Al Jazeera manager Walid al-Omri wrote a letter to Israel Radio manager Yoni Ben Menachem in response, saying, "The incident had no basis... We view this incitement as very grave and demand it end."

Reshet Bet has not responded to Al Jazeera's allegations.

Al Jazeera, the most popular television station in the Arab world, has been working around the clock in recent days to provide coverage of the violence in Israel and Lebanon. Al Jazeera sources said on Sunday that the network strictly obeys all instructions it receives on what is permitted and forbidden to air.

"The same images [aired Sunday] were shown on other channels without any response," the sources said.

Ahmadinejad slammed Israel for attacking Lebanon as the Iranian embassy in Beirut denied Israeli claims Saturday that Iranian troops had been sent in support Hizbullah.

"The survival of this regime is not possible without oppression and aggression," he was quoted as saying.

A statement from the Islamic Republic's embassy in Beirut called the Israeli report "meaningless."

The claim was "an attempt to escape reality with the aim of covering up (Israel's) inability to confront the Lebanese nation and resistance," said the embassy's statement, which was published on the web site of the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Not surprisingly the voice of Arabs on the ground, be they in Lebanon or Palestine, are not being heard.

Below is a report from Lebanon. Please distribute widely as the latest news indicates that Israel is going to probably do its heaviest bombing of South Lebanon soon. One family that did try to flee was brutally cut down by Israeli rockets. See pictures of the massacre at http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-have-just-received-these-pictures.html

If you work in the alternative media or can by some miracle convince the mainstream media to allow the voices of those on the ground in Lebanon to be heard, Bilal can be contacted at 011 961 303 1737...if you can get through.

With most of the governments of the world having abandoned the Palestinian and Lebanese people, it's important that people in the US and elsewhere continue to demonstrate, have teach-ins, speak outs, and even fundraisers because of the humanitarian crisis which has developed in Gaza and Lebanon will only be getting worse.

Hi everyone. First of all, I am fine as are family and friends. We're scattered in different places, some still in the south, some in Tyre, the rest in Beirut and its surroundings. Those who live in the southern suburbs where Hizbullah is based managed to leave before the latest strikes and are safe with relatives.

As most of you know, Hizbullah carried out a bold operation a few days ago and managed to capture two Israeli soldiers. The resistance has been saying for quite some time now that it intends to free the remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel, most prominently Samir Qantar. Dubbed the "dean of the prisoners," Qantar is the longest serving Arab prisoner in Israel. He was to be released along with other Lebanese prisoners in a swap between Hizbullah and Israel. The Israeli government voted not to release him and two others and stupidly kept the prisoner file open.

The Hizbullah operation was an attempt to put an end to the matter. There were several previous unsuccessful attempts that were costly to the resistance. This operation according to Nasrallah, the general-secretary of Hizbullah, was months in planning and its timing, which has been endlessly criticized, may have been logistical more than anything else.

In light of Israel's ferocious response, it is worth noting that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was a pure military operation and did not as much scratch an Israeli civilian. Israel's counter is exactly the opposite-collective punishment of the civilian population by destroying the country's infrastructure and committing ugly massacres against families and fleeing refugees as they did yesterday in the south. Who's the terrorist in this case, even by the self-serving definitions peddled in Washington.

Why did Hizbullah do this, did they not know that Israel would respond this way. I'm certain that they considered this scenario as one of several. But Hizbullah's two decades of experience in dealing with Israel have taught it one thing and that is Tel Aviv will never budge on any matter without threat of force. Israel was compelled to leave southern Lebanon in May 2000-after over 20 years of occupation-only after the resistance gained the upper hand militarily.

The consequent prisoner swap in which nearly all Lebanese prisoners in Israel were released was only possible once Hizbullah managed to capture Israeli soldiers and offer them in exchange. As Nasrallah put it, the recent operation was the only logical conclusion given Hizbullah long experience with Israel. To get the remaining prisoners out, Israeli soldiers must be captured-Israel simply offered no other option.

The current situation only confirms Hizbullah's experience. The whole world-and most painfully the Arab governments-have refused to lift a finger to restrain Israel. The UN met and decided to do nothing, yesterday the Arab League met and was even more insulting. The Lebanese government has yet to act, besides denouncing Hizbullah and distancing themselves from the resistance--not even providing the most basic services to the displaced and injured.

The Arab League meeting and statements by the Lebanese prime minister suggest that there is a convergence of interests between them and Israel over putting a halt to the Lebanese resistance by disarming Hizbullah and burying once and for all those forces in the region, including Hamas for example, that believe in a line of confrontation with Israel as the only road to get some semblance of justice. The Saudi royals and their slavish counterparts in Jordan and Egypt, want Arabs to submit and swallow the humiliation we are subjected to daily in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, all in the name of stability and rational thinking.

Since 1993 and the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Arab leaders, the US and the UN have been saying that negotiations and normalization with Israel are the only way to peace. But we have yet to see Israel make the smallest concession, taking the opportunity to swallow up yet more land, butcher the Palestinian people and continue to imprison thousand. Hamas' election was but one indicator that ordinary Arabs have understood that successive peace accords have brought them nothing but further misery-only resistance, with all the suffering that comes with it, bears fruit.

Like the Palestinians, the Lebanese are all alone, abandoned to be taught a lesson by the regional and global powers. Hizbullah's incredible response (striking a war ship and bombing as far as Haifa) shows that they perhaps considered and prepared for Israel's ferocious response. Only their ability to strike back effectively can save Lebanon from complete destruction at the hands of Israel-the lunatics in Tel Aviv know no other language.

Bilal El-Amine
__._,_.___
Bilal El-Amine is the former editor of Left Turn Magazine (www.leftturn.org) who returned to his native Lebanon last year. If you would like to contact Bilal you can reach him in Beirut at 011 961 303 1737 (Beirut is 10 hours ahead of PST)

The day's battles continued the cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians that has simmered for months but exploded during the past two weeks. Israel's grossly disproportionate response to a tit-for-tat Palestinian guerrilla raid during which two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third abducted has pushed the impoverished Gaza Strip to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, smashed the barely functioning Palestinian Authority, and threatened the Middle East's fragile peace. Israel's failed-state strategyThis shortsighted "strategy," which both the United States and, to a slightly lesser degree, the strangely docile Europeans have signed off on, is a recipe for continued hatred, extremism, bloodshed, injustice and festering grievances. Unless Israel and its patron summon the wisdom to take the long view and hammer out an agreement that will give the Palestinians a viable state, rather than simply trying to smash them into submission, the world's most dangerous conflict will continue to rage, with dangerous consequences for all.

It would be one thing if Olmert, head of Israel's governing Kadima Party, ordered the Israeli Army (the IDF) to conduct simple, targeted search-and-destroy missions, the logical response to the kidnapping by Palestinian guerrillas of an Israeli soldier or the firing of small homemade rockets from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns. Instead, he has launched a wide-ranging attack on the Gaza Strip, sending tanks and troops over the border, destroying Gaza's only electricity plant, and firing missiles at militants without regard for innocent civilians in the area. He even ordered Israeli jets to create terrifying sonic booms throughout the night, as if 1.4 million persons, many of them children, were being subjected to the sleep deprivation techniques applied by U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. As Patrick O'Connor has pointed out, Olmert told his cabinet last Sunday that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza."

The destruction of the electricity plant has produced a humanitarian crisis of significant proportions. Hundreds of thousands of people have been plunged into darkness at night. It is impossible to operate hospitals and emergency rooms, refrigerate food, pump or purify water, or handle sewage in the cascading heat of midsummer.

Then, this past Wednesday, the Israelis struck at the offices of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior in Gaza for the second time, wounding three persons. Why? The strike on the Interior Ministry building offers eloquent testimony to Kadima's goals, since that organization oversees police and security. At a time when Israeli spokesmen decry lawlessness in the Palestinian territories, which they say threatens Israel itself, they are actually destroying the only infrastructure -- Palestinian policing -- that has any hope of establishing law and order there.

As usual with outbursts of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, tracing the logic of attack and counterattack is like chasing the paradox of the chicken and the egg. The Israelis justify the invasion of Gaza as a response to the kidnapping of Cpl. Shalit, and as needed to stop the ramshackle homemade Qassam rockets (frankly, of the sort a teenager might construct with a science kit) fired from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian guerrillas of the Ezzedin Qassam Brigades at the nearby small Israeli town of Sderot. The rockets seldom do any real damage, though a few have harmed Israeli civilians. The Palestinians, for their part, counter that the Israelis have replied to the mostly ineffective Qassam attacks with hundreds of artillery strikes, which killed 30 Palestinian civilians in the weeks prior to the present crisis.

But as Jonathan Cook of Media Lens points out, the larger context for this violence is Palestinian grievances over Israeli attempts to isolate Gaza and cut its Hamas government off from monetary resources, moves that have harmed Gazan society and hurt healthcare and even nutrition. (Some 17 percent of children in Gaza suffer from malnutrition.)

The Israelis, along with the Americans and Europeans, have refused to have any dealings with Hamas, arguing that it is a terrorist organization. Hamas has declined to recognize Israel, and its military wing has carried out many terror attacks inside Israel on Israeli civilians. The Israelis and the Americans immediately cut the Hamas government off from monetary aid and even attempted to sidestep it in delivering the tax monies that run ministries and hospitals. Inevitably, and despite Israeli assurances to the contrary, the boycott of the Hamas government has harmed the quality of life of ordinary Palestinians, adding to the miseries of poor healthcare and unemployment, with many government employees suffering long arrears in the payment of their salaries. Government is among the biggest employment sectors in Gaza.

But from a Palestinian point of view, the fundamentalist Hamas Party is a legitimately elected government that had made a truce with the Israelis during the previous 18 months, and largely adhered to it. Some small guerrilla groups, such as the Qassam Brigades, as well as guerrillas loyal to Hamas' military leader in exile, Khalid al-Mashaal, did not share the civilian Hamas Party's commitment to the truce. They have been responsible for provocations, including the rocket attacks on Sderot.

In any case, Israel is itself largely responsible for the rise of Hamas. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, making no arrangements with any Palestinian negotiating party for security in the aftermath. Israel's then- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had insisted that he had no one to talk to, despite the long-standing commitment of the Palestinian Authority, led primarily by the secular Fatah Party, to a negotiated peace. Fatah is weak in Gaza, however, where most Palestinians support the Islamist Hamas Party. Sharon had undermined Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, helping derail the Oslo peace accords, continuing to expand Israeli colonies on the West Bank, and attacking and weakening the P.A. security infrastructure. P.A. officials also behaved locally in a corrupt and arrogant manner, turning many voters against them.

It should not have been so surprising, then, that the Palestinian population, seeing the Israelis usurp Palestinian land on a grand scale and suffering from Israeli checkpoints and the carving up of the West Bank into small cantons, swung against the secular Fatah in this year's elections.

Sharon and Olmert's refusal to allow the development of a genuine Palestinian state, while desperately trying to avoid ruling as colonial masters over millions of Palestinians, has produced a dead end for Israeli policy. By unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza and unilaterally building a wall on Palestinian territory that usurped more Palestinian land, the Israelis during the past year have created a failed state all around them. The Hamas victory was as unacceptable to many Fatah supporters as it was to the Israelis, and there have been riots and gun battles between the two. The place is beginning to look like Somalia. While Israel may reap a temporary tactical advantage from the split between Palestinian factions, in the long run chaos and armed anarchy next door is not in its best interest.

If the Israelis had negotiated with the Palestinian Authority and built up its security capabilities -- and, above all, charted a clear path toward a viable future state -- they might have been entitled to expect it to police the territories and deal with groups such as the Qassam Brigades. As the Israeli analyst Aluf Benn recently pointed out in Haaretz, strong leaders and states with return addresses -- Hezbollah's Nasrallah, Syria's Assad -- have a much better track record of controlling militants than weak leaders. But as it is, the resentful Palestinians have neither the motivation nor the capability to provide security.

The paradoxes of Kadima policy created a powder keg, and it was set off on June 9 when an Israeli artillery barrage, replying to the Qassam rocket attacks, went astray and hit a Palestinian family picnicking on the beach. The image of the survivor, little Huda Galia, orphaned and weeping hysterically at the sight of her relatives' bloody remains, touched the entire world. (The Israeli military, as usual, denied responsibility, saying that the Palestinians themselves had mined their own beach, but Human Rights Watch and most European newspapers who looked into it did not find the Israeli denials plausible.) The Israeli newspaper Maariv buried the story. But it was front page news for weeks in the Arab press.

What happens in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has consequences in the rest of the region and the world. On June 22, Al-Jazeera reported that an Iraqi guerrilla group attacked a U.S. Humvee in the name of Huda Galia. As the situation in Gaza becomes more explosive, the possibility for it to exacerbate tensions in Iraq and elsewhere only grows. On last Friday, 3,000 Egyptians demonstrated at al-Azhar square in Cairo after Friday prayers against the Israeli actions.

After the beach horror, passions ran high in Gaza and the West Bank. On June 25, a coalition of tiny guerrilla groups launched an attack on an Israeli military outpost on the Gaza-Israel border, killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third. There is no reason to think that the Hamas government was involved; its cabinet members were nearing an accord with President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah on a formula that would involve de facto recognition of Israel. One of the three guerrilla groups behind the attack was a splinter group from Hamas, but it is probably loyal to militant Hamas dissident Khalid al-Mashaal, in exile in Damascus, who rejects the civilian Hamas Party's willingness to adopt Abbas' formula for negotiating with Israel.

On Tuesday, June 27, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas announced his acceptance of the negotiating platform proposed by Abbas. The same day, another Palestinian guerrilla group kidnapped, and later killed, an Israeli colonist on the West Bank. On Wednesday last week, the Israelis made their first incursion into Gaza and destroyed the electricity plant. They have since struck at remaining generators. On Thursday they detained dozens of Palestinian lawmakers, cabinet members and activists. The lawmakers had been freely elected at the polls, and there is no obvious legal basis for Israel to detain them, nor is it likely that they were directly involved in any of the guerrilla actions. They were in essence kidnapped and held for ransom.

The only logical explanation for Olmert's actions, aside from tough-guy posturing, is that he wants to continue to degrade the Palestinian government and radicalize the population. The Israelis cannot get law and order in the territories this way, of course. Nor is there any reason to believe that these massive and disproportionate acts of violence against the Gazans will increase the chance that their captured soldier will be returned.

But Olmert clearly has something else on his mind. His actions indicate that his ultimate goal is to ensure that no Palestinian state emerges any time soon that can challenge Israeli plans to annex more of the West Bank and keep its stateless residents divided and weak, prone to outbursts of ineffectual violence and easy to label as "terrorists." If the elected Hamas government falls over the crisis, all the better. But the Israelis had a PLO government until this year and would not negotiate with it, either. The point is not to negotiate. The larger issue, that such a policy will prevent this terrible conflict from being solved, and will inevitably create blowback against Israel and the United States, does not seem to concern Olmert, the U.S. government or the U.S. media.

Organizers say Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, retired Israeli defense chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman -- all of whom are Jewish -- will be at the dinner. Several members of Congress also are scheduled to attend, including Republican Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, both Catholics. Leading evangelicals that have confirmed their invitations include the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer.

Their host will be Texas evangelist the Rev. John C. Hagee, pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and author of "Jerusalem Countdown," a 2006 book about a nuclear-armed Iran.

"There's a new Hitler in the Middle East," Mr. Hagee said in an interview. "He's talking about killing Jews. He will have the ability to do so with nuclear weapons.

"I believe that the president of Iran fully intends there to be a nuclear holocaust. The only way he will be stopped will be by a pre-emptive military strike in Iran."

The United Nations condemned Israel when it launched a pre-emptive strike in 1981 against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear program by bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor. Mr. Hagee said American evangelicals must provide cover for Israel in the case of a pre-emptive attack -- "as a last resort," he specified -- on Iran.

"We are not going to be silent," he said. "We are organizing Christians from coast to coast to express themselves in the support of Israel. I don't believe Congress has a clue how much grass-roots support for Israel exists in the evangelical community."

Building a bridge to the Jewish community


CUFI, a five-month-old Texas-based nonprofit mixing evangelical fervor with biblical literalism, is his organizational vehicle. Its political structure spreads across 50 states -- broken down by region, state and then city -- to recruit activists and lobby elected officials on Israel's behalf.

Mr. Hagee also is setting up an "Israel Rapid Response" network of e-mails, faxes and phone calls to mobilize voters. Such efforts have not gone unnoticed overseas. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz dispatched a reporter to San Antonio, who in a May 5 article labeled the effort "a magnificent evangelical industry."

This spring, the preacher hired David Brog, 39, former chief of staff for Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, as his executive director.

"I'd admired him from afar," Mr. Brog said in an interview explaining why, as a Conservative Jew, he works for a Christian organization. "I believe this is the most important thing I could do not only for Israel but for Judeo-Christian civilization today, which is under threat from radical Islam.

"We're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Plus, Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that."

Moreover, converting Jews to Christianity, long a sore spot among Jews, is not an issue.

"All activities of CUFI are strictly non-conversionary," Mr. Brog said. "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about conversion and talking about Jesus.

"So those who work with us tend not to talk about Jesus more, but talk about Jesus less. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do -- building a bridge to the Jewish community to insure the survival of Judeo-Christian civilization."

For much of his career, Mr. Hagee, 66, has circulated in Pentecostal circles as a pastor and TV evangelist appearing on 120 stations broadcast by five Christian TV networks. After the Osirak bombing, he began building contacts among the local Jewish community, starting with annual "Nights to Honor Israel" around Texas. Over the years, he has donated $8.5 million to Israeli hospitals and orphanages and has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel.

Now's the time, he said, to appear in Washington with backing by prominent Christians and Jews as the evangelical answer to AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby.

"For me," Mr. Hagee admitted, "this will be reaching a new level."

"Reverend Hagee's organization is representative of the depth and breadth of American support of the U.S.-Israel relationship," said AIPAC spokeswoman Jennifer Cannata. "We definitely see this a positive sign."

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that he intended to commit war crimes in Gaza, telling his cabinet that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza". Olmert thus officially acknowledged Israel's policy of collectively punishing 1.4 million Palestinians, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But none of the US' three leading newspapers - The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times - reported Olmert's statement, even though it was widely quoted around the world.

In the last week, these three leading US papers all also published editorials strongly supporting Israel's right to "retaliate" after the capture of an Israeli soldier. Their editorials never mentioned a single element of Israel's brutal 10 month siege on Gaza. In a reminder of The Washington Post's editorial advocacy of the Iraq war, The Post took the most belligerent position, applauding Israeli "restraint" and approving an Israeli overthrow of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Although the major newspapers have published some good articles reporting Palestinians' views in the last days, their overall bias towards Israel has been glaring.

On July 2 Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that, "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it's like" in Israel's communities near Gaza that have been hit by Palestinian Qassam rockets. His statement referred directly to Israel's practices of waking Palestinians in the middle of the night by repeatedly flying jets overhead that create sonic booms, and of shelling Gaza at night. Additionally, Israel keeps Gazans awake at night with worry about poverty, siege, imminent attack, and lack of electricity, water, fuel and food. Olmert's statement was widely reported in the Israeli media, and by the Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, and the UK's Guardian, among others. A google news search for his quote yields 279 articles, mostly from newspaper websites around the US. Some of these papers undoubtedly printed this story.

Yet there was no hint of Olmert's words in LA Times or Washington Post. The New York Times' coverage is more interesting. New York Times' correspondents Steven Erlanger and Ian Fisher reported the quote in an on-line article that was also published in the International Herald Tribune. However, the quote never appeared in the Times' print edition. The Times' editors seem to have decided that Olmert's words were not "fit to print," and deleted them from their journalists' report. The conspicuous absence of such a widely reported and telling quote raises the possibility that the leading US papers actively avoid printing information that makes Israel look too obviously bad.

What is certain is that the leading US papers generally omit the frameworks of human rights and international law as well as related concepts like collective punishment, and proportionality, all of which have been consistently violated by Israel. On July 3, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem specifically criticized Olmert's statement, saying that, "The use of sonic booms flagrantly breaches a number of provisions of international humanitarian law. The most significant provision is the prohibition on collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention... categorically states that "Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." In addition to criticizing sonic booms, Human Rights Watch noted on June 29 that "The laws of war prohibit attacks on "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." Israel's attack on Gaza's only power plant is in violation of its obligation to safeguard such objects from attack."

Though collective punishment of Palestinians has historically been a cornerstone of Israeli policy, and characterizes Israel's siege of Gaza, the US' three leading papers have used the phrase "collective punishment" just four times since heightened crisis began on June 25. Each paper cited the same statement by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas once, and The New York Times also quoted a Palestinian grocery store owner. These same newspapers printed the phrase "collective punishment" a combined total of only six other times this year in their reporting on Israel/Palestine. Since June 25 those papers used the words "terrorism" or "terrorist" 28 times to describe Palestinians, while using "occupation" only six times to describe Israeli actions. Citations of the illegality of Israeli settlements, the Wall, home demolitions, detention of Palestinians, and many other measures are similarly rare. While these newspapers do document the humanitarian crises that Palestinians endure, they generally avoid suggesting that Palestinians have rights like Israelis, or that there is an accepted body of law that should be applied not just to Palestinian attacks, but also to Israeli actions.

Similarly, in taking positions on the current crisis, these newspapers' editorial boards completely erased Israel's most recent human rights violations. All three papers blamed only Hamas. The New York Times June 29 editorial noted "reckless Hamas provocations," and The Washington Post's July 1 editorial "Hamas's War" highlighted Hamas' "acts of terrorism and war." Writing as if history began with the June 25 capture of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian attack materialized from thin air, none of their editorials even hints at Israel's disproportionate violence - Israel's 39 year military occupation; the 176 Palestinians killed in 2006, many of them civilians and children, compared to 16 Israelis killed; 8300 Israeli shells launched into Gaza this year compared with 840 Palestinian rockets launched towards Israel; on-going Israeli land seizure; or Israel's tightening siege of Gaza. Only The New York Times mentioned that Hamas was now breaking a unilateral 16 month truce. Israeli newspaper editorials have been more nuanced and balanced than these US editorials.

None of the editorials noted that Palestinians killed and captured Israeli soldiers implementing a siege of Gaza. None noted the irony that Palestinians were holding a single Israeli soldier prisoner, while Israel is holding 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, many civilians held without due process, and some enduring torture. In a sentence that could have been drafted by an Israeli government PR firm, The Post's editors wrote that "the militants' demand that Israel release Palestinian prisoners it has legally arrested in exchange for a soldier who was attacked while guarding Israeli territory."

After rationalizing Israel's arrest of 60 Hamas leaders, many of them Palestinian Authority Ministers and elected members of the Palestinian parliament, The Post's editors then downplayed Israel's destruction of an electric plant that provides half of Gaza's power. In a final outrage that combined both blindness towards Israeli violence and complete disregard for international law, The Post's July 1 editorial recommended that the Arab States and the UN stop "fulminating about supposed Israeli war crimes."

Once again, Israeli government spin overpowers the Palestinian narrative, and human rights and international law are belittled. These examples illustrate how the US corporate media is actively shaping the information reported to the US public to Israel's advantage, and promoting the view that Hamas and Palestinian terrorism are the sole problem in Israel/Palestine. Without more balanced reporting from establishment media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, US policy and public opinion on Israel/Palestine are also unlikely to become much more balanced. The need for media activism on Israel/Palestine is more vital than ever.

Nor does it seem plausible that military action will enable Israel to secure the release of its captured soldiers. The civilian victims of Israel's indiscriminate retaliation have no real influence over the militias that hold them, while the militias themselves are untroubled by the spectacle of public suffering. On the contrary, they thrive on it. In the case of Lebanon, it is possible that acts of collective punishment, such as the destruction of Beirut airport and yesterday's killing of yet more civilians, might divide Hizbullah and its supporters from the rest of the country, but only at the risk of triggering another civil war and creating a vacuum that Israel's enemies in Syria and Iran will find easier to exploit.

In view of all this, it is valid to ask what Israel thinks it is doing. Indeed, this question is implicit in the statements of world leaders at the G8 and elsewhere who have called on Israel to use force proportionately, avoid civilian casualties and refrain from acts that might strengthen Hamas or destabilise Lebanon's fragile political settlement. No one quibbles with Israel's right to defend itself, but doesn't it understand how irresponsible and immoral it is to deliberately escalate the conflict in this way?

The problem is that the premise of the question is false. It assumes that Israel shares our view that a de-escalation followed by negotiation is the best route to a settlement. It assumes, therefore, that when Israeli ministers complain of having "no partner for peace", they actually want one. A much more sensible approach would be to credit them with having the intelligence to know exactly what they are doing and to work backwards from there.

If so, it might become apparent that far from wanting a partner with which to negotiate, the Israeli government is acting with the specific intention of forestalling that possibility. There is nothing particularly new in this. The extremists on both sides have always formed a kind of tacit alliance, with the supporters of "greater Israel" and "no Israel" understanding their joint interest in preventing any moves towards a compromise peace. That is the main reason why Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas as it emerged in the 1980s. Unwilling to negotiate with the secular nationalists of Fatah, even as they were moving towards support for a two-state solution, the Israeli authorities thought it would be a clever idea to promote their Islamist rivals.

In the case of the current crisis, it is no accident that it occurred at precisely the moment when the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was gaining the upper hand in the latest round of that struggle. By using the threat of a referendum to force Hamas to accept the existence of Israel as the basis for a final settlement, Abbas had created the most promising opening for peace in six years. Faced with internal division and the loss of political initiative, Hamas militants understood that the only way to prevent it would be to trigger another cycle of violence. In turn, the Israel government, whose interests were also threatened by the Abbas initiative, recognised that it had an equally good reason to oblige. The effect of Hizbullah's intervention and Israel's over-reaction has been to put peace even further down the agenda.

The plain truth is that Israel thinks that it can get more by imposing a solution through force than by negotiation and is not interested in any kind of peace process. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, pays lip service to the road map, but he has already received American endorsement for his fallback position, artfully dubbed "unilateral convergence". George Bush has described it as a "bold idea". Armed with the knowledge that he will continue to enjoy American patronage if the road map fails, Olmert has set out to ensure that it does just that. Bush's diplomacy has been truly inept.

It's high time western governments grasped the fundamental truth that Israel is pursuing an agenda that conflicts directly with their own. In the context of the fight against terrorism and the need to promote international cooperation, the west's interest must be to remove the Palestinian question as a source of grievance among mainstream Muslims in a way that guarantees justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. A settlement of this kind is perfectly feasible and has been outlined in countless documents and initiatives over the years, most recently in the Geneva accords. But the main reason it has proved illusive is that Israel is not, and never has been, prepared to make the territorial compromises required. It still believes that it is entitled to the victor's spoils by annexing large tracts of Palestinian land.

This situation will persist as long as the west remains in denial about the reasons for the ongoing conflict and until the Israeli political establishment is forced to pay a price for its obstinacy. Yet the US remains entirely complicit in its role as Israel's main strategic ally. In the midst of last Friday's onslaught, in which Israeli bombers killed dozens of Lebanese civilians, the Pentagon announced the export of $210m of aviation fuel to help Israel "keep peace and security in the region". Even Britain and other European countries indulge in a form of diplomatic misdirection by focusing one-sidedly on the roles played by Syria and Iran.

The key to resolving the situation in Lebanon lies, as it did throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in finding a solution to the Palestinian question. A viable and successful Palestinian state would rob Hizbullah and its sponsors of the conceit that they are defending helpless Muslims and make it easier for those in the region who oppose them to gain the upper hand. Mahmoud Abbas is the only leader currently working for the kind of negotiated two-state solution the Middle East and the wider world desperately need. But he is being let down by the west at the moment when he had earned the right to expect better. The Palestinian president needs a partner for peace. If Israel will not play that role, the international community must.

- David Clark is a former Labour special adviser at the Foreign Office

Israel began military strikes against Lebanon on Wednesday, after Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. As civilian deaths mount, diplomatic efforts to end the fighting have yet to get off the ground.

The issue is certain to dominate the G8 summit, and differences between the leaders began to appear even before the annual meeting began.

U.S. President Bush, who met Saturday with Putin, has been outspoken in defending Israel and accusing Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, of igniting the crisis.

Putin agreed it was unacceptable to pursue goals using force, but said that "at the same time, we work under the assumption that the use of force should be balanced."

The G8 countries - the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - were expected to issue a declaration on the Lebanon crisis.

"We, the Russian side, regret... that on the eve of the G8... we see an escalation of the situation in the Middle East," Putin said Sunday.

On Iran, Putin indicated that Russia had not changed its opposition to sanctions, and he defended the country's right to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

"The question is not about toughening our stance, but about finding common approaches. This is actually the most difficult, but can prove to be the most effective in solving the Iranian nuclear problem," he said.

Turning to other issues, Putin said the summit would address conflicts in former Soviet states. He said he had discussed the issue with U.S. President Bush.

Putin said their talks focused mostly on Georgia, where tensions are rising over the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and most recently South Ossetia.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who visited Bush at the White House last week, has made it a priority to bring the two rebel regions back into the government fold. Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region, has provided support to the separatists in part by issuing passports to their citizens.

He also said that the United Nations was considering evacuation plans for U.N. dependents from Lebanon, while Blair said Britain was looking at the possibility of creating an air bridge for its citizens.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry said that his country "would welcome a more energetic and decisive international effort to bring about immediate and full implementation of Security Council resolutions 1559 and 1680, which call for the disarmament of Hezbollah."

The comments by Blair and Annan came a day after world leaders forged a unified response at their G-8 summit to the crisis in the Middle East, blaming Hezbollah and Hamas for the escalating violence and recognizing Israel's right to defend itself - although they called on the Jewish state to show restraint.

"We cobbled together a very important statement,"
President Bush told reporters.

"I am most pleased that the leaders came together to say, look, we condemn violence. We honor innocent life," Bush said before heading into a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "For the first time, we've really begun to address with clarity the root causes of the conflict ... and that is terrorist activity - namely Hezbollah, that's housed and encouraged by Syria."

Bush also asserted that the militant Islamic group is financed by Iran. However, the G-8 statement makes no mention of Syria or Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters that Russia blocked the effort to name Syria.

"If we don't have enough grounds to blame somebody, we cannot ... put them in documents on such a serious state level just based on assertions," Putin said.

The leaders of major industrialized countries - the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada - convened Monday for their final sessions with seven leaders of the developing world. The nations represented include a trio of emerging economic powerhouses - China, India and Brazil.

Those talks focused on more traditional summit fare, such as restarting stalled global trade talks and implementing a major debt relief program for the world's poorest nations that was announced at last year's summit.

Bush, who also met individually with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva, said that the two would discuss "how we can move the Doha round forward," referring to the stalled trade talks being conducted by the 149 member nations of the World Trade Organization.

In his meeting with Singh, Bush called a recent agreement to share nuclear technology with India "a wonderful deal" despite criticism that the agreement could undermine efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

The G-8 leaders had struggled to come up with a unified position on how to deal with the escalating warfare between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

The leaders' statement said extremist groups cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into violence. It also urged Israel to exercise restraint in its military campaign.

The statement was a compromise between a U.S. position strongly supporting Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist attacks and the views of other G-8 countries that Israel was engaging in excessive force.

The statement was carefully written so that different countries could claim it said different things. French President Jacques Chirac said it was evident from the statement that the G-8 was calling for a cease-fire on both sides of the conflict.

But Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, disagreed, saying, "There was no push by any country for a cease-fire."

The Bush administration insisted the call for halting Israeli airstrikes was conditioned on Hezbollah releasing captured Israeli soldiers and ending missile attacks on Israel, although the statement was not clear on these points.

The U.S. view was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the soldiers must be returned unharmed and attacks on Israel must stop. "Then, of course, also the Israeli military action must be ended," she said.