Asymmetry and war

By Mostafa Waly

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A senior Israeli spokesperson in the Foreign Ministry said "those who blame us for a disproportionate war should know that we face disproportionate threats."

This blunt statement explains the miserable, distressing situation in the Middle East. Peaceful co-existence, regional stability, and all the rest of the traditional political terms of any normal daily life of peoples in any other region, have never been more remote than they are in these days, in the ill-fated Middle East region.

Israel takes the modest rockets of Hizbullah, and the handmade projectiles of Hamas, as disproportionate threats.

The Arab-Israeli conflict across the last half-century engulfed different political, social and human spectra, yet it didn't include the religious element as the basic source for the denial of what Israel, and the West in general, takes as its right of existence.

Today, the violent fundamentalist tide sweeping the region has forced its discourse on liberation movements and the quest of peoples for political reform, development and democracy. The hijacking of the legitimate and humane cause of the Palestinian people by fanatics, however, is not justification for accepting the continued deterioration and suffering of the Palestinian people.

Israel's "asymmetric deterrence" is criminal and inhumane, turning the life of Palestinians into a permanent nightmare. Hizbullah, meanwhile, provoked Goliath Israel into a "clash of civilisations," the latter seizing a golden chance to entrench its position in the forefront of America's "war on terrorism" through a formidable and heartless display of power.

Israel has thus entered a phase of being hated by many more Arabs and Muslims in response to its asymmetric war against exaggerated asymmetric threats -- a war without military or political justification in either Palestine or Lebanon.

This week's Soapbox speaker is general manager of the Chambre of Chemical Industries.