'New Middle East'

There's talk in Washington of "a new Middle East", a place where the moderate Arab majority refuse to allow the region to be plunged into conflict by troublemakers like Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran.

So is that realistic, or is it wishful thinking?

America's critics have certainly been quick to dismiss the idea of a new Middle East which they say is drawn up along lines that suit the US and Israel.


Although Hezbollah is a Shia organisation it has won huge respect amongst many Arabs at street level, as the only fighting force prepared to take on the might of the Israeli military

This week the Palestinian foreign ministry, itself reeling from Israeli air strikes, said the new plan was based on the illusion that the existing political forces in the region could be removed.

"What new Middle East?" snorted Lebanon's information minister. He said US proposals for a reformed Middle East had only led to death and destruction in Iraq.

And in Iran, the hardline press has even turned the idea on its head. "Hezbollah has disturbed all the West's equations in the region," trumpeted the conservative newspaper Resalat, adding: "Hezbollah is talking about a new Middle East - in which there is no room for Israel!"

The close relationship between Iran, Syria and the Shia Lebanese militia Hezbollah has prompted some to question whether Tehran was perhaps behind the latest flare-up of violence.

Repeated conflict

Just before it began, Iran was coming under heavy international pressure to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, suspected of leading to a nuclear bomb.

But Western intelligence sources say they have no hard evidence - either from informants or from intercepted communications - that Iran instructed Hezbollah to seize the two Israeli soldiers this month, and thence trigger the conflict in Lebanon.

But Iran, which would like to see Israel eliminated as a state, is clearly delighted that an Arab-Israeli conflict is once more back at the centre of world attention.

Iran helped establish Hezbollah back in 1982 in an effort to export its Islamic Revolution into the Arab world.

Since then Hezbollah has achieved some notoriety in pioneering the suicide truck bomb, blowing up US targets in Beirut and kidnapping Western hostages.

A map of Lebanon, Syria and Israel
Lebanon, Syria and Israel have always been uneasy neighbours

Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen have trained Hezbollah's Lebanese fighters and Iranian missiles are supplied to them through Syria.

Although Hezbollah is a Shia organisation, it has won huge respect amongst many Arabs at street level, as the only fighting force prepared to take on the might of the Israeli military.

They widely credit it with driving Israeli forces out of south Lebanon six years ago.

Political chessboard

This week, the yellow flags of Hezbollah have been fluttering in the streets of Gaza, while portraits of its bearded, turbaned and bespectacled leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, are on public display in Damascus souk.

All this is very annoying for the moderate, pro-Western governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

They don't like violent change and they don't like Hezbollah, they don't like Iran's current regime and they are wary of a new axis of Shia power stretching across the region, from Iran, through Iraq, to Lebanon.

The last thing those pro-Western governments wanted to see was a resurgent guerrilla force upsetting the political chessboard in the region.

Their rulers are all too aware of Hezbollah's appeal to their own populations, who grumble privately that this Lebanese militia has done more than their own timid governments have to confront what they call "Israeli aggression".

So a recent editorial in the pro-government Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh insisted that Hezbollah's "adventurous stance" had been confronted by the "reasonable stance" of a number of Arab countries.

"What is needed urgently now," said the editorial, "is an Arab strategic plan to confront the Iranian strategic plan." It was, it said, a matter of life and death.

So behind every conflict in this troubled region there lurk so many layers of conflicting interests, national, religious, and ethnic, sometimes working in concert, mostly not.

I have a bit of a challenge with the two Isrealis who were kidnapped. Someone was looking for a flashpoint in my opinion. It could have easily been caused by "western intelligence" for the sake of more chaos and the development of a "rationale" that moves toward an attack on Iran.

People aren't buying the nuclear build up argument. I have an aquaintance who is from Iran. He used to work in a print shop when he was still living there. They had to routinely stop work because of power outages , almost on a daily basis. The need for power is very real. It's not like they lack energy resource, but apparently they see that as too valuable of a resource to consume needlessly when the demand in their export market is so great. Their attitude on this, if true , is greater energy growth.

If the WMD argument isn't gonna work , what can the Whitehouse do ?

What do you think of Obadiah Shoher's views on the Middle East conflict? One can argue, of course, that Shoher is ultra-right, but his followers are far from being a marginal group. Also, he rejects Jewish moralistic reasoning - that's alone is highly unusual for the Israeli right. And he is very influential here in Israel. So what do you think? uh, here's the site in question: Middle East conflict