Hezbollah politicians back peace package

[MsMagnificent]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060729/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_fighting_peace_package_4

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.

The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour Cabinet meeting — was the first time that Hezbollah has signed onto a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.

The package falls short of American and Israeli demands in that it calls for an immediate cease-fire before working out details of a force and includes other conditions.

But European Union officials said Friday the proposals form a basis for an agreement, increasing the pressure on the United States to call for a cease-fire.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday they too want an international force dispatched quickly to the Mideast but said any plan to end the fighting — to have a lasting effect — must address long-running regional disputes.

<snip>

But the agreement presents Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a package she might find hard to ignore when she returns to the region.

It starts out with an immediate cease-fire. Following that would come:

• the release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners; Israeli withdrawal behind the border; the return of Lebanese displaced by the fighting.

• moves to resolve the status of Chebaa Farms, a small piece of land held by Israel and claimed by Lebanon. The proposal calls for the U.N. Security Council to commit to putting the area under U.N. control until a final demarcation of the border.

• the provision by Israel of maps of minefields laid during its 18-year occupation of the south.

• "the spreading of Lebanese government authority over the entire country," meaning the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, with the strengthening and increasing of the small, lightly armed U.N. peacekeeping force currently there.

The provisions do not spell out the order in which the steps must take place, but Saniora has said the government cannot spread its authority in the south unless the Chebaa farms issue is resolved. Israel's hold on Chebaa has provided Hezbollah with a rationale to maintain its arsenal and its "resistance" against Israel.

U.N. experts have previously determined that the territory is part of Syria's Golan Heights, now held by Israel. But Syria has said the patch of land is Lebanon's.

[Kagemusha]

1. So peace when Israel treats Lebanon like a real boy and not a wood dummy

Fat. Chance.

[IndianaGreen]

2. The new axis of evil (US, UK, Israel) doesn't want a ceasefire

Straw warning on Israeli action

Israel's military action "could further destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation", former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has warned.

He said he backed Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells' comments that Israel's "disproportionate" action "only escalates a dangerous situation".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5228016.stm

The “Honest Broker’s” Plan for occupying Southern Lebanon

By Mike Whitney

The UN is powerless to stop the fighting and Kofi Annan is too frail to call for an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to eject the US from the Security Council. Thus, the institution continues to slip further into disrepute lacking the moral authority to be effective and quickly becoming a “rubber-stamp” for US/Israeli aggression.

Bush’s delusional vision of a “New Middle East” now extends from Baghdad to Gaza City, and from Beirut to Kabul; each “failed state” now bearing the imperial imprimatur; each decimated Muslim homeland is just an inconsequential part of the grand colonial schema.

This is the war on terror promised to us by western, white elites who aim to control the world’s last dwindling resources and reshape the Middle East into a modern-day Israeli Kingdom. (“A Clean Break; Strategy for Securing the Realm”)

Now that 4 countries are awash in the blood of civilians and progressively deteriorating into chaos; who will still foolishly argue that this is not a war on Muslims?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14269.htm

The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy'

Blair and his masters regard ceasefires as a weapon, a means to a political end

By Robert Fisk

07/29/06 "The Independent"

Blair and his ignorant Foreign Secretary have played along with Israel's savagery with blind trust in our own loss of memory. It is perfectly acceptable, it seems, after the Hizbollah staged its reckless and lethal 12 July assault, to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon and the lives of more than 400 of its innocents. But hold on a moment. When the IRA used to cross the Irish border to kill British soldiers - which it did - did Blair and his cronies blame the Irish Republic's government in Dublin? Did Blair order the RAF to bomb Dublin power stations and factories? Did he send British troops crashing over the border in tanks to fire at will into the hill villages of Louth, Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal? Did Blair then demand an international, Nato-led force to take over a buffer zone - on the Irish, not the Northern Ireland side, of the border?

Of course not. But Israel has special privileges afforded to no other civilised nation. It can do exactly what Blair would never have done - and still receive the British Government's approbation. It can trash the Geneva Conventions - because the Americans have done that in Iraq - and it can commit war crimes and murder UN soldiers like the four unarmed observers who refused to leave their post under fire.

And what of the Hizbollah, faithful servants of Syria and Iran, and its leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, God's first servant, perhaps, but that of Damascus and Tehran a close second? I have long believed that its attack across the Israeli border was planned months in advance. But I've now come to realise that Israel's assault on Lebanon was also planned long in advance - as part of the American-Israeli project to change the shape of the Middle East. The idea that Nasrallah is going to kneel before a Nato general and hand over his sword - that this disciplined, ruthless, frightening guerrilla army is going to surrender to Nato - is a folly beyond self-delusion.

But Blair and Bush want to send a combat force into southern Lebanon. Well, I shall be there, I suppose, to watch its swift destruction in an orgy of car and suicide bombings by the same organisation that yesterday fired another new longer-than-ever range missile that landed near Afula in Israel.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14264.htm

[rodeodance]

3. well, condi, looks like the ball is in your court:

.....But the agreement presents Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a package she might find hard to ignore when she returns to the region.

[mom cat]

4. And Israel responds to the EU Peace Proposal with the massacre of Qana.

SHAME!

[stray cat]

5. The international force that has been there for years did nothing

Hezbollah has nothing to lose with peacekeepers from the UN - they have been there for a decade and never stopped Hezbollah from a single action.

[Totallybushed]

6. sounds like

total victory for Hezbollah.

[Igel]

7. Yes.

But that would require looking at things from Hezbollah's POV, not ours.

[Totallybushed]

8. Why shoudl we do that? n/t

[creeksneakers2]

9. It not fair for Israel/US to hold up a cease fire

for conditions that they can't even name like the composition of the international force. There's no reason to keep bombing to get concessions that Hezbollah might agree to anyway.