SPEAKING
FREELY Overreaching in
Lebanon By Emanuel Shahaf
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their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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After two weeks of
fighting, Israel is beginning to overreach. The
decision to "ask" the population of south Lebanon,
between the border to Israel and the Litani River,
to leave the area (we are talking about close to
half a million people), was made to prevent
civilian casualties when Hezbollah strongholds in
that zone are attacked by Israel. But this puts
that population between a rock and a hard place
and is disproportionate.
Hezbollah is
still the major actor in south Lebanon and
naturally will try to prevent this mass exodus.
The fact that Israel has taken
out
the bridges to the north (to interrupt Hezbollah's
supply routes) sets the stage for another
humanitarian disaster, second in the area only to
what is going on in the Gaza Strip, which, lest
anybody forget, is still under heavy Israeli
military pressure with no end in sight.
Israel's concession to lift the embargo on
Lebanon locally to open a corridor to admit
humanitarian aid (and let foreigners leave)
appears more of a gesture to the international
community than a genuine solution to an evolving
calamity.
While on the face of it Israel
still has the support of the Group of Eight,
splits are showing between the US and Britain,
which are in no hurry, on one side and the
Europeans, who want to finish this mess now, on
the other.
Whereas there is no real
international pressure yet to wind this campaign
down, common sense should tell Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert that the long-term damage of pursuing this
path will likely far outweigh any operational
advantages achieved by having a free rein in south
Lebanon.
Unfortunately, it appears that
Israel's government is still operating under the
premise that this campaign's outcome will only be
determined by force. The population of Lebanon is
still vacillating between its hate for Israel,
which is bombing a country that just recently had
returned to fragile stability, and enmity for
Hezbollah, a state-within-the-state which,
manipulated by Iran and supported by Syria, that
initiated the attack against Israel with no regard
for the possible consequences.
Driving out
the population of south Lebanon will only help
unite the people of Lebanon in their hate against
Israel and coalesce widespread Arab and Muslim
support for Shi'ite Hezbollah, and could
destabilize local Sunni regimes.
Accompanying the decision to force the
local Lebanese population north, Israel's ground
operations in Lebanon are expanding rapidly,
despite the disastrous experience Israel had there
in the past. The military is quick to clarify that
ground operations will be limited in scope to
prevent getting bogged down in the Lebanese
morass, but insists that the operational
objectives cannot be attained by bombardments from
the air alone.
At the same time, Israel's
chief of staff reiterated his view that the war
would have to continue for a lengthy period, and
in general the government of Israel did not appear
to feel any urgency in bringing this campaign to
an end before a tangible achievement of some sort
had been clocked up.
Having set the aims
of this operation sky-high may yet come to haunt
Olmert. While Israel's desire to make up for
policy failures of previous governments that saw
no need to insist on Lebanon's implementation of
United Nations Resolution 1559 (getting Hezbollah
out of south Lebanon) and to compensate for
operational failures of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) is understandable, a reality fix should
dampen it, preferably quickly.
This
campaign will not be resolved by military means
but through negotiations. No matter how much force
Israel will apply, Hezbollah is likely to launch
missiles until the very last day of the engagement
and will probably come out of this battle damaged
but not defeated, with its head high and quite
likely more support in the Arab world for its
unyielding attitude toward Israel than before this
all started.
And this not because the Arab
world subscribes to its ideology or thinks that
Hezbollah is a great movement, but because it
battled against Israel, caused Israel visible pain
and damage, and lived to fight another day.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who
is interested in Hezbollah's survival as a
fighting force, has sent a letter to German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. It could be an opening
for Germany to get seriously involved in mediation
efforts in Lebanon. Germany has excellent
relations with Israel, traditional ties and a
cultural bond with Iran, and a solid track record
of confidential diplomacy mediating between Israel
and Hezbollah.
No matter which way this
will go, Israel won't easily be let off the
Lebanese hook, and Iran or its proxy, Hezbollah,
will want to score with the Palestinians as well
and try to draw their prisoners in Israel into the
bargain. While not only the Israeli government
will want to prevent increasing Iranian
involvement, it fills a vacuum caused by the
departure of Syria from Lebanon (enforced by the
international community) and its exclusion from
the diplomatic discourse in the area.
The
fact that Iran is about to negotiate with the West
over the future of its nuclear program may come in
handy when push comes to shove, but it may make
any agreement in the Middle East more costly for
Israel than it remotely imagined.
When
this war is over and done, the citizens of Israel
may want to ask their leaders whether their
achievements are in any relation to damages
incurred and, more important, whether there
weren't any diplomatic alternatives that could and
should have been pursued before hitting back with
full force, justified as that may be.
Emanuel Shahaf is a retired
Israeli diplomat who served in Southeast Asia
between 2000 and 2003 and who works as a business
consultant.
(Copyright 2006 Emanuel
Shahaf.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
