Mark Colvin interviews Robert Fisk in Beirut |
 Robert Fisk |
|
abc online australia ROBERT FISK: Well, very few in Beirut itself, we've had two missile attacks on the runways at the international airport just after six o'clock. An S-16 sprayed rockets onto the main new runway at the airport and effectively closed the facility to international traffic. There were still two aircraft, A310 airbuses, waiting to go to London and Paris and their passengers marooned at the terminal. Certainly those runways can't be
used for quite a while, they've ripped up about 20 meters, 60 feet of
the runway and chucked hundreds of tonnes of concrete and tarmac So in this steadily escalating attack on Lebanon's infrastructure, which is precisely what the Israelis threatened to do, we've now got ten bridges in south Lebanon, which have been blown up and made roads pretty impassable to traffic. We've now lost the use of the international airport, bombing continues, the most tragic of which, and the most terrible of which, was a bomb on a house near Nabatea, dropped from the air, containing a family of the local Imam, the local Shi'ite priest and his wife an eight children, all of whom were killed. We have reports of two more people killed in the southern Beka'a, possibly two Hezbollah killed, we have no more reports to increase the number of Israeli military casualties, the soldiers who've been killed, from nine yesterday. MARK COLVIN: There was also a report of a rocket attack or possibly a bomb in one of the southern suburbs of Lebanon. Do you think that was aimed at Al Manar television, because it seems to have struck at least a glancing blow at the Hezbollah television station? ROBERT FISK: Yes, that's quite possible, I was actually quite close to it when that bomb was dropped, but didn't manage to get down the street. I wouldn't be at all surprised, because the Israelis see Al Manar as being the propaganda wing of Hezbollah, which it is, and Manar's own spokesmen regularly go on television, including British television, to explain the Hezbollah's point of view. I've always thought that Al Manar - it means "lighthouse", by the way - I'd always thought that building was rather sleek and glassy and probably was on an Israeli target list, but they are still broadcasting at the moment so far as I know, I had a look just now. But we are going to see more attacks like this and of course the great Lebanese theory is that the power stations are somewhere down the list, because this is a broiling hot summer and that means no electricity, no fridges, no air conditioning, but again, there seems to be no chance of Hezbollah giving up its two Israeli prisoners and most people think that in the long-term there will be a ceasefire, and there will be negotiations for a prisoners swap. MARK COLVIN: The Lebanese government has said that it's nothing to do with the Hezbollah attacks, but the Israeli government has been quite contemptuous of that statement. ROBERT FISK: I think we all know, and the Israelis know too, that no Lebanese minister in this contentious, cantankerous, powerless government in Beirut can stop a single Hezbollah from doing what he wants. That's just an excuse to justify these constant attacks on what after all civilian targets, the infrastructure of the state, that the real country that lies behind the Hezbollah is Syria, and this is Damascus, this is the hand of Damascus, trying to push back its claim to the return to the occupied Golan Heights and to step forward into the limelight of Middle East politics and the whole power games of the Middle East after its very humiliating military retreat from Lebanon last year. MARK COLVIN: Well, we saw only about a week ago Israeli jets flying very low and very fast over the Syrian President's residence. Do you think they'll do much more than kind of sabre-rattling? ROBERT FISK: I don't know at the moment, this is at the centre of sabre-rattling, this area of the Middle East. You know, I think what people are asking themselves, and I'm asking myself this too, when we had this previous crises and the Israeli bombardments and the bombing of power stations and bridges and the killings of innocents, we've always found that in Syria lived a man called President Hafez al-Assad, and while he was a very ruthless man, he also was a man of great wisdom and intelligence when it came to knowing when to switch a crisis on and off... MARK COLVIN: Now it's his son Bashar... ROBERT FISK: ... But he died, and now we have President Bashar al-Assad and I'm wondering and a lot of other people are, whether he has his father's wisdom or whether Syria is going to go way out too far and find that it gets, to use an Arabic expression, its nose chopped off. This I don't know MARK COLVIN: So what is likely to happen as regards Robert Fisk's suggestion there about Syria? Anthony Bubilo is a research fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. I asked him that question a short time ago. ANTHONY BUBILO: Look, I think it is a very good question. So far the record is not a good one, I don't think he has been able to measure up to his father. We've seen the Syrian regime make a number of mistakes, a number of critical mistakes, not least of which was the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in Lebanon, so it really is an open question whether he'll be able to deal with this issue in the same manner that his father very effectively dealt with these things in the past. MARK COLVIN: How able is the Syrian military to stand up against a really determent onslaught from the Israelis, should they bring one on? ANTHONY BUBILO: Look, the Syrian military is not in particularly good shape. They haven't been modernised for a number of years now, they of course, when the Soviet Union collapsed, lost their major military sponsor. There's been some kind of marginal military modernisation, some equipment that they've bought from the Russians, but basically they are in no real state to stand up to the Israelis or to any other regional powers. MARK COLVIN: We saw the Israeli air force not very long ago buzzing Bashar al-Assad's palace or his residence, setting off a sonic boom, apparently completely unopposed by the Syrian Air Force. Presumably the Israeli Air Force is greatly superior to the Syrians'? ANTHONY BUBILO: No, that's right. The Syrians did claim that their radars were able to track the Israeli aircraft, but I think there is very... it's quite clear that they don't pose much of a threat to the Israeli Air Force. MARK COLVIN: On the other hand, if the Israelis did decide to take on the Syrians, or if it just came to that anyway, the Israelis would then be fighting on three fronts, and they are already mobilising reserve brigades. How capable is Israel at the moment of fighting on three fronts? ANTHONY BUBILO: Look, I think Israel is in fact capable of fighting on three fronts. The bigger questions are not the military ones, but the political ones. What would they've been looking to achieve in terms of taking the Syrians on? Who would replace Bashar al-Assad, were the Israelis able to seriously damage the Syrian military to a point where the regime became unstable? The Israelis would be asking themselves, well, would we prefer someone else? Is it better to have Bashar, the devil you know, in place, rather than, for example, the Muslim brotherhood in Syria in power? So the bigger question is not so much, can they do this militarily, but what are the political ramifications of taking on the Syrians? MARK COLVIN: But if they don't, what can they do about Hezbollah, which continues to be... well, it's been an irritant for quite a long time, now it's turning out again to be much more that that for them. ANTHONY BUBILO: I think in fact the indication of what they are going to do lies in Israeli Government statements, which have pinned the blame for the attack on Israel's border very firmly on the Lebanese Government. What I think the Israelis will try to do will be to demonstrate to the Lebanese Government and to the Lebanese people that they are going to pay an economic cost for Hezbollah's independence in the south and its continual military activity against Israel. MARK COLVIN: We've just heard Robert Fisk being absolutely dismissive of the idea that the Lebanese Government can do anything about Hezbollah. ANTHONY BUBILO: It's true, but look, at the same time, within Lebanon you have already seen a small number of Lebanese who've been asking the question, well, at a time when Israel is out of southern Lebanon, does Hezbollah still need to maintain its militia at a time when other militias have been disbanded? So there is a nascent movement there arguing for Hezbollah's disarmament. Now, of course initially, there will be a great deal of solidarity with Hezbollah within Lebanon across political fractions, but once the dust has settled I think people will ask the question, what is this costing us, and why are we getting ourselves involved in the Palestinians' fight with the Israelis. Now, this is also why Hezbollah has been very careful to say that its attack in part is a function of solidarity with the Palestinians, but it's also a function of trying to retrieve Lebanese still sitting in Israeli jails. So I think there are some risks there for Hezbollah as well. MARK COLVIN: Anthony Bubilo, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.
|
