Boston Globe Editorial - The march toward civil war

Boston Globe Editorial - The march toward civil war
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: February 12, 2007


It is almost a law of nature: Where states are enfeebled, power seeps out to more parochial units — the ethnic group, the religious sect, the clan, the armed militia. In disparate forms, this phenomenon is now unreeling in Iraq, in Lebanon, and in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip.

Civil war is the specter haunting the larger Middle East. In Iraq, several simultaneous conflicts take hundreds of lives every day. Lebanese, who retain vivid memories of the civil war of 1975-90, feel themselves being dragged toward a recurring nightmare. And in Gaza, civilians who favor different Palestinian factions share a desire to be rid of Hamas and Fatah gunmen who have turned neighborhoods into battlegrounds.

Writing from Gaza recently, Amira Hass of the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that after the recent suicide bombing in Eilat "residents of Gaza were hoping that the Israel Defense Forces would invade the Strip and detain some of the armed men and chase others out of the streets. The clear signals that the IDF does not intend to do so are additional proof for them that Israel wants this internal war to continue."

Hass concurs with Palestinians who place "overall blame for the present situation on the occupation." But she also agrees with those who blame their own leaders for fomenting "a war of the security organs and a civil war."

In Gaza, as in Lebanon and Iraq, the forces driving toward civil war come from within and from without. In each place, what looms ahead are unimaginable massacres of the innocent — unless last week's Fatah- Hamas agreement holds.

An all-out war between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank is not in Israel's interest. Nor is it in the interest of the Palestinians or of surrounding Arab states. The same holds true for Lebanon, where the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad has been backing efforts to bring down the government. Assad risks having the flames of a sectarian vendetta spread to his own country. His minority Alawite regime might not survive if Syria's overwhelming Sunni majority is inflamed by Shiite- Sunni conflicts to the east in Iraq and to the west in Lebanon.

The larger Middle East is approaching a point of no return. The Bush administration ought to be engaged in diplomatic conflict resolution with all the key players in the region, with Syria and Iran as well as the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel. The alternative is to watch the demonic forces of civil war devour peoples and cross borders.