How Israel and the US hope to destroy Hezbollah
BEIRUT — “I’ve got these [expletive deleted] just where we want them Maura! Watch the 1000 slow cuts as we shred Hezbollah–who do they think they are? And we’ll do it by using 1757 and this time we’re going all the way. I told Israel to stay out of Lebanon because the IDF can’t fight against Hezbollah plus the whole region would burn. I will handle this and it will be my Christmas present to Lebanon,” so said Jeffrey Feltman in a conversation with his former office staffer, now US Ambassador to Lebanon, Maura Connelly, during an October 17, 2010 visit to MP Walid Jumblatt at his Clemenceau residence.
On December 12, 2008, Naharnet.com reported that “Former US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman presented Prime Minister Fuad Siniora with what the American diplomat described as his personal Christmas present to Lebanon.
Mr. Feltman assured PM Siniora that he will force Israel out of the Ghajar village before the end of 2008.”
As it turned out, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and Lebanon never did receive Feltman’s promised 2008 Christmas present and Israel still has its tanks and troops in Lebanon’s Ghajar village even as pressure mounts for ending its four-year illegal occupation of North Ghajar which, in violation of UNSCR 1701, Israel invaded in July 2006 and from which it has refused to withdraw.
This holiday season Jeff is again assuring his Lebanese allies that he’s Santa Clause and Hezbollah’s head will adorn his sleigh during his Christmas Eve rounds. The reason for his optimism is that the US and Israel are quietly confident that they can achieve with UNSCR 1757 what was intended but fell short with UNSCR 1559, which is aimed at stripping Lebanon’s Resistance of its defensive weapons. On November 11th, Israel’s Vice Premier and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom predicted that “an STL indictment against Hezbollah will lead to the implementation of Resolution 1559 and the forced disarming of the Party as well as the collapse of the effort at a Syrian-Lebanese-Iranian-Turkish alliance.
THE GRAND TROPHY WOULD BE HASAN NASRALLAH
The US-Israel project is said to be based on elaborate computer models among other calculations and includes the expectation that members of Hezbollah, possibly even Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, will be indicted, tried and convicted, in absentia of course, of involvement in the February 14, 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
The US State Department Office of the Legal Adviser has proudly assured the White House that because its office insisted back in 2005 that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon be established under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, anyone who the STL convicts will face sure UN justice. Chapter Seven allows for the use of unlimited international armed force to implement any verdict that the STL hands down.
Israel, serial violator of international law including more than 60 UN Resolutions is also busy boasting that international law supports the Tribunal and that high priced law firms around the world can be hired if necessary to back up the legal work of the STL office of the Prosecution, led by Daniel Bellemare of Canada.
Within hours of Israel instructing US Secretary of State Clinton, not to worry, that there is no way for the STL to be stopped or its final judgment sidetracked and all the US has to do is fund it, the White House announced an additional $10 million for the Tribunal and got the UK to pony up another $1.8 million. More cash is expected from France. Today the STL is flush with cash and it will likely remain so.
Based on interviews with two former staff members of the Office of the STL prosecution, as well as numerous public statements by US officials, there are reasons to take seriously the “all the way” intensions of Jeffrey Feltman and Silvan Shalom. Their governments assert the that STL is legitimate under both international law, given that it was established in accordance with a U.N. Security Council resolution issued under Chapter 7, and also under Lebanon’s legal and constitutional principles contrary to what is being claimed by Hezbollah and STL’s adversaries in Lebanon.
According to one State Department lawyer, “If the STL indicts and convicts one member of Hezbollah we win. A driver, a boy scout, we don’t care. The Security Council can do a dozen things to topple Hezbollah. For example, can you imagine the effect of Iranian style sanctions if applied against Lebanon until the killers are handed over? The Lebanese only care about money and with all those sects hating each other anyhow, the country will quickly implode in recriminations and civil war if they’re forced to diet a bit…. And very tough sanctions against Syria? The US and Israel will only have to collect the pieces and do what should have been done half a century ago and that was to install governments that understand regional and international realities.”
Efforts by Hezbollah and Syria to derail the STL are viewed in Tel Aviv and Washington as futile, because Lebanon is thought to have nothing to say about the STL. It is created by the UNSC and nothing the Lebanese Parliament, Cabinet or people do will affect it. The only reason Lebanon is in the picture at all is that it is the crime scene. And it happens to harbor some suspects. Apart from that, Lebanon is essentially irrelevant to the STL work.
One congressional staffer advised: “What we will use are all the many tools, enforcement and other, available to the international community to bring down Hezbollah. The coming phase need not even look like the US and Israel have much involvement. We will just watch like football spectators from the sideline as the UN employs myriad legal and political measures to bring to justice those found to be involved. That’s the beauty of this and it’s also why Hezbollah is very, worried. Or for sure they should be.”
Another staffer in the same office added in an email: “Don’t you see, the STL is the perfect international law instrument to destroy Hezbollah, achieve regime change in Syria, create deadly Sunni-Shia conflicts everywhere, cause civil a war in Lebanon and topple the Mullahs in Iran. It’s going to be like Cheney never left office.”
Following the STL indictments, assuming they include Hezbollah, Washington sources expect that the Israel lobby will launch perhaps history’s most massive and expensive international media campaign of defamation against Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and they will be joined by the US government and some of its European allies, plus the ever-rentable Micronesia.
The objective will be to essentially unite the world’s population against the presumed Shia killers of the Sunni Prime Minister. More than a dozen US-Israel projects that failed in Lebanon over the past decade, from an airbase in Kleiat to street battles to cutting optic telecommunication lines may come back into play when stamped with the imprimatur of international law and full UN Security Council legitimacy.
The current project includes continuing the public threats and hyping threats that Israel is ready to attack Lebanon whereas the Pentagon believes Israel is not ready and may never be ready again and is being rejected regionally and internationally.
According to Loyalty to the Resistance Parliamentary bloc member MP Kamel al-Rifai, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and U.S. Senator John Kerry informed Lebanese officials during their recent visits to Lebanon that Israel is serious in its threats to attack Lebanon and might just attack. Al-Rifai told the daily Asharq al-Awsat on 11/15/10 that Hezbollah was told that the American administration gave Israel the green light to do as it pleases in Lebanon, adding that Kerry sent this message to the Syrian leadership as well.
For these reasons the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is seen as an extraordinary US-Israel opportunity to maintain control of the region. The coming media campaign will employ especially sharp personal attacks on Sayed Nasrallah who the US and Israel fear as an Arab leader in the mold of Nasser and as a Muslim leader without modern parallel. Sayed Nasrallah is seen as a leader who has the potential to heal many Shia-Sunni divisions and for this, he is viewed in Washington and Tel Aviv as very dangerous.
HEZBOLLAH’S ASSESSMENT
On November 11, 2010 Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah discussed the STL at a neighborhood Martyr’s Day gathering in South Beirut. Offering his views on the US-Israel project, he told his audience that Hezbollah knows the US-Israel strategy, which he explained is:
“Let’s accuse Shiite men of assassinating the most important Sunnite leader and consequently issue an indictment in this regard. We will call on the Lebanese government which had signed an agreement with us to arrest these men. The latter would set to arrest them and dispatch army troops and security forces which would be engaged in a clash with the Resistance.”
Nasrallah continued, “Primarily this is the plot. It is not important for the Americans, the “Israelis” and the sponsors of the STL what would happen or what might happen in Lebanon. Lebanon in itself is not important, neither is martyr Hariri, the Sunnites, the Shiites, the Muslims, the Christians, the Future Movement, March 14 Bloc nor March 8 Bloc. What is important is Israel, and “Israel’s” interest is that the Resistance be hit, eliminated, isolated, besieged, weakened, snatched away from its popular environment and its image be distorted. Its morals, belief and will must be harmed and consequently, it would be ready to be hit or to surrender to this plot.”
Hezbollah MP Nawaf Mousawi advised the media a short time later that: “The Resistance party is prepared for all scenarios”, adding that nothing would surprise Hezbollah…. Hezbollah has prepared a series of responses. Every option corresponds to a specific scenario. Thus if things are positive, we’re ready. But if things are negative and the efforts failed in reaching a solution to the crisis, we’re also ready. In brief, we’re ready to face all options,” Mousawi said.
Is this article for real? Because every anonymous quote in here sounds like you literally made it up.
dear mr genius fieldman,am verrry veerrry sorry to disipoint ur verry small brain of urs to tell tht ,every one in lebanon knows ho killed mr hariri .when the usa knew tht mr hariri and mr nasrallah met many times in district ,the(usa) knew tht harrire has become the best person to hezbollah and the only one ho will lose from harriri assasin is hezboullah becouse he became a good guy ho was affraid to lose his country ,thts when he put his hand with hezboullah to destroy israel .so pls field-man ,no one in the all world can fight hezboullah ,and if ur muslim ,you will know why .but am sorry to tell u tht ur born stupid and blind idiot person .tc and hope to see you thinking to invade lebanon .ciaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaao
The low intellectual knowledge of most American politicians never stops to wonder me, at one point i could understand the ignorance of the congress members , but not of those ” experts” or professional diplomat. now days i am not surprise anyway, and i am pretty sure that USA get where it is now , not because if it is intelligence but because their enemies were more ignorants, so in any given point in history the USA faces a smarter and with some grade of self confidence enemy , USA will always lose, i say that and i assure u, that u know nothing about the shia that is why you will lose all ur fight against them, 1979 Iran Vs USA, 1982 israel Vs leb, 1983 USA Vs leb, 2000 and 2006 u never won a fight against the shia and will never do.
I think the author is right about American and Israeli intentions form the Hariri Tribunel. I beleive Hizbollah is the last abstacle against the American-Israel ‘peace’ plan. The accusation of Hizbollah in Hariri murder will create a big rift between shiite and sunni moslems that will spread to Syria, and will eventually lead to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel up to the Litani river. The main purpose of all of this is to impose their hidden plan on Lebanon to divert most of the Litani river to Israel and the West Bank. Israel takes almost 90% of the West Bank water and will never return it back and the only way to have a viable Palestinian State is to divert water about 100 million cubic meter from Litani. It is all about water as was the case in 1967 war.
Regarding, who really killed former pm rafik harriri ,i think ,like the majority of the Lebanese people we believe that ,only Israel benefits from this assassination ,and the main target for Israel from that is the 1559 Resolution ,and consequently the resistance in Lebanon ,this was the first attempt,to put the sunniest and the shiits in confrontation against each other..the second attempt was the war in July 2008′,and the Israeli spying against the Lebanese communication,was to reconfirm this envolvement …
As I see, from all the comments above, I knew that all people have the same view that Hezbollah is innocent and they know for sure that Israel is the killer. “Franklin Lamb” the author of this article, he’s right, he just take the point of view and say what is going on, and what does USA and Israel try and plan to do, but what Mr Franklin Lamb didn’t know that Lebanon is gathered always against Israel and USA and against all the world when it comes to there community and their dignity , maybe they will try to isolate Lebanon from the world, but it’s a fake world made by America and Israel and the dictatorial countries , as they failed all this past years they will fail again now and always, try to make a revision for your past , what did you make, just tell me , killing and destroying, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and Pakistan and Lebanon , even in US, and EUROPE, they are afraid from terrorist , that you make it and let them born ,it all your fault , don’t try to reverse the situation to blame us…
The extent of Zionist influuence on US foreign policy and their control of most politicians in Washington is very troubling. It appears the US is prepared to make war with everyone rather than drop its support to the criminal Zionist entity Israel.
If Hizbollah is defeated through trickery or otherwise, others will take its place. Palestine was stolen through terrorism and genocide and its people are now under occupation or in refugee camps. No amount of trickery or conspiracy or falsifying history will hide this crime or make it an accepted reality. There will always be those who will fight on liberate Palestine if it takes a thousand years.
Thank you Mr. Franklin Lamb,
Allow me to tell you that I am not shocked at all and it is not a surprise to me, as a Lebanese and a human being living in this part of the world, to see yet another twisted American Foreign Policy episode of “Playing God” and sacrificing the fate of other nations. For what you may ask? ONLY for the benefit and comfort of a bloody monster and blood thirsty ZIONIST STATE called Israel.
Just be aware Mr. Feltman, Lebanon is not a “Piece of Cake”, our will to resist the American-Israeli diseases is stronger than you can ever imagine. Finaly, the everlasting gift of having a MAN like Hasan Nasrallah amongst us can not and will not be touched by a “dirty Amerina Poltician” like you. Wishing you the worst Christmas ever Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge-Feltman.
Yes, I am Christian and I defend a Lebanese, Honest and Patriotic Shiit MAN called Hasan Nasrallah. Surprised? don’t be, there are thousands like me in Lebanon.
Like Hezbollah will not attack Israel as a result of what they would see as an Israeli attempt to disrupt the internal peace of Lebanon?
by the way just to add one more thing…. whats the objective of this article? The entire Arab world now read it and know what the American-Israel plot against the Sunnis and Shiites is (and there is no such plot by the way)? It made Nasrallah look like a hero and the Americans as the villains. And quoting Feltman is just ridiculous because he’s not the President of the United States nor is he the Secretary of State, and I think he is just some big headed left over from the bush era who thinks he can solve everything on his own.
I love the logic that it’s “ridiculous” to quote a government official if they are not wither the president or Sec of State. Brilliant.