Time Magazine notes that perception equals reality in politics and right now the perceptions aren’t good for Israel and the United States in the status of the conflict in the Midde East:
Even as Israel extends its military’s reach deeper into Lebanon, the war there may now increasingly be more about perception than position. After three weeks of fighting, the tenacity of Hizballah’s fighters in the face of fierce Israeli air and ground assaults, and their continued ability to lob rockets into Israel, has created a problem of perception for both Israel’s leaders and the Bush Administration. The Israeli public has been questioning whether the war is actually being won, while Hizballah’s survival as a fighting force and its ability to exact a price from Israel has boosted its standing not only in Lebanon, but throughout the Arab world. Indeed, if international demands for a truce are heeded on the basis of the present battlefield reality, the outcome would look more like a hard-fought tie than a decisive victory for Israel. And that would be bad news both for the domestic political prospects of the current Israeli government and for the Bush administration’s “new Middle East” agenda.
For that reason, the U.S. and Israel need to transform both the reality on the battlefield and the view of the outcome before any kind of truce takes effect.
If you look at history, perception can’t trump an undeniable reality. It’s usually when the reality is a bit more hazy where perception tilts the scale — and a scale being tilted can mean a great deal in geopolitics. Time also notes that once again the United States and France are at odds:
\While most of the international community is likely to back the French demand for an immediate end to the fighting, followed by a cease-fire agreement to allow for the deployment of an international force to police such a truce, the U.S. is insisting that there be no demand for a halt to Israel’s offensive until a mechanism is in place to disarm Hizballah. These differences are not diplomatic hair-splitting — they reflect profound differences over the fate of Hizballah. The only acceptable outcome for the U.S. is a defeat for Hizballah, because if the movement survives the onslaught with its independent military capability intact, it will be seen throughout the Arab world as the victors.
But the French, who are currently the prime candidates to lead an international force, are making clear that the international community is not going to finish the job for Israel, and will only police a cease-fire when one has been agreed to by the Lebanese government, which includes Hizballah. In other words, it won’t try to disarm Hizballah unless Hizballah has agreed to be disarmed. And the only formula likely to achieve that objective on the basis of the current battlefield situation would be an agreement among Lebanese parties to somehow incorporate Hizballah’s fighting forces into the Lebanese Army — which may not be quite what the U.S., and certainly not Israel, had in mind.
Is there a middle ground in the the French/US preferences so that both approaches can be reconciled? Is a middle ground actually workable — or even desirable (a middle ground is not always necessarily the best solution in all events and affairs)? Or is the bottom line that no matter what an lesser armed Hizballah is unacceptable — and dangerous to Lebanon’s stability, Israel’s security, and American long-range goals?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.