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Cost of failure

When a tearful Prime Minister Fouad Siniora pleaded with Arab leaders on Monday not to let his country remain a ‘punching bag’ of Israel, he did not merely speak for the people of Lebanon but for the whole world.

But are the Arab and Muslim leaders, who have done little meaningful so far to stop this aggression and mass murder of innocents, in a position to help Lebanon now? If the Arab and Muslim leaders can hear the voices rising from the Arab-Muslim street, they would do everything in their power to stop this wholesale annihilation of a beautiful country and its peace-loving people. Consequences of failure could be unthinkable for the Middle East and the world.

So Arab foreign ministers, who were at the UN yesterday meeting US secretary of state Condi Rice and other world leaders, must send a strong message of unity and purpose and push for immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. The world powers, especially the US, which still refuses to rein in Israel, must be made to realise the seriousness of the situation in Lebanon.

If Arab and Muslim leaders fail to assert themselves and do not persuade the Bush administration to end the war on Lebanon, they would face a serious backlash from their people, who are outraged by the ineffectiveness of their regimes and the world community to stop this bloodshed.

Lebanon had been right to reject the ludicrously one-sided and hypocritical draft UN resolution proposed by France and supported by the US. The draft UN resolution, in its present form, will not be able to force Israel to hold fire. Which is what the neo-cons in the administration wanted.

In fact, the neo-cons in the Bush administration and their friends in the Lobby are said to be unhappy over the fact that Ehud Olmert’s boys have failed to take out Hezbollah and its leadership despite four weeks of relentless bombing. They expected Israel to make use of the breathing space provided by the administration that looked the other way as Israeli jets bombed Lebanon in the first two weeks of the campaign.

It is time for the Arabs to tell the world powers that the Middle East is not prepared to accept any more unjust, half-baked and one-sided solutions to its problems, resolution or no resolution. What the region needs is genuine peace, not clever-by-half diplomatic games by big powers. Arab leaders and the global movers and shakers cannot afford to ignore this message from the Arab and Muslim street.