Jean Shaoul
WSWS

A classified cable from the US embassy in Beirut has revealed how Lebanon’s ruling March 14 alliance discussed with the US its preparations for a military attack by Israel against its rival Hezbollah. This and other secret cables released by WikiLeaks are destabilising already tense political relations in Lebanon.

According to the dispatch in March 2008, Elias Murr, Lebanon’s defence minister,

attempted to use the US to pass on information to Israel. He told US diplomats how in the event of a military attack by Israel on Lebanon, Israel should avoid damaging Lebanese infrastructure in order to stop public opinion turning against the March 14 Alliance, as had happened when Israel invaded Lebanon in the 2006 war.

In that six week operation, Israel killed more than 1,200 people, injured many more, damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, and devastated much of the country’s infrastructure. Israel, he warned, should also not touch the Blue Line or the UNSCR 1701 areas, the border region in southern Lebanon patrolled by UNIFIL, so as to keep Hezbollah out of these areas.

If Israel were to bomb areas under Hezbollah control, Murr made clear that the Lebanese armed forces would not intervene. He said in the course of a two and a half hour meeting over lunch, “If Israel has to bomb all of these places in the Shiite areas as a matter of operational concern, that is Hezbollah’s problem.”

Murr is reported to have said that the Lebanese army would not get involved in the next war and that the army’s objective was to survive a three week war “completely intact” so as to be able to “take over once Hezbollah’s militia has been destroyed”. He said, “I do not want thousands of our soldiers to die for no reason”.

The US embassy concluded that Murr “seems intent on ensuring the army stays out of the way so what Hezbollah bears the full weight of an Israeli offensive.”

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Jean Shaoul

"The Washington Post reported that “Israeli ambassador Michael Oren and National Security Adviser Uzi Arad spent four hours in meetings at the White House on Tuesday, focused on how to contain the diplomatic fallout from the raid, which has endangered America’s push for sanctions against Iran and peace efforts in the Middle East”. This tying of the attack on the Mavi Marmara to the US strategy against Iran and in the region generally suggests that there are deeper motives behind this violent episode than merely a brutal and arrogant government having seemingly lost its head in the face of what clearly represented no threat to Israeli security."

The bodies of the eight Turkish citizens and one US citizen of Turkish origin killed in the Israeli attack on a Gaza aid ship were returned to Istanbul Thursday, provoking tens of thousands to pour into the street behind their coffins in an angry and emotional demonstration.

The Israeli government remains belligerent in the face of worldwide outrage at its acts of piracy and murder of at least nine unarmed passengers aboard the international flotilla taking much needed aid to Gaza.

The identification of one of the victims as Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old high school student born in the United States, has failed to shift Washington’s defence of Israel’s actions. Reports have indicated that Dogan died after being shot in the head four times, and once in the chest.

The government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has threatened a fresh confrontation with the Irish-registered vessel, the Rachel Corrie, due to dock in Gaza at the weekend.

On board are some 11 people, including Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Denis Halliday, an Irish former senior United Nations diplomat, and seven civilians from Ireland and Malaysia. The ship is carrying medical equipment, wheelchairs, school supplies and cement, a material Israel refuses to allow into Gaza.

A spokesman for the Israeli Defence Force threatened ominously, “We will also be ready for the Rachel Corrie”.

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