Israel readies new attack on Lebanon posted by Richard Seymour

Israel is preparing for the "next round" of war, which Haaretz describes as "Hezbollah hostilities liable to restart soon". In brief, Israel's strategy is going to be to make whatever attacks it feels are useful and which they could pull off (more 'daring commando raids'), and then say that they were in fact preventing an arms transaction: thereby upholding Resolution 1701. By that rationale, Hezbollah should immediately form an alliance with Iran and Syria to enforce UN Resolution 242. Oh sure, Hezbollah are to be 'disarmed' but it doesn't say when.

As Virginia Tilley writes for Counterpunch, Resolution 1701 effectively endorses Israel's narrative of the conflict, which only reflects the relative balance of international forces. That being the case, there are sufficient loopholes to allow Israel to resume attacks without appearing to be in breach of the letter of the Resolution. Such is the nature of international law, moreover, that if the Resolution were worded differently and made more concessions to Lebanon's claims, Israel would still find a way (citing precedent, finding loopholes, insisting on a peculiar exception, harking back to Article 51 of the UN Charter) to present its attacks in the context of a lawful response to aggression. If they can fabricate an arms transaction, which no one is seriously going to challenge them on, they can fix up almost any old scenario to suit themselves.

The only real constraint being exerted on Israel right now is its sense of danger given what Hezbollah has already been able to do. Nevertheless, it is significant that the Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter, is talking about returning the Golan Heights to Syria. This isn't, as you'll gather on reading the article, a magnanimous gesture: the main motive is to get a water agreement with Syria since Israel consumes way more than it can provide for itself from domestic water tables. But it is a considerable distance from bombing and invading. Israel's defeat at the hands of Hezbollah might well have temporarily strengthened or encouraged those elements in the Israeli state that prefer to sheath the iron fist in a velvet glove. I say temporarily: Binyamin Netanyahu will, if I'm not very much mistaken, be the next Prime Minister of Israel, and he isn't exactly pacifically minded. But even that raving lunatic will have to come to terms with the very real prospect that Israel will be defeated again if it attacks again: and Israel cannot survive too many defeats.

So the question is: how much mayhem and murder is Israel prepared to inflict from its lofty heights? Does the Samson Option lie at the end of this yellow-brick road?