Obama faltering in Mideast
BY FRIDA GHITIS
FJGHITIS@GMAIL.COM
It seemed like a really good idea at the time. President Obama had a clever strategy to cool down and stabilize the smoldering Middle East. This was not about friendly gestures to old foes and tough talk to old friends. The plan was something else entirely. I, too, thought it was worth a try. The idea was to quietly put the focus on Syria, the common denominator in so many areas of American interest in the region.
For years, Syria made every problem worse for the United States and its allies. Changing that could bring a giant jackpot: If Damascus could come into line with Washington, it could help bring peace to Iraq. It could help isolate Iran and raise the cost of Tehran's nuclear defiance. It could secure a functioning, democratic and moderate regime in Lebanon. It could strengthen Palestinian moderates, and ease the path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, not to mention between Israel and Syria itself.
Unfortunately, like much of what Obama has tried in the region, the new approach to Syria is failing spectacularly. Since Obama started his campaign to improve relations with Syria, trying to peel it out of its close embrace with Tehran and persuade it to stop supporting radical groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, Damascus has all but laughed at U.S. efforts. It is now hugging Iran even more tightly and showering ever more resources on its allied militias throughout the region.
That doesn't mean that American overtures have had no impact. Seeing Washington's policy change, U.S.-friendly forces in Arab countries have reconciled with a thuggish regime they reviled. Syria is looking stronger than it has in years, and Washington has received nothing in return for its efforts. In Lebanon, leaders of the once pro-American, anti-Syria forces have been traveling to Damascus to pay tribute to the man they had blamed for killing family members and hijacking their country. Syria has continued supporting Hamas, the bitter enemy of the more moderate Palestinian party Fatah.
The latest news from Syria shows a reversal so serious for Washington and its allies that some are describing it as a ``game changer'' that could precipitate another Middle East war.
It turns out Syria has just transferred some of the most advanced armament yet to its radical friends in Lebanon, the Iran-created Shiite militia Hezbollah. The Scud rockets can reach practically all of Israel, and Hezbollah -- whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel -- has proven time and again that its weapons are not for show.
When Israel worries about Iran's nuclear program, the scenario it considers more likely is not a direct attack from Iran, but nuclear materials in the hands -- or the warheads -- of Iran's allies, Hezbullah and Hamas.
Observers had already expressed deep worry when the leaders of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas gathered for a rare face-to-face meeting in Damascus last February. The editor of the Arab daily Al-Quds al Arabi called the gathering a ``war council.''
Israeli and Lebanese civilians have already had a taste of what can happen when Hezbollah and Israel go to war. Less than four years ago, Hezbollah men infiltrated Israel, kidnapping and killing a number of Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces struck southern Lebanon, looking for the kidnapped soldiers -- who had been murdered -- and trying to destroy a vast arsenal kept by Hezbollah in the middle of densely populated areas. The war, as wars are, was a horrific experience. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides were displaced as their homes came under fire, and many died.
In 2006, Hezbollah fired almost 4000 missiles at northern Israeli cities. Its Katyusha rockets had a reach of about 60 miles. The new Scuds can travel more than 400 miles, reaching Israel's main airport and all its major cities. The prospect that a warhead could carry crude nuclear materials from Iran should give the entire world pause.
Another war would be a tragedy, but it is becoming more likely.
Since coming to office, President Obama has eased economic sanctions on Syria. While keeping Syria on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, it has eased the label of international outlaw from the regime, and it has named a new ambassador for the first time since the Hariri assassination sent U.S.- Syrian relations into a deep freeze. The Senate may block the upgrading of diplomatic ties. But the Obama administration, too, should quickly review what once seemed like such an excellent idea.
Frida Ghitis writes on international affairs.
Robert Fisk: Hizbollah's silence over Scuds speaks volumes to Israel
Fears of conflict escalate as group refuses to discuss its arsenal with Jerusalem – or the Lebanese government
AP
Supporters of Hizbollah, which is represented in the Lebanese parliament, in the southern city of Nabatieh, Lebanon
ENLARGEIf Lebanon had a US-style colour-coded "war-fear" alert ranging from white to purple, we are now – courtesy of Israeli president Shimon Peres, the White House spokesman and the head of the Lebanese Hizbollah militia, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah – hovering somewhere between pink and red.
Has Syria given the Hizbollah a set of Scud ground-to-ground missiles to fire at Israel? Can Israeli aircraft attack them if the Hizbollah also possess anti-aircraft missiles? Can the Lebanese army take these weapons from the Hizbollah before the balloon goes up?
It is a long-standing saga, of course, and Israel has been itching to get its own back on the world's most disciplined guerrilla movement. You can forget al-Qa'ida when it comes to Hizbollah's effectiveness – after the Israeli army's lamentable performance in 2006, when it promised to destroy the Hizbollah and ended up, after the usual 1000-plus civilian dead, pleading for a ceasefire. Over the past few months, Mr Nasrallah has been taunting the Israelis to have another go, promising that an Israeli missile attack on Beirut airport will be followed by a Hizbollah rocket attack on Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.
But over the past week, a warning by Mr Peres that the Hizbollah has received Scud missiles from Damascus – or via Syria from Iran – and a refusal by the Hizbollah to even discuss its own disarmament within a Lebanese "national dialogue" chaired by the Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, has darkened the spring skies over both Lebanon and Israel. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this week that the United States has expressed its concern to both the Syrian and Lebanese governments over "the sophisticated weaponry that ... is allegedly being transferred". Mr Peres started the whole thing off a day earlier when he declared that "Syria claims it wants peace while at the same time it delivers Scuds to Hizbollah, whose only goal is to threaten the state of Israel."
These hootings and trumpetings have always had a strong element of hypocrisy about them. The Scuds – even if Hizbollah has them – are as out-of-date as they are notoriously inaccurate. In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein's Scuds caused fewer than a hundred deaths. The more Peres thunders about the danger they represent, the more Hizbollah's allies in Iran – supposedly trying to build a nuclear weapon – take pride of place in public imagination over the continued and illegal Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land.
As for Mr Nasrallah, he promised only a year ago that Hizbollah's disarmament could not be discussed by the Lebanese government – only during the so-called "national dialogue". And now the "national dialogue" has begun, the organisation has made it clear that it has no intention of discussing disarmament with other Lebanese political parties.
The problems are legion. Hizbollah is itself represented in the Lebanese parliament, and under the Doha agreement which followed Hizbollah's one-day military takeover of west Beirut in May of 2008, it also has an effective veto over majority decisions taken by the Lebanese cabinet. And even if the Shia Muslim Hizbollah's opponents in the Cabinet – they are largely Sunni Muslim with a prominent Christian contingent – ordered the Lebanese army to take weapons from the militia, they would be unable to do so for one simple reason. At least half the army – possibly two-thirds – are themselves Shia Muslims, and would obviously object to attacking the homes of brothers, sons and fathers in the Hizbollah.
A clue to the seriousness with which everyone now takes the possibility of war is contained in a remark made by an anonymous US spokesman who warned that the transfer of Scud missiles to Hizbollah would represent a "serious risk" to Lebanon. Not to Israel, mark you – but to Lebanon. There is no doubt that this is an allusion to frequent threats from the Israelis themselves that in another war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese government would be held responsible and as a result Lebanon's infrastructure would be destroyed.
This does not sound so bad in Lebanon as it does elsewhere. For in its last Lebanese war – the fifth since 1978 – the Israelis blamed the Lebanese government for Hizbollah's existence and smashed up the country's roads, bridges, viaducts, electricity grid and civilian factories, as well as killing well over 1,000 civilians. Israel's casualties were in the hundreds, most of them soldiers. What worse can Israel do now against the ruthlessness of the Hizbollah, even after the accusations of war crimes levelled against its equally ruthless rabble of an army?
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