Lebanon fallout

[bemildred]

Vindication, disdain and renewed concerns about Israeli militarism are the dominant reactions in the Arab world to the preliminary report of the Winograd Commission released this week in Israel.

The commission harshly rebuked three senior Israeli leaders for their conduct during last summer's war with Hezbollah, leaving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister and Labour Party leader Amir Peretz fighting for their political lives. The army chief of staff, Dan Halutz, has already resigned.

The Arab sense of vindication stems from the feeling that Israel had performed poorly in the war, and had not achieved its strategic objectives: smashing Hezbollah, removing the armed Lebanese resistance movement from southern Lebanon, bringing home the two kidnapped soldiers in Hezbollah's hands, reaffirming Israel's deterrence posture with the entire Arab world and Iran, and ensuring that all wars with the Arabs are fought in Arab lands, not in Israel. Arab analysts have been quick to recall that Israel also had been forced to accept a United Nations-mandated ceasefire after failing to win on the battlefield.

The Arab sense of disdain is primarily rooted in the long history of Israeli commissions of inquiry that create much political noise and dust but don't alter the country's consistent strategy of militarization and colonization in dealing with Arabs. Most galling for Arabs are the bitter memories of deeply flawed commissions that examined Israeli army and policy behaviour against Palestinian citizens of Israel within the state's 1967 borders. The message of such inquiries — into Israel's use of arms in Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, or in majority Palestinian areas inside Israel itself — seems to be that rule-of-law punctilio for Israelis will be observed, but Arabs can only expect to remain at the receiving end of the combined Israeli military machine and legacy of political discrimination.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070503.wcomment0503/BNStory/Front/home

[pelsar]

1. you do see the irony in it....

so the arabs are upset with israeli internal commissions of inquiry....i guess israel might get upset at the various arab govts "internal commissions that criticized their own governments" if such a thing actually existed.

[bemildred]

2. Yes, I do.

It's sort of inevitable that various parties are going to exploit Winograd for their own purposes, and there will be "I told you so" coming from all directions. That is the cost of doing business in this case, and the cost of the government's errors, it is all just talk, and to leave these matters unaddressed is not much of an option either.

The Arab states have their own troubles, and would do well to consider their own mistakes, but I don't expect they will. That is their loss, not yours.

[pelsar]

3. i know....

the report is good and will be better if mr olmert and peres move on in life (and dont look back)...that plus the demonstrations hopefully will add a bit of fire to the situation. On the other hand both of those guys arent really known for any particular "morality" and may do what they can to "stick around"

as far as the arab countries go....its just the irony, no more than that, but for the palestinians, i think they actually take the idea of commissions of inquires as a part of good govt (wishful thinking on my part?) and may actually demand something from their own.

[bemildred]

4. I suspect it will be some, hopefully short, period yet before government changes are made.

Things have to be negotiated, and things have to look and be orderly.

It doesn't appear to me that the Palestinians have the necessary political cohesion to carry out commissions of inquiry, although I'm sure plenty of them would like to see better government. The problem is that good wishes don't get you far.