If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out.
Peace with Syria would have guaranteed peace with Lebanon and peace with both would have prevented Hezbollah from fortifying on Israel’s northern border. Peace with Syria would have also isolated Iran, Israel’s true dangerous enemy, and cut off Hezbollah from one of the two sources of its weapons and funding.
From Golda Meir, to Ehud Olmert, the lie has held that the war with the Palestinians is an existential one for survival imposed on Israel when it is actually a war for real estate, one dunam after another that does not belong to us.
The situation is different with Syria. For 33 years, the Syrians gave up the military effort to reinstate their occupied lands…The Syrians sat quietly anyway, so why give them back the Golan?
…Only after blood was spilled, did Israel wake up from its dreams and realize that it could not hold onto all of the territories forever. Thus, with regrettable delay and years of bloodshed, the recognition of the PLO, the Oslo accords, the disengagement and the convergence were born -all partial and fake solutions meant to postpone the end of the occupation.
We did not need all of that with the Syrians-after all, they sat quietly all these years…the delusion that the Golan would for ever remain in Israeli hands, without our being asked to pay for its occupation, is now slapping us in the face.
But the current war could yet turn out to be only an appetizer for the coming wars, which will be far more dangerous. .The Arab and Muslim world has armed, in all of his time, and the danger of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is already hovering over our heads. The only response to that is maximum neutralization of the flashpoints, before the bomb arrives. But Israel has chosen to close its eyes and build its future on a horrifyingly temporary quiet, or on more and more war operations.
…Now, after we’ve hit Hezbollah and ruined Lebanon, the prime minister of Israel should declare: the Golan for peace. That could contribute a lot more to our security than a thousand useless daring operations in Baalbek, but it would take a lot more courage than going off to fight another unnecessary and useless war.
Der Spiegel, August 3rd - “The Harmless children of Hezbollah ?” by Henryk M. Broder
Germans are squabbling about whether Israel’s military strikes against Lebanon are justified. But how else can Israel defend itself against Hezbollah rockets? By staging sit-down protests along the Israeli-Lebanese border, perhaps?
….Every day you read and hear people saying the Israelis have done to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews…The old question:” Why didn’t the Jews defend themselves?” is no longer fashionable. To-day, the Jews are accused of defending themselves. ..Stop shooting rockets ?...And how would the Swiss react if one of their border regions were attacked with rockets? Would they retaliate by firing “Luxemburgerli” pastries from their famous confectioner? ..And if rockets fired across the border don’t threaten a state’s existence, then who or what does?...
The late King of Jordan had no qualms about using his might to put down a Palestinian uprising during “Black September” in 1970. He ordered refugee camps to be bombed. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people died. The PLO then moved to Cairo and later to Tunis.
Former Syrian President Hafis al-Assad, the father of Syria’s present ruler, pulled no punches in fighting insurgent members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He devastated the city of Hama in February 1982, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians. No one accused him of “genocide” – and if someone had, al-Assad would have asked his critics not to meddle in the domestic affairs of his country.
When one considers what Israel is doing one has to admit that it is behaving quite moderately – notwithstanding the bloodbath in Qana…This war isn’t between two regular armies, but one between an army and a guerrilla group that doesn’t hesitate to use civilians as a human shield. At least the Israeli army warns the civilian population of imminent bombings by dropping leaflets, whereas Hezbollah fires rockets without warning, in order to terrorize a civilian population…Everyone in Israel who had something to do with defense knew Hezbollah was not building holiday camps for Palestinian orphans in southern Lebanon – it was preparing for military action. Instead of sounding the alarm because UN Resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah to disarm, wasn’t being implemented, the choice was made to ignore the danger on the Lebanese quagmire…
They are now fighting an enemy they underestimated…Germany’s former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has now realized that the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas is not about “occupied territories” but about Israel’s existence……..The appeals to respect international law and the rules of the game are always directed at Israel, never at those who believe that all means are justified in the struggle against Israel.
If the Israelis don’t succeed in defeating Hamas and Hezbollah, they will have to come up with other forms of resistance. How about sit-down strikes along the Israeli-Lebanese border?
