The region stands to pay the price

Aug.4, 2006

The region stands
to pay the price


THE massive rally staged by Iraqis — regardless of whether they were Shiites or Sunnis — on Friday in support of Lebanon's Hizbollah and the Friday prayers for the group at Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque are two outstanding signs of the peril facing the US, the UK and Israel as the Jewish state continues its brutal military assault against Lebanon. Senior Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Janati added yet another dimension to the equation by publicly calling for political and financial support for Hizbollah, which has become the favourite among Arabs and Muslims who feel they are targeted by the US-UK-Israel troika.
By unleashings its military power against Lebanon and refusing to suspend it for whatever reason until it reaches , Israel has invited for its supporters the wrath of Arabs and Muslims.
There are tens of thousands of "volunteers" from Iraq and Iran ready to go to Lebanon and fight alongside Hizbollah, but they themselves realise that there is little chance of them reaching Lebanon under the present circumstances. However, they have American and British targets in Iraq, and the attempted attack on the British embassy in Tehran on Friday gave the world a glimpse of what they could do without leaving their borders.
Arab leaders have repeatedly warned that the region risks major spillovers of the overall Arab-Israeli conflict if left unaddressed in a fair and just manner, and the signs are clearly showing how true the warnings were.
Obviously, Israel has somehow managed to convince its supporters that it could militarily solve the political problem, and that is why the US is not only seen as cheering the Israeli offensive in Lebanon but is also taking an active part by sending the Israelis advanced weapons and other material to continue their assault that have already killed nearly 1,000 people and maimed thousands more.
By opting to accept the Israeli assurance, the US has made yet another major blunder. Washington strategists seem to be working under instructions from the pro-Israeli neoconservative camp, which has been given a new lease of life after being forced to lie low with the catastrophe that hit the US in Iraq.
The long and short of it is simple: US-backed Israel could continue to wreak havoc in Lebanon, which has already been rolled back 20 years in terms of its infrastructure and economy, but the Jewish state's military accomplishments in killing Lebanese and destroying Lebanon would not serve it any purpose. The Arab and Muslim mindset has reached a point where resistance to Israel's plans and designs has gathered strength after strength, and it could be easily predicted that the people of Israel would never have the sense of "security" that they have been sought for long as as long as their political and military leadership continue to resist calls for reason, logic, international legitimacy and justice as the basis to settle the conflict with the Arabs. If anything, the challenges to Israelis' security in the days ahead would only grow multifold. And caught in-between would be the US and all those who are cheering the Israeli assault in Lebanon.
It is alarming for everyone in the Middle East because the region stands to pay the price for Israel's military adventurism and the folly of its supporters to have hitched themselves to the Jewish state's war wagon.