WE are told that neither the United States nor Israel will accept a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against Lebanon unless the “root causes” of the problem are addressed.
By this American and Israeli policy-makers mean the presence of Hezbollah militia forces in southern Lebanon. How one defines the roots of a problem depends on how deeply one chooses to dig.
If one pretends that the crisis between Israel and Lebanon began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, and that the crisis between Israel and Palestine began when Hamas militants in June captured an Israeli soldier, then the root cause of the problem in both cases is self-evident.
It is aggressive action by fanatical terrorists, and the sole possible solution is the resolute use of force against them.
This is the superficial logic that today drives the American-sponsored and Israeli-waged war on Lebanon and in Palestine (and the American war in Iraq).
This logic is particularly appealing to the myopic minds of those currently responsible for US foreign policy.
For them, there are no differences between those who attacked the US on 9/11, and those fighting the US in Iraq, or fighting Israel in Lebanon and Palestine.
For them, al-Qa’ida equals Saddam Hussein equals Hamas equals Hezbollah. For them, there are no specificities and no national peculiarities, and there is no history of nearly 60 years of dispossession and 40 years of occupation for the Palestinians, and of repeated Israeli incursions, raids, attacks, invasions, bombings and occupations of Lebanon since 1968.
For them, these complicating factors do not exist, indeed they cannot exist, for they would spoil the simpleton’s narrative about the bogeyman of terrorism with which they scare the American public.
For them, dealing with root causes means chasing this bogeyman rather than those core problems – occupation, denial of self-determination, and oppression – that the rest of the world perceives clearly must be addressed if there is to be peace in the Middle East.
CHRISTOPHER MADEIRA
Aspley, Qld
