The state
lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of
proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.

The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to
maintain a mythical Aryan superiority. It is playing out
now in Israel. "This society no longer recognizes any
boundaries, geographical or moral," wrote Israeli
intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel Warschawski
in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis of
Israeli Society. Israel knows no limits and is lashing out
as it finds that its attempt to beat the Palestinians into
submission and swallow Palestine whole is being thwarted
by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people who refuse to
submit quietly and give up resisting Israel's arrogance.

We in the United States have become inured to tragedy
inflicted by Israel, and we easily fall for the spin that
automatically, by some trick of the imagination, converts
Israeli atrocities to examples of how Israel is
victimized. But a military establishment that drops a
500-pound bomb on a residential apartment building in the
middle of the night and kills 14 sleeping civilians, as
happened in Gaza four years ago, is not a military that
operates by civilized rules.

A military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a
house in the middle of the night and kills a man and his
wife and seven of their children, as happened in Gaza four
days ago, is not the military of a moral country.

A society that can brush off as unimportant an army
officer's brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl on the claim
that she threatened soldiers at a military post -- one of
nearly 700 Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since
the intifada began -- is not a society with a conscience.

A government that imprisons a 15-year-old girl -- one of
several hundred children in Israeli detention -- for the
crime of pushing and running away from a male soldier
trying to do a body search as she entered a mosque is not
a government with any moral bearings. (This story, not the
kind that ever appears in the U.S. media, was reported in
the London Sunday Times. The girl was shot three times as
she ran away and was convicted to 18 months in prison
after she came out of a coma.)

Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel is
self-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy talks of a society in
"moral collapse."

Michel Warschawski writes of an "Israeli madness" and
"insane brutality," a "putrefaction" of civilized society,
that have set Israel on a suicidal course. He foresees the
end of the Zionist enterprise; Israel is a "gang of
hoodlums," he says, a state "that makes a mockery of
legality and of civil morality. A state run in contempt of
justice loses the strength to survive."

As Warschawski notes bitterly, Israel no longer knows any
moral boundaries -- if it ever did. Those who continue to
support Israel, who make excuses for it as it descends
into corruption, have lost their moral compass.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and
has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the
author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of
Dispossession. She can be reached at
kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.

**********************************************************

(13) Israeli onslaught will strengthen, not weaken, Hizbullah's
popular appeal

The Daily Star
18 July 2006

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&
article_id=74032&categ_id=17

Despite the mounting civilian death toll in Lebanon, and
despite increasing evidence of Israeli violations of
international law, the heavyweights in the international
community are once again following the lead of US
President George W. Bush, who has effectively given a
green light to Israel's destruction of Lebanon. With the
exception of Russia, which seems to be reluctant to jump
fully onboard the international bandwagon for fear of
jeopardizing its relations with Iran, the world powers
have taken the view that UN Security Resolution 1559 ought
to be enforced - and Hizbullah disarmed - before any
cease-fire is put into effect.

In the meantime, Israel is pressing ahead with its bloody
military campaign, which one Israeli official has said
could be completed within a week. In the short-term,
Israel may succeed in laying waste to Hizbullah's arsenal
of weapons. But even the complete destruction of
Hizbullah's military capabilities would do nothing to
reduce the group's political appeal. On the contrary, each
slaughter only fuels the political sentiments that inspire
resistance groups such as Hizbullah to take up arms - not
only in Lebanon, but across the region.

Bombs will not annihilate the desire for statehood,
missiles will not force an acceptance of occupation, and
shells will not wipe out the desire of refugees to have a
place to call home. These are political sentiments that no
amount of American-made weaponry can annihilate. In fact,
over the last 58 years, Israel's use of strong-arm tactics
has consistently had the adverse effect of stirring these
sentiments into a frenzy.

When the dust from this latest round of conflict settles,
Israel will likely revert to its decades-old pattern of
demanding that the weak governments in Palestine and
Lebanon crack down on the militants in their territory,
while at the same time weakening those governments and
denying them any means of meeting the imposed demands.
This strategy has only dragged the region from conflict to
conflict, fueling more and more calls for resistance.

The only way out of this cycle is through a genuine
closure of a political conflict, via a comprehensive
Middle East peace. Any peace deal would need to be
followed up with a local version of the Marshall Plan, in
which the governments tasked with keeping the peace would
need to be strengthened. One could hardly think of a
better time to start this process, given that the Arab
world is currently awash with petrodollars that could be
put to good use.

Failure to arrive at a political settlement will only
ensure that this current conflict, which has been touted
as a battle in a "war on terror," will end up nurturing
the exact same forces of resistance that it aimed to
destroy.

**********************************************************

(14) It's not too late to say enough

By Yitzhak Laor

Ha'aretz
18 July 2006

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739501.html

Israel has not been defeated in Lebanon because it has not
bombed sufficiently and has not destroyed enough. Only
self-censorship and the mystification of the Israel
Defense Forces for many years have prevented the Israelis
from learning what the IDF did to the Lebanese, and what
the IDF's conceptual limitations are, as an organization
whose strength is great and whose wisdom is definitely
not. Only the insufferable status of the IDF in Israeli
society has prevented Israelis who emerged by tooth and
nail from the Lebanon War from pointing to the senior
officers and saying: Enough.

Let us imagine the directors of Remedia (the importer of
deficient baby formula that led to the death of three
infants in 2003) explaining on television how to feed
infants, or the engineers of the Versailles wedding hall
(which collapsed during a May 2001 wedding that led to the
death of 23 people) in Jerusalem explaining safety
procedures. No one would let them finish a sentence.
However, from the moment two reserve soldiers were
abducted on the northern border - in the midst of killing
in the Gaza Strip that is being conducted in a way similar
to the destruction in Lebanon - the television channels
defined the incident on the border as a crisis of the
first rank, and generals from the previous war, the one
that lasted for 16 years, and the fruits of which we are
eating now, were brought respectfully to the studios.

How quickly we have forgotten the long occupation in
southern Lebanon, how every entrance of a new major
general into the position of GOC Northern Command was
accompanied by promises of a comprehensive change in the
"strategy." Major generals come and go and the IDF
"strategy" has continued to be perceived as an expansion
of the "tactics": more people killed and more shells and
more strikes against civilians (see the horrors of Gaza).
No one imagines that there is something wrong with the
entire conception. Does the IDF's responsibility really
boil down only to that soldiers have been abducted and
killed on their watch (that is, ultimately only the
captives and the killed are to blame?). Does the very need
to transform a border incident, grave as it might be, into
a causus bellum by means of chatter about "the eroded
deterrent power" worthy of an accounting?

And therefore, in the studio sits Major General (Res.)
Yossi Peled, one of the heroes of that war, which in
military language is called "the Operation for the Peace
of Galilee," and preaches: "What will happen afterward, I
don't know, but I do know that it is necessary to kill as
many Hezbollahs as possible now." He, and the other
generals who are commentating on media channels, were in
Lebanon and participated not only in the destruction of
that country and in the most bitter defeat the IDF ever
absorbed, but also in the engendering of Hezbollah.

The current war, then, not only cannot provide a real
answer to Israel's problems, but also is being carried out
by the same echelon of officers that was defeated in
Lebanon, and with whom the accounts for that war have yet
to be settled. Books were written, a protest movement
arose, an investigative commission about one massacre was
conducted, a defense minister who eventually became prime
minister was convicted, and even though he is lying
unconscious somewhere, his consciousness is apparently
serving his pale shadows - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
Justice Minister Haim Ramon and Co. - and another
generation of impassioned youngsters is growing up around
us and screaming over the Internet: "Stick it to them."
Afterward, as they sit in the burning vehicles, perhaps in
Syria, and the phrase "land mine" returns to the erased
dictionary of the past, when they cry out "We want to go
home," they won't have the sense to bequeath the recoiling
from war to the next generation. That's because on
television there still will be the same generals, with the
same conception, with the same short and limited range of
strategic understanding, and they will win the same
enthusiasm from the public that just wants to "stick it to
them."

The director of the Middle East Department of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Eran Lerman, is
already recommending going to war against Syria. Anyone
who is listening to talk about the need to attack Syria
(in the name of "strategy") realizes that for those
people, "strategy" means enlarging the circle of
hostilities, including harming civilians. What Israel's
"strategists" have to offer is the destruction of yet
another country. Let us set aside the generation that is
growing up in front of the television. Let us set aside
the horrors that are being carried out in the name of all
of us. It is enough to see the destruction of Iraq and its
results. The Americans do not intend to live in this
region, but we do live here. And did the trigger finger in
the North think about the victims in the North, about the
fate of the captives? No. This trigger finger thought in
terms of "who will stick more to whom." Who can restrain
the army? Only Israeli opposition. The heads of the army
are even warning of such opposition. That is, it is not
yet too late.

**********************************************************

(15) From Haifa to Jerusalem: Thoughts While Getting Out of
Missile Range

By Am Johal

The Electronic Intifada
17 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5054.shtml

Here, we all feel like the boxer Roberto Duran, who was
known as "The Hands of Stone." In a rematch fight with
Sugar Ray Leonard in New Orleans in 1980, after having
defeated the American gold medalist during the 'Brawl of
Montreal', he turned his back to the ring in the eighth
round, let his hands fall and uttered the immortal words,
"No Mas, No Mas."

No More. No More.

People were hiding in bomb shelters or trying to find a
way out of town yesterday as Hezbollah rockets rained down
on Haifa. I couldn't sleep all night; every noise sounded
like a rocket landing. They came in like pop flies and you
could hear the thwapping as they landed in the distance.
As I jumped in to the shower at 9:00, something hit hard
in Haifa near the water. The sirens went off and the
streets became deserted. Thursday nights hit had only
engendered a kind of black comedy amongst the residents -
this time it was real.

Eight dead in a rail maintenance yard.

By Monday, more rockets were landing in northern Israel.
The rules of the game had instantly changed. For most
Israelis, Gaza was far away and they could go about their
summer as per usual. But this time, daily life was
disrupted for the first time in a major Israeli city since
tensions had escalated.

At least 140 Lebanese civilians have also died since the
violence broke out last week and public infrastructure
like the airport and roads has been mercilessly
demolished.

As 'Operation Summer Rain' had lulled the Israeli populace
in to a state of soporific complacency where the narrative
of returning a soldier justified an intrusive bombardment
of Gaza which largely killed civilians, the latest
escalation had only emboldened them in to believing that
the devastation of Lebanon is justified for 'security
purposes' - a catchall phrase designed to give the
military carte blanche discretion to carry out its idea of
the public interest.

In other words, the narrative here is built around the
idea that the voices who are calling the Israeli response
counter-productive and disproportionate are naive
peaceniks who do not understand the value of sending
Hezbollah a blunt and straightforward message.

Or, in the words of the macho new Israeli Defense
Minister, "They'll never forget the name Amir Peretz."

The irony is not lost that Peretz, the darling of Israel's
left, is an Arab Jew and that President Moshe Katsav,
currently fighting off sexual harassment allegations, is
an Iranian Jew. The head of state and the Defense Minister
who are authorizing the attacks are an Iranian and an Arab
in a Jewish state - such are the contradictions of this
place. Nothing is as it seems.

Whoever is the talking head in Israel representing the
government is irrelevant; everyone here knows that the
military's actually in charge right now.

In what could only be called a deeply hypocritical and
backhanded response, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair called for an international
force to be sent to Lebanon to stop attacks on Israel.
What about Israel's bombardment of Gaza? What about
Israel's decimation of Lebanon? Why hasn't the UN called
for the same type of international force in Gaza or the
West Bank? Civilian casualties in both those places are
far greater than what Israel has endured during the rocket
attacks. Does the relative military power of a state make
it above being censured for its own aggression and
policies which violate international law?

This is an open question.

Let it not be forgotten that Israeli military capacity has
been realized by direct and indirect US and European Union
support. Israel is a proxy representative of the West in
the Middle East, which would explain the wide berth and
discretion it is given in the exercise of its foreign
policy, even when it violates international law. When was
the last time the European Union cited the human rights
component of its favorable trade agreement with Israel?

Tony Blair was the evil genius who flew to Iraq in an
off-blue button down shirt with sleeves rolled up, to read
a children's book to Iraqi elementary school students
towards the end of the Hutton Inquiry in 2003, promising
them that big bad Saddam would never come back. Though the
weapons inspector David Kelley was dead after being
pressured to 'sex up' the dossier, everybody loved Tony
back home for the sheer quality of the PR stunt. After
all, he had beaten those mean Iraqis, made the world safer
from terrorism and stopped the acquisition of nuclear
weapons by a rogue power.

If there was any doubt that the G8 and the West in general
are setting the rules of the game in international
relations, there should now be no question at all on the
matter.

Hezbollah, intending to send a message about the Gaza
incursion, clearly overstepped in its resistance
activities. They will now pay a heavy price. Hezbollah
leader Hassan Nasrallah is permanently damaged by this and
will become an assassination target. The West has already
portrayed him as just another rabid, frothy-mouthed Arab
terrorist just like Osama Bin Laden - largely because
that's what he is.

By firing hundreds of missiles in to northern Israel in an
unprecedented way, Israel utilized its strategic opening
to carry out a massive assault that had been talked about
since the original withdrawal from Lebanon. Hezbollah has
now also eroded the good will of the Lebanese population
as well. Ariel Sharon had known about the proliferation of
rockets in southern Lebanon from Iran and had military
plans drawn up early on when he was Prime Minister.

There is a dearth of wisdom in the Holy Land, but no
shortage of naive machismo and empty threats. Everyone I
know here is tired of all this fighting. They say life is
too short to live like this - maybe it's time to move
away. Even the Old City in Jerusalem has Israeli
helicopters circling overhead right now. Everyone's on
edge.

But what about the occupation in the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and Gaza? Will it go on for another ten years in
the name of maintaining security? What about the
Separation Wall that separates families? It seems that at
no other point in history has security been so effectively
used to violate basic human and civil rights.

The only difference between the actions of Israel's
military and the terrorism of Hezbollah is that Israel's
is state sanctioned. In either scenario, innocent
civilians inordinately pay the price of this aggression
whether it is Israel, Hezbollah or a sectarian faction
connected to Hamas. Iran and the US simply prime the pump
by providing resources and weaponry in this proxy Middle
East war.

There is something more ominous in the background of this
story, though. The US has never been comfortable that they
have had to accommodate an Iran which has been punching
above their weight class while the Americans have been
busy in other places defending freedom, mom's apple pie
and all those other great things. As the US has become
entrenched in Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly
chastised US intentions in the region in an inflammatory
manner. There has been talk of pre-emptive strikes against
Iran since the fall of 2003.

For extreme hawks in the US Administration such as Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, they now have a strategic
opening to bend the ear of George W. Bush. There are many
within the Pentagon who would support a deep aerial
assault on Iran, not only on potential nuclear reactors,
but against the military and logistical infrastructure of
Iran which is perceived as the immediate threat. Those who
hold this position would argue that the casualties which
would result from Iranian rocket fire in to Iraq at
American soldiers and Iran's wide accessibility to launch
terrorist activities on a global scale, would be worth the
risk of permanently damaging the vital miltary,
transportation and communications infrastructure of the
Islamic state.

Iran is clearly a nation that jeopardizes American
interests and in the current power equation, the US is
certainly not beyond launching a pre-emptive strike. Even
US concerns about rising oil prices in the event of an
attack on Iran could be addressed by opening up the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a period of time.

Syria is widely perceived as irrelevant and could be
handled by the Israeli military, according to this view.
The US would then call on NATO and individual countries
within the European Union to support the attacks without
ever having to resort to a ground war.

The US, by viewing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a
regional issue, has never effectively played the role of a
balanced arbiter due to its own energy and geo-political
interests in the region. In fact, in 1953, such American
stalwarts with names like Schwartzkopf and Roosevelt
helped overthrow a democratically elected nationalist
leader to install the Shah in Iran after oil fields
belonging to British Petroleum were nationalized. It was
the first ever CIA-led coup. The Americans and the British
are old hands at this.

The US's Middle East democracy project was never well
thought out and has been a sad series of failures - they
would have been better off cloning a bunch of Mubaraks in
the region rather than imposing a kind of Rococo democracy
composed of quisling leaders.

Make no mistake - we have now collectively crossed the
Rubicon into dangerous times. The question is not if there
is going to be a war with Iran but when.

Am Johal is a freelance writer from Vancouver, Canada who
worked during 2004 in international advocacy with the
Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of
Israel


**********************************************************

(16) Israelis are dying: it must be an escalation

By Jonathan Cook

The Electronic Intifada
17 July 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5056.shtml

Here we go again -- another "serious escalation" has begun
in the Middle East, or so BBC World was telling audiences
throughout Sunday. So what prompted the BBC's judgment
that the crisis was escalating once more?

You can be sure it had nothing to do with the more than
130 Lebanese dead after five days of savage aerial
bombardment from at least 2,000 sorties by Israeli war
planes that are making the country's south a disaster zone
and turning Beirut into a crumbling ghost town. Those
dead, most civilians and many of them women and children,
hardly get a mention, their lives apparently empty of
meaning or significance in this confrontation.

Nor is it the Lebanese roads and bridges being pounded
into dust, the petrol stations and oil refineries going up
in smoke, the phone networks and TV stations being
obliterated, the water and electricity supplies being cut
off. The rapid transformation of a modern vibrant country
like Lebanon into the same category of open-air prison as
Gaza is not an escalation in the BBC's view.

No, the BBC proffered a first, hesitant "escalation" on
Thursday night when Hizbullah had the audacity to fire a
handful of rockets at Haifa in response to the growing
Lebanese death toll. The worst damage the Katyushas
inflicted was one gouging a chunk of earth out of the
hillside overlooking the port.

But the BBC felt confident to declare the escalation had
turned "serious" on Sunday when Hizbullah not only fired
more rockets at Haifa but one killed a group of eight
railway workers in a station depot.

Now that Israeli civlians as well as Lebanese civilians
are dying -- even if in far smaller numbers -- the BBC's
battalions of journalists in northern Israel finally have
something to report on.

So BBC World's broadcast at 9:00 am GMT (noon
Israel/Lebanon time) hardly veered out of Haifa or
Jerusalem. After the presenter's headline declaration that
the Hizbullah strike on Haifa was a "serious escalation",
the news segued into a lengthy and sympathetic interview
with an Israeli police spokesman in Haifa by Wyre Davies;
followed by another lazy interview, lasting the best part
of five minutes, with an Israeli government spokesman in
Jerusalem; followed by Ben Brown in Beirut interviewing a
British holidaymaker about her night of horror in her
hotel.

And in those 15 minutes that was about as close as we got
to hearing what the Lebanese had been enduring from a
night and morning of Israeli aerial strikes on Beirut and
the country's south. If there was any mention of the
suffering of Lebanese civilians -- and doubtless the BBC
will tell me there was -- the reference was so fleeting
that I missed it. And if I missed it, then so did most BBC
World viewers.

The true nature of the "serious escalation" was soon
apparent -- or at least it was if one watched Arab TV
channels. They showed an urban wasteland of rubble and
dust in the suburbs of Beirut and Tyre that was shockingly
reminiscent of New York in the immediate aftermath of the
9-11 attacks.

They cut intermittently to local hospitals filled with
Lebanese children, their faces a rash of bloody pockmarks
from the spray of Israeli shrapnel. More terrible images
of children burnt and lying in pools of blood arrrived in
my email inbox from Lebanese bloggers.

But in the BBC's lexicon, escalation has nothing to do
with the enormous destruction Israel can unleash on
Lebanon; only the occasional, smaller-scale blow Hizbullah
scores against Israel.

Switching from the Arab channels back to the BBC for their
11:00 am broadcast in the hope of finding the same images
of devastation in Tyre and Beirut, I stumbled on yet
another timid interview with Israel's ubiqitious spokesman
Mark Regev. It was followed by the two headlines: Nine
dead in Israel after a "barrage" of attacks on Haifa; and
foreign governments prepare to evacuate their nationals
out of the region.

At noon James Reynolds as good as gave the game away: the
Hizbullah strike on Haifa, he said, proved that the
rockets are "no longer just an irritant". Now it was clear
why a "serious escalation" had begun: Israel was actually
being harmed by Hizbullah's rockets rather than just
irritated. Until then the harm had been mainly inflicted
on Lebanese civilians, so no escalation was taking place.

As I regularly flicked to the BBC's coverage all
afternoon, I found almost no mention of those dead in
Lebanon. They had become "non-beings", irrelevant in the
calculations not only of our world leaders but of our
major broadcasters.

As I regularly flicked to the BBC's coverage all
afternoon, I found almost no mention of those dead in
Lebanon. They had become "non-beings", irrelevant in the
calculations not only of our world leaders but of our
major broadcasters.

It wasn't till the 7:00 pm news that I saw meaningful
images from Lebanon, as Gavin Hewitt followed a fire crew
trying to put out an enormous oil refinery blaze in Tyre.
Although we saw some of the suffering of the Lebanese
population, the anchor felt obliged to preface the scenes
from Lebanon with the statement that they were Israeli
"retaliation" for the Haifa attack, even though Israel had
been launching such strikes for four days before the
lethal rocket strike on Haifa.

In the same broadcast, an Israeli cabinet minister, Shaul
Mofaz, was given air time to make the claim that parts of
the rockets that landed in Haifa were Syrian-made.
Allegations by the Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud,
widely shown on Arab TV that Israel had been using
phosphorus incendiary bombs -- illegal under international
law -- received no coverage at all.

On the 8:00 pm news, one of the headlines was a menacing
quote from Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader,
that "Haifa is just the beginning". Mike Wooldridge in the
Jerusalem studio made great play of the quote, taken from
a broadcast Nasrallah had made several hours earlier.

The BBC may have lifted the sentence from the Israeli
media because they missed out the important conditional
context inserted by Nasrallah -- it was only the
"beginning" of what Hizbullah could do if Israel continued
its attacks.

They could have found this out even from the Hebrew media
if they had taken the care to look more closely: "As long
as the enemy pursues its aggression without limits and red
lines we will pursue the confrontation without limits and
without red lines," Nasrallah was quoted as saying by the
daily Haaretz newspaper. In other words, Nasrallah was
warning that Hizbullah would give back as good as it gets
-- a standard piece of rhetoric from a military leader in
times of confrontation.

The BBC is no worse than CNN, Sky and, of course, Fox
News. It is possibly far better, which is reason enough
why we should be outraged that this is the best
international broadcast coverage we are likely to get of
the conflict.

The reporting we are seeing from the BBC and the other
broadcasters is racist; there is no other word to describe
it. The journalists' working assumption is that Israeli
lives are more precious, more valuable than Lebanese
lives. A few dead Israelis justify massive retaliation;
many Lebanese dead barely merit a mention. The subtext
seems to be that all the Lebanese, even the tiny bleeding
children I see on Arab TV, are terrorists. It is just the
way Arabs are.

That is why the capture of two Israeli soldiers is more
newsworthy to our broadcasters than the dozens of Lebanese
civilians dying from the Israeli bombing runs that have
followed. The eight Israelis killed on Sunday are worth
far more than the 130-plus Lebanese lives taken so far and
the hundreds more we can expect to die in the coming days.

There is no excuse for this asymmetry of coverage. BBC
reporters are in Lebanon just as they are in Israel. They
can find spokespeople in Lebanon just as easily as they
can find them in Israel. They can show the far vaster
scale of devastation in Beirut as easily as the wreckage
in Haifa. They can speak to the Lebanese casualties just
as easily as they can those in Israel.

But they don't -- and as a fellow journalist I have to ask
myself why.

My previous criticisms of British reporters over their
distorted coverage of Israel's military assaults in Gaza a
few weeks back appear to have struck a raw nerve.
Certainly they provoked a series of emails -- some
defensive, others angry -- from a few of the reporters I
named. All tried to defend their own coverage, unable to
accept my criticisms because they are sure that they
personally do not take sides. They are not "campaigning"
journalists after all, they are "professionals" doing a
job.

But the problem is not with them, it is with the job they
have to do -- and the nature of the professionalism they
so prize. I am sure the BBC's Wyre Davies cares as much
about Lebanese deaths as he does about Israeli ones. But
he also knows his career at the BBC demands that he does
not ask his bosses questions when told to give valuable
minutes of air time to an Israeli police spokesman who
offers us only platitudes.

Similarly, we see James Reynolds use his broadcast from
Haifa at 12:00 noon to show emotive footage of him and his
colleagues running for shelter as Israeli air raid sirens
go off, only to tell us that in fact no rockets landed in
Haifa. That non-event was shown by the BBC every hour on
the hour all afternoon and evening. Was it more
significant than the images of death we never saw taking
place just over the border? These images from Lebanon
exist because the Arab channels spent all day showing
them.

Matthew Price knows too that in the BBC's view it is his
job as he stands in Haifa, after we have repeatedly heard
Israeli spokespeople giving their version of events, to
repeat their message, dropping even the quotes marks as he
passionately tells us how tough Israel must now be, how it
must "retaliate" to protect its citizens, how it must
"punish" Hizbullah. This is not journalism; it's reporting
as a propaganda arm of a foreign power.

Can we imagine Ben Brown doing the same from Beirut,
standing in front of the BBC cameras telling us how
Hizbullah has no choice faced with Israel's military
onslaught but to start hitting Haifa harder, blowing up
its oil refineries and targeting civilian infrastructure
to "pressure" Israel to negotiate?

Would the BBC bother to show pre-recorded footage of Brown
fleeing for his safety in Beirut in what later turned out
to be a false alarm? Of course not. Doubtless Brown and
his colleagues are forced to take cover on a regular basis
for fear of being hurt by Israeli air strikes, but his
fear -- or more precisely, the fear of the Lebanese he
stands alongside -- is not part of the story for the BBC.
Only Israeli fears are newsworthy.

These reporters are working in a framework of news
priorities laid down by faceless news executives far away
from the frontline who understand only too well the
institutional pressures on the BBC -- and the
institutional biases that are the result.

They know that the Israel lobby is too powerful and well
resourced to take on without suffering flak; that the
charge of anti-semitism might be terminally damaging to
the BBC's reputation; that the BBC is expected broadly to
reflect the positions of the British governmment if it
wants an easy ride with its regulators; that to remain
credible it should not stray too far from the line of its
mainly American rivals, who have their own more intense
domestic pressures to side with Israel.

This distortion of news priorities has real costs that can
be measured in lives -- in the days and weeks to come,
hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives in both Israel and
Lebanon. As long as Israel is portrayed by our major
broadcasters as the one under attack, its deaths alone as
significant, then the slide to a regional war -- a war of
choice being waged by the Israeli government and army --
is likely to become inevitable.

So to Jeremy Bowen, James Reynolds, Ben Brown, Wyre
Davies, Matthew Price and all the other BBC journalists
reporting from the frontline of the Middle East, and the
faceless news executives who sent them there, I say: you
may be nice people with the best of intentions, but shame
on you.


Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, is the author of Blood
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic
State, published by Pluto Press and available in the US
from University of Michigan Press. His website is
www.jkcook.net.

**********************************************************

(17) Israel Violates US Law With Attack on Lebanon

By Thalif Deen

Inter Press Service
18 July 2006

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=9325

Israel is in violation of U.S. arms-control laws for
deploying U.S.-made fighter planes, combat helicopters,
and missiles to kill civilians and destroy Lebanon's
infrastructure in the ongoing six-day devastation of that
militarily weak country.

The death toll, according to published reports, is over
200 people - mostly civilians - while the economic losses
have been estimated at about $100 million per day.

"Section 4 of the [U.S.] Arms Export Control Act requires
that military items transferred to foreign governments by
the United States be used solely for internal security and
legitimate self-defense," says Stephen Zunes, professor of
politics at the University of San Francisco.

"Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon's civilian
infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond
legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally
obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel," Zunes told
IPS.

Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate with the Arms
Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute in New
York, is equally outraged at the misuse by Israel of
U.S.-supplied weapons.

"As Israel jets bombard locations in Gaza, Haifa, and
Beirut, killing civilians (including as many as seven
Canadians vacationing in Aitaroun), it is worth
remembering that U.S. law is clear about how U.S.-origin
weapons and military systems ought to be used," Berrigan
told IPS.

She pointed out that the U.S. Arms Export Control Act
clear states that U.S. origin weapons should not be used
for "non-defensive purposes."

"In light of this clear statement, the United States has
an opportunity to stave off further bloodshed and
suffering by demanding that its weaponry and military aid
not be used in attacks against Lebanon and elsewhere, and
challenging Israeli assertions that it is using military
force defensively," she added.

That would demonstrate the kind of "utmost restraint" that
world leaders called for at the G8 Summit of the world's
most industrialized nations, which just ended in St.
Petersburg, Russia.

The 25-member European Union has said that Israel's
military retaliation against Lebanon is "grossly
disproportionate" to the kidnapping of two Israeli
soldiers last week by the Islamic militant group
Hezbollah, which is a coalition partner of the
U.S.-supported government in Beirut.

Israel has accused both Syria and Iran of providing
rockets and missiles to Hezbollah, which has used these
weapons to hit mostly civilian targets inside Israel.

Israel's prodigious military power - currently unleashed
on a virtually defenseless Lebanon - is sourced primarily
to the United States.

Armed mostly with state-of-the-art U.S.-supplied fighter
planes and combat helicopters, the Israeli military is
capable of matching a combination of all or most of the
armies in most Middle Eastern countries, including Iran,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

The air force has continued to devastate Beirut and its
suburbs with no resistance in the skies during six days of
incessant bombings, causing civilian deaths and
infrastructure destruction.

"The Israeli Air Force now flies only U.S.-origin
fighters, a mix of F-15s and F-16s, and the rest of the
service's fleet is almost completely of U.S. origin," says
Tom Baranauskas, a senior Middle East analyst at Forecast
International, a leading provider of defense market
intelligence services in the United States.

While in earlier years Israel bought from a variety of
arms suppliers, with the French in particular being strong
sellers to Israel of such items as Mirage fighters, over
the past couple of decades the United States has developed
into Israel's preponderant arms supplier, he added.

"The U.S. domination as Israel's arms supplier can be seen
in the Congressional Research Service's [CRS] annual study
of arms sales," Baranauskas told IPS.

He said the latest CRS survey shows a total of $8.4
billion of arms deliveries to Israel in the 1997-2004
period, with fully $7.1 billion or 84.5 percent coming
from a single source: the United States.

A major factor in this trend was the rise in U.S. foreign
military financing (FMF) - outright U.S. grants to Israel
- which now totals about $2.3 billion a year paid for by
U.S. taxpayers.

By U.S. law, Baranauskas said, 74 percent of FMF
assistance to Israel must be spent on U.S. military
products. This U.S. assistance has now become the main
source of financing for Israel's major arms procurements,
especially its fighter planes.

From a historical perspective, he said, U.S. assistance to
Israel during 1950-2005 has been staggeringly high: FMF
amounting to $59.5 billion; $27 billion in foreign
military sales (FMS) mostly government-to-government arms
transactions; and $8 billion in commercial arms sales by
the private sector.

Berrigan of the Arms Trade Resource Center said the United
States is undoubtedly the primary supplier of Israeli
firepower.

In the interest of strengthening Israel's security and
maintaining the country's "qualitative military edge" over
neighboring militaries, the U.S. Congress provides Israel
with annual FMF grants that represent about 23 percent of
its overall defense budget. Israel's 2006 military budget
is estimated at $7.4 billion.

According to the Congressional Research Service, FMF
levels are expected to increase incrementally by $60
million a year to a level of $2.4 billion by 2008 compared
with $2.2 billion in 2005.

"Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid
every year since 1976," Berrigan said.

Additionally, the United States provides Israel with
billions of dollars worth of weaponry.

She pointed out that recent military sales to Israel
include propulsion systems for fast patrol boats worth
more than $15 million from MTU Detroit Diesel; an $8
million contract to Lockheed Martin for high-tech infrared
"navigation and targeting" capabilities for Israeli jets;
and a $145 million deal with Oshkosh Truck Corp. to build
more than 900 armor kits for Israeli medium tactical
vehicles.

In December of last year, Lockheed Martin was awarded a
$29.8 million contract to provide spares part for Israel's
F-16 fighter planes.

Berrigan also said that Israel has one of the world's
largest fleets of F-16 fighter planes, made in Fort Worth,
Texas, and also in Israel by Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Israel has a total of over 378 F-16s, considered one of
the world's most advanced fighter planes - besides 117
F-15s, 94 Skyhawks, 110 Phantoms - all supplied by the
United States.

**********************************************************

(18) Europe's muted voice

The Guardian
18 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1822983,00.html

Europe's voice has once again been muted and ineffective
in responding to an international crisis. Javier Solana,
the EU's foreign policy chief, flew smartly to Beirut as
Israel's offensive in Lebanon escalated at the weekend.
While he was there the G8 summit in St Petersburg - with
the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany among
the participants - failed to call explicitly for an
immediate ceasefire, as Kofi Annan wanted, demanding only
that Israel exercise "restraint". EU foreign ministers did
a bit better yesterday: they were right to call clearly on
both Hizbullah and Israel to cease their attacks, but
wrong to deliberately avoid using the unambiguous word
ceasefire. Diplomatic communiques can seem irrelevant and
long-winded when rockets are flying and innocents dying.
But if words are the currency of international relations,
their meanings and implications matter. Not calling
clearly for a truce at once could suggest complicity with
what Israel is doing and the US is tacitly backing: using
overwhelming force to defeat or cripple Hizbullah,
whatever the consequences for Lebanon or the region. Given
the humanitarian risks involved - with attacks on Beirut
and Haifa and children buried under rubble - and a new
generation of "martyrs" being bred, this is folly.

Israel always fights its wars against the clock, rushing
to achieve its objectives before pressure for a ceasefire
becomes irresistible: Israeli military officials suggested
yesterday they needed 72 hours more fighting. Madeleine
Albright, the former US secretary of state, was not alone
in wondering why the current incumbent, Condi Rice, had
not already dashed to the Middle East. The likely answer
is a spurious realpolitik that assumes military means
alone can end this conflict. That may even be the position
of Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers, worried about Iran's
reckless sponsorship of the Shia Hizbullah to serve its
own regional goals.

Europe's position - with Britain and Germany lined up
against France and several smaller EU countries - matters
because it aspires to play a role on the world stage,
because the Middle East is its own backyard and because
the area's quarrels can explode on our streets and trains.
It matters too because the Iraq war has badly weakened the
influence of the US in the region. If a robust
multinational security force is now to be sent to south
Lebanon, European citizens will surely expect their
governments to play a full role in it. For the moment,
they will want to know that the EU is not just watching
helplessly and letting the US dictate vital decisions as
fateful, bloody and epoch-making events unfold.

**********************************************************

(19) If Israel has the right to use force in self defence, so
do its neighbours

The west appears to insist that only one side in the
conflict is able to intervene militarily across borders.
That will never be accepted

By Ahmad Khalidi

The Guardian
18 July 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1822923,00.html

Much has been made in recent days - at the G8 summit and
elsewhere - of Israel's right to retaliate against the
capture of its soldiers, or attacks on its troops on its
own sovereign territory. Some, such as those in the US
administration, seem to believe that Israel has an
unqualified licence to hit back at its enemies no matter
what the cost. And even those willing to recognise that
there may be a problem tend to couch it in terms of
Israel's "disproportionate use of force" rather than its
basic right to take military action.

But what is at stake here is not proportionality or the
issue of self-defence, but symmetry and equivalence.
Israel is staking a claim to the exclusive use of force as
an instrument of policy and punishment, and is seeking to
deny any opposing state or non-state actor a similar
right. It is also largely succeeding in portraying its own
"right to self-defence" as beyond question, while denying
anyone else the same. And the international community is
effectively endorsing Israel's stance on both counts.

From an Arab point of view this cannot be right. There is
no reason in the world why Israel should be able to enter
Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and
eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity
and without restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the
same. And if the Arab states are unable or unwilling to do
so then the job should fall to those who can.

It is important to bear in mind that in both the case of
the Hamas raid that led to the invasion of Gaza and the
Hizbullah attack that led to the assault on Lebanon it was
Israel's regular armed forces, not its civilians, that
were targeted. It is hard to see how this can be filed
under the rubric of "terrorism", rather than a
straightforward tactical defeat for Israel's much-vaunted
military machine; one that Israel seems loth to
acknowledge.

Some of this has to do with the paradox of power: the
stronger the Israeli army becomes, the more susceptible
and vulnerable it becomes to even a minor setback. The
loss of even one tank, the capture of one soldier or
damage done to one warship has a negative-multiplier
effect: Israel's "deterrent" power is dented out of all
proportion to the act itself. Israel's retaliation is thus
partly a matter of restoring its deterrence, partly sheer
vengeance, and partly an attempt to compel its adversaries
to do its bidding.

But there is also something else at work: Israel's fear of
acknowledging any form of equivalence between the two
sides. And it is precisely this that seems to provide the
moral and psychological underpinning for Israel's ongoing
assault in both Gaza and Lebanon - the sense that it may
have met its match in audacity, tactical ingenuity and
"clean" military action from an adversary who may even
have learned a thing or two from Israel itself, and may be
capable of learning even more in the future.

There has of course been nothing "clean" about Israeli
military action throughout the many decades of conflict in
Palestine and Lebanon. Israel's wanton disregard for
civilian life during the past few days is neither new nor
out of character. For those complaining about violations
of Israeli sovereignty by Hizbullah or Hamas, it may be
useful to recall the tens of thousands of Israeli
violations of Lebanese sovereignty since the late 60s, the
massive air raids of the mid-70s and early 80s, the 1978
and 1982 invasions and occupation of the capital Beirut,
the hundreds of thousands of refugees, the 28-year-old
buffer zone and proxy force set up in southern Lebanon,
the assassinations, car bombs, and massacres, and finally
the continuing violations of Lebanese soil, airspace and
territorial waters and the detention of Lebanese prisoners
even after Israel's withdrawal in 2000.

It is unnecessary here to recount the full range of
Israel's violations of Palestinian "sovereignty", not
least of which is its recent refusal to accept the
sovereign electoral choice of the Palestinian people.
Israel's extraterritorial, extrajudicial execution of
Palestinian leaders and activists began in the early 70s
and has not ceased since. But for those seeking further
enlightenment about Hamas's recent action, the fact is
that some 650,000 acts of imprisonment have taken place
since the occupation began in 1967, and that 9,000
Palestinians are currently in Israel's jails, including
some 50 old-timers incarcerated before and despite the
1993 Oslo accords, and many others whom Israel refuses to
release on the grounds that they have "blood on their
hands", as if only one side in this conflict was culpable,
or the value of one kind of human blood was superior to
another.

If there ever was a case for establishing some form of
mutually acknowledged parity regarding the ground rules of
the conflict, Hamas and Hizbullah have a good one to make.
And if there ever was a case for demonstrating that what
is good on one side of the border should also good on the
other, Hamas and Hizbullah's logic has strong appeal to
Arab and Muslim public opinion - regardless of what the
supine Arab state system may say.

Indeed as George Bush and other western leaders splutter
on about freedom, democracy, and Israel's right to defend
itself, Tony Blair's repeated claim that events in the
region should not be linked to terrible events elsewhere
is looking increasingly fatuous.

The slowly expanding war in Afghanistan, the devastation
of Iraq, the death and destruction in Gaza and the bombing
of Beirut are all providing a slow but sure drip feed for
those who believe that the west is incapable of taking a
balanced moral stance, and is directly or indirectly
complicit in a design meant to break Arab and Muslim will
and subjugate it to untrammelled Israeli force.

Contrary to what Blair seems to believe, the use of force
is unlikely to breed western style-liberalism and
moderation. What is at issue here is not democracy but the
right to resist Israeli arrogance and be treated on a par
with it in every respect, including the use of force. If
Israel has the right to "defend itself" then so has
everyone else.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the history of the region
to suggest that Israel's destruction of mass popular
movements such as Hamas or Hizbullah (even if this were
possible) would drive their successors closer to
western-style democracy, and every reason to believe the
opposite. Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 did away
with the PLO and produced Hizbullah instead, the
incarceration and elimination of Arafat only served to
strengthen Hamas, and the wars in Afghanistan, the Gulf
and Iraq gave birth to Bin Ladenist terrorism and extended
its reach and appeal. And we should not be surprised if
the summer of 2006 produces more of the same.

However Israel's latest adventure ends, it will not
produce greater sympathy and understanding between west
and east, or a downturn in extremism. Indeed the most
likely outcome is that a new wave of virulent and possibly
unconventional anti-western terrorism may well crash
against this and other shores. We will all - Israelis,
Arabs and westerners - suffer as a result.

. Ahmad Khalidi is a senior associate member of St
Antony's College, Oxford, a former Palestinian negotiator
and the co-author, with Hussein Agha, of A Framework for a
Palestinian National Security Doctrine (Chatham House,
2006)