Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire, have Turned Justice Mute

 

 

The *FREE ARAB VOICE*
July 23, 2000
In this issue of the Free Arab Voice (FAV) we bring you the fourth and last
in the Lessons of South Lebanon series. Whereas in the previous three parts
we focused on the internal factors that made the Lebanese resistance
successful, in this fourth part we look at THE LIBERATION OF SOUTH LEBANON
IN THE CONTEXT OF REGIONAL POLITICS from two separate, albeit complementary,
angles:
1) The Palestinian Implications of the Victory, by Ibrahim Ajweh
2) The Arab State System, the Victory in South Lebanon, and the
   Siege on Iraq, by Ibrahim Alloush
Finally, we present you with a wonderful poem titled Laylat al Henna about
the victory in south Lebanon, by Nabila Harb. Enjoy!
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About this issue of FAV:
There is no question that the support the Lebanese government rendered to
the Lebanese resistance was a crucial factor in the achievement of victory.
Logistically, this support practically gave the resistance a free license to
move supplies and personnel in and out of the amorphous frontline.
Politically, official Lebanese support endowed the resistance with
international legitimacy.  Organizationally, it allowed the resistance to
maintain rear end bases in South Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, which the
resistance used for example to establish a television station through which
a hi-tech media war was waged against the invader.  Cameramen would
accompany freedom fighters in their raids against the invader, and the
Hizbullah TV station would broadcast live footage of tactical successes and
Zionist or collaborator casualties on daily bases.  This helped shore up or
decimate morale where applicable.
Indeed, Hizbullah's mainstay in Lebanon has always been the Shiites, the
largest of Lebanese sects.  However, that is not to say that the resistance
adopted politically a narrow sectarian line of march. On the contrary, it
spun a policy of broad Lebanese consensus building around the unwavering
objective of liberating the Lebanese South. Thus, the rhetoric of the
Hizbullah leadership was essentially nationalistic not sectarian. In spite
of being Islamically-motivated, it evaded the trap of calling for the
establishment of an Iranian-style state in the culturally diverse Lebanon,
and vowed to coexist peacefully with that diversity. Thus the unyielding
concentration on common grounds made the emergence of a popular Lebanese
shell that embraces the resistance, and political coordination with the
Lebanese state, feasible.  The prayers which the RELIGIOUS leaders of
Hizbullah held a few weeks ago for the souls of COMMUNIST martyrs who died
for the COMMON cause of liberating South Lebanon is just another case in
point.   Without such open-mindedness and leniency with compatriots, victory
would not have been as attainable, just like victory could not have been had
the leadership of Hizbullah been prone to compromises and capitulation
before the Zionist invader, say like the leadership of the PLO.
Still, the support which the Lebanese state afforded Hizbullah cannot be
attributed solely to the tact of the leadership of Hizbullah. For there are
regional factors to consider, including where Syria, the Lebanese state's
big brother, stands on the matter.  This is because what happens in Lebanon,
the geo-political gateway to Syria, can highly affect Syria's hand in
negotiations or war with "Israel".  And just like the victory in South
Lebanon will have favorable regional repercussions vis-à-vis "Israel" and
the United States Government, defeat would have had the opposite effects,
not just for Syria, but for the Arab State system overall. Hence, the
struggle in Lebanon was for Lebanon, and whether it would or would not
become a Zionist foothold to weaken, infiltrate, and set an example for the
rest of the Arab World.  The victory in South Lebanon means that this
project has been TEMPORARILY defeated, and 'temporarily' is why the
resistance and Syria have to remain en guard.
In this issue of FAV, the regional context and implications of the victory
are tackled by Ibrahim Ajweh, a long-time Palestinian political activist
currently residing in Jordan, and by Ibrahim Alloush, the editor of the Free
Arab Voice.
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1) The Palestinian Implications of the Victory, by Ibrahim Ajweh
After the October war of 1973 between the Arabs and "Israel", Anwar Sadat
broke ranks with fellow-Arabs to sign the Camp David Treaty with "Israel".
Egypt was thus eliminated out of the formula. Since war without Egypt is
not possible, the Arabs were severely weakened by that treaty and the
Zionist camp went on the offensive. The battle to stifle Syria further
was already on. Due to the geopolitical fact that Lebanon is a crucial
strategic gateway to Syria, a Zionist Lebanon would have besieged Syria
into capitulation, or so the Zionists hoped.
The Lebanese war erupted partially as a result and in the tube of these
regional tensions.  Certain Lebanese groups sought to Zionify Lebanon, i.e.,
to renounce its Arab identity and break it up into fragments. Two Zionist
invasions later, the PLO was expelled from Lebanon with tacit cooperation
from Arafat, Syrian influence seemed to have been diminished, and Bashir
Jmayel, the leader of the pro-Zionist Lebanese Phalangists, was made
president of Lebanon on top of "Israeli" tanks. Soon afterwards, the
infamous Treaty of the Seventeenth of May with "Israel" was signed on terms
that would have made the despicable treaties of Oslo and Wadi Arabah look
like great achievements.  To top it all off, Nato forces were stationed in
Lebanon.  For one moment in time, Lebanon seemed to have lost its Arab
bearings for good.
But not really!  For heroic Lebanese-Palestinian resistance began with
encouragement from Syria.   Open revolt against the Seventeenth of May
Treaty brought it down into annulment.  Bashir Jmayel was assassinated.
Nato forces withdrew disgracefully after a few skirmishes and a couple of
human bomb attacks.   And after suffering tremendous losses, Zionists had to
recoil south into the Zionified enclave that came to be known as 'The
Borderline', Ash-shareet al hudoudi in Arabic, or the area in South Lebanon
which Zionists were ousted out of recently. The point, however, is that the
Lebanese front was opened to the possibilities of victory when the internal
battle against the Zionification of Lebanon was won. It was in this
atmosphere that Hizbullah emerged, and it was the political lessons of the
mid-eighties that shaped its outlook on the struggle with Zionists for many
years to come.
What were some of those lessons that helped see the Lebanese resistance
into victory?
1 - That the Zionist army can be beaten into withdrawal once we force it to
pose questions about the usefulness of staying. This means that once we
force the Zionist Army, or the Zionist settlement in Palestine, to pose
these questions, by raising the financial and human cost of occupying our
land, that becomes the beginning of their end.  It was the beginning of the
withdrawal from Beirut to the South Lebanon, then from the South to
Palestine.
2 - That there is a difference between abstract force and the marginal
benefit of using that force.  It's true the Zionists have nuclear weapons
and endless destructive powers, but that doesn't mean Zionist power is
unlimited or inexhaustible, or that Zionist force cannot be blunted
ineffective.
3 - That the role of the resistance is to perpetuate the engagement and
deprive the enemy of the chance to settle down, NOT to achieve victory in
the classical sense. The resistance must deplete the enemy's energy through
long-term people's war, and by defeating the enemy morally and
psychologically. I quote Ahron Brinya'a here who wrote on June 2, 2000, in
Yediot Ahronot: "We didn't withdraw from south Lebanon solely because of
Hizbullah's Katuyshas, but due to the media and psychological warfare that
Hizbullah conducted".
4 - That any resistance which is not part of the main equations of the
conflict, and which is not allied with the locus of forces formed
objectively in geopolitical space, is susceptible to collapse and
disintegration.  Thus, what the PLO could not accomplish with all its
capabilities, was easily done by part of that PLO in cooperation with the
Lebanese resistance, when the alliance was serious and honest with the
center of the struggle in Damascus.  The victories achieved after the
invasion of Beirut in 1982, the retreat of the Zionists southward, and the
withdrawal of the Nato forces in the early and mid-eighties were all the
fruits of that alliance.
5 - That a precondition for victory is the presence of the will to win. The
strategic objective has to be set once and for all without vacillation.
Hizbullah professed liberation as a strategic objective and did not budge on
that for any settlement or negotiations. Since the beginning, the leaders
of Hizbullah were very serious about that objective, and when religious
scholar and leader of Hizbullah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah sent his own son
on a sensitive human bomb mission, the point was underscored. Similarly,
the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a secular party that was active in the
Lebanese resistance, had undertaken a few human bomb attacks as well.
What are the Palestinian implications of the victory in south Lebanon?
I - The Lessons for Palestinians:
A - That depriving the enemy of the chance to settle down on our land is in
principle more important than minor military victories.  This necessitates
moving the arena of the conflict into occupied Palestine, whereas the enemy
has always tried to fight its wars outside Zionist walls.  Thus, we need to
move the battle back inside to deprive Zionists of stability.  When the
invader begins to think:  "This is an uninhabitable area!", we will have
begun to achieve victory.  When, on the contrary, the invader begins to
believe that he can comfortably live on our land, we will have begun to
lose.
B - That many hitherto misguided Palestinians will begin under the impact of
the victory of liberating south Lebanon to re-think some of the concepts and
issues of the struggle with Zionists.  The Intifada for example could have
forced the invader to withdraw UNILATERALLY from all of the Gaza Strip and
parts of the West Bank.  Then Arafatis, defeatists, and opportunists of all
kinds managed to harness the Intifada to ride high into the negotiating
table with Zionists to garner personal gains for themselves, under the
pretext that the Intifada has exhausted itself out. But lo and behold,
when Jospin dared to accuse Hizbullah of terrorism on the land of Palestine,
  he was appropriately punished by the students of BirZeit University.  Now
Arafat claims brazenly that Zionists retreated from South Lebanon because
they merely wanted to implement Resolution 425.  But Palestinians will
undoubtedly ask him: where have you been for the last eighteen years?!!
C - That many Palestinians will go back to considering the relevance of the
option of armed struggle, which has been dismissed as useless, if not
harmful, by Arafat and many Arab-American defeatist intellectuals. In fact,
the armed struggle has proven to be the ONLY means capable of achieving a
clean liberation, when it is run aptly by an honest leadership whose main
concern is the strategic goal, not red carpets or the Honor Guard.
D - That many Palestinians will repose the question of Palestinian
alliances.  Alliances should be forged with the objective centers of the
struggle, not on the basis of short-run considerations and in order to
manipulate political equations to achieve narrowly defined parochial
interests.  Arafat has always pitted the Palestinians against the Arabs in
the name of independent Palestinian decision-making.  But now it has become
clear that Arafat did not break with the Syrian axis for example to preserve
independent Palestinian decision-making, but to desert to the Zionist axis
in regional politics.
II - The Potential Regional Consequences of the Victory in South Lebanon:
A - It is no longer possible for the Zionist entity to mess in internal
Lebanese affairs the way it used to until recently.  The setback Zionists
suffered, and their total abandonment of the collaborator army of Antoin
Lahd should be an excellent lesson for all those Arabs who dare to enlist in
Zionist designs on the Arab World.  However, this does not mean that the
enemy will cease to try to throw that ball of fire back into the
Syrian-Lebanese court.  But it does mean that for the time being, the state
of no-war and no-peace will continue on the Syrian-Lebanese track.  As for
the Palestinian track of negotiations, there will be stalemate unless the
Zionists can do to the Arabs through the Palestinians what they have
failed to do to them through the Lebanese.   But stalemate on the
Palestinian track could mean a crisis in Palestine that sets the stage for
the renewal of the Intifada, under better conditions, and with the benefit
of the lessons of south Lebanon.  Arafat would either try to ride and co-opt
that wave again or he would be overthrown. A good Palestinian fight
could wipe the invader clean off the lands occupied in 1967.  Bad leadership
could thwart that possibility.
B - The wild card here remains the issue of Palestinian refugees. Arafat
and Zionists could try to use some Palestinians in Lebanon to initiate
hostilities with other Palestinian, Lebanese, or Syrian groups.
Furthermore, settling Palestinians in Lebanon as part of a Palestinian
package deal with "Israel" could re-open the door for destabilizing Lebanon.

While sending a good chunk of those to Jordan could do the same in Jordan
if other Arab states refuse to settle substantial numbers of Palestinian
refugees on their territory as they have so far.  Indeed, to preempt the
possibility of the potential eruption in the West Bank and Gaza getting out
of control, Zionists are hard at work trying to shift the locus of tensions
to Jordan. There are plans to establish an alleged Palestinian state
there, i.e., to ignite a Palestinian-Jordanian civil war after attempts to
spark sectarian strife in Lebanon have faltered.  Palestinians and Arabs on
the other hand have no choice but to send that ball of fire back to the
doorsteps of the invader inside Palestine everywhere.   It's like this:
either war with the invader, or war with each other.  RESISTANCE UNITES, AND
PEACE WITH THE INVADER DIVIDES.  That was one of the main political lessons
of the victory in south Lebanon.
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There is, upon the whole, nothing more important in life, than to find out
the right point of view from which things should be looked at, and judged
of, and then to keep to that point - Von Clausewitz.
##################################################
2) The Arab State System, the Victory in South Lebanon, and the Siege on
Iraq, by Ibrahim Alloush
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and war on Iraq, the
official Arab state system joined the Madrid Conference and adopted 'peace'
with Zionists as a strategic option in word and deed.  Ever since the Second
Gulf War, the political options of the official Arab state system have been
shaped by the three pillars of the 'Damascus Declaration': Syria, Egypt, and
Saudi Arabia.  These three of the larger Arab states remain today the
managers of decision-making on the official Arab level.
At any rate, the supervisors of the post-Gulf War Arab state system rushed
to VARYING DEGREES on the road of negotiations and normalization with
Zionists in the early nineties, leading to three 'Middle Eastern' Economic
Summits in Cairo, Casablanca, and Amman.  In this atmosphere of openness,
Zionists took full advantage of the situation to make diplomatic and
economic inroads into some of the states of the Arab Gulf and the Arab
Maghreb.  Normalization was in full swing. The signing of Oslo and Wadi
Arabah Treaties with Zionists was partially the outcome of these strategic
openings.  During the same epoch, when Hizbullah tried to organize a
demonstration in Beirut to protest the anniversary of the Oslo Agreement,
several of its supporters were either killed or wounded as Lebanese Security
forces opened fire on Hizbullah demonstrators.  The Lebanese state was
tightly then in the hands of Saudi and Syrian policy-makers.
At the same time friendly overtures towards "Israel" blossomed into
commercial and diplomatic ties, however, the siege was being tightened on
Iraq.   Indeed, the siege on Iraq is maintained at the behest of Tel Aviv
and Washington, but the ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION of the siege on Iraq remains
totally in the hands of the official Arab state system, and the Islamic
states of Iran and Turkey.  This means that if the states of Egypt, Syria,
and Saudi Arabia for example wanted to break the siege, that would be
totally within their power, as collective punishment against those states
would be virtually impossible.  In fact, African states that are much weaker
than the supervisors of the official Arab state system managed to break the
air embargo on Libya when they chose to.  But the captains of the Arab state
system have resolved that the siege on Iraq should be maintained, FOR
CONSIDERATIONS PERTAINING TO REGIONAL RIVALRIES, even if that weakens their
hand in negotiations with "Israel", and vis-à-vis political pressures by the
United States government, in Lebanon and elsewhere.  Since a weak Iraq
necessarily implies a stronger "Israel", implementing the siege is an act of
strategic folly.  Yet it was similar regional rivalries with Iran on
Lebanese soil that prompted Syrian-backed elements to try to take out
Hizbullah in Lebanon in the eighties, to no avail. Henceforth, it should
be added to the credit of Hizbullah's leadership that part of its success
was due to its shrewd ability to walk confidently towards liberation in a
landscape filled with political landmines.  Obliteration awaits the
heedless, and Hizbullah did forge an indispensable solid alliance with
Syria, but its first allegiance remained invested in the achievement of its
strategic goal.
Nevertheless, in the mid-nineties the pillars of the Arab state system
discovered that the so-called peace project with Zionists was but a
preamble for spreading Zionist hegemony over the Arab World, under the
banner of the 'New Middle East'. The regimes reigning in larger Arab
states figured out that one of the main features of the New Middle East
would be their marginalization and the appropriation of their regional
roles or influence.

The New Middle East required a power vacuum that can only be attained
if the larger Arab states are weakened and possibly fragmented. Thus
"Israel" entered the geopolitical space of regional rivalries through
the very openings the Arab state system provided in the early nineties.
There are two exceptions, however, which distinguish official Arab
regional rivalries with "Israel" from inter-Arab state regional
rivalries with each other:
1) The code name for the political, economic, and cultural operation to
achieve Zionist hegemony over the Arab World, i.e., the New Middle East,
entails the further fragmentation of Arab states into smaller units along
sectarian, religious, and ethnic lines.  For more on this, see for example
the document translated by Israel Shahak on Zionist designs to break up Arab
states and foment civil wars.   Or look at some of the papers presented in
the Conference on Minorities that was organized by Bar Illan University in
1992.  For more, please go to the document at:
http://freearabvoice.org/ZionistConspiracy_DivideTheArabWorld.htm
2) True security for "Israel" in the long-run implies that the cultural
character and national identity of the Arab World needs to be altered from
Arab and Islamic into 'Middle Eastern'.  For as long as the Arab World
remains Arab and Islamic, "Israel" under any political system, does not
belong, whereas every single Arab regime, whether legitimate or not, does.
To stop feeling like the strange kid on the bloc, "Israel" has no choice but
to inoculate the rest of the region with the disease of 'Middle Easternism',
i.e., to reign supreme on a plethora of weak sectarian, religious, and
ethnic fiefdoms from Morocco to Iraq.
Either way, with the arrival of Benjamin Netanyahu to power in "Israel", and
the wholesale adoption of Zionist demands in negotiations with Arab states
by the Clinton administration, the Arab state system suddenly found itself
fighting not for regional influence as before, but for its very survival.
The Egyptian state was one of the first to be alerted to Zionist designs to
fragment the Arab states.   The Egyptian press started to treat the issue
openly, and the adoption by the U.S. Congress of a resolution to 'defend'
the Coptic minority in Egypt at the behest of Zionist elements there
reinforced the idea.  In fact, the recent arrest of Dr. Saad Ed-din Ibrahim,
by the Egyptian state, comes in this very context. Ironically, the latter
was actively engaged in promoting minority consciousness in Egypt and the
rest of the Arab World,  with certain help from the Center of Arab Unity
Studies in Beirut at some point.
Consequently, the Arab state system found itself forced to take some
protective measures to defend itself.   This resulted in the adoption
of stronger defensive postures in negotiations with Zionists, halting
the process of normalization with "Israel", and standing up more
forcefully to U.S. Government pressures on bombing Iraq for example,
or to tighten the noose around Hizbullah. In the meantime, larger Arab
states like Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia tried to keep the official
Arab house in order by keeping the smaller Arab states within the
prescribed limits. Zionists and the U.S. Government, on the other hand,
continued to try to make inroads through the smaller Arab states like
Lebanon, Mauritania, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, etc… The weight
of the Arab state system is the present absent hard-line negotiator
today at Camp David II. Arafat knows the dear price of breaking too
radically with the dictates of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while the U.S.
Government and "Israel" want him to do exactly that.
Mind you, the official Arab state regime here is not fighting for any
principles or lofty goals, and the last thing on its mind is the interests
of the Arab people.  It is simply trying to preserve itself. It just
happens that conflicts of political interests with Zionist and U.S.
Government plans for the Arab World GAVE A CRUCIAL BREATHING SPACE FOR
ANTI-ZIONIST FORCES IN THE ARAB WORLD ON THE POPULAR LEVEL, in Jordan,
Egypt, and elsewhere. The magic of Hizbullah is that it was better
positioned to take advantage of this crucial breathing space than others.
Of course, the victory of South Lebanon could not have been without official
support from Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. But let there be no mistake
about it: the victory belongs to the Arab people. They paid for it, and
they made it with their blood and sacrifices! In South Lebanon, the
interests of the Arab people and the Arab state system happened to
coincide, but that doesn't mean that they are one and the same.
Surely though, anti-Zionist forces should have no qualms whatsoever
about taking full advantage of pragmatic conflicts of interest between
the Arab state system and the enemies of our people. When the managers
of the Arab state system, namely Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia oppose
a fourth 'Middle Eastern' Economic Summit in Doha, Qatar, and bring it
to utter failure, when they put the brakes on smaller Arab states rushing
to normalize with the invader, when they oppose another military strike on
Iraq, and when they oppose the settlement of Palestinian refugees in Arab
states, we should push them further along that road by seizing the moment
to escalate the conflict with the invader as Hizbullah has done.
However, let us not wallow in illusions about where these states come
from and about the limits of their opposition to post-colonial plans.
For they agree with peace with "Israel" in principle, but they only
want better terms for the deal, and their opposition measures all
purport to serve as tactical cards to improve their hand on the
negotiating table and to preserve their rulerships. In short, they
want to ameliorate and find a formula to coexist with the Zionist
project, not to overthrow it. But the Zionists would not let them
have that, because the Arab state system itself helped the balance
of power reach the unsavory point it is at now.  In a way that's
very good.
Yes it was commendable that the Arab state system should condemn
the recent sprint by the Algerian state to normalize relations with
Zionists!  That, however, is but a tactical move. A true strategic
move to tilt the balance of power against "Israel" would be to lift
the siege on Iraq now. This would be a wise move even if one's intention
is to negotiate with "Israel" on better terms. Unfortunately, the Arab
state system does not always act wisely. Thus the Qatari initiative to
lift the siege on Iraq was preempted by the official Arab system, for
the very reason that initiative itself was launched by Qatar in the
first place: regional rivalries, specifically, to loosen the Saudi
grip on the states of the Arab Gulf.
Hence, there is no room for keeping faith in Arab regimes of ANY
kind. Surely, protecting their regimes requires them to do good
sometimes, as in supporting the liberation effort in South Lebanon,
but that is not good enough. Genuine social and political change in
the Arab World entails the establishment of fighting popular grass-roots
movements with an independent and unwavering leadership that is committed
to a strategic vision of liberation, Arab unity, and social and economic
justice and progress. And THAT is the primary lesson of the victory in
South Lebanon.
##################################################
3) Laylat al Henna, another wonderful poem by Nabila Harb about the victory
in south Lebanon
http://freearabvoice.org/laylat_al_henna.htm
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FAV Editor: Ibrahim Alloush Editor@freearabvoice.org
Co-editors: Nabila Harb Harb@freearabvoice.org
  Muhammad Abu Nasr Nasr@freearabvoice.org
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