In his May 23 summit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President George W. Bush offered full U.S. support for Israel to attack Lebanon as soon as possible. Seymour Hersh, in the August 21 New Yorker, quotes a Pentagon consultant on the Bush administration's longstanding desire to strike "a preemptive blow against Hezbollah." The consultant added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it."

Israel was a willing partner. Although numerous Israeli press reports indicate that some Israeli officials, including top military officials, are furious at Bush for pushing Olmert into war, the Israeli government had been planning the attack since 2004. According to a July 21 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Israel had briefed U.S. officials with details of the plans, including PowerPoint presentations, in what the newspaper described as "revealing detail." Political science professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University told the Chronicle that "[O]f all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal ..."

Despite these preparations, the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties tried to present the devastating attacks, which took as many as 800 civilian lives, as a spontaneous reaction to Hezbollah's provocative July 12 attack on an Israeli border post and its seizure of two soldiers.

Some reports have indicated that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was less sanguine than Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or President Bush about the proposed Israeli military offensive. Rumsfeld apparently believed that Israel should focus less on bombing and more on ground operations, despite the dramatically higher Israeli casualties that would result. Still, Hersh quotes a former senior intelligence official as saying that Rumsfeld was "delighted that Israel is our stalking horse."

The recent announcement of a shaky ceasefire may represent only a minor speed bump in U.S. plans. After all, the attack on Hezbollah was only the first stage of what the Bush administration apparently hopes will be a joint redrawing of the Middle East map.

On to Iran and Syria?

On July 30, the Jerusalem Post reported that President Bush pushed Israel to expand the war beyond Lebanon and attack Syria. Israeli officials apparently found the idea "nuts."

This idea was not exactly secret. In support of the Israeli offensive, the office of the White House Press Secretary released a list of talking points that included reference to a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Max Boot, senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The article, "It's Time to Let the Israelis Take Off the Gloves," urges an Israeli attack against Syria. "Israel needs to hit the Assad regime. Hard," argues Boot. "If it does, it will be doing Washington's dirty work."

Iran, too, was in the administration's sights. T he Israeli attack on Lebanon, according to Seymour Hersh, was to "serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations." But first, the Bush administration needed to get rid of Hezbollah's capacity to retaliate against Israel in the event of a U.S. strike on Iran, which apparently prompted Hezbollah's buildup of Iranian-supplied missiles in the first place.

Starting this spring, according to Hersh, the White House ordered top planners from the U.S. air force to consult with their Israeli counterparts on a war plan against Iran that incorporated an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the chief of staff of the Israeli military and principal architect of the war on Lebanon, worked with U.S. officials on contingency planning for an air war with Iran.

The Bush administration's larger goal apparently has been to form an alliance of pro-Western Sunni Arab dictatorships-primarily Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan-against a growing Shiite militancy exemplified by Hezbollah and Iran and, to a lesser extent, post-Saddam Iraq. Though these Sunni regimes initially spoke out against Hezbollah's provocative capture of the two Israeli soldiers that prompted the Israeli attacks, popular opposition within these countries to the ferocity of the Israeli assault led them to rally solidly against the U.S.-backed war on Lebanon.

In Israel's Interest?

In the years prior to Israel's July 12 bombing of Lebanese cities, Hezbollah had become less and less of a threat. It had not killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade (with the exception of one accidental fatality in 2003 caused by an anti-aircraft missile fired at an Israeli plane that violated Lebanese airspace). Investigations by the Congressional Research Service, the State Department, and independent think tanks failed to identify any major act of terrorism by Hezbollah for over a dozen years.

Prior to the attack, Hezbollah's militia had dwindled to about 1000 men under arms-this number tripled after July 12 when reserves were called up-and a national dialogue was going on between Hezbollah and the government of pro-Western prime minister Fuad Siniora regarding disarmament. The majority of Lebanese opposed Hezbollah, both its reactionary fundamentalist social agenda as well as its insistence on maintaining an armed presence independent of the country's elected government. Thanks to the U.S.-backed Israeli attacks on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, however, support for Hezbollah, according to polls, has grown to more than 80%, even within the Sunni Muslim and Christian communities.

Even Richard Armitage, a leading hawk and deputy secretary of state under President Bush during his first term, noted that "[T]he only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."

Despite U.S. encouragement that Israel continue the war, Israel's right-wing prime minister has come under increasing criticism at home, with polls from the Haaretz newspaper indicating that only 39% of Israelis would support the planned expansion of the ground offensive. Meretz Party Knesset member Ran Cohen, writing in the Jerusalem Post, called earlier moves to expand the ground offensive "a wretched decision." Yariv Oppenheimer, general director of Peace Now, which had earlier muted its criticism of the attacks on Lebanon, noted that "[T]he war has spiraled out of control and the government is ignoring the political options available."

Not only have a growing number of Israelis acknowledged that the war has been a disaster for Israel, there is growing recognition of U.S. responsibility for getting them into that mess. A July 23 article in Haaretz about an anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv noted that "this was a distinctly anti-American protest" that included "chants of 'We will not die and kill in the service of the United States,' and slogans condemning President George W. Bush."

Members of Congress who have unconditionally backed Israel's attacks on Lebanon have responded to constituent outrage by claiming they were simply defending Israel's legitimate interests. In supporting the Bush administration, however, they have defended policies that cynically use Israel to advance the administration's militarist agenda.

Who's Anti-Semitic?

One of the more unsettling aspects of the broad support in Washington for the use of Israel as U.S. proxy in the Middle East is how closely it corresponds to historic anti-Semitism. In past centuries, the ruling elite of European countries would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, established certain individuals in the Jewish community as the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and moneylenders. When the population threatened to rise up against the ruling elite, the rulers could then blame the Jews, channeling the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scapegoats. The resulting pogroms and waves of repression took place throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

Zionists hoped to break this cycle by creating a Jewish nation-state where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling elite of a given country. The tragic irony is that, by using Israel to wage proxy war to promote U.S. hegemony in the region, this cycle is being perpetuated on a global scale. This latest orgy of American-inspired Israeli violence has led to a dangerous upsurge in anti-Semitism in the Middle East and throughout the world. In the United States, many critics of U.S. policy are blaming "the Zionist lobby" for U.S. support for Israel's attacks on Lebanon rather than the Bush administration and its bipartisan congressional allies who encouraged Israel to wage war on Lebanon in the first place.

Unfortunately, most anti-war protests in major U.S. cities have targeted the Israeli consulate rather than U.S. government buildings. By contrast, during the 1980s, protests against the U.S.-backed violence in El Salvador rarely targeted Salvadoran consulates, but instead more appropriately took place outside federal offices and arms depots, recognizing that the violence would not be taking place without U.S. weapons and support.

Israel is no banana republic. Even those like Hersh who recognize the key role of the Bush administration in goading Israel to attack Lebanon emphasize that rightist elements within Israel had their own reasons, independent of Washington, to pursue the conflict.

Still, given Israel's enormous military, economic, and political dependence on the United States, this latest war on Lebanon could not have taken place without a green light from Washington. President Jimmy Carter, for example, was able to put a halt to Israel's 1978 invasion of Lebanon within days and force the Israeli army to withdraw from the south bank of the Litani River to a narrow strip just north of the Israeli border. By contrast, the Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress clearly believed it was in the U.S. interest for Israel to pursue Washington's "dirty work" for an indefinite period, regardless of its negative implications for Israel's legitimate security interests.

Domestic Political Implications

Given the lack of success of the Israeli military campaign, U.S. planners are likely having second thoughts about the ease with which a U.S.-led bombing campaign could achieve victory over Iran. However, the propensity of the Bush administration to ignore historical lessons should not be underestimated. A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that "[T]here is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this. When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran." Indeed, on August 14, President Bush declared that Israel had achieved "victory" in its fight against Hezbollah.

The outspoken support of congressional Democrats for Bush's policies and Israel's war on Lebanon portends similar support should the United States ignore history and common sense and attack Iran anyway. Both the Senate and House, in backing administration policy, claimed that, contrary to the broad consensus of international opinion, Israel's military actions were consistent with international law and the UN Charter. By this logic, if Israel's wanton destruction of a small democratic country's civilian infrastructure because of a minor border incident instigated by members of a 3000-man militia of a minority party is a legitimate act of self-defense, surely a similar U.S. attack against Iran-a much larger country with a sizable armed force whose hard-line government might be developing nuclear weapons-could also be seen as a legitimate act of self-defense.

Ironically, political action committees sponsored by liberal groups such as MoveOn.org, Peace Action, and Act for Change continue to support the election or re-election of Congressional candidates who have voiced support for Washington's proxy war against Lebanon despite massive Israeli violations of international humanitarian law, its serving as a trial run for a U.S. war against Iran, and its being against Israel's legitimate self-interests. And, unfortunately, on the other extreme, some of the more outspoken elements that have opposed America's proxy war against Lebanon frankly do not have Israel's best interest in mind.

As a result, without a dramatic increase in protests by those who see Washington's cynical use of Israel as bad for virtually everyone, there is little chance this dangerous and immoral policy can be reversed.

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy In Focus Project. He is a professor of Politics and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).

The Congress needs to approve the move.

Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson said the administration's conceding to Israel's request underscores Washington's faith in Israeli economy.

In 2003, the United States approved a USD 9 billion aid package to Israel in the form of loan guarantees which allow Israel to borrow money on the international market for low interest rates.

Israel has used less than half of the fund leaving USD 4.6 billion in available cash.

Finance Minister Director General Yossi Bachar discussed the extension of the loan period with US Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmit.

Hirchson praised the Administration for expressing faith in Israel's economy.

Bachar will leave for New York on Wednesday where he will present to officials and investors the Israeli government's fiscal plans after the war in the north.

"Our nation is wasting no time in helping the people of Lebanon," he said. "America is making a long-term commitment to help the people of Lebanon because we believe every person ... deserves to live in a free, open society that respects the rights of all."

More than half of the $50 million in U.S. aid committed since the outbreak of Israel-Hezbollah hostilities has been distributed to the Lebanese people, Bush said, adding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has "led the diplomatic efforts" to establish humanitarian corridors, reopen Beirut's airport, and ensure a steady fuel supply to the country's power plants and automobiles for the facilitation of relief convoys and the transport of humanitarian aid.

The president also said 25,000 tons of U.S. wheat will be delivered to Lebanon in the coming weeks, and an oil spill response team is being sent to help the Lebanese government clean up an oil slick that is endangering communities along the Lebanese coast.

Other proposed U.S. assistance includes a $42 million package to help train and equip Lebanon's armed forces, and an upcoming presidential delegation of private-sector leaders that will visit the country to identify ways in which American businesses and nonprofit organizations can help. (See related fact sheet.)

The funds will be drawn from existing State Department resources, according to U.S. government sources.

For Israel, whose infrastructure was damaged by Hezbollah rocket attacks, the president said he would work with the U.S. Congress to extend the availability of loan guarantees to provide funds for rebuilding.

President Bush also urged the rapid deployment of an international force, as called for by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which he said is "essential to peace in the region" and to Lebanese freedom. He said the international force is needed to maintain the cease-fire and prevent Hezbollah from re-establishing itself as "a state within a state."

"The need is urgent. The international community must now designate the leadership of this new international force, give it robust rules of engagement and deploy it as quickly as possible to secure the peace," Bush said.

The United States, although not contributing troops to the 15,000-member force, will help with "logistic support, command and control, communications and intelligence." Bush also said his administration will work with the force's leadership after it is established to ensure United States is doing all it can "to make this mission a success."

He added that the United States is working with its international partners to organize and deploy the force. Citing France's understanding of regional issues and historical ties with Lebanon, Bush said he hopes France will contribute more troops.

IRAQ

Regarding Iraq, Bush said the United States has moved a brigade of troops from Mosul to Baghdad to try to quell the violence in the Iraqi capital and support the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The president said the people of Iraq "are showing incredible courage," and desire a peaceful, unified country. He said the country's security forces "remain united" behind the leadership, which is "determined to thwart the efforts of the extremists and the radicals and al-Qaida."

Bush said it would be "a disaster" to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq before its government "has a chance to defend herself, govern herself and ... and answer to the will of the people."

"We're not leaving so long as I'm the president. That would be a huge mistake," he said.

The transcript of the president's press conference is available on the White House Web site.

For additional information on U.S. policies, see The Middle East: A Vision for the Future.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

"A team from the council will test a sample from the crater in order to find out what kinds of radioactive materials it contains," Qobeisi told The Daily Star.

He added that the Israeli weapons launched on Khiam and the neighboring areas of South Lebanon "probably contained a high level of uranium."

The scientific team doubted, however, that the dust caused by these weapons was likely to contain the kind of radioactive materials which would later lead to cancers.

Copyright © 2006, The Daily Star.

"They talked about the current situation in the Middle East and options for moving forward," Swan said Saturday.

Lamont "is clearly committed to trying to figure out how as a senator he can be supportive of Israel and help to bring about a lasting peace in the region," Swan said. "I know that Ned was trying to get Peres' perception on the current state of affairs in the Middle East and the appropriate role for a senator to play."

Lamont won an Aug. 8 Democratic primary against U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is now running as an independent. Republican Alan Schlesinger is also in the race.

Lieberman is one of Israel's staunchest supporters in Congress. Pro-Israel political action committees donated to his primary campaign and urged their national membership to give generously if Lieberman was forced to run as an unaffiliated candidate.

Israel and the US are obsessed with disarming Hizbullah and confronting Iran. But a quarter of a century ago neither of these issues existed. How Hizbullah and Iran became so problematic is worth recalling. Until 1979 Iran under the Shah was a close ally and friend of the US and Israel, and Hizbullah was not even born. What happened in the three decades from the mid-70s to today? Many things. The most consistent one was that we all allowed the Arab-Israeli conflict to fester unresolved. Its bitterness kept seeping out from its Palestine-Israel core to corrode many other dimensions of the region.

The constant clashes between Israel and Lebanon since the late 1960s derived heavily from the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict that started with the 1948 war. Since Iran's 1979 revolution Islamist revolutionary zeal has found effective expression in its close association with Hizbullah, which Iranian revolutionary guards were instrumental in establishing and training. Tehran's assistance to Hamas today follows a similar pattern. A non-Arab power such as Iran exploits the resentment against Israel and the US throughout the Arab world to make political inroads into Arab regions. If the Arab-Israeli conflict had been resolved decades ago, Iran would not have this opportunity.

Hizbullah has many people working backwards. While the American-Israeli effort to disarm Hizbullah aims mainly to protect Israel, the fact is that Hizbullah has developed its military capability primarily in response to a need to protect Lebanon from repeated Israeli attacks in the past four decades. (Lebanese calls to disarm Hizbullah are motivated more by a desire to prevent the party from bringing more ruin from Israeli attacks, or to prevent it from taking over the country's political system and aligning it with Syria and Iran.)

The way to end Hizbullah's status as the only non-state-armed group in Lebanon is to rewind the reel, and go to the heart of the problem that caused Hizbullah to develop its formidable military capabilities in the first place. If we solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in a fair manner, according to UN resolutions, we would eliminate two critical political forces that now nourish Hizbullah's armed defiance: the Israeli threat to Lebanon, and the ability of Syria and Iran to exploit the ongoing conflict with Israel by working through Lebanon.

Iran has its own reasons, including some valid ones, for developing a full nuclear fuel cycle, though the potential atomic weapons capability that derives from this is more problematic. Iran's political meddling in Lebanon and other Arab lands is another issue. Yet it is linked umbilically to the assertion of Islamist identity, Shia empowerment, anti-western defiance and domestic challenges to autocratic Arab regimes - four dynamics that have often been associated with, and exacerbated by, the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel's persistent attempts to secure its place in this region by military force have always generated a greater Arab will to fight it, now also supported by Iran. Local attempts to secure its borders - occupations, surrogate armies, cross-border attacks, separation walls, massive punishment and humiliation of civilian populations - have not worked for Israel, and only generate more determined and capable resistance, as with Hizbullah. Israel will also fail in its desire to subcontract its security to foreign or regional states, as it is attempting to do through the international force in south Lebanon, or by having Turkey prevent arms shipments to Hizbullah from Iran.

Every tough issue in this region - Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, terrorism, radicalism, armed resistance groups - is somehow linked to the consequences of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The politicians and government leaders who dominate this region, or engage it from western capitals, all look like rank amateurs or intemperate brutes as they flail at symptoms instead of grappling with the core issue that has seen this region spin off into ever greater circles of violence since the 1970s.

A comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement is achievable from the Arab side, to judge by the repeated offering of the 2002 Arab summit peace proposal. Israel and the US must quickly decide if they too can become sensible and work for a comprehensive peace as the most effective way to reduce and then reverse the cycles of resentment, radicalism and resistance that now define much of the Arab-Islamic Middle East.

- Rami G Khouri is the editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star

© 2006 Rami G Khouri/Agence Global

Police said the president will be questioned under caution at his residence on Wednesday, and a complainant would be brought in for a confrontation with him.

The President's Residence declined to comment on the raid. In a statement issued after the news broke, Katsav's office said he would cooperate with the investigation.

"The president is interested in giving his full version and to prove the lies of the serious accusations," the statement said.

Investigators are searching the computers and documents seized for correspondence or other information that could shed light on the nature of the relationship Katsav had with the former employee and with other staff at the Residence.

The police have begun to decipher the information found on the computers, saying that they hoped the raid would lead them to information that could help the case.

The aim of the investigators was to accumulate further information so that their case is not based solely on differing versions of events by the two sides.

Investigators have yet to determine which specific charges will be brought against the president on the basis of the woman's accusations.

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that if the former employee's claims that she was powerless in turning away Katsav's advances are deemed credible, the investigation would then focus on possible rape charges against the president.

By law, intimate relations with a woman who is precluded from providing full consent by her own volition is considered rape. If, however, investigators find the relations were consensual, police could recommend charging Katsav with "forbidden consensual intercourse," a statute which forbids exploiting a position of authority in the workplace for the purposes of having sex.

Some two months ago, Katsav gave Attorney General Menachem Mazuz a letter, in which he said that he believed the former employee had tried to extort him, threatening that if he denied her requests she would accuse him of sexual harassment.

The woman consented to take a lie detector test about a week ago. The test included questions about the sexual contact between the employee and the president, and indicated that the woman had answered several questions truthfully. However, in other cases her answers were not unequivocal and the police were collecting testimonies to corroborate or refute her testimony.

About a month ago the special inquiry team in charge of the affair, headed by Brigadier General Yoav Sigalovitch, summoned the former employee to the station in Lod. At first they questioned her under warning on suspicion of attempted extortion. Later, however, she gave them a detailed account of her grievances against the president, although she did not submit an official complaint.

Police, who conducted the raid on Monday night, plan to question Katsav at his residence on Wednesday, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

At least two women have accused Katsav of harassing them. He has denied wrongdoing.

In a statement issued after the news broke, Katsav's office said he would cooperate with the investigation.

"The president is interested in giving his full version and to prove the lies of the serious accusations," the statement said.

Israeli presidents enjoy immunity from trial on charges related to their tenure in office, but are not immune from investigation, the Justice Ministry has said.