SMOKE ON THE WATER

What was I thinking of when I wrote my last column about water? What strange movements were in the skies? Damned if I know, but its references to possible wars over water supplies, and the specific instancing of Israel seems uncannily prescient in the light of that country's latest brutish incursion into the south of Lebanon.

Control of the Litani river in South Lebanon is widely agreed to be a key longterm objective for the Israelis. It is the source of the sweetest water in the Middle East.Well lo and behold, what happens a week after I wrote? The Israelis strike out against South Lebanon, battering its inhabitants and villages and infrastructures into a paste.

The given reason was to hit at Hezbollah, the Muslim fundamentalists who gave the Israelis a bloody nose in 1982, and who remain defiant in the face of overwhelming technological superiority.

Now, I'm not exactly enamoured of fundamentalists of any hue. But the fact remains that there would be no Palestinian extremists if Israel had been established on an inclusive and pluralist basis in the first place.

Equally, Hezbollah would be of little significance if Israel had not persistently interfered in Lebanese politics, even establishing its own proxy guerilla force, the South Lebanese Army, whom the Irish have particular cause to know, since a number of our peacekeeping soldiers have met their deaths at the hands of these brigands.

But the Israelis seem unwilling to accept the universality of the principle of cause and effect. They drive several hundred thousand people from their homes in South Lebanon, killing between one and two hundred of them for good measure, and seem surprised when people object!

Their spokespersons maintained that they had sophisticated weapons that were very accurate. One, speaking for the military (on RTE radio), seemed to deny the possibility that an Irish post had been hit!

The nett effect of all the blood and guts will be more, not less, support for Hezbollah, and a further polarisation in the Lebanon, which was once known for its easygoing attitudes.

The Israelis cannot see that they themselves are largely responsible for the growth in fundamentalism in Lebanon and the West Bank and that the more they attack the Arabs, the more the Arabs will turn to the only ones who seem to remain defiant.

Or is this part of the agenda? To derail the Middle east peace talks? It hardly seems credible, but few harbour any illusions about politics in that part of the world.

It is the same the world over: in attempting to save our own skin we dig an even deeper hole for ourselves.

And what, the Arab world asks, of America? When Saddam Hussein sent his army into Kuwait, the world, led by the USA, invoked sanctions and threw the most sophisticated military machine known to history at Iraq.

So, the Arabs ask, what's the difference? A regional power invades a weaker neighbour, displaces huge numbers of its citizens, blows its homes and buildings to smithereens . . .

Well, on the face of it, it's hard to argue with them. Israel's treatment of the Lebanese civilians is not that different to Saddam's treatment of the Kurds or Marsh Arabs, which aroused such anger that a "no-fly zone" was instituted.

True, the Israelis haven't used poison gas, but the dead are the dead. They are unlikely to be picky about which way they died. And their living relatives are going to be bitter one way or the other.

What is most galling about the whole thing is that the Israelis themselves should appreciate, more than any other people on earth, what it means to be driven from your home. But the terrible wrongs inflicted on Jews over the centuries don't justify the reciprocal infliction of wrongs on others.

And after 45 years of war, there is a genuine desire for peace in that region, especially in Lebanon, ancient home of the Phoenicians, the first oceangoing traders, and eternally pragmatic and flexible dealers (and chancers).

We could all do with peace. Aside from the possibility of an unexpected Armageddon breaking out, that part of the world is rich in intellectual challenge and exchange, as in culture and commerce. You wouldn't know it from what we hear, but the arts flourish in the Middle East.

Moreover, Israel has sufficient scientific, industrial and agricultural knowhow to become one of the world's economic giants within a generation instead of being dependent on the USA, as it is now. And in a world rapidly running out of food, don't we need the expertise the Israelis have accumulated over the years in making the desert bloom?

The worry is that events will continue to overtake the peace process. After all, the Israelis couldn't have foreseen Saddam Hussein's mad grab for Kuwait. That, and the collapse of the old USSR, which flooded Israel with huge numbers of angry immigrants.

But these eruptions notwithstanding, leadership is all about keeping your head while everyone else reaches for the holster. Things don't always go according to plan, but that's no justification for flattening entire villages in another state and deliberately setting out to create a huge refugee problem.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in a world of turmoil, the universally loathed Serbs seem to have achieved all their objectives in the Balkan War.

They have thumbed their noses at the world and have effectively got away with murder, rape, genocide .. with crimes far in excess of those of which the hapless John Demjanjuk was finally acquitted in Israel last week after 18 years.

This Ukrainian may have been a camp guard in World War II, but such "collaborators" have never been accused of war crimes for a number of reasons: most were forced to collaborate for a start. It's a messy area, and wisdom indicates that trials are unworkable.

But in fact he was charged with the crimes of another, the notorious Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, a man just like some of the more extremist Serb leaders.

Demjanjuk was uprooted from his American home, held in prison, tried and sentenced to death, a sentence that would have been carried out had an Israeli extremist not thrown acid in his lawyer's face, which necessitated a recuperative delay in the hearing of Demjanjuk's appeal, during which time the USSR collapsed and old documents became available which indicated his innocence . . .

Like I said, things don't always work out as you thought they would.

The old Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal agreed with the verdict and that's good enough for me. But if this phase of history is drawing to a close, with the advancing decrepitude of the survivors, who is to take up Wiesenthal's mission and apply it to the brutes of the Balkans?

The much hated Serbs, who now use the term "exchange of population" instead of their former preference, "ethnic cleansing," honour amongst themselves some of the most appalling war criminals who have ever lived. Their neighbours in Croatia also harbour their own monsters.

Who is to hunt them down? And who will oversee the process of trial and punishment? And will similar sanctions be put and kept in place for Serbia as a whole, when the dust dies down and they have their Greater Serbia established?

And what happens if, succoured by the largest army in Europe, they decide they don't like it? Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria could all be invaded, as could Hungary to the north.

The point being that there isn't an inevitable progression towards peace and prosperity and democracy and sweet reason in this world. Unpredictable things intervene. It only took Hitler six years to take Germany from Weimar dissipation to imperial power. Serbian leader Slobodon Milosevic is a kind of reincarnation.

I doubt that he will be happy within his charnel house for long.