With Guns Silent, Wartime Unity Unravels in Israel Amid Fierce Criticism of War Effort
The political ramifications of Israel's failure to secure any recognisable gain for it's month long war against Hizbullah - a war which trashed it's international reputation - continued yesterday.
The most worrying of which is Olmert's statement that withdrawing from the West Bank will no longer be an Israeli priority as Israel concentrates on repairing the damage done to homes in the north. Considering the fact that Israel is more vulnerable than she has ever been since 1948, this is a decision that she might come to regret.
It also appears to put Olmert much nearer to the policies of Netanyahu and further from the policies that the Kadima Party were elected to carry out.
And if the Israelis needed any more proof regarding the pointlessness of Olmert's war, it came yesterday with the long awaited sight of the Lebanese army finally entering southern Lebanon welcomed by the traditional throwing of rice. Any pleasure or reassurance this might have been expected to give them was wiped as the leading army officer of the Lebanese army made clear what his orders were:"The army will deploy on the wounded Lebanese land alongside the men of the resistance."
These are not the words of a force that have come to disarm Hizbullah. Nor even to drive them from southern Lebanon. They are to work "alongside" them.
For most Israelis this must surely be the moment when they realise that this was not a war in which they were victorious, no matter what Bush and Olmert say.
Nor will any further comfort be forthcoming with the arrival of French forces. Chirac last night doubled the amount of troops he intends to send into the region to 400. Hardly a unit of a size capable of taking on Hizbullah and, even then, he is withholding these forces until he has a clear mandate of what exactly they will be required to do. In other words, he is not sending in his forces to do Israel's dirty work for them, especially as this was a task that the Israelis proved is almost impossible to do.
The reality appears to finally be hitting home to Israelis:
The difference between Bush's reading of what the cease-fire means - a cease-fire that he refused to call for as hundreds of people were killed and thousands maimed - and the reality on the ground is made clear once again by the wonderful Robert Fisk. Talking of the disarming of Hizbullah he notes:Shlomo Avineri, a political science professor at Hebrew University said, “The achievements were less than expected, and the price was too high.”
He added: “From the beginning we should have set more modest goals. A lot of this agonizing is self-inflicted.”
“It’s not a victory at all,” said Ziona Dotan, 50, who returned to her rocket-damaged apartment in the hard-hit northern town of Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday. “It’s going backwards. They keep getting more weapons. I don’t see what we got out of this. Many people were killed, and what was it all for?”
“At the beginning of the war there was unity, but now it’s broken down because there were many mistakes, by the army and also politically,” said Yakov Hoshkover, 66.
Not only do most of the Hizbollah live in villages south of the Litani but several of their officers made it clear that they had told the Lebanese army not to search for weapons. So much for the disarmament of the Hizbollah south of the Litani river. And so much for President Bush's "war on terror" which the Israelis claim to be fighting on America's behalf.Bush is trying to claim victory where none exists. And Israel are falsely claiming that their actions are somehow part of the war on terror. They are not. Israel is trying to hold on to land that international law states does not belong to them.
One would hope that amidst all this soul searching, Israelis will realise that only by vacating land held against international law will Israel ever know any true peace. That is what makes Olmert's reticence to vacate the West bank as planned all the more worrying. It looks to me as if Israel, under Olmert, is determined to learn the wrong lesson out of all of this.
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