This food-for-thought cartoon from the British newspaper
The Daily Telegraph shows the current American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a renowned pianist, playing a difficult score (amongs many others...) : that of the "Lebanon Peace Overture". The US position in that country is difficult to hold: one the one hand, they provide Israel with sophisticated weapons, on the other hand they supply food to endangered civilians. It is a catch-22 situation: Israel must show it can win against Hezbollah to appear as a deterring power in the region; and Hezbollah wants to resist as long as possible, win and continue to attack Israeli areas such as Haifa. It does not have the military power of the Hebrew state of course, and casualties in Lebanon are in their hundreds while in Israel they are in their dozens. What is to deplore in Israel's tactics is the massacre of innocent civilians (and the latest killing of four UN envoys in South Beirut) and above all the tearing apart of the Lebanese society, which had managed to extirpate itself from many years of instability and civil war. Three questions: will the American Secretary play the Lebanese score
"con dolceza" (to use her Christian name)? Will there be a ceasefire soon? Last but not least, will there be harmony in Lebanon, and around it in the Middle East?
This food-for-thought cartoon from the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph shows the current American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a renowned pianist, playing a difficult score (amongs many others...) : that of the "Lebanon Peace Overture". The US position in that country is difficult to hold: one the one hand, they provide Israel with sophisticated weapons, on the other hand they supply food to endangered civilians. It is a catch-22 situation: Israel must show it can win against Hezbollah to appear as a deterring power in the region; and Hezbollah wants to resist as long as possible, win and continue to attack Israeli areas such as Haifa. It does not have the military power of the Hebrew state of course, and casualties in Lebanon are in their hundreds while in Israel they are in their dozens. What is to deplore in Israel's tactics is the massacre of innocent civilians (and the latest killing of four UN envoys in South Beirut) and above all the tearing apart of the Lebanese society, which had managed to extirpate itself from many years of instability and civil war. Three questions: will the American Secretary play the Lebanese score "con dolceza" (to use her Christian name)? Will there be a ceasefire soon? Last but not least, will there be harmony in Lebanon, and around it in the Middle East?
No comments:
Post a Comment