The Winograd report mainly provokes Arab disdain

By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 03, 2007

A combination of vindication, disdain, and renewed concerns about Israeli militarism are the dominant reactions in the Arab world to the preliminary report of the Winograd Commission released Monday in Israel...

The Arab sense of vindication stems from the feeling that Israel performed poorly in the war, and failed to achieve its primary strategic objectives: smashing Hizbullah, removing the armed Lebanese resistance movement from the South of Lebanon, returning the two abducted Israeli soldiers in Hizbullah's hands, reaffirming Israel's deterrence posture with respect to the Arab world and Iran, and ensuring that all wars with the Arabs are fought in Arab lands, not in Israel...

Disdain permeates many Arab reactions to the Winograd report, for two reasons. The first is the long history of Israeli commissions of inquiry that create much political noise and dust and censure top officials, without altering Israeli militarization and colonization when dealing with Arabs...

Arabs see Kadima as an apt symbol of the combined approaches of Labor and Likud, both of which have pursued virtually identical policies toward the Arabs: colonizing and expropriating Arab lands, using massive military overkill to resolve political differences, jailing or killing thousands of Palestinians, wounding tens of thousands of others, institutionalizing Apartheid-like segregation between Israeli occupiers and Palestinians, strengthening the movement to "Judaize" Jerusalem and diminish its Christian and Muslim character, and refusing to seriously consider any negotiated compromise on the core Palestinian refugee issue which forms the heart of the conflict in Arab eyes.

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