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Middle East Conflicts Beg Solutions Lowell Ponte On the shelf above my desk sits a golf ball-sized piece of twisted metal, a remnant of the Katushya rocket fired from Lebanon. It exploded only 40 feet away from the bomb shelter where, as a visiting journalist, I lay sleeping a quarter-century ago in northern Israel's Galilee. On Wednesday, rockets from Lebanon again rained down on Israel as part of a cross-border raid by Hezbollah terrorists that killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Four more Israeli troops died when their tank, entering Lebanon to drive the attackers back, hit a land mine. This attack, said Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, was "not a terror act, but an act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason. The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to shake the stability of the region." Hezbollah, whose name means "the Party of God," is Shiite, armed and funded by Iran, and supported by Syria, which like Saddam Hussein's deposed dictatorship in Iraq next door is Ba'athist socialist. Many suspect that the weapons of mass destruction Hussein might have possessed were spirited across the border into Syria. The United States responded to Wednesday's unprovoked attack by blaming Syria and Iran for the violence and for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.
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Middle Eastern politics is Byzantine, a chess game played on many levels at once. But at least a few of the motives behind recent moves in this game of nations are obvious. Iran funds not only Hezbollah but also elements of Hamas, the "duly elected" terrorist group that now rules the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and was responsible for the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier near the Gaza border. If Iran could drag Israel into prolonged military operations in Gaza (as is now happening) and in Lebanon, this could at least slightly reduce Israel's ability, politically as well as militarily, to focus on staging a preemptive attack against Iran's nuclear weapon facilities. The Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled Lebanon for four centuries. But following Ottoman defeat in World War I, France ruled Lebanon. Beirut became the "Paris of the Middle East," or perhaps the Levant's Las Vegas. During World War II, the Nazi-allied Vichy government of France granted Lebanon its independence under a constitution that guaranteed power sharing by Lebanese Christians and Muslims.
The United States sent Marines ashore in Lebanon in July 1958 to halt an attempted Muslim takeover. Newsreels showed images of our troops running amid nearly nude sunbathers on its beaches. By 1969, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists had begun occupying parts of southern Lebanon, with the approval of Syria. In 1970, after King Hussein unleashed his elite Bedouin troops on PLO terrorists in Jordan, fleeing Palestinian "illegal immigrants" flooded into Lebanon, destabilizing the once-happy nation and turning it into a virtual Syrian-terrorist satrap. Southern Lebanon promptly became a launching site for Islamist terrorist attacks into Israel. After more than a decade of such provocations, Israel in June 1982 invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut. The Islamists responded with terrorism, including the Oct. 23, 1983, suicide bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers at Beirut airport. After more than two decades of terrorist assassinations of leaders and journalists that followed Israeli withdrawal, Lebanon recently has begun to free itself from the yoke of Syrian, Palestinian, and Hezbollah oppression. But Hezbollah, which boasts that it planned this week's attack for months, continues to be represented by 14 of its members in Lebanon's parliament and two cabinet ministers in its government. This is why Israel is right to define Wednesday's attack as an act of war as committed by Lebanon's government, and the United States is strategically wise to fix responsibility on Hezbollah's patrons and puppet masters, Syria and Iran. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are demanding the release of large numbers of Arab prisoners held by Israel in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Two years ago Hezbollah gained the release of 400 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, noted Wednesday's New York Times, in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers killed in 2000. I agree with the Hamas terrorists, at least in principle, about one aspect of their demand. The Hamas terrorists are demanding the release of 1,500 Israeli terrorist prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier. In other words, they are acknowledging that one Israeli has the same value as 1,500 Palestinian terrorists . . . that one Palestinian terrorist life is worth a mere 1/1,500th of an Israeli life. While I believe that this undervalues Israelis, in principle I accept the Hamas acknowledgement of just how worthless these Islamofascists are. The terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 should have taught us one thing: We in Western Civilization are now all Israelis. We confront a murderous and irrational foe that puts no value on human life and practices utterly immoral tactics. No reliable peace treaty is possible with these terrorists or their patrons. This is a fight to the death, and on this we have an agreeable compromise: They wish to become martyrs, Shahids with 72 virgins apiece in Muslim heaven, and we must kill them if we are to survive and remain free here on Earth. A win-win outcome is therefore possible, and we should pursue it without hesitation or constraint. On March 13, 2002, this humble columnist proposed a partition plan for Iraq that would carve it up into Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni regions. I even proposed giving a slice of oil land there to the Palestinians in exchange for renunciation of any claim to Israel. In May 2006 Senator Joseph Biden, D-Del., echoed my partition proposal. In the July 9 New York Times Magazine, former Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith (son of the late Canadian, New Deal and Harvard University socialist economist John Kenneth Galbraith) proposed partitioning Iraq into a confederation of three states, which he named "Kurdistan, Sunnistan, and Shiastan." I enjoy siring seminal ideas, even when those who adopt them refuse to acknowledge those ideas' paternity.
Editor's note:
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