It's about annexation,
stupid! By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Officially, Israel's ground invasion of
Lebanon is an act of self-defense against
Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security
buffer zone until the arrival of a "multinational
force with an enforcement capability". But
increasingly, as the initial goal of a narrow
strip of only a few kilometers has now been
extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon,
the real motives behind Israel's invasion are
becoming crystal-clear.
It's about (de
facto) annexation, stupid. This is a war to annex
a major chunk of Lebanese territory without
necessarily saying so, under the pretext of
security buffer and deterrence against future
attacks on Israel.
Already, since the Six
Day War, Israel has annexed the Sheba Farms,
considered part of the Syrian Golan Heights,
although the
government of Lebanon has long
complained that the 25-square-kilometer area was a
part of Lebanon. Now the Israeli army is sweeping
the area south of the Litani River as a temporary
occupation.
"We have no intention of
extending our operation more than 70 kilometers
north of our borders with Lebanon," stated
Lieutenant-Colonel Hemi Lini on the Lebanese
border on July 17, one week
after the war's
outbreak.
This would put Israel, assuming
for a moment that the Israel Defense Forces'
operations prove ultimately successful, in control
of the Litani River, thus fulfilling Israel's
founding fathers' dream, stretching back to Chaim
Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization,
who in 1919 declared the river "essential to the
future of the Jewish national home".
Consequently, contrary to the pro-Israel
pundits' reassurances that this war is not about
occupation, all the tangible signs indicate the
exact opposite, ie, the distinct possibility of a
"war of acreage" whereby Israel would expand its
territory, acquire a new strategic depth, and
simultaneously address its chronic water shortage
by exploiting the Litani.
Access to the
Litani would translate into an annual increase of
water supply by 800 million cubic meters. This in
turn might allow Israel to bargain with Syria over
the Golan Heights, source of a full one-third of
Israel's fresh water. However, a more likely
scenario is Israel's continued unwillingness to
abide by United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338
calling for its withdrawal from the Syrian
territories.
The entire Western media have
settled on a naive perspective of the reasons for
Israel's invasion of Lebanon, namely as a
defensive measure against Hezbollah. Conspicuously
absent is any serious consideration of a viable,
alternative explanation while focusing on, in
essence, the same ingredients as in the 1982
invasion: "deceit and misleading statements" by
leaders, "inaccurate announcements" by the
military spokesmen, and "gross exaggeration" of
threats, to paraphrase a candid reflection of an
Israeli general, Yehoshafat Harkabi.
Following this scenario, Israel has
dropped leaflets throughout southern Lebanon
warning the civilians to leave or risk their
lives, as they would be considered "Hezbollah
sympathizers" if they refused to leave.
Reminiscent of Israel's annexation of Palestinian
lands in 1948 and beyond, the present war is
causing mass refugees, who in all likelihood will
not return to their homes any time soon.
The geostrategic and water dimensions of
Israel's quest to possess southern Lebanon
notwithstanding, the question is, of course,
whether or not the world community will tolerate
such a development that would remake the map of
the Middle East.
There are plenty of
reasons to think that in light of the United
States' complicit silence on Israel's violation of
the territorial integrity of Lebanon, Israel will
somehow manage to ride out the international
criticisms and stick to its undeclared plan to
annex southern Lebanon. However, what is less
certain is that the combined efforts of Hezbollah
and the rest of Lebanese society, not to mention
other Arab contributions, will prevail over
Israel's appetite for a decent part of Lebanon.
With the military balance
disproportionately in Israel's favor, we can
safely assume that the new Operation Litani will
succeed and thus create a "new Middle East" with a
"greater" and geographically expanded Israel and a
shrunken or diminished Lebanon.
If so,
then the chronology of events narrated by future
historians will closely follow this line of
thought: that Israel deliberately provoked
Hezbollah into action, after a six-year hiatus, by
pressuring Hezbollah's ally, Hamas, which was
subjected to a campaign of terror, financial
squeeze and intimidation.
The laying of
such a trap by Israel would not have happened in a
vacuum of strategic thinking on Israel's part. The
fact that Hezbollah fell into the trap is a result
of several factors, including an adventurist
element lending itself to the "reckless" action of
Hezbollah on July 11 with respect to crossing the
Blue Line and attacking an Israeli patrol.
Since then, the Israelis have put on the
mask of being reluctant warriors, delaying their
troops' entry into south Lebanon and thus
perpetuating Israel's self-image as disinterested
in any imperial grand objectives. Yet the facts on
the ground speak louder than words and, indeed,
what fact is more important than Israeli leaders'
announced intention to occupy up to the Litani
River?
Again, what is understandably
omitted in those announcements, adopted as the
real reasons by CNN and other US networks, is
Israel's predatory lust after Litani's water
sources, as well as for new geographical and
strategic depth. This in turn might explain the
otherwise inexplicably blatant overreaction of
Israel to a border incident with Hezbollah.
Instead of searching for answers in the
Israeli collective psyche or in the context of
action, we must probe the answer in the writings
of Israel's founding fathers, including Theodor
Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, commonly yearning for
Israel's control of the Litani River. As a timely
addition to their old wish, Israel today has a
security-related explanation, justifying the
territorial takeover in the near future in terms
of the lessons of the present war, the main lesson
being Israel's dire need to gain strategic depth
to avoid rocket attacks.
Indeed, the
verdict will soon be out in Israel about the
precious lesson of Lebanon War II, that is, how to
prevent future rocket attacks in the only feasible
way, that is, direct control of southern Lebanon.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review. He is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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after the war's
outbreak. 
