Israel in Iran's Trap
    By Jean Daniel
    Le Nouvel Observateur

    Thursday 03 August 2006

    Rightly taking no comfort from Israel's decision to bomb all of Lebanon - without avoiding civilian massacre - some people assert that the Israelis, alas, couldn't do anything else. My answer: what they could do specifically, they've just decided to do, but too late - to suspend, at least provisionally, the bombing.

    Let us imagine that, after the kidnapping of the two soldiers by Hezbollah, the Israelis had proceeded to a riposte that almost no one, even among the Arabs, would have contested their right to conduct. Suppose that they had executed that riposte in a single day, or two at most, and in an overwhelming manner. That they had returned afterwards to global public opinion, NATO, the European Union, the Security Council, and they had spoken thus: "It's been years that none of you has succeeded in carrying out Resolution 1559, intended to disarm the Hezbollah militia. You can all wait. But after Hezbollah's aggression, we can't. And we are forced to impose what you delay doing." This Israeli warning in the form of a security ultimatum necessarily would have had to be taken seriously. In any case, the world would have felt itself indebted to a state that had not passed directly from the status of attacked party to attacker.

    Why do all these speculations become so foolish when they are mentioned today? First of all, because the Israelis never count on anyone but themselves, and they were persuaded they would be able to achieve their objectives rapidly. Then, because they had no desire to delay an operation that had long been premeditated, with the United States' support and surety.

    When did evidence of this collusion appear? The day when George Bush contented himself with saying the Israelis had a right to defend themselves without adding the least qualification, while he knew - he did, not we - that the issue for Israel was not responding to a provocation, but proceeding to an "eradication," that would bring invasion and occupation in its wake.

    Also, on the day when, at the Rome Conference, Condoleezza Rice obtained the replacement of an injunction for an immediate cease-fire with the simple wish for an urgent solution. Finally, on the day when, at the Security Council, it became clear that the United States wanted to prolong the discussions and water down the resolutions to give the Israelis time to finish with Lebanon and Hezbollah. Each time, we understood that the conflict would be prolonged - dramatically for everyone - if Hezbollah's resistance were to present the same surprises as the Iraqis' and the Afghans'. In any case, a series of spectacular rallies to Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the new charismatic figure between Nasser and Bin Laden, was not expected.

    In fact, for the first three days following the beginning of the Israeli riposte, the Arab states didn't budge, except for Algeria and Syria. More: the Sunni allies (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt) went so far as to denounce "Hezbollah's irresponsible adventurism."

    Several days later, with "eradication" in Lebanon being transformed into disasters and the razing of cities, Hezbollah's epic resistance against the IDF has become so irresistibly contagious that, under the enormous pressure of Arab public opinion, the religious authorities first of all, then the political ones (even in Riyadh!) condemned Israel and declared themselves in solidarity with the Lebanese "people," Hezbollah having suddenly become the sole expression of the people. Even better, Bin Laden's right hand, the Sunni Ayman al-Zawahiri, who supports a civil war against the Shiites in Iraq, did not hesitate to rally to an ideological and emotional mobilization suddenly become powerful enough to transform all who do not adhere to it into traitors.

    Since then, the entire Muslim world has tilted toward Hezbollah, which, after preening itself (a little quickly) on having kicked the Israelis out of the Lebanese fatherland in 2000, today reveals itself capable of resisting one of the best armies in the world so effectively and so long.

    Thus, having failed to conquer quickly enough or to stop when they should have, the Israelis have transformed their enemies into heroes. Israel's victims, even yesterday so divided, have united in their mourning and their revolt. We now know that with nationalist and mystic hysteria in place, when Hezbollah fighters fall, others will replace them and the "eradicatory" ambition is confounded. For these heroes have muscled in, in the name of a new Islam on the move, that of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and thanks to the tutelage of a very great power, Iran, which thus marks its return to the international scene. With the risk that the Iranians endow themselves with the atomic bomb and allow their allies to benefit from it.

    What is most extraordinary in this story is that the Israelis, although the best informed in their region, should have made the same error in Lebanon as the Americans in Iraq: underestimating the terrorist tactics of their adversaries and planning to replace a bad government with men to their liking, thanks to handy opponents.

    Especially, especially, like the Americans at the time of the war in Iraq, they didn't bother with the Lebanese because they thought that they, out of fear of Hezbollah and respect for strength, would want only to unite with a victorious Israel.

    Some Israelis fear today, rightly, that Hezbollah will appear to emerge victorious from no matter what international arrangement. You would have to be blind, in fact, not to recognize that a certain Hezbollah victory is already gained and that the threat today is the tipping over of the entire moderate Arab world: the Sunni rallying to the Shiite Hezbollah fight heralds the promotion of its Iranian sponsor to the status of a great regional power.

    There are strategists with an international vision in Washington. The radical Islamism born with Khomeini's revolution in 1979 and with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took on a tragic dimension during the 1980-1990 Algerian civil war. But at that time, no one thought any more about the Palestinian conflict that remained a wound in the heart of every Arab.

    As though Israel's military victories had brought the humiliation inflicted on the entire Arab world by the British, French, and other colonizers to a paroxysm. Maxime Rodinson has explained what comprises the "Arab rejection" of Israel's existence very well.

    This wound was beginning to be put into perspective, in any case, was beginning to calm down, if not to heal, when impotent Arabism ceded its place to Islamism on the move. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stroke of genius - if one may say so - was to awaken the Palestinian wound, prancing into one-upsmanship and declaring that "Israel must be erased from the map." To do that, he devoted himself to the triple objective of defying the Americans by endowing himself with nuclear weaponry, attempting to establish Shiite Muslim hegemony over the Arab world, and creating permanent hotbeds of insurrection between Palestine's allies and Israel's allies.

    Hezbollah is probably the insurrectionary hotbed most precious to Iran. Israel presumed on its strength by imagining it could rapidly finish with Hezbollah, and it has dramatically fallen into Iran's trap.

    Jacques Chirac, by recalling that the nation of Iran was the heir to a "great civilization" and that it had a right to intervene in the affairs of the region and the world, not only demonstrated that he understood the stakes, but proceeded to a true overture: in fact, an appeal for dialogue covering all the region's problems.

    With things brought to this pass, even the most autistic Americans, fearing all the same to add a third Lebanese front to Iraq and Afghanistan, should understand that it is time to persuade Israel to an immediate cease-fire. That said, the Israelis obviously have a perfect right to demand every guarantee to assure their security. Notably by demanding the installation of a true international force of interposition on a security zone situated in Lebanese territory, but perhaps also in Israel. The "eradication" will not take place as young Israelis full of illusions and vengeful buoyancy and also ready to die for their country's victory hoped. Nonetheless, Hezbollah's firepower and capacity to harm will have been moderately well weakened.

    That said, through all the analyses and declarations, it seems that everyone, everywhere, understands that without a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, everything will quickly start over again as before. With this difference - that, from now on, millions of Muslims and Arabs feel themselves directly involved. And that Zionism, born in part to flee European anti-Semitism, will have resuscitated anti-Semitism with a face no longer Christian, but Muslim. I hope it will take less than two thousand years for it to disappear.

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    Jean Daniel is co-founder and Director of the Nouvel Observateur.