Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

As the war between Israel and Hezbollah keeps escalating, there seems to be no significant effort from the U.S. to stop the fighting. It seems that the only strategy Bush has is to curse the Syrians. I don't have any problem of the president cursing but I think he has not demonstrated any leadership or understanding in the Middle East. Maybe he didn't study history at Yale. So I am going to write what I understand about the history of this region. I am not a history buff and my understanding of this area may not be accurate but I think that in order to make good policies, a leader must have a good understanding of the past.

The region of Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire prior to WWI. Unlike the assertion of pro-Palestinian groups, the Jews did not take away their country. They had no country to begin with as they were controlled by the Turks. Some Jews were in this area even in the early 1900's even though they were greatly outnumbered by the Arabs. During WWI, the Ottomans were on the sides of the Germans. Britain wanted the help of the Arabs to defeat the Ottomans so they promised that various Arab groups will get independent countries following the defeat of the Ottoman if the Arabs help Britain. At the same time through the Balfour Declaration, Britain expressed support for a Jewish homeland in the hope of getting support from Jews in Britain and the U.S. Needless to say these promises raised the expectations of the Arabs and Jews alike.

After WWI, with the Ottomans defeated, Britain had the mandate to create a Jewish state. Many Zionists started to immigrate to Palestine. But fearing Arab hostility, Britain sought to control Jewish immigration. During the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews, the cry for a Jewish state increased. Britain continued to ignore the demand of the Jews and there were uprisings against the British by Jews in Palestine. Future Israeli leaders like Begin were considered terrorists by the British at that time. After WWII, the UN decided to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jerusalem was to be under international control. The Jews accepted this plan but the Arabs did not. Fighting broke out immediately after the state of Israel came into existence. Israel won easily and gained a lot of land that was meant to be the new Arab state.

After this you have various wars starting in 1956 when Israel, England and France attacked Egypt for closing off the Suez Canal. In 1967 Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the 6 Day War. Egypt lost the Sinai peninsula and Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel. After this war the PLO came into prominence. Since regular Arab armies couldn't defeat Israel, Arab support went to the PLO and their guerrilla tactics. The armies of Egypt and Syria tried again in 1973 in the Yom Kippur war. Again they failed miserably. But Israel did suffer losses during this war and she became more dependednt on the U.S. for arms and aids.

Jimmy Carter didn't accomplish much as president but one thing he did accomplish was bring together Sadat and Begin to Camp David. This eventually led to the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Incredibly, this peace has held up. This did cost more credibility of the U.S. in the Arab world. In the 1980's and maybe even now, I am not so sure, the aids that the U.S. give to Egypt and Israel make up 50% of our total foreign aid. Everybody knows that Egypt did not get the aid because the U.S. likes Egypt. Even neutral countries would agree that the U.S. is not even handed in this conflict and that the aid to Egypt was for making peace with Israel.

How did Lebanon get into this mess? Location, location, location. When Lebanon was formed she was an example how Muslims and Christians can get along. Lebanon was about 60% Muslim and 40% Christians and they were doing all right. Then the Palestinians poured in and the PLO established itself among the refugees. The Lebanese Muslims came to support the PLO and the Christians opposed it. This led to internal conflicts and brought Syria into the picture. It also brought in western troops including the U.S. forces. Unfortunately that led to a suicide bombing killing over 200 U.S. troops in the 1980's. This was the beginning of Hezbollah. Foreigners were taken hostages so often that a comedian said that if you go to Beirut, instead of stamping your passport, they stamp "hostage" on your forehead. Ariel Sharon took the Israel army into Lebanon to destroy the PLO. Some say Sharon was responsible for the massacre of Muslim civilians by Christians. Israel ended up occupying southern Lebanon for many years with heavy losses and finally pulled out few years ago. The pull out of the Israelis was seen in the Arab world as a victory for Hezbollah. With this momentum and their organized social services, Hezbollah was able to get some posts in the mainstream Lebanese government. Their hatred for Israel, however, is still the main reason for its existence.

The PLO under Arafat actually had became more moderate over the years and had signed a peace agreement with Rabin. Unfortunately Rabin was killed by an Israeli extremist. Arafat had opportunity to make a lasting peace during the Clinton administration with Barak. He ultimately chicken out believing he would be assassinated just as Rabin was. His so-called government was also very corrupt and did not serve the Palestinian people well, wasting international aid. This led to the rise of Hamas, a much more radical group bend on destroying Israel. Hamas became popular among the people with its organized social services. Arafat would not have gotten any international sympathy, except the Israelis were dumb enough to listen to extremists on their side and built settlements that were considered illegal in the eyes of the international community. The harsh treatment of the Palestinians led to intifadas and ultimately more and more suicide bombings.

So why do I go through this exercise of writing about what I feel as some of the important parts of Arab-Israel history? I figure I will be writing about this topics in the next few weeks and I will be referring to some of this history as I go. For example, I see pundits are calling for Israel to go into Lebanon and destroy Hezbollah once for all. As you can see from history, winning wars has not been a problem for Israel. They have won all the wars decisively and yet no security has been achieved. Israel maybe able to kill the leaders of Hezbollah and most of its foot soldiers in the coming weeks. But will that help her security? History says no. The bombing in Lebanon is making more future suicide bombers and terrorists everyday. Diplomatic solutions are hard because the bad guys are going to try their best to destroy any peace gesture. But diplomatic solutions are the only ones that can possibly bring lasting peace in this region. So has Bush make any diplomatic effort? Condi Rice hasn't even gone to the region yet and we are almost two weeks into the conflict. Apparantly Bush did not learn anything from history.