The First Waltz

A Film in Search of a Context

By NADIA HIJAB
CounterPunch

"......No mention is made of the fact that an informal ceasefire between Israel and the PLO had kept the border quiet for nine whole months. Then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon used the excuse of an attack on the Israeli ambassador to London by a renegade Palestinian group -- one that was also anti-PLO -- to launch his Lebanon invasion.

Does any of this sound familiar? In December 2008, Sharon's political heirs launched a hellish assault on Gaza ostensibly to stop the rockets against Israel's southern towns. Yet an informal ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that began in June 2008 had brought quiet to those towns -- until an Israeli incursion on November 4 killed six Hamas fighters and led to a resumption of rockets, providing the excuse for the assault.

Waltz does not question the reasons for the Lebanon war, or even Israel's role beyond its "indirect responsibility," as an Israeli inquiry put it, for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila at the end of the war. But some 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed during the 3-month war for which Israel was directly responsible......"