Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
SPECIAL EDITION: ESCALATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST
July 18, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.
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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

1. The real cost of Israel's strategy in Lebanon by Nadim Matta
Nadim Matta, a US citizen of Lebanese origin, sheds light on the indignation and frustration that ordinary Lebanese citizens feel as Israeli bombardment of their country continues. Through the use of analogies tailored to recent American experience with both the civil rights movement and September 11, Matta makes the case for immediate US intervention - before the cause of peace is set back by decades.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 18, 2006)

2. How to see the common ground while bombs are landing around you by Juliette Schmidt
Juliette Schmidt, Assistant Director of the Partners in Humanity programme at Search for Common Ground, examines the recent conflict between Lebanon and Israel from the perspective of a Canadian living in Beirut. "Empathizing with our neighbours to the south is not so popular up here, but it seems that we have a few things in common at the moment." She proceeds to lay out several steps that need to be taken not only by the international community, but by Lebanese and Israelis themselves, in order to turn the situation around.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 18, 2006)

3. Time for America to put its diplomatic muscle where its mouth is – Editorial (Daily Star)
The Daily Star comments on the devastating blow of the ongoing Israeli onslaught to Lebanon’s struggle to rebuild itself following its civil war, and its democratic progress since Syria finally withdrew its troops last year: “…we trusted Bush when he promised that he would do everything to protect and advance our aspirations…Yet even now, …we are still clinging to the same values and ideals that the Bush administration has promoted: we want life, liberty and happiness; we want democracy, sovereignty, freedom and independence.” Lebanon’s “fledgling independence is under fire,” and the US has an obligation to "be faithful to the values that they have championed and protect [Lebanon] from further harm."
(Source: The Daily Star, July 15, 2006)

4. Israel can win all the wars, but that doesn't settle anything by Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer places Israel’s use of military force in Lebanon and Gaza under the microscope and acknowledges that while both Israel and Hizbollah are capable of exerting tremendous force, the damage done will not produce either parties’ intended outcome.
(Source: Arab News, July 16, 2006)

5. US must act to stop Mideast escalation by James Zogby
James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), recognises the problem of placing blame on multiple parties as events unfold alarmingly in the Middle East. “Pointing fingers in every direction may be a valid exercise, but it accomplishes little. There is clearly enough blame to go around, with reckless provocations abounding.” He also confronts the current stance that the US has taken on the developing crisis, and offers advice for the next course of action.
(Source: The Jordan Times, July 18, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
The real cost of Israel's strategy in Lebanon
Nadim Matta

Stamford, Connecticut - When Hizbollah embarked on its provocative incursion into Israel, most Lebanese (apart from ardent Shiite radicals) saw this incident for what it was: a reckless act aimed at advancing the interests of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, at great risk to both Lebanon and its people.

But the mood in Lebanon has drastically changed over the past few days. Very few now blame Hizbollah, or actively agree with calls for its disarmament (even though the majority of the population supported this goal prior to the recent events). And virtually no one would be pleased if the two Israeli soldiers were surrendered under the threat of Israel’s continuation of its systematic destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Understanding this radical transformation in mind-set can shed some light on the unintended – yet tragically predictable – consequences of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

What has happened in the span of a few days?

In the aftermath of Hizbollah’s attacking and kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers across the border, Israel implemented a “shock and awe” strategy that blasted away every piece of infrastructure that the Lebanese painstakingly built over the past fifteen years. As the long-in-place agreement to restrict activities in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel to military targets gave way to open warfare, Hizbollah also unleashed its deadly barrages of Katyusha rockets over northern Israel.

In a few infernal days, Israeli planes and warships managed to destroy the fruits of fifteen years of labour of ordinary Lebanese citizens determined to restore the country to a semblance of its pre-war level of development. Significantly, only three Hizbollah fighters were killed in the Israeli raids, while more than two hundred Lebanese civilians, including whole families, perished. It is equally sad that Israeli civilians, however fewer in number these may be, were killed and wounded by Hizbollah rockets.

In what can only be viewed as an insult to the intelligence of informed citizens everywhere, President Bush argued simply that Israel “has the right to defend itself”. Luckily for Mr. Bush, Israel was able to articulate a more plausible explanation for its strategy: it was ensuring that Hizbollah will not smuggle the Israeli soldiers out of Lebanon, and it was cutting off Hizbollah’s arms supply routes.

In reality, this explanation is not borne out by the facts on the ground. For example, Israeli jets bombed the highest bridge in the Middle East – a few miles from my hometown on the main road between Beirut and Damascus – disabling it and rendering it unusable for months to come. Curiously, the Israelis were not satisfied by disabling the bridge. They came back the next day and completely demolished the remainder of the structure – as if to simply add tens of million of dollars to the eventual cost of repair. Israel also bombed power generating plants, cellular telephone towers, gas stations, foodstock warehouses and purely commercial targets. I am not a military expert, but none of these seem like relevant targets if the aim is to block Hizbollah from transporting the Israeli soldiers out of the country or to prevent it from receiving arms from Syria and Iran.

The more plausible rationale for the “shock and awe” operation is to make the situation so painful for Lebanese civilians that they “take responsibility” for the actions of one of their own, the Hizbollah militia. The argument goes as follows: if the cost is made high enough, citizens will pressure their government into doing what it has been struggling to do for months: disarming Hizbollah. This strategy was beginning to work in the first day of the Israeli operation, as voices in the country began to be raised against Hizbollah and its reckless action. But as the intensity and the perniciousness of the Israeli bombing escalated, even the most moderate civilians in Lebanon experienced an emotional transformation into what can be likened to the revulsion of an innocent person being terrorised into submission by a vastly superior power. In an affront to human dignity and disregard for human life, Israel is inflicting severe pain and suffering on a huge number of civilians to incite them to do its bidding.

Hizbollah may be accused of doing the same in Israel (though with a much more limited capacity to inflict pain). But then we would expect a terrorist organisation to commit acts of terrorism. A state committing the same acts, magnified many times over, with the same intentions, must be condemned and ultimately prevented by the world community. Otherwise, we would be sending yet another message to people and nations who feel wronged yet do not have the means to win the fight against their aggressors: your only recourse is to equip yourself with whatever means necessary to deter your aggressors. It would be a return to the law of the jungle that the world can ill afford in this age of nuclear proliferation.

By failing to act on behalf of Lebanon and to call Israel to account for its actions, the US is putting the world at greater risk, and it is setting back by decades the cause of peace in the region.

To understand the sense of injustice that people in Lebanon feel about their situation, consider this analogy: black rights activists, indignant at police brutality towards fellow blacks, kidnap a white police officer and retreat into their black neighbourhood, demanding the release of detained black activists in exchange for the police officer. The state calls in the exclusively white national guardsmen who surround the neighbourhood and start firing mortars into it, destroying businesses and killing whole families. To drive their point home, the national guardsmen cut off the electricity and water supply of the neighbourhood, and announce to the inhabitants that they, the community, will be held responsible for the actions of their radical fringes, and will continue to be pounded by heavy artillery until they rise up against the activists among them. Would blacks in the neighbourhood rise against their reckless brothers, or would this response by state authorities take their fury towards their white neighbours to new and irreversibly hostile levels?

To put things in perspective, Lebanese civilians are experiencing the same type of revulsion towards Israel that American citizens felt towards Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda after September 11. But blame is also directed at the U.S. government for its political and moral support of Israel in this affair. And I am not talking here about Lebanese Shiite fanatics. I am talking about Jane and John Doe of Lebanon: your average Sunni, Christian, Shiite and Druze who may otherwise hold living in the US as their greatest aspiration.

The Lebanese are feeling tremendous indignation at the injustice they are facing. Let us not allow this indignation to fester and turn into new seeds of hatred. The US had best seize the moment, quickly and decisively, to demonstrate that it understands that there is no lasting peace for Israel or Lebanon without some measure of justice and dignity for all parties involved.

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* Nadim Matta is a management consultant and US citizen of Lebanese origin. During the civil war in Lebanon, he worked for USAID and for Save the Children Federation in Beirut. He can be reached at nadim@rhsa.com. Thisarticle is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 18, 2006)
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
How to see the common ground while bombs are landing around you
Juliette Schmidt

Beirut, Lebanon - As a Canadian, I have so far been spared the stress, anxiety and heartbreak of living through a violent conflict that is the centre of the world’s attention. Yet here I find myself, just north of Beirut, sitting in a glassed-in balcony overlooking the American Embassy and the Mediterranean, 9 of us plus a dog in a 3-bedroom apartment. For the last 7 days we have been listening with heavy hearts to explosions throughout a country that is as beautiful as it is resilient, full of friends and stories.

Clearly, Hizbollah crossed a not-so-imaginary line when they kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers from the wrong side of Lebanon’s southern border and, as Israel retaliated, followed with rocket attacks on increasingly-civilian targets in northern Israel. Clearly, Israel has been raining bombs on strategic targets in Lebanon causing great damage to infrastructure throughout the country at the cost of many civilian lives. The political commentators calmly discuss events day and night and consider greater implications and root causes.

Watching these discussions, it is hard to see any space for a resolution that will be satisfactory to both parties. In fact, it is hard to see any opportunity for a resolution at all. Sitting here in the heat and humidity of a Lebanese summer with the sporadic relief of air conditioning when the electricity comes on, I imagine those in the bomb shelters in northern Israel must not feel very different.

Empathizing with our neighbours to the south is not so popular up here, but it seems that we have a few things in common at the moment. Not only are there mounting civilian deaths in each country, but individuals are tense and hot, waiting and watching, on both sides of the border. In addition, my limited experience living in a country being bombarded by another is that having bombs dropped on you doesn’t quite generate goodwill for the perpetrator.

As a result, military bombardment is only a short-term distraction from a more complicated problem. It has disastrous side effects not only for those involved, but for anyone with an interest in the Middle East. These days, this “anyone” is generally a good proportion of the world population -- it is East and West alike. This is obvious from the amount of press coverage and international attention that has been given to this situation. The international community, or more accurately American and European governments and the UN Security Council, are going to play a significant role in the outcome of this conflict.

And here we come to the most pressing question: what is the most effective role for this larger Western contingent? First of all, the international community needs to call for a ceasefire immediately and empower the Lebanese government to deploy the Lebanese army in the south to deal with the situation internally as they have indicated they are prepared to do. By refusing to pressure both sides of the conflict to stop, they are indirectly sanctioning the continuing volley of missiles from both parties and perpetuating anger and hatred that will linger long after the explosions stop.

Second, longer term solutions need to be considered. This most recent flare-up is not an isolated problem. In the aftermath of the Israeli incursion, the Lebanese will not only have to rebuild, they will have to continue their national dialogue around this event and all its implications sitting squarely on the table. Meanwhile, Israelis will still find themselves living between two angry populations. The international community needs to publicly support opportunities for dialogue and facilitate it when necessary.

Third, the human element must be addressed. There are people on each side of the conflict, people who can influence the actions of their governments and local leaders. At the moment there is very limited interaction between Lebanese and Israelis. It is unreasonable to believe that this will change instantly with the cessation of violence, however human stories need to get out and in forums where Lebanese and Israelis are able to come together – in online chat rooms, in comment sections of regional newspapers, and in the diaspora – interaction must be encouraged and enabled. International media and high-level spokespeople can be powerful vehicles to get diverse stories and opinions on both sides into the spotlight in a non-inflammatory way, beginning a process that can lead to greater communication between groups.

As I sit here in front of a stunning sunset signalling the end of yet another day and the beginning of another night, I listen in the dark for the sound of explosions. We hope this will be the last such night. These neighbours will still have to live beside each other tomorrow.

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* Juliette Schmidt is a Canadian citizen working in Beirut for Search for Common Ground. She is Assistant Director of the Partners in Humanity programme. This article is distributed by the Common Ground NewsService (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 18, 2006)
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Time for America to put its diplomatic muscle where its mouth is
Daily Star Editorial

Beirut, Lebanon - This week has given a sense of just how quickly things can change in the Middle East. In a matter of hours, a relatively confined conflict in the Gaza Strip erupted into a two-front war, posing a dangerous threat of even wider escalation. But perhaps the most startling development of late is that the United States is at least publicly trying to take a relatively balanced approach to the conflict unfolding in Lebanon.

Expressing concern for Lebanon's "fragile democracy," US President George W. Bush urged the Israelis to show restraint during their siege, stressing that precautions should be taken so as not to weaken the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Likewise, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also urged Israel to show concern for the democratically elected government of Lebanon, as well as infrastructure and innocent civilians.

It is the least that they can do, considering the suffering that we Lebanese have endured as a result of US policies. For 15 years, we were trampled under the weight of Syrian oppression, via an occupation that had been approved by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, in exchange for Damascus' cooperation in the 1991 war in Iraq. We were emboldened by the younger Bush's decision to terminate America's policy of sanctioning Syrian hegemony over Lebanon. We took to the streets, demanding Syria's withdrawal and the return of democracy to our country.

From that point forward, we became a focal point in Bush's democracy scorecard, as he proudly boasted that his policies had helped achieve democratic advancements around the region. Lebanon was held up as a shining example of the fact that the people of the region have a real desire to live in free and democratic states. And we trusted Bush when he promised that he would do everything to protect and advance our aspirations.

But now, our fledgling independence is under fire. Only a little over a year since we started making our own decisions and trying to forge a sense of national unity, we have been hit with a crisis of unexpected proportions. Our fledgling government, which like any 1-year-old is still struggling to stay on its feet, is under fire. Our civilians, who had no part in the decision to abduct Israeli soldiers, are being killed. Our infrastructure, which has only recently been built, is being destroyed.

Yet even now, as Israel is laying waste to our country with guns and missiles paid for with US tax dollars, and as American-made bombs are raining down on our cities, we are still clinging to the same values and ideals that the Bush administration has promoted: we want life, liberty and happiness; we want democracy, sovereignty, freedom and independence.

No one is calling for the return of Syrian occupation, even though one could argue that Syria's presence served as a deterrent to this kind of Israeli onslaught. No one is asking whether the US government only asked the Syrians to step out only so that the Israelis could step in to replace them. We are holding out hope that the Americans will be faithful to the values that they have championed and protect us from further harm.

The Americans now need to choose sides, not between warring parties, but between right and wrong. They must now demonstrate their commitment to freedom, human rights and international law and speak out loudly and firmly against the killing of civilians, the destruction of infrastructure and the brutal collective punishment that all of us are now enduring.

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* This editorial was produced by the Daily Star. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: The Daily Star, July 15, 2006.
Visit the Daily Star, www.dailystar.com.lb (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
Israel can win all the wars, but that doesn't settle anything
Gwynne Dyer

London - “The objective of the operation is clear to no one — not the government, not the prime minister, not the Israel Defence Force with all its commanders,” wrote journalist Hagay Huberman on Thursday in the conservative Israeli newspaper Hatzofe. “No one tried to think 20 steps ahead. When an operation is called a ‘rolling operation’ they mean that the operation continues to roll independently and then we will all see where it leads.”

In just a few days, the situation has spun completely out of control. Beirut airport’s runways have been cratered by Israeli fighters, rockets have landed on Haifa, Israel’s third-biggest city, and the Israeli Army has crossed into southern Lebanon. Israeli troops were there for eighteen years after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, and they took hundreds of casualties and killed several thousand people before they finally withdrew. Now they’re back, for God knows how long.

Less than a year ago, the IDF also pulled out of the Gaza Strip. They’re back there now, too, blasting away at houses and government offices and police stations, not because they really think that that will help them find their kidnapped soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, but because they cannot think of anything else to do. The whole game plan has unravelled, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has run out of strategies. He is just responding by reflex — and the habitual Israeli reflex, when confronted with a serious challenge, is to lash out with overwhelming force.

That’s understandable, because Israel’s great asset is exactly that: overwhelming force.

Its armed forces are incomparably superior to those of all its neighbours combined, both because it has state-of-the-art technology and because it simply outnumbers all the other armies it faces.

Only Israel in the region is rich and well organized enough to mobilize its entire population for war, with the result that it has actually had numerical superiority at the front in every war it has fought since 1948. When you have that kind of advantage, it seems foolish not to use it.

Except that winning all the wars and killing tens of thousands of Arabs never seems to settle anything. There are only six million Israelis, and about a hundred million Arabs live within 500 miles (750 km) of Israel. Sooner or later, if Israel is to have a long-term future, it must make peace with its neighbours — and that depends critically on making peace with the Palestinians, the main victims of the creation of Israel.

That is not impossible, for the Palestinians are pretty desperate after almost forty years of Israeli military occupation. Most of them are willing to settle for a pretty meager share of what used to be Palestine — say, the twenty percent that they retained until Israel conquered them in 1967. But that has never been on offer.

The so-called “peace process” has been paralysed for fifteen years by bitter Israeli arguments over whether the Palestinians should be allowed to have fifteen percent of former Palestine for their state, or ten percent, or none at all. Almost nobody in the Israeli debate was willing to let the Palestinians have everything they had controlled in 1967, because that would mean abandoning the Jewish settlements that had been planted all over the occupied territories.

Ehud Olmert’s goal, inherited from former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has been to impose a peace settlement on the Palestinians that leaves East Jerusalem and all the main Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank in Israeli hands. “Impose” rather than negotiate, since no Palestinian would ever agree to such a deal, but Israel could only justify such an arbitrary act if it could plausibly claim that there were no reasonable Palestinians to negotiate with.

The Palestinians’ election of a Hamas government that rejected any kind of peace with Israel helped Olmert to make that case. The killing of two Israeli soldiers and the abduction of Cpl. Shalit by Hamas’s military wing three weeks ago should have reinforced that case, and initially it did. But then the temptation of overwhelming force kicked in.

Since Shalit was taken prisoner, increasingly indiscriminate Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip have killed close to a hundred Palestinians. Arabs elsewhere watched in helpless rage, and eventually, last Wednesday, the Hezbollah guerrillas who drove the Israelis out of southern Lebanon six years ago struck across Israel’s northern border, killing three Israeli soldiers and taking two others hostage.

Everyone knows that the Lebanese government does not control Hezbollah, but Israel held Beirut responsible, rolled its tanks across the border, and launched a wave of air strikes that has already killed over fifty Lebanese. That won’t free the hostages, and it poses the risk of a wider war that could involve not only Lebanon but also Syria, but at least it protects Olmert from the accusation of being “weak”, always the kiss of death for an Israeli politician.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are adept at pushing Israel’s buttons and getting it to overreact (even if that does involve Israel destroying what little infrastructure there was in the Gaza Strip, and destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure all over again). The dwarf superpower of the Middle East is good at smashing things up, and so long as the real superpower behind it does not intervene, nobody else can stop it. But nobody in this game has a coherent strategy for getting out of it.

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* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: Arab News, July 16, 2006
Visit the website at www.arabnews.com (http://www.arabnews.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
US must act to stop Mideast escalation
James Zogby

Amman, Jordan - Escalating violence and expanding conflict in the Middle East threaten to spin out of control into the broader region. It is a worrisome situation fraught with grave danger, a clear example of competing and unchecked pathologies.

While Europe expresses concern and the UN sends a delegation to mediate, the US, the only country that can provide needed restraint, has so far appeared to abdicate its leadership role.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has unconvincingly urged restraint, but does little to back up that call. Meanwhile, President George Bush has sounded more like Israel’s coat holder and cheerleader, alternately pointing fingers at Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran, appearing to give Israel carte blanche to “defend” itself. Thus, the damage done by Israel’s asymmetric power edge has been amplified by our own asymmetries of compassion and pressure - Israel gets the compassion, while pressure is reserved for the Arabs.

Pointing fingers in every direction may be a valid exercise, but it accomplishes little. There is clearly enough blame to go around, with reckless provocations abounding. The capture of Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian extremist group and Hizbollah has served only to aggravate an already volatile situation, providing Israel with the pretext to justify its now three-week-old destructive campaign in Gaza and its massive devastation of Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Self-defence is one thing, but collective punishment is quite another matter.

Urging restraint and support for moderates, while doing nothing to accomplish either objective, only results in no restraint and a weakening of those for whom we have declared support.

Some cynics believe that the US and Israel really have no intention of stopping, thinking that these campaigns will end terror, once and for all, and defeat Hamas, Hizbollah, et al.

One would hope, however, that Israel had learned a lesson or two from its many brutal campaigns in Lebanon or its three-decade-long effort to suppress Palestinian resistance to occupation. Or that the US might have been cured of its similar delusion by the chaos and violent insurgency spawned by its Iraq debacle.

Equally dismaying are the fanciful notions that exist among some on the Arab side who celebrate as bold and heroic the exploits of the bombers and kidnappers whose only accomplishments have been to provoke devastating attacks and deadly repression.

As past cycles of violence should have taught us, when the dust settles, and the blood and tears have dried, all that is left is sorrow over the loss of those we loved, destruction that must be tackled, and anger, hatred and extremism.

This round of violence, however, if left unchecked, can become more dangerous than past cycles, because the regional setting is so much more volatile.

Iraq is in a fragile state, on the verge of civil war, and Iran has been emboldened and empowered by US miscalculations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, deep fissures that plague the Lebanese polity remain a concern, as should a profoundly enflamed Arab public opinion that can become a destabilising factor throughout the region.

What can be done?

The Bush administration now showing some signs of being chastened by its international isolation needs to shake off the last vestiges of its neoconservative thinking -- “creative chaos” which it once believed would usher in democracy but has instead brought only anarchy. And the fanciful notion that overwhelming violence would defeat all enemies and be a transformative force has, instead, only yielded more violence and anger in its wake.

Clearly a new direction is required.

What is urgently needed is the appointment of an empowered envoy dispatched to the region to make and enforce calls for restraint. The prerequisite to strengthening forces of modernisation and democracy in Lebanon and Palestine is to stop the Israeli assault and to work with moderate leaderships, empowering them to meet their peoples’ needs.

Massive amounts of aid will be required for Palestine and immediate reconstruction is now needed in Lebanon. Negotiations, like those that were nearing completion among Palestinian leaders before the capture of Shalit, need to be restarted. It is important to note that since the June 25 capture was designed to abort those talks, Israel’s response in Gaza, in fact, only served to reward this ploy. Similarly, Israel’s systematic destruction in Lebanon has only served to deepen divisions in the country and weaken efforts at national reconciliation, thereby rewarding the actions of the provocateurs.

To undo the political, human and economic damage created by the past three weeks will entail heavy lifting. To strengthen the moderate majority, while isolating the extremist tendencies, will require both finesse and incentives. All will necessitate a skilled and engaged mediator and US leadership.

The sooner we act, the better. If the current situation is left unchecked, and if, God forbid, Israel draws Iran and Syria into the fray, the consequences will be with us for a long time.

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* James J. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab American Institute. Thisarticle was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org/).
Source: The Jordan Times, July 18, 2006
Visit the website at www.jordantimes.com (http://www.jordantimes.com/)
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

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Posted by Evelin at July 19, 2006 06:45 AM