MEDIA REACTION ON MIDDLE EAST

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SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON MIDDLE EAST

Editorial Commentary

-- "Lebanon lessons, the failure of individual peace deals"

Columnist Fahd Khitan writes on the inside page of independent,
mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm (08/22): "The experience
of the past few years of the peace process in the region proved that
the individual deals were not only bad for the Arabs, but also for
Israel. The Arabs went to Madrid for the sake of peace united and
under one umbrella, but then chose to follow separate tracks....
Israel at the time considered the matter beneficial for it as it
isolated the Arab countries and imposed its own conditions. In
everyone's view, Israel was the biggest winner and the weak and torn
Arabs were the losers. 12 years after the last individual peace
deal, Israel found out that it had succeeded in establishing peace
with the regimes and had failed to establish reconciliation with the
Arab people. Strategists in Israel look at this Israel today as
being tragic. The Arab regimes on the other hand have come to
realize now that they had sacrificed their credibility and
popularity with their people and won nothing in return.... A small
country like Israel, no matter how much military power and American
support cannot guarantee an eternal presence in the region without
reconciliation with 350 million Arabs.... The individual and
incomprehensive peace agreements have harmed Israel more than they
did the Arabs for one main reason, and that is that the core issue
of the conflict in the region continues to exist unsolved, and all
the attempts to turn it into a simple Israeli Palestinian conflict
were doomed to failure. After all, the Egyptian citizen who has
regained his territory in line with the Camp David agreement, did
not change his stand vis-`-vis Israel because the core of the
conflict as far as he is concerned did not change.... In other
words, the conflict in the region remains the same as it was before
Camp David, an Arab Israeli conflict. This fact must be
acknowledged by the Arab regimes. Hence, I believe that the Arabs
and Israel are in need of a new peace process that completely
ignores the existing agreements and puts the conflict back in its
objective place so that just and comprehensive peace can really be
achieved."

-- "The inevitability of war renewing"

Chief Editor Ayman Safadi writes on the back-page of centrist,
independent Arabic daily Al-Ghad (08/22): "Israeli officials
believe in the inevitability of a new war with Hizbullah. Their
belief is correct and in its place, but not because of the reasons
that Israel uses to justify its repeated wars on Lebanon. The war
will erupt against because its causes continue to stand and exist
and because no one in Israel or the U.S. administration wants to
address these causes. Israel sees itself as a victim of Arab
hostility. Its conflict with the Arab is an existential struggle
that has no links to its occupation of Arab lands. The Israel
society closed its eyes to the real reasons for the conflict. It
does not see the injustice of the occupation and does not sympathize
with the suffering of the Palestinians. It views the destruction
that its military machine is inflicting on the Arabs as being self
defense in the face of a barbaric enemy that has no relation to
human culture... and now it is canceling from its future
considerations the major condition for achieving peace, the one that
will prevent the occurrence of war every time the circumstances are
opportune. So now there is no talk about a political solution for
the Palestinian cause and there is no move to end the cause of
tension with Lebanon by resolving the issues of Shebaa farms and the
prisoners. Moreover, those who listened to the words of U.S.
President George Bush yesterday will find other reasons for the
inevitability of the war in Lebanon, and maybe in future, in places
other than Lebanon. The American president adopted Israel's illogic
in an absolute manner. He dwarfed the Lebanese crisis into its
simplest form. All that concerns George Bush now is to establish a
security zone that protects Israel and disarm Hizbullah. There is
no mention of Shebaa farms, no mention of the prisoners, and no
mention of the Palestinian cause, without a solution to which the
Middle East will never have peace. The American president learned
nothing from the Lebanon war, just as he failed to learn any useful
lessons from his administration's weak performance in Iraq. The
result is that the Arab region will continue to pay the cost of the
American complete bias in favor of Israeli policies, leading only to
the demise of all peace opportunities in the region."

-- "Israel at the crossroads: peace or the preventative and
complementary war"
Columnist Oraib Rantawi writes on the op-ed page of center-left,
influential Arabic daily Ad-Dustour (08/22): "The drums of the
upcoming war, be that preventative against Syria and Lebanon or
complementary against Hizbullah, are beating loud in Tel Aviv. The
important lesson that the Israeli military and the Hebrew
intelligence forces learned is that they must not wait on Syria's
missiles arsenal and on Hizbullah's rebuilding of its own arsenal,
and they must not gamble on making Lebanon another Gaza. This is
the conclusion that all Israelis of all schools of thought agree
upon.... The internal debate in Israel is going to be influenced by
the fallout from the Iranian nuclear issue. The United States is
still at a loss about how to deal with that issue, and this
confusion is going to lead to a similar confusion in dealing with
Tehran's allies and friends in the region. Until Washington
resolves its hesitancy and determines how it is going to deal with
the Iranian issue, peacefully or through war, it is no expected that
Israel is going to resolve which way it will head: negotiations for
a serious peace process or preventative and complementary wars."

-- "A pivotal moment"

Centrist, elite English daily Jordan Times editorial (08/22) opines:
"US President George W. Bush has rightly described the moment as
"pivotal" in the Middle East. Indeed, every year is pivotal around
these parts. Where the American president's analysis somewhat
stumbles is in his assertion that it is purely up to the people of
the Middle East to choose between democracy and extremism, and that
those are indeed the choices available.... Bush assured that the
United States and its allies "will defeat the terrorists by
strengthening young democracies across the broader Middle East."
Does the president, by terrorist activity in Lebanon, mean the
targeting of innocent Lebanese civilians and civilian
infrastructure? Does he mean the military occupation of Lebanese
land...? What freedom, Mr. President, in a region where
democratically elected governments are sanctioned by Western powers?
What open societies, Mr. President, when some regimes stay in power
simply by allying themselves with Western and US interests over and
above the interests of their own people? What democracy, Mr.
President, in a region where occupiers are allowed unquestioned US
support, and the largest political opposition blocs, the Islamic
movements, are denounced as "terrorists"? The only real democracy
in the region is in something that isn't even a state, the
Palestinian Authority. And we all know what reward the Palestinians
received for exercising their democratic rights. Another country in
the region that approaches a democracy is Lebanon, where America's
regional bulldog was recently allowed a free hand to murder and
destroy. Yes, the people of the Middle East have choices to make
and they are pivotal. Yes, there is an unhealthy fascination with
destruction and mayhem and those who revel in it. Unfortunately, the
West is included in those ranks. Unfortunately, the US in particular
offers no alternative that is either ethical or acceptable. The US
offers its way or the highway and that is no choice at all.
Washington needs to understand that it too stands before a pivotal
moment. It must, absolutely must, redefine its "war on terror,"
rethink its policies in the region, and reconsider its blind support
for Israel. These are indeed options open to it that could rewrite
Middle East history."
HALE