GAZA: In Lebanon and Iran, Israel described as loser

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Though Israel says it has achieved all the goals it set out for its offensive in Gaza, Palestinian advocates were loath to admit that Israel had gained anything from the offensive other than to damage civilian lives and the tools of Palestinian statehood built up since the Oslo Accords.

‘It is not a defeat,’ Salah Salah, a Lebanon-based member of the Palestinian National Council, said of the conflict’s shaky end. The council is a 669-member legislature that represents Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora.

‘It is a victory for the resistance and the Palestinian people of Gaza,’ he said along the sidelines of a conference sponsored by a think tank run by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

‘After being bombed for three weeks, they did not give up. They did not stop shooting rockets. They’re still fighting,’ he said.

‘Israel declared a ceasefire; it means they were defeated,’ Salah continued. ‘They could not destroy Hamas. They could not stop the rockets. What did they prove other than that they can destroy anything?’

Ali Fayad, the director of the Consultative Center for Studies and Documentation, the Hezbollah think tank, said Hamas won just by continuing to stand and fire rockets into Israel, likening the conflict to the monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

We think that Hamas will be stronger, he said.

Fayad argued that one consequence of war and defeat for Israel and its allies was the emergence of a rival to the Arab League, which he described as the ‘League of Doha,’ a reference to the gathering in Qatar last week that excluded pro-American Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The Doha forum included delegates from Syria. Turkey and Iran, as well as Hamas.

‘We expect this will result in changing the regional balance,’ he said. ‘We can no longer talk about one regional system. We now have two. This will make the moderate, pro-American axis weaker and weaker.’

He said the war also had badly damaged the U.S.-sponsored peace process, which Hezbollah and Tehran staunchly oppose in favor of opposition to the Jewish state.

“There is no way to normalize Israel in the region,� he said. “The Arab and Muslim people have become more and more angry [and] reject peace or any compromise with Israel.�

Iranian foreign minister Manoucher Mottaki, whose country is a major patron of Hamas, said that the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip could collapse unless Israeli troops withdraw outside of the seaside enclave.

Mottaki told the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, that Israel’s decision to stop its offensive in Gaza while leaving its troops in place was not acceptable.

‘The forces should leave the occupied areas in Gaza, otherwise there would be no guarantee for cessation of conflicts,’ he told IRNA, urging Israel and Egypt to reopen border crossings into the enclave.

Despite the shaky ceasefire, Iranian officials continued bellicose talk about Gaza, spinning the ceasefire as an indication of Israel’s failures in achieving its objectives. Iranian lawmakers and officials publicly urged Muslims and Arabs to pressure their governments to pursue the Gaza issue at the United Nations Security Council.

They also continued lambasting pro-American Arab states, saying they did not do enough to counter Israel. It was an indication that Tehran is not yet willing to let tempers cool between the two camps -- one led by Iran and Syria, the other by Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- that have emerged in the Middle East.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan ‘have indeed supported the oppressor,’ said Ali-Reza Zaker Isfahani, a foreign policy adviser to firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to IRNA.

Israel and its allies hope to avoid the reconstruction pitfalls of Lebanon after the 2006 war, in which the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Tehran took credit for much of the rebuilding efforts in areas of southern Lebanon devastated by Israeli airstrikes.

But Iran appears primed to help in Gaza’s reconstruction. Ahmadinejad, in a phone conversation with Syrian President Bashar Assad, said the two nations were ‘duty-bound to help the Palestinian nation and create suitable grounds for them to continue their decent lives,’ according to IRNA.

Salah, the Palestinian activist, said the greatest threat to the Palestinian cause was the rift between Hamas and the Western-backed Fatah faction, the dominant political force in the West Bank.

Reconciliation, he conceded, ‘will take time, and it will not be easy.’

The rift ultimately plays into the hands of Israel, he said.

‘The main thing I am worried about is that the conflict between Hamas and Abu Mazen will lead to the creation of two cantons,’ he said. ‘It means the conflict between the Palestinians will continue. This is what Israel wants.’

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut