Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My grievance today relates to the war in Lebanon and the enormous human suffering that is caused when diplomacy and dialogue are sacrificed in favour of aggression. Today it is three weeks since a ceasefire was brokered under the auspices of United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, which called for a full cessation of hostilities in Lebanon. With the ceasefire, thankfully, still in effect, now is the time to take stock of what happened, especially the enormous damage suffered by Lebanon during the war as well as the political fallout that has already started to occur, particularly in Israel, where calls have been made for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign over his government’s handling of the war.

It was only a year ago that a popular groundswell of support for democratic change swept across Lebanon as millions of ordinary Lebanese civilians took to the streets demanding that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Sparked by the assassination of the then Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and largely driven by student and youth groups across Lebanon, this popular groundswell of support for change came to be known as the Cedar Revolution. The Cedar Revolution served as an outlet for ordinary Lebanese civilians to vent their collective anger and frustration at decades of Syrian interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon and, in particular, its continued military presence in the country. The Cedar Revolution succeeded in ultimately breaking the back of Syria’s hegemony in Lebanon, and it helped unite the country in an atmosphere of promise and expectation for the future.

The culmination of this promise was the running of the Lebanese Assembly national elections in May and June last year. Prior to the Cedar Revolution and Lebanon’s national elections, Lebanon had embarked upon a decade-long project to rebuild itself after the massive devastation it had suffered in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of war. One of the key figures in Lebanon’s postwar reconstruction had, of course, been Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

For the first time in decades, Lebanon finally seemed to be turning the corner. National reconstruction efforts, combined with the running of strongly contested national elections, marked the rebirth of Lebanon as a prosperous and democratic nation—one that was well on its way to embracing a new and promising future. Tragically, Lebanon’s path to national renewal has been cut mercilessly short, and that sense of a new and promising future now seems like a distant memory given the enormous devastation caused by this last war. Whatever Israel’s intentions were in Lebanon, the net effect of this war has been to destroy in a matter of weeks what it had taken the people of Lebanon both years and billions of dollars to rebuild and, in the process, to set Lebanon’s development back some 30 years.

For those of us who watched the war unfold in scenes that were often brutal and devastating, it was hard not to conclude that Lebanon itself was under attack rather than just Hezbollah, as asserted by Israel. Both northern and southern Lebanon were targeted, essential civilian infrastructure and services were destroyed and ordinary Lebanese civilians were collectively punished for a war they had no part in starting. The physical, financial and psychological costs of the war will likely be felt in Lebanon for generations to come. Today, Lebanon is again faced with the daunting task of having to rebuild itself virtually from the ground up.

The United Nations Development Program lists the cost of short-term recovery programs necessary to alleviate Lebanon’s current humanitarian crisis at a staggering $US46.3 million. The aim of these short-term recovery programs is to return Lebanon’s basic social, economic and administrative infrastructure to a minimum level of operation and to prevent the further deterioration of Lebanon’s national and natural assets. In the words of the UNDP, the sole purpose of these short-term recovery programs will be to ‘bridge the gap between crisis and reconstruction’, meaning that $US46.3 million is required before Lebanon can even begin to contemplate its longer term reconstruction and rebuilding, which will cost in the vicinity of $US3.6 billion.

There are many aspects of this conflict that remain deeply disturbing to me and to many of the constituents that I represent in this place, and I want to briefly highlight some of them today. The first is the sheer speed with which this conflict escalated into all-out war, without warning and without any prior attempt made at diplomacy to mediate the tensions caused by Hezbollah’s cross-border capture of the two Israeli soldiers and its killing of several others on 12 July this year. In a region that is already highly volatile, there is always the possibility for any act of war, no matter how localised, to engulf other parts of the Middle East. This makes the actions of both Hezbollah and Israel doubly irresponsible, but Israel’s actions were more so given its disproportionate use of force that many in the international community have criticised.

The second point relates to the utter failure on the part of the international community to either prevent this war from occurring in the first place or stop it once it had started. As the international community reached a stalemate over Lebanon, and with US attempts to reach an international consensus on a ceasefire hard to take seriously, Lebanon was left virtually defenceless. One consequence of our failure to secure an early end to the war was the tragedy of Qana. Our failure to stop this war early speaks of an international system continually compromised by a form of politics in which, to repeat the words of Thucydides: ‘The strongest do as they can, and the weak suffer as they must.’

The third issue of concern I have is simply that none of the justifications so far given for this war fall within the parameters of what the UN Security Council charter sanctions as a just cause for war. Israel’s justification for its military offensive in Lebanon continually changed. It went from being a war aimed at freeing the two captured Israeli soldiers to being a war of retaliation against Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on northern Israel. Then it became a war aimed at implementing UN Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah to be disarmed and disbanded. Finally, we were told that it was a war of self-defence and a war for Israel’s survival, even though it was Lebanon’s survival that hung precariously in the balance rather than Israel’s.

On the other side, there is no justification for Hezbollah’s cross-border attack into Israel and its capture of the two Israeli soldiers. This was a grave provocation and a miscalculation on the part of Hezbollah, one for which Lebanon and its people have paid an enormous price, and Hezbollah’s firing of rockets into northern Israel only served to kill and traumatise innocent Israeli civilians and to perpetuate the war. However, it would be naive to believe that Hezbollah was the loser in this war or, alternatively, that Israel was the winner. While Hezbollah’s popularity has grown, the war has seriously damaged broader perceptions of Israel’s military strength, and domestic criticism in Israel continues to intensify over the Israeli leadership’s handling of the war. This was surely not the outcome that Israel envisaged when it commenced its attacks.

Israel has long been the single most dominant power in the Middle East, given its strategic alliance with the United States. By virtue of this position, it has both an obligation and a responsibility to safeguard regional stability by pursuing diplomatic solutions built around dialogue, rather than relying on a policy of military deterrence. If nothing else, the devastation and human suffering caused by the war in Lebanon, and its resounding failure to resolve longstanding tensions in the region, again teaches us that war is not the answer—is never the answer—and that dialogue and diplomacy are the only real options available to us, especially in a region as volatile as the Middle East.

It is completely fallacious to believe that the Lebanese government could in any way have resolved the issue of Hezbollah only one year into its term in office, and we need to listen to the Lebanese government when it insists that only dialogue and inclusion can succeed where war cannot. Let us not overlook the fact that the government of Lebanon was in discussions with Hezbollah prior to the commencement of the war and that it was hoping to effect the disarming of Hezbollah through dialogue. The government of Lebanon feels that it was not given a reasonable chance to pursue this course of action.

Instead, Lebanon is today left with the task of picking up the pieces after the massive destruction of its infrastructure and the killing of over 1,000 civilians, with countless more injured. While both sides have suffered civilian causalities, it is the people of Lebanon who have suffered nothing short of a catastrophe, one that will take decades to overcome. The support and commitment of the international community is required to aid the recovery of the people of Lebanon. I would like to make the point that Australia’s commitment to assist in that effort is also required. I call on the Australian government to increase the level of aid that it has already committed to the rebuilding of Lebanon.