2010 will witness the most destructive wars in modern history
2010 will determine the fate of Iran and Lebanon for many
years
2010 will observe a bitter end of Hezbollah and the
destruction of Syria’s missile and chemical programs
January 01/10
Middle East journalist and analyst, Hamid
Ghoriafi, wrote this analysis in Arabic especially
for the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC http://www.10452lccc.com)
Translated by LCCC Chairman, Elias Bejjani*
Middle East analysts predict that the year 2010 could make
the past nine years look laughable considering the kinds and ferocity of
tragedies that might hit the region that has been a violent battlefield for
four crushing wars.
The first two are the Taliban regime of Afghanistan and that of Baathist Saddam Hussein in Iraq which were toppled by force
in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida
group that targeted New York’s twin towers and the Pentagon in Washington.
As a result of this deadly attack, Lebanon's political and
military map was changed in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. By
the end of this devastating war, an Israeli security belt was established
inside the entire southern Lebanese territory as far as 20 miles to the south
of the Litani area.
In 2000 Israel withdrew its troops from a previous security belt
in southern Lebanon, to a distance not exceeding four kilometers. This new wide
Israeli belt on her borders inside Lebanon is maintained by a force from
34 countries under the UN flag, and not by her own troops as was the situation
before 2000.
Meanwhile, Lebanon, Syria and Iran were forced to approve the
redeployment of the Lebanese army in the entire southern region, including the
Lebanese –Israeli borders after it was driven away by the Syrian occupation all
through its 30-year occupation of Lebanon.
At the same time, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon was knocked out
in a successful political war in 2005 in which the Lebanese "David"
defeated the Syrian "Juliet" and the Syrian army was forced to
withdraw from Lebanon with accordance with UN Resolution 1559 after 30 years of
brutal and savage occupation of the country.
Still in the Middle East, last year the creeping Iranian military
invasion has viciously reached Saudi Arabia’s southern borders with Yemen,
where a fierce war is waging, probably in its last stages, in which the
Iranians and their Yemeni Al-Howthy proxy are heading
to a significant defeat.
In 2010, weapons of mass destruction that were developed after the
unprecedented Iraq war, will probably determine the fate of at least two Middle
East countries and that of a mini-state: Iran and its nuclear program,
Lebanon and Hezbollah, and the Gaza Palestinian Strip mini-state. It is
expected that events will unfold in a dramatic way that could be much more
catastrophic and destructive than all the previous wars that hit the region
throughout the past 50 years. Analysts assume that these coming wars will
remove all obstacles that US President Barack Obama is presently facing in his
endeavor to solve the Arab - Israeli conflict which has been raging for the
last 61 years. In the midst of all these dramatic foreseen events, Syria and
Lebanon will have no other option but to the sign a peace treaty in compliance
with Israel's terms.
After containing the major Middle East conflicts, it is expected
that the mighty Western countries will seriously focus their military
interventions to resolve and end conflicts in three fragile countries,
Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, in a bid to put an end to the problems that
these three unstable countries are inflicting on their neighboring countries
and on global peace and order.
Meanwhile, Syria and Lebanon might encounter a serious internal
crisis as a result of the indictments and arrest warrants the Special
International Tribunal for Lebanon is scheduled to issue. Hezbollah is expected
to use its weapons internally to deter the Lebanese government from extraditing
the witnesses and the accused that could include its elite leadership. This
Iranian armed militia will replicate its May, 2008 military invasion of Sunni
western Beirut and the Druze Mount Lebanon that was waged to stop by force and
terrorism the Lebanese government from dismantling its illegal
telecommunication network and to transfer the head of security at Beirut
airport who happens to be a Hezbollah loyalist.
Lebanon and Hezbollah
Israeli experts at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Universities strongly
believe that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in
Tehran could pre-empt any international military attack against its nuclear
program and start a war against Israel from south Lebanon through Hezbollah and
several Palestinian armed militias allied with Syria that are stationed in
Lebanon.
These experts say that such an Iranian act will give Israel’s
Netanyahu government the needed justifications to go ahead and wage an
unprecedented destructive war against both Hezbollah and Lebanon and totally
cripple their capabilities for many years to come.
These same experts predict that Israel will need from five to six
weeks to totally liquidate and eliminate Hezbollah's leadership, including
Hassan Nasrallah, his deputy, Naim
Qassem, all the military and political teams working
with them, and to dismantle the Lebanese army structure and all its security
apparatus that is still following the Syrian doctrine that Syria enforced
during 30 years of her tutelage of Lebanon. The Israeli forces will target
the Lebanese army leadership, weapons' caches, barracks, facilities, and
members throughout Lebanon.
Syria
Despite the fact that the Syrian Baathist
regime has been avoiding during the last three decades any direct military
confrontation or even friction with the Israeli army, the Israeli
analysts are under the impression that their country will widen its hit
on Syrian targets to include sites in the capital Damascus and in the northern
Syrian regions up to the Turkish border in a bid to once and forever eliminate
Syria's chemical and missile programs in addition to the nuclear sites that
were built with North Korean and Iranian experts. Syria would be hit more
massively if it turns out to the Israelis that Hezbollah's long-range missiles
that could target Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities were Syrian-made (an
argument Israel's generals have been contemplating for a while).
Experts estimate the number of Israeli casualties as a result of
the Iranian and Syrian missiles that Hezbollah would launch on Israeli cities
and towns in this coming war between 1,000 and 2,000, with a twofold number of
injured. Meanwhile, the Hezbollah and Lebanese losses will be four to five
times greater than their casualties of the 2006 war. These losses will be
around 8,000 dead and twice as many wounded. Many Shiite border villages
as well towns and cities in the Bekaa valley and
Beirut's southern suburbs will be totally destroyed and cease to exist.
Experts estimate the number of the Lebanese that would be
displaced from their homes, mainly from south Lebanon, the Bekaa
valley and southern Beirut suburbs would be more than a million citizens, with
most of them taking refuge in Syria at this time. The same scenario indicates
that the Lebanese economic infrastructure will be destroyed and transformed
into mere ruins, while all international and Arabic efforts through the
convening of aid conferences (e.g. Paris 2 and Paris 3 were special
international economic conferences held in Paris to aid Lebanon in
reconstruction) in order to raise funds for reconstruction will take for many
years to be productive.
British defense officials have affirmed that this grim,
intimidating and scary picture predicted by the Israeli experts for the coming
year seems to be very close to the actual devastating reality that will hit
Lebanon in the next war. The Israelis, as they are advocating worldwide,
are solidly determined to close the Hezbollah case once and or all, due to the
fact that wish to eliminate the possibility of any future wars and finally achieve
security on their northern border.
Click Here to read the Arabic version of this analysis
Elias Bejjani
Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator
Email phoenicia@hotmail.com
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