The Middle East fills all the front pages of the main European dailies: “The Lebanese lament the return to chaos” ( La Croix , 19/7), “The resistance of the Hezbollah causes a debate in Israel” ( Le Monde , 20/7), “The bloodiest day” ( El Pais , 20/7). Concerns are also expressed about the crisis in the German press. An editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (20/7) comments: “ As regards the military escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict, the international community is agreed about one fact: the blame is that of the radical Islamic forces (Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon) that launched rockets on Israel and overstepped the limits of the military offensive opened by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. This common line is documented by the declaration issued by the nations of the G8 in St. Petersburg and by the statement of EU foreign ministers. It’s at that point that the more or less concealed differences begin… But not only dissent: even unity can create problems. The Americans and the Europeans have inserted Syria and Iran, the two States that support terrorism, in a list of ‘pariahs’. And now, Teheran and Damascus have united the better to be able to shrug off the international pressure and increase their own destructive potential. Breaking this fatal alliance is one of the keys for a solution in the Middle East”. Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau (19/7) , Inge Günther notes: “In Israel the predominating opinion is that one of the most just wars in history is being fought… but the question is: what will happen afterwards?… It is clear that apart from the cessation of all hostilities and the release of the three Israeli hostages, what matters is to interrupt the monopoly of violence of the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. That is a difficult task that can be performed in the best of scenarios only with the help of a multinational peacekeeping force. Israel and the USA have not (so far) shown much enthusiasm for the idea, for two reasons: first, because time is needed to really place pressure on the Hezbollah before opting for a peaceful solution; second, because Olmert, like his predecessors, would like to avoid an internationalisation of the management of the conflict. Israel would prefer the forces deployed on the other side of the frontier to be exclusively those of the Lebanese army. But that’s pure utopia… This escalation in the Middle East, too, demonstrates the need to conduct negotiations and manage the crisis. The Bush government has made little effort in this direction. Yet all hopes are being pinned on the US Secretary of State, who is expected in the Middle East at the end of the week”. “France has a special relation with Lebanon. The first country to send a high-ranking envoy to Beirut, on the sixth day of the war,” she “ wished, according to Dominique de Villepin, to express her own solidarity to the Lebanese people”. So begins the editorial in the French daily Le Monde (19/07). “ The reasons for this French inclination” are various, according to the author: they include, in particular, “the assassination, in February 2005, of Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, Chirac’s best foreign friend” , an assassination “presumably prepared” by “Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese agents” , and the “Franco-American rapprochement that followed it” . “Chirac, traditional ally of the Arab countries, has now decided to give his diplomacy a more even-handed approach: an appeal to an Israeli withdrawal on the one hand, and a determination to put an end once and for all to Hezbollah on the other”. “This policy – comments the editorialist – is undoubtedly the most legitimate but it must not ignore one reality: Israel is not aiming only at Hezbollah, but also at Lebanon. And if its military operation may serve to put an end to Hezbollah, it is essential that it should not destroy the efforts of the Lebanese to reconstruct their own country”. According to David Clark , author of a comment on international policy published in the British daily The Guardian (17/07) “the key to solve the situation of Lebanon consists, as in the Seventies and Eighties, in seeking a solution to the Palestinian question”. The effective creation of “a Palestinian State would deprive Hezbollah and its supporters of the presumption of defending defenceless Muslims and would make it easier for their opponents in the region to gain the upper hand”. “With its hard-line reaction to the attacks of Hezbollah, Israel wished deliberately to cause the short circuit between long- and short-term logics both of the regional system and the international system” observes Vittorio Emanuele Parsi in an editorial in the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire (19/07). “Olmert asks that Lebanon be really capable of guaranteeing that its territory does not constitute a safe haven for terrorists, or that the international community should assume responsibility for the problem. How much are we prepared to do – asks Parsi – to transform Israel’s right to survival into a right for security, abandoning a condition of continuous emergency in favour of one of normality?”. “The sending of an international military contingent – he suggests – would be useful only if it be equipped with adequate tools and political mandate to monitor disarmament or the re-deployment of the militias in Southern Lebanon”. What needs to be done, argues Parsi, is “to create, also in the Middle East, the necessary conditions to prompt the stronger to strategic moderation in exchange for the collaboration of the weaker in a just order, in which they would share both in the costs and in the benefits, in the rights and in the responsibilities”.
