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 commission harshly rebuked three senior Israeli political and military leaders for their conduct during last summer's 34-day war with Lebanon's Hezbollah Party, leaving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Amir Peretz in dismal political shape. The former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz, had already resigned in disgrace after the war. 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 Hezbollah, removing the armed Lebanese resistance movement from the south of Lebanon, returning the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers in Hezbollah'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. Arab analysts were quick to recall Monday that Israel was forced to accept a UN-mandated cease-fire in August, after failing to win on the battlefield. 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. Most galling for Arabs are the bitter memories of the deeply flawed and inconsequential inquiry commissions that have examined Israeli behavior against Palestinian citizens of Israel within the state's 1967 borders. The latest followed demonstrations inside Israel in 2000, after Israeli police killed and wounded dozens of Palestinian citizens of Israel. The message of such inquiries - into Israel's use of arms in Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, or in majority Palestinian areas inside Israel itself - seems to be that rule-of-law punctilio will be observed for Israelis, but that Arabs can only expect to remain at the receiving end of the combined Israeli military machine and legacy of political discrimination. The second reason for widespread Arab disdain is that the prospect of the Winograd report bringing down the Israeli government and leading to a change in leadership holds out no particular promise of something positive. While Israelis get themselves deeply entangled in the minutia of Israeli party politics and the entertaining personalities of their leaders, Arabs at the receiving end of Israeli foreign policy tend to see little or no significant difference between the Labor and Likud parties that have dominated Israeli life since the 1960s. The hybrid Kadima Party that Ariel Sharon formed in 2005 to claim a new "center of Israeli politics is about to disintegrate. Removing Olmert and replacing him with Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, or Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may spur a satisfying sense of cleansing and renewal in Israeli politics, but this would be seen only as another massive show of smoke and mirrors in the Arab world. 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, injuring 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. After 60 years of hard experience with the Jewish state, most Arabs have concluded that Israeli national policy is defined by a combination of Zionist zealotry and state military overkill vis-a-vis Palestinians and other Arabs. Political leaders who come and go - Olmert, Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Sharon and others - tend to be technical managers of a consistent policy rather than strategic managers who can truly change policy for the same of the wellbeing of Israel and its Arab neighbors. Another prevalent Arab attitude to the Winograd report is renewed concern that an admonished Israeli military and political elite will resort to military adventurism or other extremist moves to reassert its deterrent capability in Arab eyes. The bedrock of Israel's national strategic policy has always been a fearsome military that can quickly defeat, and therefore preemptively deter, any combination of hostile neighbors - Arab or Iranian. Restoring that shattered image of invincibility is likely to be seen as a priority by any Israeli political and military leadership that takes over from Olmert's discredited and crippled coalition. The Winograd report may make Israelis feel good, but in Arab eyes it portends only more of the same Israeli military overkill policies, or even worse, in the months and years ahead. Rami G. Khouriis published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
