Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Advocates on all sides of Middle East conflict call for a ceasefire
By E. Ashley Wright
The California Aggie (UC-Davis)
07/24/2006

(U-WIRE) DAVIS, Calif. — A conflict beginning July 12 between the Israeli government and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has continued into a second week as Israel sends ground forces into southern Lebanon.

While Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Sinoria has pleaded for a cease to Israeli attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, supported by the United States, insists the disarmament of Hezbollah must be part of any possible resolution.

As attacks on all sides persist and civilian casualties continue to rise, people worldwide have expressed concern.

The Bush administration and Congress have continued to show support for Israel, sending National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to the region Sunday to speak with Israeli and Palestinian officials. According to CNN, Rice did not deal with Hezbollah or Syrian representatives.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby group based in Washington D.C., has championed the U.S. House of Representatives for "overwhelmingly approving a resolution supporting Israel's military actions against Hamas and Hezbollah as legitimate exercises of the Jewish state's right to self-defense."

The group's website asks for supporters to rally behind Israel because of the United State's longstanding relationship with the Israeli government.

UC-Davis speaks

At the University of California-Davis, students and professors alike have been affected personally and professionally by the turbulent state of the Middle East.

Recently, four UC-Davis students lost family members to Israeli tank firing in Gaza. Countless others who have family members in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon have shown deep concern for the safety of their loved ones.

In addition to students returning to the U.S. after being evacuated from the American University at Beirut, professors planning teaching stints or studies have had to put off plans to travel to the region.

Arbel Bedak, sophomore music and religious studies major at UC-Davis, returned from Israel on July 12. He said he feels Israel is protecting itself as it should be.

"My family in Israel all have faith in the Israeli army and they trust that they will make the right decisions," Bedak said. "I also fully trust in the Israeli army."

Bedak said that he feels some news sources have concentrated on the conflict as it is happening in Lebanon, which has created some biased attitudes.

"Some news stations show a lot of what is happening in Lebanon, which is too bad," he said. "I have full faith in Israel and watch news that represents the conflict fairly and unbiased."

Muhammad Marrush, a plant sciences professor at UC-Davis, left his home in Lebanon for the second time in 1982, when Israel began occupying Lebanon. He said love for his country had to be outweighed to protect the well-being of his family.

"I have a great pride in this country," Marrush said. "In '82 I left Lebanon in the first war for the safety of my children. I left because I had the opportunity to leave. I knew it would keep going back and forth. This thing will keep going on until they find a solution."

Marrush, who traveled to Lebanon in the spring of 2006, said that the onset of the conflict surprised him. According to Marrush, the Lebanese infrastructure had been largely rebuilt since Israeli troops left in 2000, and the Lebanese people expected 2006 to be one of their biggest years for tourism.

"It came at a time when people were not expecting it," he said, "Lebanon is a center of tourism. People go there because it is cooler than the rest of the Middle East. The force used right now [by Israel] way outweighs what happened because they're destroying the entire Lebanese infrastructure."

Marrush added that he feels the Lebanese people are bearing the worst of the attacks even though Hezbollah does not represent Lebanon as a whole.

"People who have nothing to do with it get the worst of fate," he said. "These people [Hezbollah] have their own logic, but does that give Israel the right to attack all the people in Lebanon? The central government was not even consulted."

Suad Joseph, a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East/South Asia studies at UC-Davis, was born in Lebanon and recently traveled there in the spring of 2006. She said the news of fighting in the region was painful to hear after seeing the successful rebuilding in Lebanon.

"By all accounts this [travel] season had already begun as the best they've [the Lebanese] had since the end of the Civil War," Joseph said. "A real vigorous cultural life had re-emerged. The Lebanese have always been committed to education and preparing for a very international and cosmopolitan life."

Joseph emphasized that the gravity of the situation cannot be overlooked.

"I've always been an optimist, a person that manages to find hope and opportunity in every occasion," she said. "I no longer have that hope. The destruction that has been done has been so devastating that it will take another generation to recover. Already the people in Lebanon were desperate in terms of their sense of a future. It's hard to see how a young person in Lebanon or Palestine can look forward to a future."

In addition, Joseph said she feels the force used by Israel was "out of proportion." She speculated that Israel's attack on Hezbollah had been planned for some time and said she wanted to remind people why Hezbollah emerged in the first place.

"They are a Lebanese force," Joseph said. "They are a Lebanese party. That doesn't mean Lebanese people support them. We have to remember why Hezbollah started. Had there been no Israeli occupation, there would be no Hezbollah."

Joseph added that she feels world powers need to become involved in order to bring about a ceasefire.

"I think the U.N. needs to step in," she said. "The U.S. needs to fully support the U.N. to bring about a peaceful negotiated solution. There's no reason that they can't find peace."

She said that although a resolution may not be in the immediate future, countries in the Middle East can and should find peace.

"It will eventually be resolved, but how and when and what price to pay are the questions to ask," Joseph said. "Eventually these countries have to and will come together. My hope is that a generation of new leadership will emerge that have learned that violence does not breed peace and that understand that good neighbors emerge from respect for the rights of all the people in the neighborhood."

Zeev Maoz, professor of political science at UC-Davis, said the Israeli attack on Hezbollah was not surprising to him.

"It was not unprecedented," he said. "It was in a way something Israelis have expected for a long time because they have held a large number of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners and they knew that Hezbollah was committed to taking these prisoners to make an exchange. It's the typical Israeli response. First they shoot and then they think."

Maoz termed the Israeli bombings part of an "escalation dominance strategy," a strategy of disproportionate force he said the Israeli government has been apt to use in the past.

"It's based on the philosophy that the use of disproportionate force will deter further attacks," Maoz said. "It hasn't worked, and so far it has not solved anything."

According to Maoz, the United States has a "huge responsibility" to step in that it has not yet lived up to.

"The U.S. has taken the Israeli side almost unequivocally," he said. "So far the Bush administration was essentially doing nothing about it. The U.S., in my opinion, is not playing a responsible leadership role. In fact, so far U.S. foreign policy has made matters worse."

Keith David Watenpaugh, associate professor of Modern Islam, Human Rights and Peace at UC-Davis, said he feels the U.S. has not carried out the appropriate actions in the Middle East.

"The only country that can influence Israel is the United States," Watenpaugh said. "Our diplomacy in the region has been largely inept in the region of late."

Watenpaugh stressed that he feels the U.S. should in fact be aligned with Israel in most cases, but that it has a responsibility to pressure Israel into a ceasefire.

"Israel is, by and large, a democratic state," he said. "We have a lot of values in common, but a good friend is someone who can tell you the truth, and we haven't been able to do that with Israel."

Watenpaugh said that without a change in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the region will remain in conflict.

"The U.S. has made a terrible mess of foreign policy," Watenpaugh said. "We have abandoned democracy, and we continue to support undemocratic regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and we stand by and continue to let the Israelis deny basic rights to the Palestinians. The United States is embarking on a very dark moment, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel without an abrupt transformation of U.S. foreign policy."

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