CAIRO: Rising anger on the Arab street over the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah apparently has prompted conservative rulers in the region to change their tune. Initial slaps against the Shiite Muslim guerrilla movement for igniting the fight have evolved into criticism of Israel and the mounting toll its offensive is taking among Lebanese civilians. The most dramatic turn has come from Sunni Muslim-led Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, where King Abdullah followed an initial rebuke of Hezbollah for carrying out "uncalculated adventures" with a warning this week that "if the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war."
But even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an important mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict for the last 25 years, now mixes his condemnation of Hezbollah's move with sharp criticism of the Israeli response. It was "disproportionate, to say the least," Mubarak said in remarks posted on Time magazine's Web site Friday. "Israel's response demonstrated a collective punishment against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. The bloodshed and the destruction caused by the Israelis went way too far."
As civilian casualties have risen into the hundreds, popular opinion in favour of Hezbollah has swelled as newspapers and television stations have shown graphic pictures of the suffering, including one showing an aid worker carrying the lifeless body of a young Lebanese girl upside down, by the legs with her innards spilling out of a gaping wound in her side. Much of the initial reaction among conservative Sunni Arab rulers was fuelled by a general dislike for the Shiite-Arab Hezbollah and wariness of its Iranian backers, but that has been swept aside in the flood public anger at Israel.
"Arab states are still worried, especially about Iran and Iraq ... but right now we are talking about the destruction of Lebanon," Hassan Al-Ansari, head of the Gulf Studies Centre at Qatar University, said in a telephone interview. "When people see all the stuff going on they cannot sit idle. There is no easy way just to get rid of Hezbollah, therefore those Arab states cannot be quiet, because they have public pressure." The rhetoric has also focused on the United States, whose broad military and diplomatic support that has allowed Israel to prolong and deepen its offensive. Media reports have emphasised that Israel's bombing of Lebanon is being done with US-made warplanes dropping US-made guided bombs - paid for with US tax dollars.
Egypt's semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram published an editorial cartoon yesterday, showing an Israeli hand and American hand clasped together holding a young girl upside down. An arrow pointed at her head says "peace." During US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's brief visit, her statement that the conflict represented the growing pains of a "new Middle East" provided ready-made ammunition for rallying Arabs to unite against Israel. "The Zionist-American plan aims as dismantling resistance and redrawing the map under the banner of a new Middle East where the supreme hegemony is for Israeli entity only," Mohammed Habib, deputy leader of Egypt's main opposition Muslim Brotherhood told AP. "All sects (of Islam) are in need of unity to deter the enemy."
Even Jordan's mainstream Al-Arab Al Yawm newspaper carried a column saying that what Rice really meant was a Middle East free from all kinds of resistance. "So it's important to dismantle all the organisations that fight Israel, especially Hezbollah, Hamas and the other Palestinians factions, because the New Middle East project is an obedient project and everybody must say yes to the American administration!!" the newspaper wrote. "Such projects will never succeed in the region and the people will resist such plans because it is impossible that these people will accept the oppression and the American and Israeli arrogance."
Part of the political difficulty now is that Arab governments have difficulty condemning Hezbollah without appearing at once to condone Israel's response. "The problem is Hezbollah is not an army, it is part of the Lebanese community," Al-Ansari said. "It is not an easy thing to deal with... . What are you going to do, keep quiet, let the Israelis do whatever they want to do?" Some shifts in position have been more subtle than that of Saudi Arabia. Where Jordan initially accused unspecified forces of dragging Lebanon into a conflict, the government's recent focus has been the increasing number of civilian casualties in what King Abdullah II has called a result of Israel's "aggression."
In Egypt yesterday, Mubarak remained critical of Hezbollah, saying "some forces are provoking conflict ... to achieve their private interests." But at the same time he chastised the turn the fight had taken. "Israel will lose a lot ... from the continuation of the military operation, which is concentrating, sadly, on civilian targets," the Egyptian leader said in an interview carried by the official Middle East News Agency. Fatma Hassan Al Sayegh, a professor of modern Gulf history at United Arab Emirates University, said she was surprised by the initial reaction, given that the foe was Israel. But as Hezbollah has shown resilience and garnered support among the masses, the governments have had to back away from their stance, she said.
"Don't forget Saudi has a large Shiite population ... and because of that I think they realize that they have taken the wrong attitude at the wrong time," she said in a telephone interview. "We know that inside they have this attitude to the Shiites and Hezbollah, but we are surprised to see it appear at such a time." And the people seem to have put aside Shiite-Sunni animosities to concentrate on the common enemy: Israel. "Oh Sunni, Oh Shiite, let's fight the Jews," a crowd chanted outside Cairo's Istiqama Mosque yesterday. "The Jews and the Americans are killing our brothers in Lebanon." The protesters carried photos of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah alongside those of former Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose Arab nationalist policies helped lead to the 1967 war.
Al-Ansari suggested that the shift in position from some Arab leaders could be not only because of public pressure, but also to what many believe has been a disproportionate Israeli response to Hezbollah's actions. "The Arab governments, they look at it from a rational point of view - they know it's going to be a big mess at their doors and they have to deal with it," he said. "From the beginning they made their positions clear (but) nobody was expecting the reaction by the Israelis this way."-AP
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