Israel's aggression vs Lebanon - is this the end of the peace process?

by Hans Lebrecht

This article was reprinted from the April 20, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

TEL-AVIV - Can the inhuman Israeli aggression against Southern Lebanon be reconciled with the peace process? Can the Clinton Administration and the leaders of both parties on Capitol Hill still claim to appear as neutral "Peace Makers" while supporting Israel in its criminal steps against the Lebanese and Palestinian people? If Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his Labor Party think they can gain from their iron- fist policy in Lebanon and Palestine they are gravely mistaken.

The most radical monsters in the right-wing Likud /Tzomet /Gesher opposition alignment are enthusiastic about Labor's taking their advice to hit "the enemy" hard and re-occupy southern Lebanon. Only the right-wing will gain support from Labor pursuing a Likud policy.

"Anvei Haza'am," or Grapes of Wrath, is the Israeli army's name for its operation in Lebanon, alleged aimed at annihilating Hezbollah (Party or God) and Lebanese patriotic guerrillas, but actually targeting the civilian population. Israel ordered the whole civilian population, an estimated mass of more than half a million people, to leave their homes and flee northwards towards Beirut, warning that their localities will come under artillery fire and aerial bombing.

That criminal aggression is committed under the pretext of retaliating for the Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns and settlements.

The leaders of the Hezbollah militia maintain that their forces are fighting against the Israeli occupation army and their "South Lebanese Army" mercenaries in order to liberate Lebanese soil occupied by Israel since 1982. Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nassrallah stated that as soon as the last Israeli soldier leaves Lebanon his fighters will stop fighting and engage in reconstructing peaceful life in southern Lebanon.

Peres, his foreign minister, ex-Chief-of-Army General Ehud Barak and other government spokespersons openly state their operational aim in expelling hundreds of thousands from their homes under artillery shelling and air strikes -- which have killed several dozens of Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah men.

By hitting the civilian population "we want to teach them a lesson ... not to tolerate Hezbollah and other 'terrorists' in their midst," as well as to pressure the Lebanese government and their Syrian "godfathers" to act in order to eliminate Hezbollah and other militias on Lebanese soil, government sources state.

However, the people are not infuriated against Hezbollah and other patriots fighting the Israeli occupation. They curse the Israeli invaders and aggressors for causing their horrible plight.

One of the most horrid crimes in the latest attacks was the rocketing of a civilian ambulance by an Israeli helicopter gunship. The ambulance was hit by a well-aimed rocket near the village Hiniye, south-east of Tyre, while evacuating hospitalized people northwards (as ordered by the Israeli army!). All six passengers and the driver were killed, among them two women and three children, ages 3, 4 and 6. The Israeli army spokesman claimed the driver was a "Hezbollah man." Asked, how the helicopter pilot could possibly apprehend whether this was so, before he fired, the spokesman had no reasonable answer.

In the last four days, heavy artillery batteries have fired over 10,000 shells into Lebanese towns and villages. (While I am writing these lines, news continues to come over my automatic army public relations phone line and open radio and TV broadcasts.).

Many Israeli analysts are convinced the Israeli iron-fist treatment will backfire. The sense amongst the Lebanese of being victims of aggression and of martyrdom will certainly strengthen the ranks of Hezbollah fighters. The fight for national liberation from Israeli occupation, sanctioned by international law and the U.N. charter, will go on as long as Israel's current "war on terrorism" continues.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq el-Hariri rejected Israel's demands. He stated that neither was he able, nor does he want, to curtail the forces who fight against the Israeli occupation of his country, that Israel was obliged to withdraw its occupation troops from all of Lebanese soil, as demanded by the Security Council.

No peace process can bear any fruit as long as the occupation and armed oppression will continue. There can be no security for Israel and Israeli citizens. Katyusha rockets or other shells and bombs will fall in Kiryat Shmona and other Israeli territories as long as Israel occupies those Arab lands captured in 1967 and 1982.