Lebanon: those tough on-the-ground Hezbollah fighters, and other fucking tough stuff

1. The Ground War
As Israel delays expanding its push into Lebanon, a reserve infantry officer explains what it’s really like to fight Hezbollah on the ground.
By Kevin Sites

WEST GALILEE, Israel - Major Lior Taylor is no stranger to combat in Lebanon. He served in an anti-tank platoon in the famed Golani Brigade the first time Israel invaded its neighbor to the north in 1982.

Now, at 38, Taylor is one of the operations officers for the Israeli army's 609th Reserve Infantry, a unit that has already seen plenty of action in south Lebanon, reportedly killing 60 Hezbollah fighters and capturing 10 — so far — without losing a single soldier of its own.

"It's the same Lebanon, it's the same terrain," he says. "The difference is in the quantity and quality of the weapons we face."

Most deadly for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Taylor says, is the broad range of anti-tank missiles Hezbollah has acquired, including American-made TOWs, which they buy on the black market.

"Some of the stuff they have is brand new, right out of the box," says Taylor. "We found a weapons cache in Ras Bayada, four TOW anti-tank missiles sitting right next to a launcher. The control box was still wrapped in nylon from its shipping container."

Trained in using the TOW, Taylor says he did the standard seven-point check for launching and within moments the weapon was ready to fire.

He says fighting Hezbollah is anything but straightforward. They are a militia, but have the discipline of a foreign-trained army, which is how the IDF classifies them.

"They're not just a terrorist organization," says General Ido Nehushtan at an IDF briefing in northern Israel Thursday. "They are a terrorist army built by Syria and Iran ."

"It's complicated," Taylor adds, speaking from personal experience. "It's not army versus army warfare. They do have an organized fighting doctrine but it's not based on making contact. It's more of guerrilla warfare tactics. They want to draw you into an area where they have booby traps and they can use their anti-tank missiles."

Those anti-tank missiles have been blamed for the bulk of IDF casualties in southern Lebanon, as Hezbollah fighters have used them both against tanks but also against houses and buildings where IDF forces take shelter.

Taylor says the one tactical area where the IDF has been particularly effective is also the area where they've been the most criticized: Attacks on villages where they believe Hezbollah supplies are stockpiled.

"The villages are used as logistic bases," he says, "but they usually fight from bunkers in outlying areas. They have tunnel systems with camouflaged entry points where they can enter in one place and exit somewhere else. We've been fairly successful at cutting off the supplies from the villages, which forces them to come out eventually."

The way to fight Hezbollah, he says, is to outlast them in a war of nerves.

"The name of the game is patience," says Taylor. "You have to be methodical, moving forward slowly and see who makes the first mistake, then capitalize on it."

At this base in western Galilee, reserve soldiers lay in cots in the operations center catching some sleep between missions. Others play cards outside or, like soldiers all over the world, sit around smoking cigarettes, talking about their lives back home.

Most of them had to leave their work and families behind quickly after getting what's called "Emergency Call Up Order 8," the order that almost instantly transformed them from civilians to soldiers.

IDF spokesman and reservist Manny Socolovsky, who fought with Taylor in the Golani Brigade in the 80s, says that reservists call it "flipping the bowl."

"It's like you have this nice table set," says Socolovsky, "plates and napkins and nice bowls filled with food. Then all of a sudden they're turned upside down and the whole thing is a mess. Like you've pulled out the tablecloth from under it all."

"Emergency Call Up Order 8 — this is a rare animal that is both particular and peculiar to Israeli society," says Taylor. "It's understood they don't use this for superfluous reasons. If you get one, the gravity of it makes the switch for you.

"It's not an easy moment." he says. "It's a defining moment in your life. It will be the difference between everything that came before and everything that came after."

A month into the offensive, Taylor himself looks tired and war-weary.

He has left a job with a multi-national company, a wife and three children back home in Haifa for a life of combat missions in the hills and valleys of south Lebanon and "hot-racking" back at base — sleeping in shifts on whatever cot is available.

Still, he believes the sacrifices are not only worth it, but essential for the preservation of Israel.

"This is like a test case," Taylor says. "[Hezbollah] interprets an open society as a weak society. Our response has to be definitive."

Socolovsky agrees and brings up what Israelis refer to as the "cobweb speech" made by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah a few years back in the city of Bent Jbail.

"He said Israel was like a cobweb," says Socolovsky, "that it looks like a net, but if you touch it with your hand it falls apart."

The two reservists say Israel can't afford to let that perception go unchallenged.

Socolovsky, like Taylor, is making sacrifices, but his are even more personal. His oldest son is in a combat brigade currently fighting inside Lebanon. As a spokesman, Socolovsky could stay in a hotel room in northern Israel, but chooses to sleep in his car and eats only one meal a day, breakfast, out of a sense of solidarity with his son. He says he would change places with him if he could.

"My wife says she got a [text] message from him today," Socolovksy says. "Now we're both relieved."

It is the kind of anxiety and concern that afflicts all in this conflict, regardless of their role and which side of the border they're on.

"If there's one thing that pains me about all this," says Taylor, becoming circumspect, "it's the fate of the Lebanese people. Medieval-thinking forces have dragged them into this. If they could be masters of their own destiny, I know there would be peace. But instead of progress and enlightenment these forces drag the Lebanese into darkness."

On the roof of the operations center, covered with machine gun and 40mm grenade shell casings, we look across the valley into south Lebanon.

Taylor points out a pile of rubble on a hilltop in Lebanon directly across from us with an Israeli flag flying above it. He says it used to be a Hezbollah command post, which the IDF destroyed when the fighting broke out.

Regardless of that small victory, this war is still on the cusp. As Israel masses tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers along the border, it has decided to pause for a few days before committing them to the fight, giving diplomacy one final chance to gain traction.

And even if it does, people like Taylor and Socolovsky may not be going back to their civilian lives anytime soon.

"This is not a war for days or weeks," Nehushtan said during his briefing. "This is a war against terrorism. And since Hezbollah has no responsibilities to any country, you won't see them waving any white flags."


2. Hizbullah Learns from Its Mistakes, Israel Doesn't – by Charles Glass

In his memoir, Not So Wild a Dream, the famous CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid recalled watching the execution of six Nazi collaborators in the newly liberated city of Grenoble in 1944.

“When the police van arrived and the six who were to die stepped out, a tremendous and awful cry arose from the crowd. The six young men walked firmly to the iron posts, and as their hands were tied behind the shafts they held their bare heads upright, one or two with closed eyes, the others staring over the line of the buildings and the crowd into the lowering clouds . . . There was the jarring, metallic noise of rifle bolts and then the sharp report. The six young men slid slowly to their knees, their heads falling to one side. An officer ran with frantic haste from one to the other, giving the coup de grâce with a revolver, and one of the victims was seen to work his mouth as though trying to say something to the executioner. As the last shot was fired, the terrible, savage cry rose again from the crowd. Mothers with babies rushed forward to look on the bodies at close range, and small boys ran from one to the other spitting upon the bodies. The crowd dispersed, men and women laughing and shouting at one another. Barbarous?”

Such events were part of what the French described as the épuration – the purification or purging of France after four years of German occupation. The number of French men and women killed by the Resistance or kangaroo courts is usually put at ten thousand. Camus called this ‘human justice with all its defects’. The American forces that liberated France tolerated local vengeance against those who had worked for a brutal occupier. Thousands of French people, encouraged by a government in Vichy that they believed to be legitimate, had collaborated. Many, like the Milices, fascist gangs armed by Vichy, went further and killed Frenchmen. When Vichy’s foreign sponsors withdrew and its government fell, the killing began. Accounts were settled with similar violence in other provinces of the former Third Reich – countries which, along with Britain and the United States, we now think of as the civilised world.

From 1978 to 2000 Israel occupied slices of Lebanon from their common border right up to Beirut and back again. To reduce the burden on its own forces, the Israelis created a species of Milice in the form of the locally recruited South Lebanon Army – first under Major Saad Haddad, who had broken from the Lebanese army in 1976 with a few hundred men, and later under General Antoine Lahad. Both were Christians, and their troops – armed, trained, fed and clothed by Israel – were mainly Shia Muslims from the south. About a third of the force, which grew to almost 10,000, were Christians. Some joined because they resented the Palestinians’ armed presence in south Lebanon. Others enlisted because they needed the money: the region has always been Lebanon’s poorest. The SLA had a reputation for cruelty, confirmed when its torture chambers at Khiam were opened after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and for a high rate of desertions.

As Israel pulled back from Beirut, the high-water mark reached during its 1982 invasion, its share of Lebanon contracted further and further. Having seized 3560 square kilometres, about a third of the country, containing around 800 towns and villages, Israel found itself in 1985 with only 500 square kilometres and 61 villages, mostly deserted. Hizbullah, which led the resistance that had forced the Israelis to abandon most of their conquest, demanded the unconditional return of all Lebanese territory. Its attacks intensified, resulting in a loss of IDF soldiers that became unpalatable to most Israelis. The Israeli army placed the SLA between itself and Hizbullah so that it could pay the price that Israel had decided it could not afford. Hizbullah kidnapped SLA men, and the SLA and Israelis kidnapped Shias. The two sides killed each other, as well as many civilians, and blood feuds were born. On 17 May 1999, Israelis elected Ehud Barak on the strength of his promise to reverse Ariel Sharon’s Lebanon adventure, which had by then cost around a thousand Israeli lives.

Barak announced that Israel would pull out in an orderly fashion in July 2000, provided that Lebanon agreed to certain conditions. The Lebanese government, urged by Hizbullah, rejected these conditions and demanded full Israeli withdrawal in accordance with UN Resolutions 425 and 426 of 1978. Barak abandoned Lebanon two months ahead of schedule, suddenly and without advance warning, on 23 May 2000. His SLA clients and other Lebanese who had worked for the occupation over the previous 22 years were caught off guard. A few escaped into Israel, but most remained. UN personnel made urgent appeals for help to avert a massacre by Hizbullah. Hizbullah went in, but nothing happened.

The deputy secretary-general and co-founder of Hizbullah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, wrote a fascinating if partisan account of the creation and rise of Hizbullah. His version of the events in 2000 is, however, borne out by eyewitnesses from other Lebanese sects – including some who stood to lose their lives – and the UN. ‘It is no secret that some young combatants, as well as some of the region’s citizens, had a desire for vengeance – especially those who were aware of what collaborators and their families had inflicted on the mujahedin and their next of kin across the occupied villages,’ Qassem wrote in Hizbullah: The Story from Within. ‘Resistance leadership issued a strict warning forbidding any such action and vowing to discipline those who took it whatever the justifications.’

Hizbullah captured Israeli weapons, which it is now using against Israel, and turned over SLA militiamen to the government without murdering any of them. Barbarous?

Naim Qassem called the liberation of south Lebanon ‘the grandest and most important victory over Israel since it commenced its occupation [of Palestine] fifty years before – a liberation that was achieved at the hands of the weakest of nations, of a resistance operating through the most modest of means, not at the hands of armies with powerful military arsenals.’ But what impressed most Lebanese as much as Hizbullah’s victory over Israel was its refusal to murder collaborators – a triumph over the tribalism that has plagued and divided Lebanese society since its founding. Christians I knew in the Lebanese army admitted that their own side would have committed atrocities. Hizbullah may have been playing politics in Lebanon, but it refused to play Lebanese politics.

What it sought in south Lebanon was not revenge, but votes. In the interval between its founding in 1982 and the victory of 2000, Hizbullah had become – as well as an armed force – a sophisticated and successful political party. It jettisoned its early rhetoric about making Lebanon an Islamic republic, and spoke of Christians, Muslims and Druze living in harmony. When it put up candidates for parliament, some of those on its electoral list were Christians. It won 14 seats.

Like Israel’s previous enemies, Hizbullah relies on the weapons of the weak: car bombs, ambushes, occasional flurries of small rockets and suicide bombers. The difference is that it uses them intelligently, in conjunction with an uncompromising political programme.

Against Israel’s thousand dead on the Lebanese field, Hizbullah gave up 1276 ‘martyrs’. That is the closest any Arab group has ever come to parity in casualties with Israel. The PLO usually lost hundreds of dead commandos to Israel’s tens, and Hamas has seen most of its leaders assassinated and thousands of its cadres captured with little to show for it.

Hizbullah’s achievement, perhaps ironically for a religious party headed by men in turbans, is that it belongs to the modern age. It videotaped its ambushes of Israeli convoys for broadcast the same evening. It captured Israeli soldiers and made Israel give up hundreds of prisoners to get them back. It used stage-set cardboard boulders that blew up when Israeli patrols passed. It flew drones over Israel to take reconnaissance photographs – just as the Israelis did in Lebanon. It had a website that was short on traditional Arab bombast and long on facts. If Israelis had faced an enemy like Hizbullah in 1948, the outcome of its War of Independence might have been different. Israel, whose military respect Hizbullah, is well aware of this.

That is why, having failed to eliminate Hizbullah while it occupied Lebanon, Israel is trying to destroy it now. Hizbullah’s unpardonable sin in Israel’s view is its military success. Israel may portray Hizbullah as the cat’s-paw of Syria and Iran, but its support base is Lebanese.

Moreover, it does one thing that Syria and Iran do not: it fights for the Palestinians. On 12 July Hizbullah attacked an Israeli army unit, capturing two soldiers. It said it would negotiate indirectly to exchange them for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as it has done in the past. It made clear that its attack was in support of the Palestinians under siege in Gaza after the capture of another Israeli soldier a week earlier.

The whole Arab world had remained silent when Israel reoccupied the Gaza settlements and bombed the territory. Hizbullah’s response humiliated the Arab regimes, most of which condemned its actions, as much as it humiliated Israel. No one need have been surprised. Hizbullah has a long history of supporting the Palestinians. Many of its original fighters were trained by the PLO in the 1970s when the Shias had no militias of their own. Hizbullah risked the anger of Syria in 1986 when it sided against another Shia group which was attacking Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Hizbullah has never abandoned the Palestinian cause. Its capture last month of the two Israeli soldiers sent a message to Israel that it could not attack Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without expecting a reaction.

On this occasion Israel, which regards its treatment of Palestinians under occupation as an internal affair in which neither the UN nor the Arab countries have any right to interfere, calibrated its response in such a way that it could not win. Instead of doing a quiet deal with Hizbullah to free its soldiers, it launched an all-out assault on Lebanon. Reports indicate that Israel has already dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on the country than it did during Sharon’s invasion in 1982. The stated purpose was to force a significant portion of the Lebanese to demand that the government disarm Hizbullah once and for all.

That failed to happen. Israel’s massive destruction of Lebanon has had the effect of improving Hizbullah’s standing in the country. Its popularity had been low since last year, when it alone refused to demand the evacuation of the Syrian army after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Hizbullah sensed that Washington was orchestrating the anti-Syrian campaign for its own – rather than Lebanon’s – benefit.

Syria had, after all, helped found Hizbullah after Israel’s invasion – and encouraged it to face down and defeat the occupation, as well as to drive the Americans from Lebanon. Syria in turn allowed Iran, whose religious leaders gave direction to Hizbullah and whose Revolutionary Guards provided valuable tactical instruction, to send weapons through its territory to Lebanon. Hizbullah’s leaders nevertheless have sufficiently strong support to assert their independence of both sponsors whenever their interests or philosophies clash. (I have first-hand, if minor, experience of this. When Hizbullah kidnapped me in full view of a Syrian army checkpoint in 1987, Syria insisted that I be released to show that Syrian control of Lebanon could not be flouted. Hizbullah, unfortunately, ignored the request.) Despite occasional Syrian pressure, Hizbullah has refused to go into combat against any other Lebanese militia. It remained aloof from the civil war and concentrated on defeating Israel and its SLA surrogates.

Hizbullah’s unspectacular showing in the first post-Syrian parliamentary elections was largely due to changes in electoral law but may also be traced in part to its perceived pro-Syrian stance. Now, Israel has rescued Hizbullah and made its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, not only the most popular man in Lebanon – but in the whole Arab world. An opinion poll commissioned by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information found that 80 per cent of Lebanese Christians supported Hizbullah; the figure for other communities was even higher. It was not insignificant that, when false reports came in that Hizbullah had sunk a second Israeli warship, the area that fired the loudest celebratory shots in the air was Ashrafieh, the heart of Christian East Beirut. Unlike in 1982, when it could rely on some of the Christian militias, Israel now has no friends in Lebanon.

Israel misjudged Lebanon’s response to its assaults, just as Hizbullah misjudged Israeli opinion. Firing its rockets into Israel did not, as it may have planned, divide Israelis and make them call for an end to the war.

Israelis, like the Lebanese, rallied to their fighters in a contest that is taking on life and death proportions for both countries.

But unlike Israel, which has repeatedly played out the same failed scenario in Lebanon since its first attack on Beirut in 1968, Hizbullah has a history of learning from its mistakes. Seeing the Israeli response to his rocket bombardment of Haifa and Netanya in the north, Nasrallah has not carried out his threat to send rockets as far as Tel Aviv. He now says he will do this only if Israel targets the centre of Beirut.

If the UN had any power, or the United States exercised its power responsibly, there would have been an unconditional ceasefire weeks ago and an exchange of prisoners. The Middle East could then have awaited the next crisis. Crises will inevitably recur until the Palestine problem is solved. But Lebanon would not have been demolished, hundreds of people would not have died and the hatred between Lebanese and Israelis would not have become so bitter.

On 31 July, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: ‘This is a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon.’ Yet Israel itself is playing by the same old unsuccessful rules. It is ordering Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah or face destruction, just as in 1975 it demanded the dismantling of the PLO. Then, many Lebanese fought the PLO and destroyed the country from within. Now, they reason, better war than another civil war: better that the Israelis kill us than that we kill ourselves. What else can Israel do to them? It has bombed comprehensively, destroyed the country’s expensively restored infrastructure, laid siege to it and sent its troops back in. Israel still insists that it will destroy Hizbullah in a few weeks, although it did not manage to do so between 1982 and 2000 when it had thousands of troops on the ground and a local proxy force to help it. What is its secret weapon this time?

(Charles Glass has recently published two books on the Middle East, The Northern Front and The Tribes Triumphant , and is writing a book set in France during the German occupation.)


3. Neocon Dreams, American Nightmares – by Eric Alterman

Taking what might be considered the moderate neocon position on the Israel/Hezbollah war, the editors of The New Republic demand that the Bush Administration "move ruthlessly to prevent Iran from acquiring the deadliest arsenal of all," while their contributor Michael Oren calls only for an Israeli, rather than an American, attack on Syria. Next door at The Weekly Standard, William Kristol sees no point in playing coy. Having already called for an American attack on Syria twenty months ago, he is now beating his bongo for an immediate "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities." Concerned about retaliation against American citizens in the form of terrorist attacks around the world? Don't worry. Any and all "repercussions," he promises, "would be healthy ones." Kristol even imagines that such an attack could cause the Iranian people "to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power," as if the natural reaction of people who see their country attacked, their families killed and their property destroyed is to side with the people who are bombing them (just like in, um... Iraq).

To borrow from both Beyoncé and Yogi Berra, it really is déjà vu all over again. Roughly four years, 2,600 American deaths, $1 trillion and one murderous civil war ago, the same William Kristol predicted that a US invasion of Iraq would inspire "the principles of liberty and justice in the Islamic world." Richard Perle, his comrade in armchair warfare, suggested that the impending US invasion would "transform the thinking of people around the world about the potential for democracy, even in Arab countries."

Today, despite the lack of available troops owing to these delusional predictions, neocons are looking to Israel's war in Lebanon as an excuse for attacks on Syria and Iran--coincidentally, also Israel's enemies. Also coincidentally, four years ago many neocons were looking to exploit an attack on America as an excuse to attack Israel's enemies. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Seth Lipsky called for US attacks "from Afghanistan to Iran to Iraq to Syria to the Palestinian Authority." Echoes of today's war cries go back even further. Kristol insists that Israel's problems with Lebanon demonstrate that "what's under attack is liberal democratic civilization." Twenty-four years ago, in a now infamous Commentary essay titled "J'Accuse," Norman Podhoretz accused those who dissented from Israel's catastrophic invasion of Lebanon "of faithlessness to the interests of the United States and indeed to the values of Western civilization as a whole."

One does not need to take a position on the wisdom--or lack thereof--of Israel's current invasion of Lebanon to question whether Israel's interests are in fact identical to America's. Kristol can title his editorial "It's Our War," but Hezbollah was not shooting missiles into Manhattan. And while we may not like its sponsor, Iran, last I checked we were not at war with that nation either. (In fact, we're doing its dirty work, destabilizing antagonist Iraq and preparing the way for a Shiite ascendancy led by an Iranian cleric.) But whenever one raises the issue of just how large Israel's perceived well-being looms in the minds of those who seek to risk America's blood and treasure for actions that happen to be at the top of AIPAC's wish list, one is immediately accused of either anti-Semitism or, as the case may be, self-hatred. New York Times columnist David Brooks, for example, has argued that those who use the very term "neoconservative" are anti-Semites, "full-mooners" living on "Planet Chomsky." TNR senior editor (and William Kristol's writing partner) Lawrence Kaplan claims that "invoking the specter of dual loyalty to quiet criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse."

Things can become a little confusing when the same neocons who insist it is ipso facto anti-Semitic to ask what role Israel plays in their calculations instruct American Jews that they are paying too much attention to their own country's best interests and not enough to Israel's. Writing in--of all places-- The Weekly Standard , David Gelernter attacks American Jews for their "self-destructive nihilism" in remaining "fervent supporters of an American left that is increasingly unable or unwilling to say why Israel must exist." (This is nonsense about the vast majority of the left, of course, but ignore that for a moment.) Gelernter argues that "grassroots Democrats are increasingly dangerous to the Jewish state (not to mention the American state)." Note that the question of the "American state" is literally a mere parenthetical to Gelernter's principal concern--the well-being of Israel. Over at National Review 's "The Corner," Mona Charen can be found making the same sneering argument. She calls American Jews "stubborn and downright stupid" because they "despise George W. Bush and will donate time and money to any Democrat in 2008, while Bush is indisputably the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States." Again, it's highly "disputable," but never mind that. More to the point is the fact that Bush's presidency--a complete and utter failure by virtually any empirical measurement--is also deemed irrelevant. It's Israel alone that matters, according to these anti-American conservatives. (And woe unto American Jews when Christian America starts paying attention to their unpatriotic perfidy.)

What's most immediately worrisome about the neocons' long march through our institutions of government is the possibility that they may succeed a second time. According to Sidney Blumenthal's reporting in Salon , neocon staffers for Dick Cheney and the NSC's point man on the Middle East, Elliott Abrams (Norman Podhoretz's son-in-law), "have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries." They are looking, according to this NSC source, "to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war."

Four wars simultaneously? Led by this crew? After what we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is it me, or are the people who run this country dangerously out of their minds?


4. The Middle East’s Military Delusions – by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The paradox of the current violence in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon is that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not hard to see. A large majority of Israelis and Palestinians favor a two-state solution essentially along the pre-1967 boundaries. The major Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others, share that view. The problem lies not in seeing the solution, but in getting to it, because powerful and often violent minorities on both sides oppose the majority-backed solution.

Perhaps three-quarters of Israelis and Palestinians are eager for peace and compromise, while a quarter on each side – often fueled by extreme religious zeal – wants a complete victory over the other. Radical Palestinians want to destroy Israel, while radical Israelis demand control over the entire West Bank, through either continued occupation or even (according to a tiny minority) a forcible removal of the Palestinian population.

When peace appears to be close at hand, radicals on one side of the conflict or the other provoke an explosion to derail it. Sometimes this involves overt conflict between moderates and radicals within one side, such as when an Israeli religious zealot assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when peace negotiations were making progress. Sometimes this involves a terrorist attack by radical Palestinians against Israeli civilians, in the hope of provoking an exaggerated violent response from Israel that breaks the process of trust building among moderates on both sides.

The moderates are in a daily battle with their own extremists, who claim that compromise is impossible. Israeli extremists insist that all Palestinians are intent on destroying the state of Israel itself. They take the Palestinian suicide bombings and kidnappings as proof that peace with the other side is impossible. “There are no partners for peace,” goes the refrain.

Palestinian extremists insist that Israel is simply plotting to maintain its occupation over all of Palestine and that withdrawal from Gaza or announced plans to withdraw partly from the West Bank are merely tactical, without giving up real control over land, transport, water, defense, and other attributes of sovereignty.

The extremists have been able to block peace because any attack from one side has systematically provoked a violent counterattack from the other. Moderates are repeatedly made to look weak, naïve, and idealistic. The extremists also peddle the appealing fantasy that total victory is somehow possible, often by personalizing the battle. Israeli forces regularly try to “decapitate” the violent opposition by killing Palestinian leaders, as if the problem were a few individuals rather than ongoing political stalemate. Violent Palestinians, for their part, propagandize that Israel will lose its nerve in the face of another terrorist attack.

In an environment as deadly as this, the details and symbolism of a possible settlement are bound to loom very large. Israelis and Palestinians came close to agreement on “land for peace” in the context of the Oslo peace process. Both sides endorsed something like the pre-1967 borders, yet the deal was not quite struck, with each side claiming intransigence by the other on one or another point. Such a deal can be struck now, but only by avoiding the useless debate over who blocked peace in the past.

An insight of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist Tom Schelling is especially useful in this context. Schelling identified the practical importance of a bargaining “focal point” as the way forward for negotiators who are in range of an agreement. The pre-1967 boundaries are the inevitable focal point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both sides should agree to the pre-1967 boundaries in principle, and then swap small land parcels and definitions of control (especially regarding Jerusalem) in slight and mutually convenient deviations from the 1967 boundaries.

In other words, quibbling over details should come after both sides agree on the principle of respect for the pre-1967 borders, which are recognized by key countries throughout the region and around the world, and are enshrined in numerous UN resolutions.

Today’s tragedy is that we are receding from this possible agreement. Israel is rightly aggrieved by the abduction of its soldiers by Hamas-backed insurgents in Gaza and Hezbollah forces in Southern Lebanon, but Israel’s massive and disproportionate military response plays into the hands of the extremists.

Indeed, each side says that the other struck first. Israel refused even to negotiate with the Hamas-led Palestinian government, trying to squeeze it financially and make it capitulate. Hamas refused to acknowledge a two-state solution except obliquely, and then under considerable pressure. Yet broad Palestinian public opinion is on the side of compromise. Blame is easy enough to assign, but misses the point. Compromise based on the pre-1967 borders is the way to peace.

Nor is the United States playing a stabilizing role. It, too, is playing into the hands of extremists by fighting terrorism with military rather than political means. Just as the war in Iraq was a mistaken response to the threat of al-Qaeda, the Bush administration’s green light to Israel’s military assaults in Gaza and Lebanon offers no real solution. The US and other powerful outside parties should be pressing both sides to the focal point solution, not sitting on their hands as the violence spirals out of control.

The most powerful ideology in the world today is self-determination. Until there is a Palestinian state and an Iraq free of US occupation, Islamic extremists will win recruits. Military reprisals will swell their ranks still further, and, until political grievances are addressed, the spread of democracy will not change that equation, because the extremists will win at the ballot box.

In short, specific terrorist threats should be fought through narrowly targeted counter-terrorist operations, while moderates should undercut extremism through the politics of compromise rather than the false and dangerous delusions of military victory.
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(Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.)


5. It's Time for Jewish Dissenters to Challenge Israeli Policies -- by Henri Picciotto

I grew up Jewish in Beirut. Although I left nearly 40 years ago, my memories of Lebanon -- vibrant and multicultural -- have stayed with me. And so, my wife and I had started talking about taking a trip there.

I would show her the neighborhood where I grew up, the beaches where I swam in the warm Mediterranean waters and the small mountain hotel we loved to stay at in the summer. I would also show her my school, where Jewish, Christian and Muslim children learned and grew together.

After the past few weeks, we may never be able to take this trip. Israeli bombings have killed more than 700 Lebanese civilians. Hundreds of thousands -- more than one-fifth of the population -- have become refugees, uprooted from their homes. Lebanon's civilian infrastructure has been systematically destroyed.

We, as Americans, bear a special responsibility for this carnage. If Washington would withhold its unconditional military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel, the Israeli government would waste no time in starting genuine negotiations. Current U.S.-backed cease-fire proposals are so unfair to Lebanon that the Lebanese government has already indicated it cannot accept the terms, which do not even include a full Israeli withdrawal.

This one-sided U.S. policy is the result of a combination of factors, but it thrives on the myth that all American Jews stand uncritically behind the Israeli government.

Many believe that American Jews unanimously and unconditionally support the Israeli government. That what we learned from the Holocaust is to shoot first and ask questions later. That our commitment to justice and equal rights is a quaint feature of our past.

There is a saying "two Jews, three opinions.'' Now we are told "1 million Jews, one opinion.''

In fact, our community is profoundly divided:

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews all over the country have demonstrated to demand an end to the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon. In one of these demonstrations, 17 Jewish protesters were arrested in an act of civil disobedience.
In the past few days, thousands of Jews have signed a petition demanding that the United States intervene to stop the wanton killing of Lebanese civilians by the Israeli war machine.

Jewish organizations that sponsor such demonstrations and petitions, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (on whose board I serve), are experiencing exponential growth. Jews are looking for ways to express their outrage at the actions of the Israeli government, and of the blind support accorded by the Jewish establishment in this country.

We are appalled by the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli cities, just as we were the earlier attacks by Israel on Lebanese cities. We mourn the loss of Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese lives equally. We are outraged by the destruction of Lebanese airports, roads and bridges, the bombing of homes and private cars, the killing of children, and the other horrors visited by the Israelis on their neighbors.

It is this kind of past Israeli behavior that gave birth to both Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that have strengthened immeasurably in recent weeks. Israeli intransigence has made Israel a pariah state, and is the biggest enemy of all the people of the Middle East -- Arabs and Israelis alike.

Jewish American leaders work tirelessly to promote the myth of Jewish consensus. Their tactics include refusing to rent space to dissenters, threatening funding cuts when Jewish institutions question Israel's actions and canceling meetings when they suspect debate might occur. Their most ubiquitous weapon is the hurtful charge of anti-Semitism, hurled at both dissenting Jews and Gentiles.

Many Jews question Israel's policies, but are afraid to speak out in their congregations or even to their families. But the time has come for Jewish dissidents to challenge the policies of the Israeli government. In the short run these policies kill Arabs, mostly innocent civilians; in the long run, they can result only in disaster for Israelis and Jews worldwide. Our silence in this time of crisis is complicity. We need to help bring about the peace that would one day make my visit to Beirut -- and the visit of all Jews -- possible.

(HENRI PICCIOTTO of Berkeley is a mathematics educator and chairman of the board of Jewish Voice for Peace. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.)


6. Let Jerusalem go – letter to LRB from Slavoj Zizek

Freud gives a striking example of a good dream interpretation made by Alexander the Great’s counsellor. On the eve of a battle fought for the city of Tyre, the obscene figure of a satyr, dancing wildly, appeared in Alexander’s dream. The counsellor ignored the figure and focused instead on the word satyros , which he deciphered as ‘sa Tyros’: ‘Tyre will be yours.’ Perhaps, today, as the IDF tries to ‘pacify’ the same city of Tyre, we should reverse the focus, and concentrate on the figure of the satyr. What orgy of violence will be unleashed if the IDF does conquer Tyre?

The mystery of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of which the war in Lebanon, discussed by Elias Khoury, Rasha Salti and Karim Makdisi ( LRB , 3 August), is another horrific symptom, is why it has persisted for half a century when everybody knows the only workable solution: the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank and – conclusively – Gaza, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and, as part of that process, a compromise over the status of Jerusalem. How often has peace seemed possible, only for everything suddenly to fall apart, demonstrating the frailty of the negotiated compromise? There is, in effect, something neurotic in the Middle East conflict: everyone sees how the obstacle can be got rid of, and yet no one wants to remove it, as if there were some pathological libidinal benefit to be gained by persisting with the deadlock.

If there ever was a passionate attachment to the lost object, a refusal to come to terms with its loss, it is the attachment of Israelis and many diaspora Jews to the ‘Holy Land’ and above all to Jerusalem. The present troubles are supreme proof of the consequences of such a radical fidelity, when taken literally. For almost two thousand years, when the Jews were fundamentally a nation without land, living in exile, their reference to Jerusalem was a negative one, a prohibition against ‘painting an image of home’ or indeed against feeling at home anywhere on earth. Once the return to Palestine began a century ago, the metaphysical Other Place was identified with a specific place on the map and became the object of a positive identification, the place where the wandering which characterises human existence would end. The identification, negative and positive by turns, had always involved a dream of settlement. When a two-thousand-year-old dream is finally close to realisation, such realisation has to turn into a nightmare.

Brecht’s joke a propos the East Berlin workers’ uprising in 1953 – ‘The Party is not satisfied with its people, so it will replace them with a people more supportive of its politics’ – is suggestive of the way Israelis regard the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza. That Israelis, descendants of exemplary victims, should be considering a thorough ethnic cleansing – or ‘transfer’ – of the Palestinians from the West Bank is the ultimate historical irony.

What would be a proper imaginative act in the Middle East today? For Israelis and Arabs, it would involve giving up political control of Jerusalem, agreeing that the Old Town should become a city without a state, a place of worship, neither a part of Israel nor of a putative Palestine, administered for the time being by an international force. By renouncing political control of Jerusalem, both sides would gain, because they would see Jerusalem become a genuinely extra-political, sacred site. What they would lose is only what deserves to be lost: the reduction of religion to a counter in a game of political power. Each side would have to recognise that this renunciation would constitute a liberation for itself, not merely a sacrifice made for the other.

Back to Brecht – and the Caucasian Chalk Circle , in which a biological mother and a stepmother are in dispute over a child and appeal to a judge. The judge takes a bit of chalk and draws a circle, then he places the baby in the middle and tells the two women that the first to pull the child out of the circle will get him. When the stepmother sees that the child is being hurt, she lets him go and, of course, the judge gives her custody, claiming that she has displayed true maternal love. One should imagine Jerusalem along these lines: whoever truly loves Jerusalem would let it go rather than see it torn apart.