As you sow

According to press reports, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wants Damascus to calm tensions on the Lebanese-”Israeli” border by using its influence to “rein in” Hizbullah. In a nutshell, Albright told Syrian President Bashar Assad what he has already heard from “Israeli” leaders themselves: the Jewish state “will hold both Lebanon and Syria responsible” for the fate of four “Israeli” servicemen captured by the resistance in the past couple of weeks.
The approach that Albright and her boss, President Clinton, have taken to this latest set-to has been an extension of general US policy in the region for decades, one of unthinkingly reiterating “Israel’s” positions while ignoring those of the Arab world.
This time around, the imbalance could have easily been avoided if US policymakers had asked themselves a simple question: why has Hizbullah chosen the course of action in question? The answer is that the White House gave Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his advisers almost no choice in the matter because no help was forthcoming when various Lebanese and Arab voices demanded the release of more than a dozen Lebanese whom the Jewish state has held in prison for years.
Nasrallah expressed his grievances in a conventional fashion shortly after the “Israelis” pulled out in May: in talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he warned that the resistance would not consider Lebanon to have been totally liberated unless and until, among other things, “Israel” set the detainees free. No UN, US, or EU officials came galloping into the Middle East to press for their freedom, so Nasrallah could not help but presume that his strategy had failed.
Unaccustomed to sitting on its hands, Hizbullah’s reaction to this international intransigence could not have been more natural. After all, it is a professional guerrilla organization, so when its attempts to obey the niceties of diplomacy were rebuffed, it reverted to what it knows best: speaking to the enemy ­ and his powerful allies ­ in the only language to which they respond.
Lo and behold, it worked ­ Washington has finally taken notice of Lebanon’s existence again. Now if we can just convince Clinton and Albright of the radical notion that gross human-rights violations committed against Lebanese are matters worthy of their consideration, the situation might actually be resolved satisfactorily for all concerned ­ including the four “Israelis”, whose families now have a tiny taste of what some of their Lebanese counterparts have endured for more than two decades.
Lebanon is a peaceful country. Its people seek no quarrel with others, and its military is too small for anything but a minimum self-defense capability. Now “Israeli” warplanes are plying our skies again, sometimes frightening women and children by blasting through the sound barrier, sometimes lackadaisically ­ and arrogantly ­ over-flying our capital at an altitude that our meager air-defense weapons cannot hope to reach.
This was the last thing that the Lebanese public wanted to see, but the decision was not in its hands, and nor was it in Hizbullah’s: the choice was taken in Washington when America’s leaders decided that their expensive ally did not deserve to be scolded for adopting an approach to the detainee issue that would have made Burma’s ruling junta proud.
This goes to the very core of Washington’s unconditional (and paradoxical) support for whatever boorish policy “Israel’s” government happens to trot out on any given day. When “Israel” does something for which any other government would receive a tongue-lashing from the White House, the Jewish state’s neighbors are accused of “provocation;” when “Israeli” occupation forces treat Palestinian civilians far worse than British colonial troops ever did Americans, the successors to the world’s first popular revolutionaries warn the victims of oppression to stop making trouble.
China and North Korea can rely on America to remind them when they treat human beings like farm animals. Unfortunately for a few “Israeli” families, their sons and husbands are now in captivity because America would not do the same for “Israel"

The Daily Star, 19-10-2000.