Global Voices Online

When citizen journalists or ‘ordinary' bloggers are making political statements on current Middle East conflicts between Israel and Lebanon, they are usually talking with their hearts. They write whatever they want to write without any consideration of impacts. But when a minister of the largest Muslim country in the world like Indonesia is blogging, he must have been facing difficulties to speak up his mind and hence has to walk in the tight rope between personal statement and the portfolio of ministership he's holding. Hence the ability to read “between the lines” is needed to understand what he is actually talking about.

That's what happens to Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesian Defense Minister, the first and only Minister to have a blog who is also former professor of international relations at the prominent Universitas Indonesia.

In his latest post he wrote about the current Middle East conflict from various angles especially from the diplomatic point of views.

On the incapablitity of UN and “awkward” position of US stand:

The UN in New York issued its predictable litany of diplomatic statements, underlining its helplessness in having credible leverage over any of the protagonists.

The US Secretary of State rather awkwardly wanted “a ceasefire in days, not weeks” but found her words undercut by intensified shelling and missile attacks by both Israel and Hizbullah.

The deep divisions even among the Arab countries:

Heads of states and of governments in Arab capitals differ in their approaches to seek a solution, depending on the respective Arab government’s strategic attitudes toward Israel, Lebanon and Iran.

He equally states that both Israel and Hizbullah have acted beyond their respective backers i.e. the US and Iran respectively.

What the root cause of the conflict?

The intense hatred arising from anger, fear, deep vengeance and radical rhetoric, combined with personal as well as collective sufferings on both sides have led the military conflict run unchecked.

He thinks that the war will last longer than predicted because,

Hizbullah found new methods of running a total war effort, confounding the Israeli military with their ingenuity and skill in deploying rockets and missiles from wide and dispersed areas. It can ignore calls for a cessation of hostilities so long as its human and military resources remain intact. The Israeli defense force, under increased international pressure to agree to a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities, can only do so if it feels that the Hizbullah forces are dismantled, if not destroyed, entirely. Neither side can afford to be seen as having to step down from its absolute minimum military threshold. So longs the war of military attrition continues, an agreed diplomatic formulation will have to wait for the appropriate balance of military forces.

The post attracts some interesting comments which you can read below:
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