The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned between top Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration.
by Wayne MadsenJuly 24, 2006
Wayne Madsen ReportThe Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned between top Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration. On June 17 and 18, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. There, the impending Israeli invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon were discussed. After receiving Cheney’s full backing for the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu flew back to Israel and participated in a special “Ex-Prime Ministers” meeting, in which he conveyed the Bush administration’s support for the carrying out of the “Clean Break” policy — the trashing of all past Middle East peace accords, including Oslo. Present at the meeting, in addition to Netanyahu, were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is very old and suffers from dementia and Ariel Sharon remains in a coma after a series of strokes.
Lebanon and Gaza invasions planned last month in Colorado meetings between Netanyahu, Sharansky, and Cheney.
After the AEI meeting, Sharansky, who has the ear of Bush, met with the Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Philadelphia’s Main Line Haverford School sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum who this past Thursday was beating the war drums against Syria, Iran, and “Islamo-fascism” in a fiery speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose board Santorum serves along with Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Davis.
Our Washington sources claim that the U.S.-supported invasions of Gaza and Lebanon and the impending attacks on Syria and Iran represent the suspected “event” predicted to take place prior to the November election in the United States and is an attempt to rally the American public around the Bush-Cheney regime during a time of wider war.
Who is WAYNE MADSEN ?
Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, nationally distributed columnist, and author who has covered Washington, DC, politics, national security, and intelligence issues since 1994. He has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, Counterpunch, and the Intelligence Newsletter (based in Paris). Madsen is the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999, co-author of America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II, and the forthcoming Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates. Madsen is also the author of The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan, 1992), an acclaimed reference book on international data protection law.
Madsen is a former U.S. Naval officer who was assigned to the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. He also has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. He has also worked for the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.
And some more info about the “Clean Break Policy” and what’s really going on.
Title: MADSEN: U.S./ISRAEL PLANNING FOR ATTACK ON LEBANON
Source: Wayne Madsen Report
URL Source: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Published: Jul 21, 2006
Author: Wayne MadsenJuly 21, 2006 — The current Israeli assault on Lebanon was stage-managed between the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and neocons in the Bush administration, according to well-connected sources in the nation’s capital. The Bush administration had prior knowledge of and supported Israel’s planned attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, the sources have revealed. In addition, there was no move by the Bush administration to warn Americans in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or Lebanon to leave the areas before the Israeli invasions. No travel warnings were issued to U.S. citizens in an attempt to mask Israeli attack plans, an action that resulted in last-minute Dunkirk-like sea evacuations of foreigners from Lebanon.
The first indication that Israel pre-planned its assault on the Palestinians came early this month when the Israelis began denying entry to the West Bank to Palestinians holding U.S. passports. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem refused to intervene with Israel, claiming it was the decision of a sovereign nation. The denial of entry to Palestinian-Americans was a violation of the Oslo Accords and the Geneva Conventions. The United States does not officially recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Washington insiders report that the Bush administration’s coordination with Israel in the attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah involve the official adoption of the white paper, “A Clean Break: New Strategies for Securing the Realm,” as U.S. policy. The “Clean Break” document, authored in 1996 by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and other neocon operatives, was written at the same time the program for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was drawn up by the same neocon players.
The current U.S.-Israeli strategy of bombing and invading Lebanon is a follow-up to four years of covert activities by the Pentagon, White House, and Mossad in Lebanon that involved the car bombing assassinations of top Lebanese officials in order to clear out Syrian forces from Lebanon. The assassinations of Elie Hobeika, George Hawi, and Rafik Hariri were all carried out to destabilize Lebanon and force the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon. Syria was blamed by the Bush administration for all the car bombing assassinations in Lebanon.
Israel’s border exercise that saw the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese side of the border and the contingency plans involving the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas in Israel, near the Israeli-Gazan border, provided a pre-text for the Israeli attack on Gaza and Lebanon. Similar plans have been drawn up to respond to a Syrian “capture” of Israeli troops in Lebanon near the Syrian border or from the Golan Heights. That will be used to justify a joint Israeli and American attack on Syria, with Israel entering from Lebanon and the U.S. entering from Iraq.
The carrying out of the joint Israeli-U.S. attack plan for Lebanon, Syria (and eventually, Iran) is the reason why the United States has stymied UN attempts to seek an immediate cease-fire. The intent of the Bush administration is to see a widening of the conflict. Unconfirmed UN ambassador to the UN John Bolton, appearing on Fox News, laid out the future blueprint for the joint U.S.-Israeli regionalization of the war in the Middle East when he stated, “I think that if you look at the support that Iran and Syria have given groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad that really the reckoning we need here is a reckoning, not just with the terrorist groups, but with the states that finance them.”
. . .snip. . .
No, nothing surprises me any more, it just makes me more and more angry.
For more on Clean break you might find this site enlightening, since it has been in the planning since 1996
IRmep site
I have never been a violent person, but when it comes to BushCo, I am rethinking my position. . .grrrrrrrrrr
Update [2006-7-26 14:54:14 by shirlstars]:: I know many people find Mr Madsen without any credibility at all. My surprise is that some people assume that because his report is the subject of this diary that we ALL BLINDLY believe every word of it. We are thinking people. I offer this information for us to think about and decide on our own if any or some of it is plausable, and do further research if we wish more information. We are thinking people. Credible sources is an interesting phrase for me because I have a very difficult time finding any at all on either side of these questions. Sometimes Sy Hersch, maybe. . .but then again who else? Hmmmmmmmmmm. I hold any of the information I see or hear as possible certainly not as truth. I don’t know if we will ever see truth again from any quarter in my life time. Probably we have never seen truth in this country in anyones life time.]
These people are really starting to piss me off!!
I think we had better have our own October Surprise ready for these maniac KILLERS.
I’m so afraid, shirl; I can see these soulless monsters dropping nuclear weapons on Iran BECAUSE it will inflame more hatred for America around the world, and they need bigger and better enemies to unify the country behind Bush. I hoped I’d never live to see a WWIII, but the world is at the mercy of psychopathics with a deadly arsenal.
sorry…. psychopaths
I made a Freudian amalgamation of pathetic and pyschotic.
Don’t be afraid, that’s what they want from us, trembling, abject fear. These guys are so POWER hungry, MONEY grabbing that there is nothing else that matters to them. They don’t care who or how many die in other countries or OUR country. They truly have no souls. If the 1.2% of the mega rich can control the world then they will have accomplished their goals. IT IS NOT ABOUT ANYTHING BUT MONEY, MONEY, MONEY AND POWER, POWER, POWER. You can see even in their wording in the Policy statement, they call it the “Realm.” They want to be the emperors of the world, the Realm!
THEY WILL DO ANYTHING TO FULFILL THEIR GOALS. I am getting my pitch fork ready for my personal insurrection, make no mistake about it. I have my garlic necklace around my neck already to ward off the blood sucking vampires that they are! 🙂
I’ve been doing a tapdance lately. Pretending that when I see what’s being done in my name I want to react in a non-violent way. I think I might have asked for an Oscar, but then again, I think that those who know mw, know that I feel a visceral need to effect a physical change. As Tracy would say…I’m healthy ;o)
I don’t envision a long retirement for George Bush. I see something more along the lines of the fate of Il Duce. A brutal reawakening, followed by a long, long, sleep.
Me, too, super.
I’ve been committed to non-violence since the 60’s.
Now I find myself wondering how bad they have to be before I do something of substance.
I think they are ultimately going to destroy the world, and because this is our country, we are obligated to stop them.
I keep remembering the holocaust; if all the good people had stepped up when that first rock was heaved through a Jewish shopkeeper’s window, the brown shirts could not have come to power.
This administration had stepped over the line with greater and greater arrogance because no one seems able to stop them. At home and abroad, they parade their contempt for law, truth, and humanity.
I fear they can’t be stopped short of revolution.
Is it time to go to jail ?
It may well be time to go to jail. I look pretty good in orange, anyway!. I want to be on the front line of the revolution if it comes to that, and it looks more and more like that is the only thing that will get anyone’s attention.
Yeah,
it’s time for them to go to jail. I joke a lot. I try to relieve the pressure that others feel and that I feel, but if I’m honest, and at this point dishonesty gets us nowhere, anymore than pascifism, it looks like it might take something a little more hands on. I am not afraid. The only thing I fear is that my children will be swept up alongside me. But, I’ve taught them that nothing is free. That sometimes force needs to be met with force. Am I proud of it? No. No. Not at all. But I think that there comes a time, when time is short, that people of conscience need to make a decision. Will you allow the continued slaughter of children, who live with violence every day? Or…will you realize that the only thing the warmongers understand is a righteous citizen, standing toe to toe, refusing to back down, who will give as good as she/he gets, and more.
I’m sorry to the peaceful people on this site. I’m sorry for my anger and my need to act. I’ve done what I could to quell it. It’s not working and no one is listening. Time to stand. Call it civil disobedience or incivil disobedience. It’s time…for me.
I have been thinking for a long time about a wrinklies revolution. The anti-war, civil rights activists from the Viet Nam era are all at least sixty now. We’re old, pissed off, have nothing to lose, and not in very good health. We have seen much that we sacrificed for wiped out by this administration. Mass civil disobedience arrests would choke the prison hospitals with elderly dissidents. Better yet, children all over America would be asking, “Daddy, why is Grandmama in jail?”
I really really like this. I remember asking the same question when I was a teenager, but it was about my mother and why she was in jail for refusing to take cover during an air raid drill in Woodstock, NY.
Perfect susan! Count this old lady in!!
I am MORE than ready to roll. Any time.
unfortunately violence has a role to play. If someone breaks into your house and assaults your wife and you attack that person, your violence in this instance is completely justified. Orienting ourselves to human history and the world we live in, upholding non-violence as a way of life does not preclude violent behavior in exceptional circumstances. The role that propaganda and corporate media brainwashing plays in the way the Bush regime promotes escalalting violence in the middle east is a complicated subject.
You reap what you sow. We have tried. We’ve protested. We’ve tried civil disobedience. We’ve tried working within the system. We’ve tried winning elections. Make of the elections what you will, but even if they are pristine, I will never accept that the winning faction represents American values, let alone human values. If they represent the new American state of mind, then they are welcome to the adjustment that they deserve. They’ve forgotten. This country was never founded with an eye for Imperialism. It was Imperialism that it opposed, as far as I can can tell. It was founded with a hand outstretched for the oppressed. Come on in. Give it the best you got. It’s a fair shot for all. But Goddamn, it isn’t what this country stands for now. Now even close.
I’m a simple man. I don’t understand the intricacies of foreign policy in the 21st century. All I know is that my country is a force for death in the 21st century. We arm countries with an eye for a gluttonous future. Children burn, while their clothes survive….all the while our emissaries speak of , prudence. While our media touts our caring, and our reluctance to take a strong stand. That’s why Rice’s arrival in the Mid-East is called a “Surprise”. The only thing that remains a surprise to me is that there are enough real Americans to fall for the catapulting of the propaganda. A rising is what is needed. A reckoning. A cleansing. What remains standing after the revolution might not be recocnizable as America as we’ve known it, but it can only be better. Better. Something to strive for. Something Better. Something worthy of the Declaration of Independence and all it’s lofty words.
As an individual I feel so far removed from the realities of the day. I’ve involved myself in Peace movements…from day one, when I was 6 years old. That’s almost 40 years now.
Susan speaks of all those who gave it all when it counted. It counts now. Again. Despite the heart and the blood given back then. I was there, as a child. I have them to thank for my awareness. My need to fight.It’s where I learned who I was, and how I’d approach the world from day one. But…..where are we? How have we made a difference? And I say we, knowing that I’m extra-generationally connected to Susan and my Mother and those who fell in Ohio and those who fought at the democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, and those who sacrificed for Peace in 1972.
If there was ever a time to stand up and say, The world can stand no more, if ever there was a time to say that you will kill another child over my dead body….now is the time.
I’m going. I’ve been going for a long time now. I can’t take it any more. I won’t ask for acclomplices. I won’t ask you to risk your families. All I ask is that you think about where Peace is, as a principle, and where we’ve gotten. Where do we need to be? What will make a difference?
Goddmn, I’m sick.
Great,
I sound like an Archist! :o)
I stand by what I say. You all know it too. Bush will never recognize a Peace Movment. Focus Group. That’s what we are. Are you…any of you, satisfied with the headway we’ve made?
Anarchist….doh!
But you’re the best Archist I know. I’m standing right there beside you, luv.
Smiles, Hugs and take up the pitch forks,
They done pissed me off.
Shirl
No, you don’t sound like an anarchist to me!
I don’t often talk about spiritual-type subjects, but I happened to pick up “Discourses” by Meher Baba, which I read and studied years ago. “Discourses” was written during the WWII era and there are four chapters on violence vs. non-violence and at first I thought, this is all dated stuffed aimed at people during the WWII era, how boring, what does this have to do with us in the here and now? But then I was surprised as I read on to find that the issue of violence is not as clear cut as I would have liked to believe, and these texts are just as relevant as they were when they were first written.
For example, Meher Baba makes a sharp distinction between the violence commited by those who invade another country and the violence committed by those who have to defend themselves and their country from invaders. He talks about the “non-violence of the weak” (which I interpret as cowardice) and the non-violence of the strong (which I interpret as civil disobedience a la Gandhi). The sad part was seeing America so differently now from when I first read those texts in the 1970s. Now we are the invaders and have put ourselves in a position where violence against us is justified. Sorry to have to say it, but now the majority of the world sees us that way, vs. our role in Europe during WWI and WWII.
So anyway, I bring this up because — I repeat — you do not sound like an anarchist to me at all. Last night on the way home from work I was listening to someone on KPFK who had written a book called “Fooled Again,” I did not get his name or hear the entire interview, but I agreed one hundred percent with everything he was saying about the Bush regime and the way they have hijacked this country by disenfranchising the majority.
This writer made the point, and it is very obviously true, if you think about it, that the policies of the Bush regime do not represent the majority of this country and could never be enacted through majority endorsed legislation. Stem-cell research is just a case in point, since the unelected Tyrant Bush flies in the face of the majority to impose the will of a small percentage of religious extremists and fanatics on the rest of the country.
It’s refreshing in a way to be reassured that Americans are really not that stupid, they did not elect the Tyrant Bush, but they did go to sleep at the wheel while their government was hijacked by a handful of right-wing extremists, and they are still asleep at the wheel, in my opinion.
So how do we wake America up? Where is the fight to take our country back, if not at the polls? Whoever was talking on KPFK predicted that 2008 will be another rerun of 2004, which was a rerun of 2000, and I’m sorry, but I totally believe that. You cannot enact voter reform through legislation when the electoral system is broken, just can’t do it. That would be like asking a broken down car to fix itself.
So how do we wake America up and when she wakes up, how does she take her government back, fix the broken electoral process, and reinstate democracy? How?
I’m not advocating violence, I would never do that since, like you, I have always been a “peacenik.” But I don’t know the answer, really don’t, and that’s what’s so disturbing.
One way I keep my sanity in these times is to allow myself to “dream”, now and then. I dream of seeing mass non violent demonstrations all across this country. I dream of seeing the elders in the front rows of each one of them, backed up by younger generations of men and women who can “see”, who have had enough, and who are ready to put their lives where thier mouths have been for so long.
I dream of crowds of us so huge we shut down business as usual, so large that nothing can go on as usual until attention is paid. I dream of seeing the jails unable to hold us all, and the politicians running aruund frantically trying to save their pathetic asses, while the sheeplike media finally remembers what the hell they are there to do. And I comfort myself with the knwoledge that if I could make this happen, I would do it today.
It is useless, I know, expect that it helps me stay sane.
The answer is in the question. Civil disobedience on a totally unprecedented massive scale.
It’s a good dream.
What will stir the media and capture the imagination of great masses of people ?
Cindy tried with a hunger strike. Not enough.
Public group suicides for peace ?
I’m not that keen on self immolation, but I know that death is inevitable in a more immediate sense than I did when young. We’re all going to die, some of us sooner than others. I’d like my death to mean something, to be of value, as I believe my life has been. I guess I’m saying, why waste a perfectly good death which could be used to the political purpose of saving younger lives and restoring our nation’s decency and democracy ?
I’d rather go out in a blaze of activism than slip away quietly in a nursing home.
Maybe it wouldn’t even require mass numbers or our deaths.
Maybe it would only take smaller numbers, well coordinated, acting simultaneously, in many strategic places, well prepared with whatever dramatic form of street theater type dramatic protest material we could come up with, and the press well informed in adbance of something that would be sure to draw viewers.
Recruit enough elders and others in wheelchairs and with assistive devices to be on the front lines, and see if the police would rough up old folks and disabled people with the cameras running. Make sure some of us weight a lot.
Use big signs and meaningful movement and song, not shouts and screams. Stand/sit firm. Do not move. No matter what. Watch them just try to make power chairs and scooters move after the keys or controls etc have been thrown into the crowd. Let them be seen yanking old people and disabled people out of their wheelchairs chairs. Don’t move. Make them move us.
This is GREAT, scribe!
I never saw the police mess with the disabled veterans who protested the war.
I’m going to start working on this. It’s transportation, mainly, because I know lots of people who don’t go to demonstations BECAUSE they have wheelchairs or walkers.
They are bastards of war.
You say it like it is!
I agree, Shirl, DJ says it like it is!
A bit OT but, the only thing that really, absolutely shocks me about your report is that the meeting took place in Haverford College. It is a Quaker school, with very good progressive politics, linked with both Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore and the fact that they would be willing to host people like Daniel Pipes and Rick Santorum is just beyond shocking.
Maybe it was a larger event–with various viewpoints being expressed….
,,,with my gut reaction and intution about what is going on in the middle east right now, but I would also appreciate a diversity of sources since Madsen’s credibility has been called into question.
I’ll try a google some more on “Clean Break Policy”, or any of you that wish to can fill us in further.
Why is Madsen’s credibility in question? Something I don’t know?
Wayne Madson claimed to have a copy of a check used to pay off election fixers in 2004, when pushed he provided a bogus check that he wrote, claiming that this is what a real check would look like if he actully had it!?!?!?!?
Another time he claimed to be in hiding because the CIA was trying to kill him.
I don’t doubt the gist of the story, but he has no credibility IMHO.
Thanks for the INFO.
Like I said, I don’t believe much of what I hear, see or read out there, so I take this piece by Madsen with a grain of salt, just like I do everyone elses stuff.
However, I don’t doubt the over all plan or at least the possibility or even a high probability. These guys are into everything, as we know.
I would rather be overly suspicious of such actions and have it turn out to be wrong than to be quietly saying, “no it couldn’t be. . .not here. . .not my government.”
At this point and with the unimaginable lies we already know about, it seems to me anything at all is possible.
As I said previously, the NO CEASE FIRE stand is all it took for me. That is criminal and it is just stupid to accept it. That usually leads you to a WHY WOULD WE NOT WANT A CEASE FIRE? Too many possibles there, and far too many of them look probable to me.
Again, thanks for your info.
.
pretty well debunked the $29mln Canadian bankcheque story …
Wayne Madsen, show me the money! ◊ by Eternal Hope
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
And now the UN is saying Israel deliberately targeted the building where 2 UN Peacekeepers were killed.
It seems the people running these governments (certainly that includes ours) are all MURDERERS!
A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.” The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.
Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions–which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, “New Middle East”–undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s “peace process.” That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass– including a palpable sense of national exhaustion–and forfeited strategic initiative. The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel’s efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital, and to respond with resignation to a spate of terror so intense and tragic that it deterred Israelis from engaging in normal daily functions, such as commuting to work in buses.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government comes in with a new set of ideas. While there are those who will counsel continuity, Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform. To secure the nation’s streets and borders in the immediate future, Israel can:
+ Work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from the slogan, “comprehensive peace” to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power.
+ Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas and nurturing alternatives to Arafat’s exclusive grip on Palestinian society.
+ Forge a new basis for relations with the United States–stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West. This can only be done if Israel takes serious steps to terminate aid, which prevents economic reform.
This report is written with key passages of a possible speech marked TEXT, that highlight the clean break which the new government has an opportunity to make. The body of the report is the commentary explaining the purpose and laying out the strategic context of the passages.
A New Approach to Peace
Early adoption of a bold, new perspective on peace and security is imperative for the new prime minister. While the previous government, and many abroad, may emphasize “land for peace”– which placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat — the new government can promote Western values and traditions. Such an approach, which will be well received in the United States, includes “peace for peace,” “peace through strength” and self reliance: the balance of power.
A new strategy to seize the initiative can be introduced:
TEXT:
We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading “land for peace” will not secure “peace now.” Our claim to the land –to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years–is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, “peace for peace,” is a solid basis for the future.
Israel’s quest for peace emerges from, and does not replace, the pursuit of its ideals. The Jewish people’s hunger for human rights — burned into their identity by a 2000-year old dream to live free in their own land — informs the concept of peace and reflects continuity of values with Western and Jewish tradition. Israel can now embrace negotiations, but as means, not ends, to pursue those ideals and demonstrate national steadfastness. It can challenge police states; enforce compliance of agreements; and insist on minimal standards of accountability.
Securing the Northern Border
Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:
+ striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.
+ paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.
+ striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.
Israel also can take this opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime. Syria repeatedly breaks its word. It violated numerous agreements with the Turks, and has betrayed the United States by continuing to occupy Lebanon in violation of the Taef agreement in 1989. Instead, Syria staged a sham election, installed a quisling regime, and forced Lebanon to sign a “Brotherhood Agreement” in 1991, that terminated Lebanese sovereignty. And Syria has begun colonizing Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, while killing tens of thousands of its own citizens at a time, as it did in only three days in 1983 in Hama.
Under Syrian tutelage, the Lebanese drug trade, for which local Syrian military officers receive protection payments, flourishes. Syria’s regime supports the terrorist groups operationally and financially in Lebanon and on its soil. Indeed, the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon has become for terror what the Silicon Valley has become for computers. The Bekaa Valley has become one of the main distribution sources, if not production points, of the “supernote” — counterfeit US currency so well done that it is impossible to detect.
Text:
Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria’s require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side’s good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.
Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan “comprehensive peace” and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting “land for peace” deals on the Golan Heights.
Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy
TEXT:
We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship.
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.
But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the ‘natural axis’ with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.
Since Iraq’s future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.
Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.
King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.
Changing the Nature of Relations with the Palestinians
Israel has a chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians. First and foremost, Israel’s efforts to secure its streets may require hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas, a justifiable practice with which Americans can sympathize.
A key element of peace is compliance with agreements already signed. Therefore, Israel has the right to insist on compliance, including closing Orient House and disbanding Jibril Rujoub’s operatives in Jerusalem. Moreover, Israel and the United States can establish a Joint Compliance Monitoring Committee to study periodically whether the PLO meets minimum standards of compliance, authority and responsibility, human rights, and judicial and fiduciary accountability.
TEXT:
We believe that the Palestinian Authority must be held to the same minimal standards of accountability as other recipients of U.S. foreign aid. A firm peace cannot tolerate repression and injustice. A regime that cannot fulfill the most rudimentary obligations to its own people cannot be counted upon to fulfill its obligations to its neighbors.
Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfill its obligations. If the PLO cannot comply with these minimal standards, then it can be neither a hope for the future nor a proper interlocutor for present. To prepare for this, Israel may want to cultivate alternatives to Arafat’s base of power. Jordan has ideas on this.
To emphasize the point that Israel regards the actions of the PLO problematic, but not the Arab people, Israel might want to consider making a special effort to reward friends and advance human rights among Arabs. Many Arabs are willing to work with Israel; identifying and helping them are important. Israel may also find that many of her neighbors, such as Jordan, have problems with Arafat and may want to cooperate. Israel may also want to better integrate its own Arabs.
Forging A New U.S.-Israeli Relationship
In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy for two reasons: to overcome domestic opposition to “land for peace” concessions the Israeli public could not digest, and to lure Arabs — through money, forgiveness of past sins, and access to U.S. weapons — to negotiate. This strategy, which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the U.S. and Israel, and placed the United States in roles is should neither have nor want.
Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.
To reinforce this point, the Prime Minister can use his forthcoming visit to announce that Israel is now mature enough to cut itself free immediately from at least U.S. economic aid and loan guarantees at least, which prevent economic reform. [Military aid is separated for the moment until adequate arrangements can be made to ensure that Israel will not encounter supply problems in the means to defend itself]. As outlined in another Institute report, Israel can become self-reliant only by, in a bold stroke rather than in increments, liberalizing its economy, cutting taxes, relegislating a free-processing zone, and selling-off public lands and enterprises — moves which will electrify and find support from a broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders, including Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Israel can under these conditions better cooperate with the U.S. to counter real threats to the region and the West’s security. Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state. Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel’s survival, but it would broaden Israel’s base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense. Such broad support could be helpful in the effort to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is before November, 1996.
Conclusions: Transcending the Arab-Israeli Conflict
TEXT: Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them.
Notable Arab intellectuals have written extensively on their perception of Israel’s floundering and loss of national identity. This perception has invited attack, blocked Israel from achieving true peace, and offered hope for those who would destroy Israel. The previous strategy, therefore, was leading the Middle East toward another Arab-Israeli war. Israel’s new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response.
Israel’s new strategic agenda can shape the regional environment in ways that grant Israel the room to refocus its energies back to where they are most needed: to rejuvenate its national idea, which can only come through replacing Israel’s socialist foundations with a more sound footing; and to overcome its “exhaustion,” which threatens the survival of the nation.
Ultimately, Israel can do more than simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict though war. No amount of weapons or victories will grant Israel the peace its seeks. When Israel is on a sound economic footing, and is free, powerful, and healthy internally, it will no longer simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict; it will transcend it. As a senior Iraqi opposition leader said recently: “Israel must rejuvenate and revitalize its moral and intellectual leadership. It is an important — if not the most important–element in the history of the Middle East.” Israel — proud, wealthy, solid, and strong — would be the basis of a truly new and peaceful Middle East.
Participants in the Study Group on “A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000:”
Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader
James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS
Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates
Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University
Wow, that’s one amazing little read isn’t it now. Thanks shirl for putting the whole thing up. Sort of like a PNAC for Israel.
So they want to abandon the language of ‘comprehensive peace’ and substitute ‘peace through strength’..and also want to promote preemptive action to defend themselves…gee how familiar does that sound.
The economic ideas are straight out of bushco-make Israel strong by cutting taxes, selling off public land etc etc etc..whole thing is just spooky.
Thanks again for putting up the whole ‘Clean Break Policy’ statement and thanks also for the rest of the diary-lot of what Israel is doing now makes a lot more sense and also the almost insane stubbornness of bush/Condi refusing to call for cease-fire makes more sense to me now also.
It certainly makes more sense to me now.
What the crap is a “NO CEASE FIRE” stance? How the US or any country can actually stand up and say NO CEASE FIRE is waaaaaaaaay beyond the pale. It means go a head and murder the children, the civilian men and women, the innocents. . .and just maybe all of them are innocents, who knows.
I guess Rummy is pretty pleased that we were able to use our left over phospherous weapons from Faluja by shipping them off to Israel to use on the Lebanese.
Yeah, these criminals delight in murder, that should be pretty obvious by now.
Yet more treachery from the right.
Treacherary?
Yep!
The worst part is that they have a plan…and a conclusion.And while you and I are busy raising Holy hell about it…it’ll get done. Because we’re too complacent about it. That baseball bat of truth I was willing to wield last week wasn’nt as metaphorical as it seemed…..maybe. They’re taking your country.
A couple of folks over at MLW are a little freaked out that we would consider anything Wayne Madsen says is the truth. Well, here’s my view of it:
I do not believe anything I read, or see, or hear in the media. I believe nothing from this Administration and its minons. I take everything the dems say with a grain of salt and I certainly don’t give any credibility to the RightWingNuts.
I sort of figured that we are mostly grown up intelligent people here who can read, do more research (google), compare other info, etc and make up our own damn minds.
Frankly, I don’t take well to people telling me what to think, even if they turn out to be right. If there is credible evidence (besides kos says so) that Madsen is a lunatic, well then I will consider it. Meanwhile, most every talking head out there, whether in print media or TV/Radio is highly suspect as far as I am concerned.
I know that those reading here will use their own good judgment and decide where they stand.
The “No Cease Fire” stance is enough for me. These people are murderers.
A little off subject, but it appears if there isn’t a civil war in Iraq, W plans to start one. As he has promised to “restrain” Kurdish attacks into Turkey. Or as the article below, will Turkey follow Israel lead and follow Bush Doctrine and take the war to the Kurds in Iraq??
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/berga.php?articleid=9393
I don’t think he will have to do much. . .Not so sure what you would call Iraqis fighting and killing Iraqis but civil war. . .except it isn’t one unless Cheney says it is, I guess.
I have no trouble believing that this Administration and PNAC’ers and all their murdering subsidiary arms will do whatever it takes to foment WWIII and destroy the Middle East so they can take over all the Oil/resources. Turkey better watch their own backs. These people want to own the world, and if they can they will.
Excellent piece, thanks for that link. I saw somewhere in my travels online that Turkey wants NATO to get involved. I’m sure that’s a non starter. Iran has its own large Kurdish population that clamors for autonomy. Using Kurdistan as their base, Kurds are a thorn in the Iranian side. That’s why they’ve lobbed a few mortars into Iraqi Kurdistan.
I’m pretty sure Bush could care less about Turkey and the Kurds. Bush STILL couldn’t find Turkey on a map, even a big blownup map of the Middle East with big colorful letters and arrows pointing to it.
.
European Tribune — Mon Jul 24th, 2006 at 08:32:33 AM PDT
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm is the title of a neoconservative strategy paper for Israel that has come up here and there in commentary over the last week or so. Fran put up an item in Friday’s Breakfast, and Booman refers to it in this diary (linked to by Migeru).
Is A Clean Break of any interest? It was put together ten years ago, in another millennium — before 9/11, you know, changed everything. And the members of the study group at the think-tank Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies are all washed up these days, right?
…
A CONCISE AND EXCELLENT ANALYSIS!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I don’t know what to say here, usually I think of a pop song that expresses what I feel, but for this diary and this time it is Yeats:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I hope and pray we can help each other through this trauma.
Cheney really is evil, isn’t he? How can Americans be so naive?
The neocons really played their cards well on this one!
The Big Money tycoons are always behind the wars.
We need an organized labor revival in the US–like in Venezuela and Bolivia.
Otherwise the magnates are going to run us all right into the ground.