It is a war no one here wanted, no one planned, and no one thought it
would ever happen again. In May this year we commemorated the sixth
anniversary of our withdrawal from Lebanon, with a wide consensus that
this had been the right decision.
This is the tenth war imposed on a small country, barely 58 years old.
Think at the suffering. Think at all the victims and the bereaved families:
young soldiers, barely 18 years old, and civilians, yes – many civilians
including children, women, the elderly. This time among them: a Christian
Arab from the village of Ibellin, Ethiopian, Australian, US and Ukrainian young immigrants, a Moslem teenager girl from the Arab village of M’rar.
We have seen much madness in this region: hundreds of suicide bombings in Israeli cafes and buses, Shiites killing Sunnis and Sunnis retaliating. And yes, we have seen Israelis,
retaliating at times by levelling whole buildings, with the guilty and the innocent inside.
Innocent civilians have been killed in Lebanon. We sincerely lament and regret their deaths. Even if they were used by the Hezbollah as human shields, we cannot condone such killings.
This time we have seen madness go one step further: we have seen the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, take all of Lebanon into a devastating, unprovoked war with Israel, just to improve his political standing, and take pressure off Iran.
Make no mistake – for Israel this is an existential war. But much more is at stake. A religious militia that calls itself the “party of God” takes over a State, drags it into war, using hightech
rockets, and the world is paralyzed. Hanging in the balance is the relative strength of moderates versus extremists in the most volatile part of the world.
A return to the status quo ante, where Hezbollah could hit Israel at will, will serve as an invitation
to Syria to continue to destabilize Lebanon, and could also reinforce Iranian recalcitrance on its nuclear program as well as embolden radical fundamentalists everywhere.
On this, the fourth week of the conflict, the diplomatic clock has started ticking.
We, at the Labour Party believe that the only way out of this crisis is a political settlement. In this issue, you will find some of our ideas and suggestions regarding such a settlement.
Perhaps as President Bush and PM Blair have stated, this is a “moment of opportunity for change”
