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There's no mystery about what the US interest is in the Middle East. In the words of its high-level officials in the 1940s, the energy resources there were seen as "a stupendous source of strategic power (and) one of the greatest material prizes in world history." But Israel also has an oil-related motive driving its current policy of aggression it and the US may extend next to Syria and Iran. Israel gets a large amount of its oil from the Caspian Basin which will be made all the easier by the opening of a new pipeline from that region to the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel needs the oil, and the US needs a strong military ally it can depend on in the Middle East to assure it maintains control of the oil there and from the Caspian and that US and European Big Oil giants are guaranteed handsome profits from it. It's all part of a new "Great Game" to dominate these two vital energy-rich regions that instead of pitting the old British Empire against Tsarist Russia that lasted nearly 100 years until the early 20th century (when the issue wasn't over oil) now finds the US with Israel's help challenging Russia and China.As part of its plan to make it work, Israel (and the US) wants to depopulate South Lebanon to control it and likely eventually build permanent settlements there just as it did in Gaza and now continues to do illegally in the West Bank and the Golan. To do it, it's now warning the civilian population there to "ethnically cleanse" itself voluntarily or the IDF will terror-bomb it out forcibly which it's doing daily. It's all part of Israel's long-standing policy made clear by its leaders since its first prime minister David Ben-Gurion first stated it - that all means will be used including war to "redeem the land" occupied by the Palestinians and other Arabs in the way for "the chosen people." Current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made that position very clear when he addressed the US Congress joint session on May 24, 2006 saying "I believe and to this day still believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land." Unstated by the prime minister was exactly what he claims that "entire land" to be. World leaders though understand Israel's aims well enough and thus know what its assault against Lebanon and Palestine is all about. It's why they haven't challenged it, aren't likely to beyond the meaningless and customary pro forma disingenuous calls for "restraint on both sides," and thus are aiding the Jewish state accomplish its land-grab in the short run. Over time, however, it's quite another matter.
Israel tried before and failed in 1978 and again in 1982 to seize and permanently occupy South Lebanon hoping eventually to annex the territory as it did the Golan and the parts of the OPT it wanted. Now it's trying again in Lebanon and wants to annex more land in the OPT. It's plan is to seize this land, destroy the resistance in it, crush both nations politically and succeed this time unlike before when Hezbollah forced it out of South Lebanon and the Palestinian resistance in part prevented its annexation of all areas of the OPT it wants for settler development.
Israel wants no repeat of that this time and thinks it can have the land it wants and avoid being expelled trying to hold on to it through a proxy force it can control - this time a NATO-led one it's allied with militarily and which it knows will serve its interests and not those of the Lebanese people. It wants NATO there to act as its enforcers, engage Hezbollah or other resistance that may challenge it, have it do its killing and dying for it, and relieve Israel of the burden of funding a long and costly operation or being humiliated again if it fails, which almost certainly will happen in time.
Israel's Aim in the OPT
So far in the OPT, Israel is going it alone handling the dirty job of crushing a defenseless people, so it hasn't asked for an international military force to come in as its enforcers there. Once it ends its assault, Israel ideally wants the Palestinians to be their own enforcers as was the arrangement agreed to by Yasser Arafat under the 1993 Oslo Accords and later related agreements. The Israelis know current Fatah party leader and Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to take on the job for them as he proved his Israel-friendly bona fides at Oslo and in the 1990s. Will the Palestinian people and its Hamas leadership submit to their subjugation any more this time than in the past when they eventually resisted it? And will Hezbollah and the Lebanese people be any less resistant? There's little chance of it in both countries and thus every chance the carnage now ongoing may ebb and flow but will continue unending until the people of both lands win the freedom they're unlikely never to stop fighting for.
Israel Must Finally Be Held to Account For Its Criminal Acts
Israel's crimes so far have gone unchallenged because most world leaders have supported them overtly or tacitly. In so doing, these leaders and other officials are guilty criminal accomplices under Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter that states: "Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the....crimes (listed in Articles 6b or 6c of the Charter) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." By this standard, the entire US Senate and all but eight members of the US House are also criminal accomplices by result of their votes during the week of July 17 to unconditionally support Israel's "supreme international crime" of illegal aggression against Lebanon and Palestine unjustifiably claiming Israel has the right of self-defense guaranteed it under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
It's long past time that Israel no longer be allowed to get away with its crimes and for its officials responsible for them to be held to account for them. Since world leaders on their own won't act (especially as they're guilty co-conspirators), mass worldwide public protest and action must do it for them and demand either the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague indict and prosecute Israeli officials responsible for what they've inflicted on Lebanon and the OPT or the UN General Assembly must act in its stead to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel. It has the authority to do it under Article 22 in the UN Charter and twice before used it for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The ICC was established in 2002 in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. It's authorized by its signatories to act as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by the 1945 Numerberg Charter drafted by the US and its main WW II allies to try Nazi war criminals. The court was established to adjudicate in the kinds of cases Israeli officials should be brought to book for. However, while Israel signed the final act of the Rome conference creating the ICC, it voted against the statute to remain free of its authority. People demanding justice thus may have no other recourse than to have the UN General Assembly act to establish a special International Tribunal for Israel that will use its authority to prosecute culpable Israeli officials in the Hague if they can be brought there or in absentia if they're not.
Israel has a long history of criminal and abusive acts. Long before the June 25 incident near Kerem Shalom crossing that began the current conflict, the UN Human Rights Commission held that Israel had violated nearly all 149 articles under the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and in so doing is guilty of war crimes according to international law. The Commission also determined Israel as an occupier in the OPT has committed "crimes against humanity" as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. By its actions since June 25 against the Palestinians and especially after July 12 in Lebanon, Israel has compounded its crimes by committing many more of them.
It remains for an international court of law to name those individuals culpable for these crimes and to state the specific charges. But the one accusation above all others should be that Israel violated the most important of all binding international laws under the UN Charter to which Israel is a signatory. The Charter authorizes a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." In other words, necessary self-defense is permitted.
Israel's extreme responses following the capture of three of its soldiers, known in both cases to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretext to initiate them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated illegal aggression and, as such, are what the Nuremberg Tribunal that tried the Nazis called "the supreme international crime." The Nazis found guilty of it were hanged and justice was served. Under Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter, Israel also committed the flagrant war crimes of "plunder of public (and) private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, (and) devastation not justified by military necessity." Under Article 6c, it's guilty of the "crimes against humanity (of) murder..., deportation and other inhumane acts committed against (the Lebanese and Palestinian) civilian population(s), before (and) during the war."
The Nuremberg Tribunal set a high standard which it followed based on the principles of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact signed by 63 nations after WW I to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy. The Pact didn't prevent WW II, but what it stipulated formed the basis for "crimes against peace." The Nuremberg Charter described those crimes as "the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a premeditated war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties." It prosecuted the Nazis for what they did including the ones charged with this supreme crime. The UN is surely authorized to act to establish an international criminal court just as the victorious US, UK and USSR allies acted on their joint authority during and after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals.
Israel also has a long and disturbing record of flagrantly violating or ignoring international laws and norms. In its past conflicts as well as the current ones, besides committing "the supreme international crime" of illegal aggression, it's using weapons banned under the Hague Convention of 1907, the 1925 Geneva Protocol and succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions that outlaw the use in war of chemical, biological or any other "poison or poisoned weapons. In the 1973 war and currently, Israel is using depleted uranium (DU) weapons that are radioactive and chemically toxic and thus clearly fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the 1907 Hague Convention.
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