Former US Official Says Israel Inflicting 'deliberate collateral casualties'

Sunday, July 23 2006 @ 08:04 PM EDT

Lebanese Towards US and Israel: 'more hostility than ever before'

BBSNews 2006-07-23 -- Today Wayne White, who was Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Middle East and South Asia Analysis until March 2005 answered six questions by Ken Silverstein of Harpers Magazine. According to a bio at the Middle East Institute, White started his career working in public service in the Middle East in 1978 and:

Sinai Field Mission Watch Station at Mitla East during the mid to late 1970's. Image Credit: Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC) Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mid to late 1970's. Thirty-one years ago, "The Sinai Interim Agreement (known commonly as Sinai II) was signed on September 4, 1975. The key point of contention was the control of the strategic high ground of the Giddi and Mitla passes in west-central Sinai and the Israeli electronic signal collection (intelligence) station there. The passes are the primary route for large mechanized ground forces to cross the Sinai. Israel wanted to retain the station to provide defensive early warning. The key compromise of Sinai II was Israeli withdrawal from the Giddi and Mitla passes in exchange for tactical monitoring of the passes by the United States in combination with Sinai Field Mission Watch Station at Mitla East permitted national technical means (NTM). The UN provided 4,000 peacekeeping troops to perform observation and on-site inspections of garrisons in the limited force zones along the entire line of confrontation in the Sinai. The United States established a sensor system to monitor access to the passes and performed periodic overflights of the disengagement zone. A Joint Commission and Liaison System with representatives from all parties supervised and coordinated implementation of the agreement." [Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC) Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, New Mexico.] Unless something changes in the way that equality, even-handedness and the rule of law are applied to both Israel and the Arab world, thirty-one years from now we will still be seeing this conflict and death. A move towards legitimacy in solving the crisis in a lasting manner would be to implement all resolutions, this includes those that Israel has most egregiously been ignoring for almost four decades.

"White most recently served as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia. White also served as principal Iraq analyst and head of INR/NESA’s Iraq team from 2003 to 2005. He was Chief of INR’s Maghreb, Arabian Penninsula, Iran and Iraq division and State Department representative to NATO Middle East working groups from 1990 to 2002.

Mr. White served as Political Officer at the US interest section in Baghdad in 1983.

From 1978-1979, Mr. White served as a US Sinai Field Mission peacekeeper. White joined INR/NESA in 1979 as editor of INR’s Arab-Israeli Situation Report, and as an analyst for Iraq. He then served as Senior Analyst for Syria and head of NESA’s Lebanon Crisis Team."

From his credentials it is clear why Harpers chose him as an expert able to give a factual explanation with insight about what will likely come out of the current direction of US foreign policy as pertains the the most current crisis during decades of recurring violence, this latest; Israel destroying Lebanon.

What emerges from his answers to questions about the current situation is that this action on the part of the Israeli's, with American acquiescence, and indeed bombs on a rush order, will almost certainly make Americans and indeed the Israeli's less safe. Leading to another generation of people who have no hope of being treated fairly joining groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and continuing the endless cycle of violence.

White was asked, "Will there be any negative consequences resulting from the administration's relatively passive diplomacy?"

"Very much so. As I have noted, the Israelis have embarked on a campaign that will most likely make matters worse over the long term. This crisis will further erode the United States' credibility in the Middle East—and beyond. Despite clearly siding with Israel, Washington used to be regarded as a party quite often useful for intercession with the Israelis, but in this case the Bush Administration has seemingly given Israel a blank check to do whatever it wants for as long as it wants..." White further notes here that "By the end of the crisis, the cost of rebuilding Lebanon will be incredibly high and the rebuilding effort quite prolonged, leaving most Lebanese, aside perhaps from the hard-core Christian right, considerably more hostile to Israel—and the United States—than ever before. In this respect, I find scenes of devastated Lebanese urban areas not only appalling, but frightening."

White also answered that Israel's likely outcome from this "damaging" show of massive and apparently indiscriminate force which "(in this case, even deliberate) collateral casualties..." would probably not amount to much:

"To the extent that Israel meets with success, that success will be of questionable long-term value. From a large and enraged Shiite population, surely there will be thousands of recruits ready to replace Hezbollah's losses in personnel. Indeed, just as the emergence of Hezbollah came in reaction to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, other groups—most likely Palestinians from vast communities in and around Tyre and Sidon, or Sunni radicals from as far away as the Tripoli area of northern Lebanon—could also mobilize against the Israelis. In fact, not learning from the American experience in Iraq—that trying to crush a guerrilla movement with conventional military force and thereby inflicting significant (in this case, even deliberate) collateral casualties might only generate thousands of other potential fighters bearing various grievances—the IDF could find itself mired in the same sort of seemingly open-ended confrontation."

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