By Uri Avnery, 16.8.06
THIRTY THREE days of
war. The longest of our wars since 1949.
On the Israeli side: 154
dead - 117 of them soldiers. 3970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead,
more than 422 civilians wounded.
On the Lebanese side:
about a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of
Hizbullah fighters dead and wounded.
More than a million
refugees on both sides.
So what has been
achieved for this terrible price?
"GLOOMY, HUMBLE,
despondent," was how the journalist Yossef Werter described Ehud Olmert, a
few hours after the cease-fire had come into effect.
Olmert? Humble? Is this
the same Olmert we know? The same Olmert who thumped the table and shouted:
"No more!" Who said: "After the war, the situation will be
completely different than before!" Who promised a "New Middle
East" as a result of the war?
THE RESULTS of the war
are obvious:
·
The prisoners, who served as casus belli (or pretext) for the
war, have not been released. They will come back only as a result of an
exchange of prisoners, exactly as Hassan Nasrallah proposed before the war.
·
Hizbullah has remained as it was. It has not been destroyed,
nor disarmed, nor even removed from where it was. Its fighters have proved
themselves in battle and have even garnered compliments from Israeli soldiers.
Its command and communication structure has continued to function to the end.
Its TV station is still broadcasting.
·
Hassan Nasrallah is alive and kicking. Persistent attempts to kill
him failed. His prestige is sky-high. Everywhere in the Arab world, from
Morocco to Iraq, songs are being composed in his honor and his picture adorns
the walls.
·
The Lebanese army will be deployed along the border, side by side
with a large international force. That is the only material change that has
been achieved.
This will not replace
Hizbullah. Hizbullah will remain in the area, in every village and town. The
Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from one single village. That was
simply impossible without permanently removing the population to which it
belongs.
The Lebanese army and
the international force cannot and will not confront Hizbullah. Their very
presence there depends on Hizbullah's consent. In practice, a kind of
co-existence of the three forces will come into being, each one knowing that it
has to come to terms with the other two.
Perhaps the
international force will be able to prevent incursions by Hizbullah, such as
the one that preceded this war. But it will also have to prevent Israeli
actions, such as the reconnaissance flights of our Air Force over Lebanon.
That's why the Israeli army objected, at the beginning, so strenuously to the
introduction of this force.
IN ISRAEL, there is now
a general atmosphere of disappointment and despondency. From mania to
depression. It's not only that the politicians and the generals are firing
accusations at each other, as we foresaw, but the general public is also
voicing criticism from every possible angle. The soldiers criticize the conduct
of the war, the reserve soldiers gripe about the chaos and the failure of
supplies.
In all parties, there
are new opposition groupings and threats of splits. In Kadima. In Labor. It
seems that in Meretz, too, there is a lot of ferment, because most of its
leaders supported the war dragon almost until the last moment, when they caught
its tail and pierced it with their little lance.
At the head of the
critics are marching - surprise, surprise - the media. The entire horde of
interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very
few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified,
ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded
as traitors all who opposed the war - they are now running ahead of the lynch
mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying
right from the beginning of the war.
This phase is symbolized
by Dan Halutz, the Chief-of-Staff. Only yesterday he was the hero of the
masses, it was forbidden to utter a word against him. Now he is being described
as a war profiteer. A moment before sending his soldiers into battle, he found
the time to sell his shares, in expectation of a decline of the stock market.
(Let us hope that a moment before the end he found the time to buy them back
again.)
Victory, as is well
known, has many fathers, and failure in war is an orphan.
FROM THE deluge of
accusations and gripes, one slogan stands out, a slogan that must send a cold
shiver down the spine of anyone with a good memory: "the politicians did
not let the army win."
Exactly as I wrote two
weeks ago, we see before our very eyes the resurrection of the old cry
"they stabbed the army in the back!"
This is how it goes: At
long last, two days before the end, the land offensive started to roll. Thanks
to our heroic soldiers, the men of the reserves, it was a dazzling success. And
then, when we were on the verge of a great victory, the cease-fire came into
effect.
There is not a single
word of truth in this. This operation, which was planned and which the army
spent years training for, was not carried out earlier, because it was clear that
it would not bring any meaningful gains but would be costly in lives. The army
would, indeed, have occupied wide areas, but without being able to dislodge the
Hizbullah fighters from them.
The town of Bint Jbeil,
for example, right next to the border, was taken by the army three times, and
the Hizbullah fighters remained there to the end. If we had occupied 20 towns
and villages like this one, the soldiers and the tanks would have been exposed
in twenty places to the mortal attacks of the guerillas with their highly
effective anti-tank weapons.
If so, why was it
decided, at the last moment, to carry out this operation after all - well after
the UN had already called for an end to hostilities? The horrific answer: it
was a cynical - not to say vile - exercise of the failed trio. Olmert, Peretz
and Halutz wanted to create "a picture of victory", as was openly
stated in the media. On this altar the lives of 33 soldiers (including a young
woman) were sacrificed.
The aim was to
photograph the victorious soldiers on the bank of the Litani. The operation
could only last 48 hours, when the cease-fire would come into force. In spite
of the fact that the army used helicopters to land the troops, the aim was not
attained. At no point did the army reach the Litani.
For comparison: in the
first Lebanon war, that of Sharon in 1982, the army crossed the Litani in the
first few hours. (The Litani, by the way, is not a real river anymore, but just
a shallow creek. Most of its waters are drawn off far from there, in the north.
Its last stretch is about 25 km distant from the border, near Metulla the
distance is only 4 km.)
This time, when the
cease-fire took effect, all the units taking part had reached villages on the
way to the river. There they became sitting ducks, surrounded by Hizbullah
fighters, without secure supply lines. From that moment on, the army had only
one aim: to get them out of there as quickly as possible, regardless of who
might take their place.
If a commission of
inquiry is set up - as it must be - and investigates all the moves of this war,
starting from the way the decision to start it was made, it will also have to
investigate the decision to start this last operation. The death of 33 soldiers
(including the son of the writer David Grossman, who had supported the war) and
the pain this caused their families demand that!
BUT THESE facts are not
yet clear to the general public. The brain-washing by the military commentators
and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the
foolish - I would almost say "criminal" - operation into a rousing
victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now
being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even
treasonous politicians.
And that is exactly the
new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.
After World War I, in
similar circumstances, the legend of the "knife in the back of the
victorious army" grew up. Adolf Hitler used it to carry him to power - and
on to World War II.
Now, even before the
last fallen soldier has been buried, the incompetent generals are starting to
talk shamelessly about "another round", the next war that will surely
come "in a month or in a year", God willing. After all, we cannot end
the matter like this, in failure. Where is our pride?
THE ISRAELI public is
now in a state of shock and disorientation. Accusations - justified and
unjustified - are flung around in all directions, and it cannot be foreseen how
things will develop.
Perhaps, in the end, it
is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is
that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also
true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to
lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the
Palestinian guerilla.
For logic to win, we
must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper
causes, draw the proper conclusions.
Some people want to prevent
that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the
war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.
When a football team is
able to choose the referee, it is no surprise if it is declared the winner.