Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: i commenti che non ti aspetti dagli israeliani

Israeli invasion is self-defeating
Friday, July 14, 2006
JESSICA ASHOOH
Mortars pound the scrublands on either side of the Israel-Lebanon border 
and Israeli soldiers take up positions in southern Lebanon while the 
United States and Europe sit back and wring their hands in a passive 
expression of self-imposed inefficacy. This scene has been played out so 
many times over the past 30 years that it could easily describe any day 
from 1978. Yet the fact that it is happening in 2006 illustrates the 
time warp that is Middle East security.
Wednesday’s incursion is the latest in a long series of retaliatory 
operations against militants in southern Lebanon. But such operations 
never work. If they did, Israel’s bordersecurity problem would have been 
resolved in 1978, when its army first entered Lebanon.
Rather than quelling the attacks, such drastic military responses 
escalate them and severely destabilize the entire region. In essence, 
Israeli action in Lebanon is akin to trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
The invasion is exactly what Hezbollah wants: a nationalist rallying 
point to bring even moderate Lebanese to the anti-Israeli cause. In the 
hours after troops crossed into Lebanon, Hezbollah supporters were in 
the streets of Beirut dancing and handing out sweets while making 
preparations for a major demonstration. Meanwhile, Israeli officials 
continued to make the Hezbollah propaganda machine’s work impossibly 
easy as Defense Forces chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz threatened to "turn 
Lebanon’s clock back 20 years."
But the sad truth is that there is little difference between these 
events and those of 20 years ago. Tit-for-tat retaliation games couldn’t 
solve the conflict then, and won’t now. While there is no quick fix to 
the Israel-Lebanon problem, which like so many other troubles in the 
region is strapped in the straightjacket of the Palestinian issue, there 
are options other than invasion that would go a long way in easing the 
tension.
First, Israel must stop walking into the public-relations traps that 
Hezbollah repeatedly sets for it. While the group’s frequent kidnappings 
are intolerable and inexcusable, the Israeli response encourages them 
through its predictability. Hezbollah knows it can count on a big boost 
at home through baiting the Israelis into crossing the border, a sore 
subject among even the most moderate of Lebanese, given Israel’s 22-year 
occupation of southern Lebanon. In fact, it was this presence that 
originally gave birth to Hezbollah, which was formed as a resistance 
against the occupying forces. The group, which has become a full 
political party in Lebanon’s democracy, experienced the greatest threat 
to its existence during the relative calm following Israel’s withdrawal 
in 2000. In the absence of an immediate Israeli presence against which 
to rebel, talk in Beirut turned to disarming the group. Simply put, 
Hezbollah relies on Israel’s militarism for its very existence.
History has also shown that Israeli military presence in Lebanon tends 
to bring other unsavory additions to the neighborhood, namely Syria. 
Syrian troops, which held Lebanon in a 29-year stranglehold until driven 
out by mass protest in 2005, remained in the country for that long on 
the sole pretext of counterbalancing the Israeli forces stationed in the 
south. Hence, an encore presence in Lebanon on the part of Israel could 
give Damascus the excuse it craves to reassert its military presence in 
its tiny neighbor.
Both these scenarios would be bad news for Israel by internationalizing 
its conflict with the Palestinians, drawing the region back into the 
political quicksand that it had somewhat wriggled out of through the 
liberation of Lebanon, and ultimately countering any Pyrrhic victory 
that recovering the kidnapped troops would provide.
Thus, the greatest weapon that Israel can use in its fight against 
militant fanaticism is restraint. This fact should be sternly brought to 
Jerusalem’s attention by the United States, whose security interests in 
the war on terror cannot withstand the public-diplomacy nightmare of 
being perceived as complicit to Israel’s cat-and-mouse border games.
Jessica Ashooh is a terrorism analyst at the World Security Institute in 
Washington, D.C.

 JESSICA ASHOOH
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Che...  was born in New Hampshire, grew up in Manlius, New York, and 
now lives in Dublin, Ohio. ...
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ROTFL!
Tb
Ps: articolo intelligente comunque. Mi sa che non l'hai capito, 
campagna.