There has been a lot of talk over the last few days on the escalating situation on the Israel/Lebanon border and the rights and wrongs on each side.
Once fact that has been bandied about as justification for Israel’s actions is that Hezbullah, the terrorist group which has been attacking Israel is part of the Lebanon Government and as such the entire country is responsible for their actions.
Of course it is true that the Lebanese Government has failed to disarm Hezbullah as it was supposed to under UN resolution but at the same time it is important not to confuse the acceptance by Hezbullah at a political level as a resounding endorsement for their actions.
At present the Party of God (the political wing of Hezbullah) takes up just 11% of the seats in the Lebanon Parliament (seats which it took from a region that had only a 50% turnout); to put that into an Irish context Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) currently hold 3% of seats in the Dáil and in the March Red C/Sunday Business Post opinion poll they pulled in 11% of the votes (their standing is currently 9%). To work on the assumption that a tiny minority of voters are representative of the entire country is obviously flawed.
Of course, Sinn Fein do not hold Ministerial positions and parties like Fianna Fail have so far pledged to continue their boycott of the party however just like in Ireland, Lebonese coalition partners are not pre-determined and in the quest for power pre-election pledges are not always honoured. Consider the fact that the two biggest single parties in Lebanon (The Current of the Future and Progressive Socialist Party) are both Anti-Syria (whom fund Hezbullah) you have to ask how many people in the country actually support violence against Israel… were the Party of God included to make up the numbers more than anything else?
Also look at the ministries they hold; Labour and Health are hardly central roles; it has to be said that whatever influence they have in politics probably isn’t as grand as they or Israel would like the wider world to believe.
Of course Israel does have a right to defend itself against terrorism but it must be questioned if their current response is actually going to solve any problems; vox-pop’s on BBC News 24 showed some people in South Lebanon now supporting the continued armament of Hezbullah where they didn’t before. The issue of “proportionate” is also a difficult one, as Planet Potato points out, how can this be calculated?
I would not claim to have an answer to this however I do feel that the punishment of a nation that is not really supportive of the terrorists is not the right way to handle the conflict. Again using an Irish example the Black and Tans, an extreme reaction to the IRA, did more to help the group than crush it; the same can be said for the heavy handed tactics of Bloody Sunday.
The real problem with the debate at present is the lack of actual debate. Internationally the USA refuses to even consider criticising Israel but blunt titles like pro-Israel and anti-Israel have to be discarded for realism; there is no black and white on this issue and to simply support or oppose one side completely is idiotic.
Of course some are more than willing to find fault to prove their own opinions; one blogger recently pointed to two Irish Times headlines that failed to mention Israeli casualties; to that I would reply that any person who only reads the headlines deserves to be mis-informed (both articles had references to Hezbullah attacks and Israeli deaths in their opening paragraphs) and secondly a newspaper will always give the most important aspect of the days events first (beginning with the headline down). On one occasion no Israeli deaths had occoured on the day in question as a result of Hezbullah attacks (while 42 had happened on the Lebonese side) and in the other the number of deaths from Israeli action was then the high-water mark in the conflict. The fact of the matter is Israeli firepower is far superior to Hezbullah and so is capable of inflicting more damage; while Israel is also incuring losses it is not even close to the numbers of dead on the other side and this was the most important aspect of the conflict at that time.
In a newspaper headline it would be 100% accurate to say that both sides were suffering but it is vague too and not news; the main event of the day within that area is the huge attacks and high deaths; the details from both sides are more than apparent in the actual article and The Irish Times can hardly be considered to be bias on the issue.
Of course some media coverage has been questionable, some more than others; but the fact is that if the debate continues from two complete opposites the media will never be able to appease everyone.
In my opinion Israel is going too far but the Lebanese government has also not done enough, and even that is a supreme over-simplification of the crisis.
In my opinion while the initial response from Israel was an attempt to find its soldiers it is now just a clean-up, using the misfortune of its army to excuse an action it has wanted to take for some time. Lebanon should however have been in control of its borders, in which case this event may not have even come to this point.
There is no single fault here, however and like everything in the Middle East no side is right and no side is wrong. The sooner everyone, especially the likes of the USA (and the Lebanon and Israel) realises that the better.