7-27-06, 9:56 am
TONY Blair continues to parrot platitudes about deeply regretting 'the loss of innocent life in the Lebanon and Israel' while backing the US-Israeli battle plan.
A ceasefire forms no part of US-Israeli strategy until the Hezbollah resistance organisation is disarmed, disbanded or otherwise pulverised into defeat.
That is why the US agreed to Tel Aviv's request last week to rush a delivery of satellite and laser-guided weapons to the Israeli army to tool up its invasion of Lebanon.
It is why Israel has used artillery-delivered cluster bombs against populated areas of south Lebanon, in breach of international law.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz, who once carried the hopes of the Israeli Labour Party as a force for peace and justice, has committed Israel to building what he calls a 'security strip' in south Lebanon, which will be 'under the control of our forces if there is not a multinational force.'
Presumably, this is because an Israeli-imposed self-styled security zone has been such a striking success in the past.
Neither Israel, the US nor France can look back with pleasure to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, to say nothing of the suffering that was inflicted on the Lebanese people and the Palestinian refugees sheltering there.
Hezbollah destroyed US-French meddling by blowing up a Beirut marine barracks in 1983, killing 241 US service personnel and 58 French paratroopers.
And it led the resistance war of attrition against the Israeli occupation that forced the intruders out in 2000.
No wonder that US allies vaguely support a multinational buffer force in south Lebanon but will not commit their own troops.
They know that any such force would be perceived as doing Israel's dirty work for it and would be bound to come into conflict with Lebanese patriotic forces opposed to foreign occupation.
Public opinion throughout the the Middle East rejects Israel's aggression together with the efforts of the Bush administration and our own wretched US colonial dependency that passes for a Labour government to secure through diplomacy what Israeli armed force has not achieved thus far.
Although Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair waffle on about any ceasefire having to be based on 'enduring principles and not on temporary solutions,' neither is prepared to tackle the key issues that create instability in the region.
These are Israel's expansionism and its refusal to negotiate a settlement with those whose land it has occupied and which it plans to annex.
The extent of the US desire for peace stretches only to a guarantee of no attacks on Israel, leaving the zionist state to press on with its criminal deeds and abandoning those living under occupation and those existing for decades as refugees.
Mr Blair's slavish support for US-Israeli war crimes is disgusting growing numbers of people in Britain.
The pressure must be stepped up to show him and the world that people in this country want a peace settlement in the Middle East that guarantees the rights of all peoples rather than those of one regional superpower and its patron.
From Morning Star
