Hezbollah's arms still a reason to
fight By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Many in the Arab world could
not help but draw parallels between Hassan
Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, giving a
televised address on August 13 - the day the
ceasefire with Israel came into effect - with the
speech given by Egyptian president Gamal
Abdul-Nasser in June 1967 when his six-day war
with Israel ended.
A tired
and apologetic Nasser appeared before a baffled
and miserable Arab public. That war resulted in
the occupation of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights,
the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank.
Having aged tremendously during the few days of the
war, he lamented the Arab defeat and explained why
his air force had been completely destroyed
before even taking off. (On June 5, the start of
the war, over 300 Egyptian aircraft, including
bombers,
combat planes and helicopters,
were destroyed in less than two hours.)
Nasser took full blame for the fiasco, then
famously resigned in disgrace.
This time
Nasrallah, considered a new Nasser by many, was
far from apologizing. Rather, he proudly said, "We
are before a strategic and historic victory,
without any exaggeration, for all of Lebanon, the
resistance and the whole of the Arab world."
Depending on where one stands in the Arab
world, this battle was either a grand victory for
Hezbollah or a prelude to their ultimate and
eventual defeat by virtue of United Nations
Resolution 1701. The resolution, passed at the UN
on August 11, emphasizes that Hezbollah should
disarm, and it calls for the deployment of the
Lebanese Army and multinational troops on the
Lebanese-Israeli border. To date, that has been
accepted by Hezbollah.
This was a
concession indeed on the behalf of Nasrallah, but
by no means does it mean that Hezbollah is
defeated or writing itself off the political stage
of the Middle East. If implemented strictly by the
word, the resolution means that Hezbollah will be
deprived of the territory from which it can launch
attacks on Israel. The Israelis hailed this as a
victory.
Shortly before Nasrallah's speech, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert commented that "there
is no more a state-within-a-state" in Lebanon,
and Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed to prevent
Hezbollah from carrying out any more attacks
on Israel from South Lebanon. Also, those who
believe that the resolution will destroy Hezbollah
point to the fact that it emphasizes UN Resolution
1559, which calls on Hezbollah to disarm.
The conflict, however, is not over. A battle
has ended in which both sides have claimed victory.
The war has only just begun.
But
what about the arms? A
good reading of history
shows that multinational forces do not necessarily
mean that Hezbollah will stop firing rockets
into Israel. Multinational forces were there
after all in 1982-1984, numbering 5,000 troops,
including 1,800 US marines. They went to Lebanon
to help put an end to the civil war that had
raged since 1975. They were sent home after a suicide
truck bomb killed 241 marines and 58 French
soldiers in October 1983.
The
new coalition force of 15,000 troops would be
larger than the one of the 1980s, but it is
doubtful that Hezbollah will pay any attention to
it. The troops will not be authorized to inspect
the bases of Hezbollah or the underground bunkers
and tunnels that the Lebanese group has created in
South Lebanon, along the border of Israel, since
2000.
They will also be unable to
disarm Hezbollah. That has to be done by the
Lebanese state or the Lebanese Army, and clearly neither
is in a position to do so at this stage.
From where everybody stands today, nobody
has a formula on how to disarm Hezbollah.
Nasrallah has said that disarming Hezbollah, or
even talking about such an act at this stage,
would be "wrong timing and immoral". If any party
tries to disarm it by force, Hezbollah will fight
back, and the results would be nothing less than
another bloody civil war for Lebanon.
Several countries have signaled
willingness to send troops to Lebanon, including
France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia,
Morocco, Spain and Turkey. Arab countries are
reluctant because it would seem as if they were
protecting Israel by stationing their troops along
with the border and "preventing" any future
attacks by Hezbollah. But not one of these
countries has a clue as to how to deal with
Hezbollah in South Lebanon, given that Beirut is
unable and unwilling to call on its fighters to
lay down their arms.
When the war broke out, Israeli
intelligence estimated that Hezbollah had 500
medium-range Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 rockets and several long-range
Zilzal rockets, with a range of 300 kilometers (far
enough to reach Tel Aviv) and able to
carry up to 600 kilograms of explosives. It
also had about 12,000 short-range rockets,
probably all Russian-made Katyushas.
Israeli analysts claim that Hezbollah's
long-range missiles have been destroyed, but the
short-range ones are still there. These can still
be dangerous because they can be smuggled with
ease, and can be fired from homes and civilian
areas, making it difficult for Israel to retaliate
without embarrassing itself by killing civilians.
Not according to plan According
to a variety of Middle East experts, including
veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, Israel
had devised a plan to attack Hezbollah well before
the Lebanese movement captured two Israeli
soldiers on July 12.
The US administration
has its own reasons for supporting such an
offensive. The State Department wanted Hezbollah
to be defeated, which would strengthen the central
government of Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora. The
White House wanted war because its was seriously
considering a military strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities.
To the White House, this war would demonstration what kind
of weapons Iran had given Hezbollah. Second, if
the war succeeded - and everybody thought that it
would - then it would destroy Hezbollah and
prevent Nasrallah from siding with Iran in the
event of an Iran-US showdown, or from firing
missiles on Israel during such a crisis.
The costs of the war would be minimal for
Israel, the Americans believed. It was easy to
convince President George W Bush of the need for
such a war because he wanted to strengthen
Siniora and test the pulse of Iran's power. As it
is, he has learned the kind of resistance
Hezbollah can mount - and Iran would be many times
stronger.
Further, the Bush administration
feared a "Hezbollah model" emerging in failed
states inspired by the military prowess and
leadership of Nasrallah, or more specifically, an
Iraqi Hezbollah.
Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has all
the qualifications to repeat the "Hezbollah model" in Iraq.
He is young, has a strong power base,
is Shi'ite, comes from a religious family,
and like Nasrallah is very much opposed to Bush's Middle East plan.
The Shi'ite resolve, which made
the war a success for Nasrallah, is also
present in Iraq. Weapons and money can be provided
by Iran. Iraq today is exactly where Lebanon
was when Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s:
a war-torn nation, occupied by an enemy state
(Israel), and ripe for any kind of military or
political adventurism. And it would not be
difficult to rally thousands into a "Hezbollah
model" because what Nasrallah did in Lebanon has
shown the world that Israel is not invincible. If
Israel is not invincible, Muqtada would conclude,
then the same applies to the United States.
In the broader sense, the Americans and
the Israelis wanted several things out of the war
- none of which, with the exception of sending the
Lebanese Army to the south - has been achieved.
They wanted to create a Sunni Arab coalition,
spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, to obstruct Shi'ite
ambitions in the Arab world. Although both Saudi
Arabia and Jordan at first showed readiness, they
quickly became silent in fear of the wrath of
their own streets, which are supportive of anyone
fighting - and winning - a war against Israel.
Olmert under fire
It will be difficult for Israeli Prime Minister Olmert
to emerge as a peacemaker in the region -
assuming he manages to stay in office. A leader has
to prove himself in times of war and earn enough
war medals before he can make peace with the enemy. History
is filled with examples, such as Menachem Begin
with Camp David in 1978, Yitzhak Rabin with the
Oslo Accords in 1993, Ehud Barak with the Syrians
in the 1990s and Ariel Sharon with his
disengagement from Gaza in 2005.
All
of these prime ministers were established
leaders with a long record of military successes that
they could flash before the Israeli public if
anybody accused them of being too soft on the enemy.
A discredited prime minister such
as Olmert, who is being severely criticized
for mishandling the war, cannot make peace. It would be
considered an ultimate disgrace for him to sign
off a treaty with his enemy if he were not in a
position of power and had not defeated his enemy
over and over again.
Although the Israeli
public rallied around Olmert during this war, the
opposition will seriously try to oust him now that
it is over, just like it ousted Golda Meir for her
mishandling of the early hours of the October War
of 1973.
Yaron Ezrahi, a political analyst
at Hebrew University, said: "The right is
preparing itself to attack the government no
matter what, for failing to defeat Hezbollah."
Moshe Arens, a former minister of defense with the
Likud Party, commented that Olmert and his team
"are not fit to govern Israel in these trying
times". He added, "They have exhausted whatever
little credit they had when they were voted into
office."
On August 11, a poll
conducted by Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper showed that support for
Olmert had dropped to 48% from a high of 75% at
the start of the war on July 12. Shimon Peres, the
deputy prime minister, has already quarreled with
Olmert, heightening fears that the coalition
cabinet might fall.
Winners and
losers The war means many things to
different people. Despite all the face-saving
being done by Olmert and Bush, it was a grand
surprise to the Americans and the Israelis. And it
is wrong to assume that the war is over only
because a ceasefire has gone into effect.
War will break out once again if anybody
tries to disarm Hezbollah by force, or if Israel
launches any provocations against Hezbollah. This
cannot be prevented by the Lebanese Army or by the
multinational forces as long as Hezbollah remains
armed. And Hezbollah will not disarm until the
occupied Sheba Farms are returned to Lebanon.
Israel might also be tricking the Lebanese
with the ceasefire. Olmert might be seeking time
to retrain, rearm, replan and reinvade South
Lebanon to achieve his original stated goal of
annihilating Hezbollah. If he needs more urging,
cover-up, arms or money, he could get it from the
White House, which is just as determined to see an
end to Hezbollah.
Naturally, Olmert would need
an excuse to attack again, or else Israel would be
accused of violating the ceasefire. But excuses
are very easy to find in the Middle East. This
scenario is not all that far-fetched: one can be
sure that the guns have not been silenced
permanently.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst. He is the author of
Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria
1900-2000 (Cune Press 2005).
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