Israeli aggression

While Israeli aggression against Lebanon remained unabated, on Sunday alone at least 45 people were killed and 11 injured in repeated air strikes. Later on Monday, 16 rescue workers were killed in a mindless attack in Tyre.
According to press reports, almost all of those killed and injured between Wednesday and Sunday last week were civilians, and the Lebanese cabinet has also accused the Jewish state of using banned weapons. The provocation for this barbarity has been the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah to demand the release of Arab prisoners, apparently, in a bid to ease off pressure on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Gaza has been under heavy military assault since last month when a resistance group kidnapped an occupation soldier to press for the release of over 1000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children. The occupation forces in Gaza have murdered a number of people and also arrested eight members of an elected Palestinian cabinet, including the deputy Prime Minister, and 20 legislators.
Hezbollah, has the singular distinction of having forced Israel to withdraw from an occupied Arab territory, southern Lebanon, after 22 years of armed struggle. However, Israel still retains a small piece of Lebanese territory, Sheiba Farms, giving Hezbollah a reason to continue to fight the Zionist state's policy of aggression and expansion.
Since the latest escalation of hostilities in the Middle East coincided with the G-8 summit at Saint Petersburg, leaders of the world's most powerful nations held emergency talks on the outbreak of fresh Arab-Israeli conflict. A statement issued at the end of the talks said, "The most urgent priority is to create conditions for a cessation of violence that will be sustainable." That indeed should be the priority of anyone who has any respect for human life as well as territorial integrity and sovereignty of a small country like Lebanon. Presumably, these leaders are also worried that the conflict might spread to other countries in the region with unpredictable consequences.
As it is, the US is in deep trouble in Iraq, and the mess it has created in that unfortunate country has allowed Iran to emerge as a key player in the regional politics. It is also known to have close links with Hezbollah. Hence, even though it would be tempting for the pro-Zionist neo-con clique ruling in Washington to use this opportunity to sort out all the regional 'irritants', such as Syria and Iran on the pretext of their support for Hezbollah, the situation in Iraq counsels them restraint.
But as usual full US support is available to Israel in its aggression against Lebanon. No wonder, the Lebanese government complained on Sunday that the UNSC has been purposely delaying intervention to stop Israeli attacks so as to allow it time to force Lebanon to surrender to its terms.
The conditions that the G-8 has identified for a "sustainable" cessation of violence are of short-term nature. These include "an end to Israeli military operations and the early withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza", and a halt to "extremists'" shelling on Israeli towns as well as the safe return of Israeli soldiers and the release of the arrested Palestine ministers and law makers. However, while President Bush said Israel had every right to defend itself against terrorist activity, his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, dismissed calls for temporary truce, since according to her, that would not address the underlying threat to Israel's security.
As a matter of fact, she is right, by the neo-con connotation of the term which is not acceptable to the Arabs. Israel cannot go on usurping other people's lands and bringing death and destruction on the Palestinians living under its occupation, in the name of security of its own people.
For a time it seemed to have come to the realisation that the Arabs would never agree to its terms, when it signed the Oslo Accords on the basis of a "land-for-peace" formula. But then after dragging its feet on the implementation of that agreement, it abandoned the peace process completely resorting, once again, to state terrorism in order to crush the Palestinian aspirations for independence. Considering the indefatigable Palestinian struggle against 39 years of Israeli occupation - the longest in modern history - the only way to achieve a sustainable cessation of violence in the Middle East and security for the Israelis is for the Zionist state to vacate, as per UN Security Council Resolution-242, all Arab territories it occupied through an act of war.