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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Lebanon is not alone
The first meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Beirut this week was important for many reasons. The ministers sent a clear message: any peace deal in the region must be comprehensive. Israel cannot claim progress while bombing civilian targets in Lebanon every day.
Normalisation, and even participation in regional talks, will always be conditional on Israel's compliance with the agreements it signs, and its withdrawal from all occupied territories.
Israel reacted angrily to the Arab League meeting, accusing the ministers of adopting extremist stands. The ministers are, in Israel's view, the ones responsible for delaying the peace process. Killing Lebanese children, on the other hand, has nothing to do with negotiations -- at least, according to Israel's warped logic. To prove our peaceful intentions, therefore, we are supposed to stand by and watch an Arab nation being attacked brutally by a country that shows no respect for international law, or even the basic tenets of human decency.
The Arabs are on Lebanon's side, as of course they must be. Public opinion -- which, contrary to Israeli statements, counts for a good deal in the Arab world -- is against normalisation. The outrage felt on the Arab street was one of the main reasons for the meeting in Beirut. As for the Arab regimes, they must show they mean business by providing funds to restore Lebanon's economy, devastated by the ongoing Israeli attacks.
Lebanon is not alone: Israel should understand this much, at least. As for American and European policy-makers, have they not heard Israel's attempts to terrorise the Arabs by threatening to massacre us all? Perhaps they could bring themselves to admit in public what they surely recognise in private: that the real reason for the tension in this region is Israel's occupation of Arab land, not Arab resistance to an illegal and inhuman occupation.
