More wars or appeasement in the Middle East?
As the dust settles following the Lebanon cease fire, Israel is less secure than before the war whatever the fig leaf of positive spin international diplomats put on events.
Current indications are that Israel’s northern borders may not be secured without another bigger war, unless Israelis suddenly have a change of heart and decide to appease their enemies.
It is increasingly clear that the edifice of peace is being built on a quicksand of hope rather than firmer foundations of tangible and constructive post-war events. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan’s visit to Lebanon was a reminder of how dangerous those shifting sands are.
Under UNIFIL’s rules of engagement clarified during the last two days nobody – neither the Europeans nor the Lebanese army – would shoot to kill Hizballah members transporting weapons in south Lebanon. European soldiers in particular will do nothing to stop arms deliveries to Hizballah beyond asking the Lebanese government to take action despite its obvious impotence.
After great soul searching, the Europeans have offered about 7,000 troops towards the UNIFIL force, which is less than half the required strength of 15,000. The motives of that offer have less to do with building a better Middle East and more with avoiding embarrassment and international contempt for Europe.
A key motive was to avoid being branded yet again as a group of confused and hypocritical governments reluctant to stick their necks out for peace, especially if that costs European blood and treasure.
Israel is less secure since it will come under increasing pressure not to defend itself through war because of the presence of international troops in Lebanon. Given the circumstances, there are only two courses of action to move towards peace starting from the fragile road map laid down in UN resolution 1701.
One is that the Lebanese government should somehow neutralize and disarm Hizballah through a domestic process of political negotiations. The other is that Israel should voluntarily desist from raids into Lebanon even if it sees arms being shipped to Hizballah through Syria. It would also lift the naval blockade of Lebanon, thus running the risk of possible arms shipments to Hizballah from the sea. No warship linked to UNIFIL is expected to shoot to stop those shipments.
That puts Israel in a bind because the Lebanese government is obviously too weak to confront Hizballah in any way. In effect, Hizballah alone will decide whether to lay down arms and fully enter Lebanese politics as a pacific entity or to keep one foot in each camp, as currently. It alone will decide whether it remains the chief social service organization rebuilding south Lebanon and south Beirut, or whether it allows Lebanon’s government to be visible to the public as a key actor.
Meanwhile, the Europeans have drawn a blanket of wishful thinking and hope over their involvement. Their main message is that Israel should prefer negotiations to war as the route to building security and peace for its people. As an ideal, that route is laudable. But with whom is Israel to negotiate?
Is it expected to sign peace deals and compromises with a Lebanese government that has no punitive power over any of the major sects, including Shiites, Maronites, Sunni and Druze? Such deals would not be worth the paper on which they are written. Worse still, Transparency International ranks Lebanon alongside Rwanda for corruption and poor governance.
Even if valid interlocutors could be found for Israel, would they make the necessary compromises if they knew beforehand that Israel will not start a major war because of the risk of killing European troops?
Israel is between a rock and a hard place. Expecting the Lebanese government to reign in Hizballah is unrealistic. Therefore, it must retain full freedom to conduct raids and conduct naval blockades to stop arms from flowing to Hizballah.
On the other hand, it cannot respond with overwhelming force to new provocations by Hizballah or other more shadowy splinter groups of terrorist because of the presence of many thousand Europeans in Lebanon.
In the end, the only possibility open to Israel may be to tell UNIFIL to get out of the way while it launches a war bigger than the last one to change Lebanon’s political makeup once and for all. This may not happen soon as all sides lick their wounds and rearm for another day. But one thing is clear – the current no-war no-peace situation is unsustainable.
The available choices are a bigger war or wars of attrition for decades to come; or a sudden change of heart in Israel to make peace at the cost of major territorial and other concessions.
9 Responses to “More wars or appeasement in the Middle East?”
Your analysis is sound, as usual. But please use care in employing the explosive term “appeasement.” The term conjures up Neville Chamberlain’s delusion about “peace in our time” and giving in to Hitler. But the historic parallel almost never applies when it is brought up in today’s context against Islamist terrorism. Nobody earnestly believes that Islamist terrorists will somehow lay down their arms if given a set of political demands. Cheney and other delusional neo-con warmongers raise the specter of appeasement any time somebody doesn’t agree with the most outlandishly aggressive policy. (When not using the term “appeasement”, they use the word “unserious”, which seems to apply more to the neocons than their critics.)
The question is means. How do you confront Hizbullah? Israel tried a direct confrontation approach and discovered that, absent a massive ground invasion a la 1982, total victory against Hizbullah was impossible. Does that mean Israel decided to “appease” Hizbullah by agreeing to the UN plan? No. It means they determined that the future costs of war far outweighed continuing the military track they were under. It may have been a tactical defeat for Israel in the end. It may have even been a long-term strategic defeat. But it wasn’t appeasement. Nor was it appeasement when Europeans and the UN tried to intervene. There were real concerns about civilian casualties and destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, economy and government. It may have been unwise, in the end, for Europe and the UN to intervene. But it wasn’t “appeasement” in the sense of craven, self-serving cowardice.
I could contend that
is deceptive: Israel has made lots and lots of concessions, and what exactly has it gotten for these concessions? More war, and more terrorism.
No, the decision not to fight needs to be made by Hizbollah and its associated groups.
Even if “a sudden change of heart in Israel to make peace at the cost of major territorial and other concessions” it would do no good because Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aksa Martyr Brigades, Al-Qaeda etc do not want peace with Israel but rather to destroy Israel.
It’s almost like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Very disheartening, in my opinion.
Major terroritorial concessions indeed: Israel has to destroy itself in order to establish some kind of peace in the Middle-East.
I said it once and I’ll say it again: Hizbullah and Hamas are not fighting to ‘liberate’ their people, they are also not fighting because Israel is settling on soil that doesn’t belong to it.
Read Hamas’ charter: their goal is not two states. Their goal, like that of the Muslim brotherhood logically, like that of Hizbullah, logically, is to destroy Israel completely.
I agree with Elrod, but would also note the Neville was also trying to buy some time for Britain to build up it’s military forces. I am not sure that he did not think that at some time there would be a day of reckoning between Germany an Britain. You could even make a good case that if France had followed British advice and had struck Germany while they were attacking Poland the war could have ended earlier and differently, and Neville might have been hailed the hero.
Territorial concessions are precisely what lead to the recent war with hezbollah. It boggles my mind that anyone can still suggest additional territorial concessions for peace is the proper course.
I believe that there may be another option for Israel – learn from Hezbollah and co-opt their successful strategies. Hezbollah succeeds because they support the locals with money, health care, infrastructure improvements, etc. And so long as Hezbollah continues this strategy, Israel will have a very difficult time of defeating Hezbollah. Israel’s strategy thus far has been to make life so painful for locals that they’ll cast Hezbollah out from their midst, and it’s not neccessarily a bad strategy – if it worked. IMHO, it’s not working, so it’s time for Israel to change their strategy, and I propose that the new strategy should be for Israel to help rebuild southern Lebanon and to use propoganda to Israel’s advantage. It probably wouldn’t be quite this simple, but it’s a starting point.
I have a more detailed proposal for the U.S. in Iraq and Israel in Lebanon on my website here.
Brian Angliss- I agree. Right after the latest conflict Hezbollah was visible in the streets of Lebanon handing out wads of cash from Iran, and helping homeowners rebuild. There is nothing Israel or the Lebanese government can do to combat that kind of PR.
Making life difficult for the Lebanese, and destroying their infrastructure will only unite them behind Hezbollah in the goal to wipe Israel off the map. I’m not sure why the Israelis declared victory after their withdrawel- I really didn’t see much militarily (except they got Hezbollah to fire off many of their missiles) and it was a PR disaster for them and the U.S.