placing the palestinian struggle

Naji Dahi n.dahi12 at gte.net
Wed Apr 3 15:45:11 PST 2002



> In exchange for Syria supporting the anti-Iraq coalition, it was relieved
of
> billions owed in foreign debt and its control of Lebanon was essentially
> rubberstamped by the Bush administration.

I doubt that Syria was relieved of its debt, but it did get a green light to control/occupy Lebanese politics.


> Why is Syria's occupation of Lebanon any more legitimate than Israel's
> occupation of the West Bank. When I travelled in Syria, I met
Palestinians
> there who were quite bitter about the second-class treatment they suffered
> under the Assads.

Syria's occupation of Lebanon is way different than Israel's ocuupation of the West Bank and the Gza Strip.

First, syria was invited into Lebanon by the government of Lebanon when the country was falling apart into civil war back in 1975. Syria's intervention in Lebanon was always designed to keep the country together and to prevent any one of the Lebanese factions from winning in the war. As such, during the first phase of Syrian intervention in Lebanon the Syrian army struck agianst the PLO and the progressive forces of Kamal Junblat who was trying to overrun the Christian controlled regions. Thereafter, when the Christian phalange forces got too strong, allied themselves with Israel and tried to challange Syrian presence in Lebanon, Syria switched alliances to the Muslim/Leftist forces of the country. Syria was very adamant about keeping Lebanon as a united state. It feared that a fractioned Lebanon might draw Isreal into Lebanese politics and this might draw Syria into a war with Israel that it did not want. The first Assad knew fully well the limits of Syria's power and he did not want a dircet confrontation with Israel.

Unlike Israel, Syria's presensce in Lebanon is not opposed by UN resolution 242 and 338. UN resolution 242 orders Israel to leave the occuppied territories and go back to the 1967 borders. Syria's total control of Lebanon, like it or not, has effectively ended the Lebanese civil war. The security situation in Lebanon is much better now than it was in from 1975-1990. All of downtown Beirut has been rebuilt. Israel's control of the West Bank and the Gaza strip has lead to a lot of bloodshed and destruction. I do not see the same happening in Lebanono as a result of Syrian control. Do you?

Nor is Syria trying to settle its population in Lebanon. Syria accepts the territorial entity known as Lebanon. Lebanon still has its seat at the UN. There is still a lebanese currency, culture, army, legislature, president. Syria is not redirecting the water of Lebanon to Syria. Israel rations the water of the West Bank giving large amounts of it to settlers and leaving a bare mininmum for the Palestinians. All these institutions still function, allbeit, within the realms that are acceptable to Syria. So Lebanon as a state still exists and Syria did not seek to wipe it off the face of the earth. Israel, on the other hand, seeks to destroy the PA, settle the West Bank with more Jews from around the world and eliminate any vestiges of a Palestinian nationhood.

The fact remains that a large portion of the population of Israel are Jews
> who were driven out of Yemen, Iraq, Morocco and other Arab states, so the
> injustices highlighted about Israel are mirrored by its neighbors. When
> Israel is referred to just as a "settler state", the Mizrachi/Sephardic
Jews
> native to the region are made as invisible and their indigenous rights in
the
> region are as delegitimized as many on the left rightly accuse Israel of
> delegitimizing Palestinian rights.

How do you account for the fact that the sephardic Jews lived in Yemen, Iraq, and Morrocco for so long and were not kicked out until the state of Israel was established? Why weren't they kicked out before 1948? Why did the leaders of the Arab states wait until 1948 to kick the Jewsish population out? I in no way condone what happend to the Jews being kicked out of the Arab countries, but it was a reaction on the part of the Arab states to what happened to the Palestinians in 1948. I support the right of return for Jews and palestinians, each to the respective country that theyu were kicked out from.

Naji



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