Sir, - Dr Steve Harris takes me to task (March 19th) for having referred to Israel's incursion into Lebanon as an invasion; he himself uses the rather coy term "entry". I suppose there are a few revisionists out there who might wish to talk of Cromwell's "entry" into Ireland in the 17th century - and no doubt the natives were revolting at that time as well - but his letter rather misses a central point of my own earlier one.
Even if one accepts some of his premises concerning the alleged justification of Israel's repeated incursions into Lebanon - and by and large I do not - my point is that:
(a) they have not achieved their original objectives from an Israeli standpoint and have led the Israeli army and state into dishonour and disgrace in such incidents as the massacres of civilians in Palestinian refugee camps and at Qana; and (b) irrespective of the motives of other outside players, including Syria, Israeli actions have generated an understandable, home-grown and effective resistance movement in South Lebanon.
It is difficult to take some of his other points seriously, as they are based on factually incorrect statements. Resolution 425 does not refer to the 1982 invasion, for instance, but that of 1978, four years earlier. Syria, like it or not, was invited into Lebanon by the Lebanese Government. This does not justify or excuse all of its actions there since then but it does mean that any comparison with the invasion by Israel (and that is the correct word in terms of international law) is invalid.
The statements about massive Soviet backing, and weapons for an army of 150,000, are risible and would be amusing were it not for the vastly more modest nature of the support that Syria and the PLO received from the Soviet Union compared with the weapons of mass destruction which Israel received from the US and which it has not hesitated to use against civilian as well as military targets.
Dr Harris's letter also ignores the role which Israel itself played in destabilising the internal equilibrium of Lebanon through its support for the neo-fascist Phalange party within a portion of the Christian community and by its deliberate targeting of the normal apparatus of state administration, such as the incident three years ago when electricity production facilities were bombed outside Beirut.
The Hezbullah resistance is there primarily because Israel continues to occupy Lebanon. There have not been "numerous" rocket attacks on Northern Israel - on the contrary, there was a de facto agreement between Israel and the Lebanese resistance that military actions would be confined to the so-called security zone. In the vast majority of instances it has been the Israeli side that has failed to keep its word. Israeli propaganda has managed to obscure or confuse these and many related facts down the years. It would be naive to suggest that there has not been wrong on all sides. The Palestinians did not play a helpful role in Lebanon and only accepted over time that they can never drive the Israelis into the sea, even though it was mostly their land to begin with; Jerusalem will never become the capital of an Islamic republic; Syria is still a dictatorship although that does not make Assad's desire to recover the lost Golan Heights less understandable or less popular there; Lebanon has not been the ideal multicultural society. The fact remains that the underlying Israeli approach to date - that attack is always the best method of defence - must change, before acceptable compromises become possible. The signs are that many in Israel are beginning to recognise this fact. - Yours, etc., Piaras Mac Einri,
Model Farm Road,Cork.