Further Opinions on the Middle East Crisis

I walked down Cornmarket Street this afternoon in Oxford (the main shopping drag) and saw a group of people waving Palestinian and Lebanese Flags, protesting Israel's current military campaign. Having no connection to Lebanon, Israel or Palestine, and only receiving information through the media, allow me to share things from my perspective.

First of all, we have the Canadian Prime Minister saying that he doesn't want to send Canadian troops as part of a peacekeeping operation to southern Lebanon, saying instead that the "countries in the area should be responsible for resolving the conflict." Three days later, Bush and Blair call for a "multinational force to keep order in Lebanon." So kudos to our PM for totally missing the boat on that one. What else is new?

Meanwhile, Israel has been vastly stepping up their rhetoric. With audacious claims like "Wednesday's decision by key world powers not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive has given it the green light to continue," and "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

All right, now I know that talking about the Middle East, and especially Israel, is a touchy subject, but I absolutely hate this mindset. Making declarations which are 'absolute' in order to further your own agenda makes me nauseous. Take the first statement for example - just because a group of people can't come to a consensus doesn't mean that they don't want to. It's like claiming that because a jury couldn't decide whether to give a convict 10 years in jail or 15 years in jail that he should be allowed to go free! He definitely should not be allowed to go free, they just couldn't agree on how to punish him. And the second quote is equally revolting. It is essentially Israel giving themselves permission to kill innocent civilians. What about people in southern Lebanon who don't have the money to travel anywhere else? Or the means? It does not automatically mean that EVERYONE is associated with terrorists. In fact, these are the exact claims that terrorists make themselves, i.e. everyone in The West threatens us, therefore you are all targets. Unthinking dogmatism has no place on this planet, least of all when it comes to ending peoples' lives. Furthermore, today Israel has rejected a UN-proposed 3 day truce which would allow time for humanitarian aid to be delivered. The reasoning for this was laid out by an Israeli government spokesperson as follows:

"There is no need for a temporary, 72-hour ceasefire because Israel has opened humanitarian corridors to and from Lebanon," Pazner told reporters.

"It is Hezbollah who is deliberately preventing the transfer of medical aid and of food to the population of southern Lebanon in order to create a humanitarian crisis, which they want to blame Israel for," he said.

This, despite the fact that Hezbollah has killed around 50 people in Northern Israel where as Israel has destroyed infrastructure throughout Lebanon and killed over 600 people, including 4 UN observers. Speaking of which, "The UN Security Council issued a statement voicing 'shock and distress' at the deaths, after the US blocked calls for harsher criticism of Israel." Now, I'm not anti-Israel by any means, and I certainly don't think Hezbollah was right in kidnapping Israeli soldiers. That said, it is blindingly obvious that Israel has the greater military might, and instead of using it responsibly, they flaunt it while continuing to act like they're the persecuted ones. That's just not right, in my eyes.

It's not all one-sided though. The Lebanese Prime Minister isn't helping a terrible amount by backing Hezbollah 100%. King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia has also threatened to go to war if peace options fail. And I'm fairly certain Iran and Syria wouldn't have a problem following him. If this were to happen, it would be interesting to see where the U.S., U.K. and U.N. stand in all of this.

*sigh* I just want people to stop killing each other.

Feel free to comment on this one. Like I said before, it's not like I've made up my mind on this issue (or any other, for that matter). I'm always open to new information...this is just the opinion I've formed from what I've been exposed to.