Sir, - In reply to Gershon Kedar, of the Israeli Embassy (February 26th) on the subject of Israel, Hizbollah and Lebanon, I note that his citations of Hassen Nasrallah and Ali Tah, senior members of Hizbollah, do not, as she says they do, call for the "destruction of Israel". In fact, they do not name Israel, or even that old cherry, the "Zionist Entity".
If one examines the recent historical record, one can see that while Israeli politicians do not call for the "destruction of Lebanon", the result of actual Israeli policies has been destruction, violence, suffering and injustice for that country. One has only to remember the bombardments of and incursions into South Lebanon of the last few years, launched by the "peace making" Rabin and Peres Governments, with the expressed intention of creating a huge refugee problem (the deployment of violence for political purposes, or "terrorism" by any fair estimation).
One can go back to the 1982-85 war - the time, after all, when Hizbollah first appeared, and when the "security zone" was instituted. One can remember the invasion of 1978. These two enterprises were intended to destroy the PLO, and indeed they damaged that organisation severely.
But they also led to a new radicalisation of Lebanese Shiite society, and contributed to the production of a constituency out of which emerged Amal, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and so on.
This is not a recent policy. Mr Kedar tells us that "Israel has no territorial claim on Lebanon", that "the security zone exists solely to prevent terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians" and that "Israel expect Lebanon to carry out its duties under international law and to disarm terrorist groups such as Hizbullah". But David Gilmour has pointed out, in Lebanon. The Fractured Country, that Israel has, unsurprisingly, had major political and strategic interests there from its inception.
Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan mooted, as far back as 1948, the partition of Lebanon, the establishment of a Christian Maronite state with its southern border on the Litani River, the draining of the waters of the Litani into Northern Israel, and the annexation of a large part of Southern Lebanon: precisely the region that is now the stronghold of Hizbollah (Gilmour, pp. 146-147). Israel's policy after the 1967 War consisted in raids and interventions in Lebanon, assaults on Palestinians and Lebanese locals alike, the destruction of infrastructure, property and crops all of this with a view to persuading the Lebanese to deal with the PLO in the way that Jordan was to do in 1970.
The failure of this policy, because of the weakness of the Lebanese Army, resulted in the arming by Israel of the Maronite militias. The culmination of this was the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Sabra and Chattila in 1982.
Israel may have no territorial claim on Lebanon, as Mr Kedar asserts. Alas, Israel also has absolutely no territorial claim on the moral high ground when it comes to actual interventions or the peddling of influence in Lebanon. - Yours, etc.,
De Vesci Court, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.