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The New World Order and the Stone Age
:: Israel's Next
Target: Syria ::
by Ran HaCohen
The retiring and the
designated Israeli Chiefs-of-Staff sound like twins: both Shaul
Mofaz and Moshe Yaalon insist that the next war is inevitable. – Yet
another war? Yes: the re-occupation of the West Bank has not
satiated the junta's desires at all. In fact, the on-going war on
the Palestinians, with its clear genocidal features, is no real
challenge for the Generals. Using one of the world's strongest
armies to chase amateurish combatants armed with outdated revolvers
and home-made explosives is a General's shame, not fame.
So what is Israel up to?
Although incitement against Iran, Iraq and even Egypt never ceases (Hebrew
Ha'aretz says [2.7] "Recent reports about Egyptian
intentions to develop nuclear weaponry WERE APPARENTLY THE RESULT OF
ISRAELI PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE and do not match intelligence information in
Jerusalem, according to a senior Israeli official"; typically, the
capitalised words were omitted in the
English edition), Israel's most immediate target is undoubtedly Syria.
How It All Started
Since 1967, Israel has been
holding the Syrian Golan Heights. As revealed in a posthumous interview by
Moshe
Dayan, Israel's celebrated Defence Minister of the 1967 War, this
occupation was an unprovoked act of aggression:
'At least 80% of the
skirmishes there [prior to the War] started by us sending a tractor to
plough inside the demilitarised zone, knowing in advance the Syrians would
start shooting. If they did not, we would tell the tractor to go on until
the Syrians got nervous and did start shooting. Then we would use cannons
and later even air force.' Dayan added that the decision to occupy the
Golan was taken by PM
Levi
Eshkol, among other reasons, under pressure of a delegation from the
Kibbutzim [...], whose true motivation was the desire for more land" (Yedioth
Achronot, 17.12.1999).
The occupied Golan has
formally been annexed, settled by Israelis, and, contrary to international
legislation, Israel has been extensively exploiting its nature resources:
"Mey Eden", an Israeli-based
mineral water producer, is pumping in the occupied Golan. Typically, even
the Yizchak Rabin Monument in Tel-Aviv is made of black basalt from the
Syrian Heights.
Barak's Syrian Fraud
Opinion polls repeatedly show
that "in a referendum, 60% of Israeli Jews would support returning the
entire Golan Heights and evacuating all the settlements there for full
peace with Syria" (Yedioth Achronot, 10.3.2000). But contrary
to the prevailing myth, there is no evidence that any Israeli PM,
including Barak, was ever ready to return the Golan to Syria. In the
Shepherdstown Protocol leaked from the latest peace talks under President
Clinton, the Syrian proposal –
"The location of the border
has been agreed upon by the parties, based upon the line of
June 4th, 1967.
The State of Israel will withdraw all its military forces and civilians
behind this border"
– was met by the following
Israeli version:
"The location of the border
has been agreed upon by the parties, taking into account security
considerations and other considerations essential to the parties, as well
as legal considerations of both parties. The State of Israel will
re-deploy all its military forces behind this border."
So Barak's "generous offer" to
Syria offered no withdrawal but just "redeployment"; no eviction of
Israeli civilians; and did not even mention the 1967 border. (Document
published in Ha'aretz, 13.1.2000).
War with Syria – Why?
Nevertheless, the
Israeli-Syrian cease-fire line has been Israel's most quiet border since
the 1973 war: not a single shot in almost thirty years. Since Israel
withdrew from Lebanon two years ago, the Lebanese border has been fairly
quiet too. There is limited fighting in a disputed small piece of land
that Israel holds, probably just to keep the border warm (how else can one
explain Israel's insistence to keep this disputed area, on the absurd
grounds that it wasn't occupied from Lebanon but from Syria?), and the
flak fired by the Hezbollah – often portrayed as a potential casus belli –
is provoked by repeated Israeli military flights in Lebanese air space.
(Let's drop the "terrorism"
demagoguery. Sure, Hezbollah is "a terrorist group". It holds one Israeli
civilian and several soldiers hostage, and it used to bomb Israeli
civilians and civil infrastructure. But Israel too has been holding
several Lebanese citizens hostage for years, it has terrorised south
Lebanon for decades, bombed Lebanese civilians, turned up to half a
million of them into refugees, repeatedly destroyed Lebanon's civil
infrastructure, and breaches Lebanese sovereignty on a regular basis.)
But in the present quiet
atmosphere, why go to war? The answer seems to be part of the logic of the
New World Order. In the Cold War period, conflicts were contained by
balance of power and mutual deterrence. The ABM Treaty between the US and
the Soviet Union was a good example. You didn't have to destroy your
enemy: it was enough to make sure he had no interest to attack you. With
the collapse of the Eastern Block and the emergence of the US as the sole
super-power, the rules have changed. The New World Order rejects the idea
of balance of power: every threat should be physically eliminated, and
reducing whole nations to dust is not too high a price. Only military
forces that serve as proxies of the US are allowed to exist. All other
forces should be destroyed. Not negotiations, but dictates are the means;
not hegemony, but absolute control is the end. Thus, power-intoxicated
governments gamble away public money in the lubricated roulette of the
booming weapons industry.
Israel is following the
example of its American patron. Even though Hezbollah has been a reliable
partner for agreements based on mutual deterrence, the mere fact that it
possesses missiles that can reach strategic targets in northern Israel is
intolerable for Israel. Yes: for the very Israel that now
boasts a "capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to
any location on the face of the earth" (Ha'aretz, 26.6).
Obviously, the existence of a rather strong Syrian army cannot be
tolerated as well, no matter how unlikely it is to attack Israel. If Syria
does not act as an Israeli proxy and dismantle the Hezbollah, it should be
destroyed.
War with Syria – When?
Geoffrey Aronson, writing for
the Los Angeles Times (21.6),
warns: "For
the first time since then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, under a
benevolent American eye, led Israel's star-crossed invasion of Lebanon in
1982, there are growing indications that a US president has given Israel a
green light to attack targets on Syrian soil if the on-again-off-again
battle between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies."
Alex Fishman of Yedioth
Achronot (28.6) believes that "the political echelon does not want
to open the northern file as long as the Palestinian file has not been
closed [...] When the Americans launch part II of their war on terror –
against the Iraqi regime – Israel will pay its share."
I am not sure Israel will wait
that long. As Geoffrey Aronson says: "Prime Minister Sharon's
government did, indeed, contemplate such a strike this year. According to
Eyal Zisser, an Israeli analyst, hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah
failed to trigger war in April not because of American opposition but
because
Sharon has learned that precipitous military action without
a broad public consensus is a recipe for defeat."
War with Syria – How?
Though it is difficult to
predict what exactly the junta has in mind, there are some hints.
"This week, the Head of the
Military Intelligence Agency held an obscure speech in the Knesset's
Committee for Security and Foreign Affairs, saying Israel was going to
give Syria a hit of a totally different kind." (Ofer Shelach,
Yedioth Achronot, 7.6).
"The days in which Israel
was confining itself to hitting power generators in
Beirut and a few Syrian radar stations are over. In coping
with the threat, only a massive punitive operation will do." Alex
Fishman, Yedioth Achronot, 28.6)
The New World Order now
enables the US and its allies to reduce peoples to dust. For the richest
nation on earth, even cutting food supply is not out of range. Noam
Chomsky, in his
911, quotes the New York Times of September 16th:
"Washington has also demanded [from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies
[...] and the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food
and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population".
In World War II, one of the
plans considered by the Allies was to send Germany after the war, as a
punitive measure, back to the Middle Ages. It was ruled out for fear that
it might push Germany to the Soviets. There is no such danger nowadays. In
the New World Order,
Sharon is reported to have told Colin Powell that Israel might
act "in a way that would send Syria back to the Stone Age". (Shimon
Shiffer, Yedioth Achronot, 7.6) And it might happen very soon.
Ran HaCohen was
born in the Netherlands in 1964 and has grown up in Israel. He has B.A. in
Computer Science, M.A. in Comparative Literature and he presently works on
his PhD thesis. He lives in Tel-Aviv, teaches in the Department of
Comparative Literature in Tel-Aviv University. He also works as literary
translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for
the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. His work
has been published widely in Israel. His column appears monthly at Antiwar.com.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2002 Antiwar.com & Ran HaCohen
by the same author:
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