Middle East Crisis

 

Israel — Lebanon War:

 News flash highlights the middle east crisis As in the past, so in 2006, bloodshed, massacres, war and mass misery were the Middle East's lot. While Iraq continued to bleed, former president Saddam Hussein having been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity, it was tiny Lebanon that for 34 dramatic days was the focus of world attention. Hezbollah and Syed Hassan Nasrallah, its charismatic leader, emerged as heroes for the Arab-Islamic world, and if there was "a political corpse", to quote a European diplomat, it was Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister to whom fell the unenviable task of presiding over Israel's second military defeat in less than six years.

Israel bombed Lebanon mercilessly, killing its civilians without the slightest compunction, but that failed to give it victory in south where Hezbollah fighters put up a resistance that Israel and its supporters had not expected. The destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure was not incidental; Israel made it clear it was destroying it because it was used by Hezbollah for logistics. But Israel went a step further and started destroying homes and apartment buildings and factories producing civilian goods. The most terrible example of Israel's violation of the laws of war was what has come to be called the second Qana massacre when on July 30 Israeli air strikes killed 56 people, including 36 children. Israel also bombed out all bridges on the Litany river to cut off supplies for Hezbollah, its navy blockaded Lebanese harbours, and the air force attacked Lebanese airports, but Hezbollah fought on.

 As Israel realized it could not annihilate Hezbollah in a short blitz, it sought and got from the US and Britain the assurance that they would continue to oppose a UN ceasefire resolution to give Israel time to finish the job. It was when 34 days had passed and Israel was nowhere near a victory that the US and UK finally agreed on a UN meeting a ceasefire resolution.

The end of the war found Israel licking its wounds without having achieved any of its war aims. Hezbollah was there as strong as ever, its stockpiles of rockets intact, and the Israelis had lost 118 solidiers and 39 civilians, and at least 22 tanks. What is more, if security was Israeli's main concern in launching the blitz, the mission failed, for Hezbollah responded to the Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians by firing rockets on Israeli cities, especially Haifa, its third largest city. Olmert managed to stay in power by making the army carry the can for the military defeat and at least two generals had to resign.

 The castes belly was supposed to be the "kidnapping" of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. According to the norms developed by the western media, when Israel captures Arabs in battles, they are prisoners of war, but when Arabs take Israeli prisoners, this becomes "kidnapping". Much before Hezbollah took the two Israeli soldiers prisoner and killed eight others on July 12, Israel had invaded the Gaza strip for the umpteenth time, kidnapped seven Palestinian ministers and 20 legislators, disrupted Gaza's water and power supplies and blew up several homes, and killed a number of Palestinian soldiers and civilians. This was on top of the seven Palestinian picnickers Israel killed by shelling a Gaza beach on June 9, forcing llamas to break the ceasefire it had unilaterally observe for 16 months.

 Even though Israel should have learnt its lessons and realized that force was not going to pay, it made no attempt to revive the peace process and to talk to Hamas, which was swept to power in the January election, winning 76 out of the Palestinian Assembly's 135 seats. Instead, Israel froze the Palestinian Authority's share of revenue, and saw to it that the US and the European Union followed suit and cut off all non-humanitarian assistance to the PA. To make matters, Fatah seems not to have reconciled itself to the loss of power, and all attempts by President Mahmoud Abbas to create a government of national unity failed. The result was fratricide after Abbas said he was going to call an early election.

In December, a bipartisan group released its report in Washington, asking the Bush administration to make attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and to pull out troops from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008. The report by the Iraq Study Group took a realistic view of Iraq, where violence gave way to anarchy. On April 22, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was named' Minister by President Jala Talabani, a Kurd, in place of Ibrahim Jaffari. But the government's security forces obviously could not succeed where the US-led forces had failed. Even the death on June 7 of Abu Musab Zargawi, who was leading the insurgency, did not serve to improve the situation the average daily death toll hovered between 60 and 100. October saw the highest number of US casualties in a , month — 102 — the highest since fighting in Fallujah two years ago. On Feb 22, a bomb attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samaria, one of the holiest Shia sites, caused no casualties, but sectarian clashes the next day led to the recovery of 100 bodies riddled with bullets. On the whole 165 people were believed to have been killed.

 While the US death toll neared 3,000, Iraqi civilian casualties according to Johns Hopkins researchers, had reached the unbelievable figure of 600,000. However, the figure appeared exaggerated, and Iraqi health minister Ali al-Shemari put it at 150,000. Following reverses in the mid-term polls, Donald Rumsfeld resigned as defence secretary, but President George Bush made it clear he had no intention of accepting the ISG report's 2008 deadline for a withdrawal of American troops.

More awkward for him, the ISG report, prepared by former secretary of state James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton asked the administration to "engage" Syria and Iran for pacifying Iraq because of the two countries' "influence" with that country. Iraq kept its options open and Foreign Minister Manoucheher Muttaki told Dawn that his country would consider the talks offer if it was formally made but that America must fisrt change its policy toward Iran and the region in general. This appeared highly unlikely, for Iran's nuclear plans seemed to be America's main concern, even though Tehran continued to insist that its nuclear programme was for peaceful purposes.

 On December 23, the Security Council slapped sanctions on Iran. Even though it was passed unanimously, China and Russia succeeded in diluting the resolution and confined the sanctions to Iran's nuclear and missile progammes. Iran's reaction was firm.. It is "a piece of paper:, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said and proclaimed that the West would need to live with an atomic Iran. All the while, the public authority declared that work on introducing 3,000 new rotators at the Natanz office would start right away. The unavoidable issue was whether Israel or America or both will utilize power to annihilate Iran's atomic establishments. On the homegrown front, the moderates experienced a misfortune as reformists did well in metropolitan surveys and races to the gathering of Elders.

 

For Turkey, the circumstance changed significantly at the year's end as European Union unfamiliar priests settled on December 11 to close eight of the 35 "sections" for enrollment talks. This established an inversion of their June 12 choice and evoked genuine analysis from Turkish Prime Minister Recep tayyip Erdogan, who called the choice "uncalled for", said Turkey-EU relations were going through "a genuine test" and swore to proceed with changes.

 

The staying point was Turkey's refusal to open its harbors and air terminals to Greek Cyprus, which Ankara doesn't perceive. Doing as such would add up to perceiving the southern republic.. Even though Turkey later agreed to open one port to Greek shipping, the EU still refused to budge. With a general election due this year, it is unlikely that the Erdogan government will soften its attitude toward Greek Cyprus.

Besides the Cyprus question, the EU wanted Turkey to improve its human rights record and continue with reforms, including abolition of article 301 of the penal code which seeks to punish those guilty of "insulting Turkishness". There were other "provocations" also for Turkey. On May 20, the French lower house passed a law, making it a crime to deny the alleged Armenian genocide during World War 1, and nonconformist writer Orhan Pamuk won a Nobel Prize.

Lebanon, meanwhile seemed to be teetering on the brink of civil war as Hezobollah quit the government and, along with some Christian groups, took to the streets to bring Fuad Siniora's "pro-western" government down. On November 21, Industries Minister Pierre Gemayel, an outspoken critic of Syria, was assassinated in Beirut, and while the Arab League continued its mediatory effort, most Lebanese were wondering whether their country was heading toward a second civil war.

 Among the acts of terrorism outside Iraq were blasts at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Ahab on April 24 killing 30 people and wounding 150. On the whole, the heart of the Middle East remained a region of turmoil and bloodshed throughout the year with no possibility of an end to the slaughter in Iraq, a revival of the Arab Israeli peace process, and a solution to Iran’s nuclear question.

Middle East Crisis