Intellect

Authors:  Richard Falk 
DOI: 10.1386/ijcis.1.1.77/1

Keywords
regional war,Middle East,Oslo Framework of Principles,interventionary,diplomacy,Israel,Palestine,Iraq,September 11 (2001)

Abstract
The Lebanon War needs to be understood as an expression of an Israel/United States partnership designed to restructure the Middle East in a manner that serves both countries’ security and strategic interests. The main goal is to rely upon political and military pressures to eliminate political actors, whether governments or popular movements, that are perceived as hostile to the hegemonic grand design of the partnership. The Lebanon War, arising from a border incident, reflected Israeli efforts to reach the goals that eluded it during an earlier offensive war against Lebanon in 1982. American support for Israel was based on the unconditional character of domestic support for Israel in the United States, specifically justified by reference to the ‘global war on terror’. Washington also enlarged the diplomatic battlefield beyond Israeli efforts to destroy Hezbollah by blaming Syria and Iran as the main sources of terrorism against Israel. From this perspective, the Lebanon War represented a renewal of Israeli/US efforts at regional restructuring, which had been floundering as a result of the American failures in Iraq, as well as the unexpected degree to which American calls for democracy, when heeded, were bringing to power Islamic leaders opposed to Israeli/US regional hegemony and sympathetic with the aspirations of the Palestinian people. The Lebanon War needs to be understood in the context of the dangerous encounter with Iran over its nuclear programme, which if not peacefully resolved, could lead to a regional war with disastrous global consequences.