Alain Gresh is a Le Monde Diplomatique journalist and specialist of the Middle East. He has written authoritative articles and books on the subject. He is a must read. He recently started a blog at this adress in French.
''After considerable tension, all the Palestinian organisations except Islamic Jihad signed a text on June 27 calling for a political solution based on the creation of a Palestinian state beside the state of Israel. It also restricted armed resistance to the occupied territories. This agreement opened the way for the formation of a government of national unity that could open peace negotiations. The next day the Israeli army invaded Gaza, on the pretext that a soldier had been taken hostage, but in fact to destroy Hamas.
This Israeli incursion, with its bombing of power stations and ministry buildings, arrests of political leaders, destruction of homes, and use of civilians as human shields also qualifies as a war crime. The Swiss government, the custodian of the Geneva conventions, said on July 4 that there is "no doubt Israel has not taken the precautions required of it in international law to protect the civilian population and infrastructure".
The wars against the Palestinians and Lebanese are parts of the same strategy, which seeks to impose a solution that only satisfies Israeli interests. Yet never in the past 40 years has Israeli policy received such unanimous western support. We have heard only a few voices of dissent, notably from the Vatican.
Again the Arab world has demonstrated its inability to intervene - so far. Arab states allied with the US feel unable to exert pressure on Washington. What they have done is to condemn Hizbullah and Hamas, implicitly justifying Israeli incursions. The Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, asked non-Arab parties to keep out of the conflict, obviously not referring to the US, but to Iran.
Abd al-Wahab Badrakhan, an al-Hayat columnist, wrote: "All the Arabs, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, know that the peace process is well and truly dead. However, the Arabs have never acknowledged that the peace process was dead, out of obstinacy and because they do not know how to get out of the swamp they have sunk into. Therefore, whether we like it or not, the final word has been left to those we call extremists or adventurers."
Hamas began in Gaza in 1987, after 20 years of Israeli occupation, surfing on the tidal wave of the first intifada. Hizbullah emerged from the fight against occupation forces after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. What new extremist organisation will rise from the fresh ruins of Lebanon?''
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''My people decide the truth in sixty countries every morning. And in every one it's different.''
Since March 29th 2006
9 comments:
Sophia,
I am sorry to say but what you have posted is the most one sided analysis disguised as informed opinion. The fact that it appeared in Lemonde does not add to its credibility.
That a change in Israeli attitude is required for a lasting and sustainable peace is not subject to discussion. Eventually Israel and a Palestinian state will have to coexist and so as Wallerstein has argued Israel needs Palestine when the Palestinians do not need Israel as much. But to jump from this to the unsustainable and ludicous statements that Israel started the Gaza conflict and the Lebanese war in order to push its agenda is laughable. It is as if Hamas, HA and Ahmadinajad have nothing but Israels' interests in mind. We sure are badly in need of credible analysis but definitely we do not want any one sided, dogmatic rants.
Ghassan,
It did not appear in Le Monde. if you would have bothered reading the analysis before judging it you would have known that it appeared in The Guardian !
Sophia,
I did read the article in question but I must admit that whenever I hear the name Gresh I immediately think of the Le Monde Diplomatique and its so called radical left one sided presentations.
He has always practiced the art of half truths which turns out to be very highly deceiving. He has been interested for years in pushing his silly idea that poverty breeds terrorist and he operates as if his Egyptian ancestry entitles him to pontoficate about all ME affairs when as it is very clear in the essay that yoy reference he has no understanding of what is HA and what are the challenges that it poses. As is often the case, Alain Gresh's ideas are misleading and are based on unproven assumptions.
Ghassan,
It is clear for me that you have a bias against Gresh. Le MOnde Diplomatique is not radical left. Actually, they are very silent, in my opinion, on the tragedy of the middle east and the Bush agenda for the region. As for Gresh, you did not show how he is biased. I can accuse anybody of bias but still I have to prove it and yu did not prove it. Please prove it with facts and references. Gresh is not known by anglophones readers and it is easy to throw at him accusations of bias.
'His Egyptian ancestry'...Well his Egyptian ancestry definitely entitles him to a better understanding of the ME, at least more than the neo-cons who are designing policies for the ME and more than Bush, Rice, and their pro-zionist friends...
He is a well known authority on the ME, like it or not...
Over the last month or so I've been sampling the opinions of colleagues and friends and to be honest I think Israel's failed mission in the Lebanon has woken people up to what the Israeli government really is and how the Bush agenda sits with that.
Its been a PR disaster for Zionism.
PM Blair's support has cost him his remaining credibility and no number of exaggerated security threats will now dissuade the British people from the path of "regime change".
You have to hand it to Olmert, he's done more harm to Israel than any Arab ever managed in 60 years. Class work.
Hi Wolfie,
I hope you were able to catch up with your vacations after the turmoil of the 'bomb plot'.
I believe that in human deeds there are laws as in physics. These laws are actually made of logical relations. Zionism is a sum of logical contradictions: 'A land without people for people without land', 'a Democratic secular Jewish state', 'unilteral withdrawals as a peace process', 'Convergence', 'there is nobody to talk to on the other side' and so on...
And each new contradiction is meant to hide the others.
Olmert found himself at the end of the chain of these contradictions. The recent disaster is mainly his doing but being at the end of the tree of deductions (anybody who has followed logic class knows what this means) with false premises and not having followed the rules is where zionism and Israel stand now and they won't even recognize that this is the beginning of the end !
However I am afraid that when they will recognise this fact, they will react like Samson...They won't support the fact that they are not anymore the only absolute power they were in the ME...They have already started crashing entire buildings on their 'ennemies' and if they will keep going this way they will end up destroying themselves without any external 'help'...
Hi Sophie,
The August 2006 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique is particularly enlightening- maybe because President Bushmert is making everything he can to vindicate the (often) paranoid worldview of old Europe’s "Third world-ist" far left (the “un tiers mondains, deux tiers mondistes” Marxist crowd)!
;O)
Also, in the same issue, check out this superb article by a young Israeli historian of Moroccan descent.
Victor,
A Canadian Jewish friend thinks of Israel as a Real Estate project, no more. I agree with him. This is a country that is always expanding like housing developments...
It will take me a long time to forgive for that fiasco. We were really looking forward to that trip in Asturias, plus we had important things to handle. Damn it, these people didn't even have tickets or even passports yet.
A slight of hand that I do not countenance at my own expense.
Thanks for the sympathy vote anyway, that was my Summer holiday that was. I have yet however to drink a bottle of tequila and do a "Mel Gibson", but don't push me...
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