Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora may be a weak US puppet, but he fully understands the reality about Israel’s strategic blindness:
Last week, Israel’s Winograd Commission published an interim report scrutinizing Israel’s conduct during what it called the country’s most recent military “campaign.” But the report failed to draw the most essential lesson from the July war and the wars that preceded it: military action does not give the people of Israel security. On the contrary, it compromises it. The only way for the people of Israel and the Arab world to achieve stability and security is through a comprehensive peace settlement to the overarching Arab-Israeli conflict.
Military action doesn’t bring security? One would think that after decades of failed policies, Israel’s military and political elite (and their mouthpieces in the West) would have realised this, but alas, it is not so. As America is thankfully discovering in Iraq, military force is virtually useless against an insurgency that understands the rules of the game far better. And in relation to the Israel/Palestine conflict, time is clearly on the Palestinian’s side. Israel’s regional supremacy was shattered during the 2006 Lebanon war, and perhaps it’ll take another few pointless wars for the Jewish state to be put in its rightful place, namely a non-aggressive nation state granting full rights for all.
Then again, Israel’s colonial addiction shows no sign of weakening:
Jerusalem’s city council plans to build three new Jewish settlements on land it occupied in 1967, in contravention of international law, it was announced yesterday. The estates will be built on land that has been earmarked for a future Palestinian state, close to Bethlehem and Ramallah.
International law forbids construction on land acquired by war, but since 1967 Israel has built homes for around 500,000 Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The construction is planned to link existing Jewish settlements in Jerusalem with each other and with settlements in the West Bank. Saeb Erekat, the head of negotiations for the Palestinians, said the building plans suggested that Israel had no real interest in peace. “Today it is obvious that Israel wants Jerusalem for only some of Jerusalem’s people,” he said. “I wish Israel would do what majorities of both Palestinians and Israelis want: accept the two-state solution and accept peace.”
While Israel says that it supports the creation of a Palestinian state, its building projects – which include walls, fences, bypasses and tunnels as well as settlements – restrict the amount of land that would be available to the new state.
The short-sightedness of these policies is mind-blowing (not that you’ll hear a peep from most Western governments.)