Tehran holds the key to a
ceasefire By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert spoke at a military graduation ceremony
last week, commenting on Israel's war in Lebanon:
"Israel is winning this war and chalking up
unprecedented achievements. If the fighting were
to end today, we could say certainly that the face
of the Middle East has changed as a result of this
great Israeli victory."
It's difficult to
understand what achievements he is talking about.
Olmert promised to crush Hezbollah in a matter of
days. After four weeks, that has not been
achieved. He promised to disarm Hezbollah by force
to implement United Nations Resolution 1559. That
also has not been achieved. He promised to gain
the release of the two Israeli soldiers captured
by Hezbollah on July 12. That, too, is far from
being a reality, unless Israel releases Lebanese
prisoners from Israeli jails.
Certainly,
Israel has bombed Lebanon, killing more than 1,000
Lebanese (nearly 700
civilians) and displacing more than a million.
Hezbollah, however, is still there - and fighting.
Hezbollah says it has only lost 58 fighters in
battle; Israel says it has killed 300-400.
The only things this war has "achieved"
for Israeli - until now - is a bloody nose, a
reputation for brutal reprisal, and shattering of
the long-standing myth that Israel is invincible.
The war has already cost Israel an
estimated US$1.6 billion. In addition, 120
Israelis have been killed, 82 of them soldiers. At
the time of writing, 13 Israeli tanks had been
destroyed by Hezbollah.
Unlike Olmert,
Hezbollah has fulfilled many of its promises. It
promised to "surprise" the enemy, and did so by
striking an Israeli warship off the coast of
Beirut during the early days of the conflict, and
since then it has bombed numerous Israeli cities,
including Haifa and "beyond Haifa" in the Israeli
heartland.
It has not liberated the Sheba
Farms, however, nor has it forced the Israelis to
negotiate the release of their two captive
soldiers, abducted on July 12, in exchange for
Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
Some
say that by surviving the might of the Israeli
army for a month, and striking deep in the Israeli
heartland, Hezbollah has already scored a victory
and emerged in military triumph. Others, however,
argue that the devastating results in Lebanon are
proof that Lebanon - and Hezbollah - have been
defeated.
The first tangible result of the
war, which is a setback for Hezbollah, was the
Lebanese government's decision to deploy 15,000 of
its troops on the border with Israel. This was
surprisingly agreed to by Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah and the two Hezbollah members in the
cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora. Since
the liberation of south Lebanon in May 2000,
Hezbollah has rejected deploying the Lebanese army
in the south. The announcement came shortly before
the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on
Thursday that the Christian border village of
Marjiyoun was now under Israeli control.
The IDF, which used the village as a
command base during its long occupation of Lebanon
from 1978 to 2000, will serve as a strong foothold
for Israel as it prepares to launch a massive
ground invasion into Lebanon.
The move to
deploy the Lebanese army is a grand setback for
Hezbollah. So is the fall of Marjiyoun. It does
not mean, however, that Hezbollah had been
defeated. It does mean that Hezbollah has been
exhausted. It also means that Hezbollah is under
immense pressure, due to all the destruction
having befallen Lebanon, and in desperate need for
an exit strategy.
It also means that
Nasrallah is willing to bargain with regard to
previous red lines to attain his long-term
objective: keeping Hezbollah armed. When the war
started, it was believed that Hezbollah did not
want confrontation, but now there is no turning
back for Nasrallah.
When it became clear
that the IDF would not be able to destroy
Hezbollah by air attacks, Israeli leaders began
toying with the idea of a ground invasion of south
Lebanon. Hezbollah welcomed the idea, because of
its superiority in hand-to-hand combat, and has so
far performed with flying colors.
But the
reality of today is that - whether the Arabs like
it or not - Hezbollah has been tired, if not
weakened. The acceptance to deployment of troops
and the fall of Marjiyoun illustrate this, despite
the thundering rhetoric of Nasrallah, who said
this week that Lebanon would become a graveyard
for the Israelis.
Hezbollah is, after all,
a non-state entity with limited manpower and
weapons. Political pressure to bring the war to a
halt, along with the rising death toll in Lebanon,
will eventually be too strong for Hezbollah to
ignore. There are limits to what it can do, and
there are limits to its supplies of arms and the
fighting spirit of the Lebanese people. There are
limits to what people can tolerate in exchange for
Nasrallah's "surprises" on Israel.
Hezbollah's main weapon is its famed
Russian-made Katyusha rocket. Lacking any target
precision, the rockets are only effective when
they are fired in large numbers at the same time,
so that they fall indiscriminately in Israel. But
ultimately, these missiles are outdated combat
weapons. They were first used 60 years ago by the
Russians against the Germans in World War II.
They are no match for the massive and
highly precise US-made missiles that are raining
on Lebanon. Hezbollah has used other missiles,
including the Iranian-made Raad I (believed to be
another name for Iran's Shahine 1) along with Fajr
3 (45-kilometer range), and Fajr 5 (75km range).
Its most deadly weapon is Zilzal 2, a missile it
has not used to date, which supposedly has a range
of 200-400km and can hold up to 600 kilograms of
explosives.
Diplomatic
efforts Meanwhile, the international
community is still talking about a ceasefire.
Hezbollah has repeatedly welcomed this, but
refuses to announce it before Israel stops its
bombing. It has also flatly turned down the
French-US ceasefire agreement those to countries
want to put before the United Nations. Among other
things, it would create a buffer zone in south
Lebanon that could only be entered by the Lebanese
army and a multinational force.
The
proposal also calls for the disarming of
Hezbollah, and has been rejected by the Lebanese
government because it does not call for the
withdrawal of Israel troops from south Lebanon,
nor for an immediate ceasefire. The draft places
full responsibility for a ceasefire on the
shoulders of Hezbollah, and makes Prime Minister
Siniora responsible for distancing Hezbollah from
the border.
What Israel could not do by
force - effectively push Hezbollah away from the
border with Israel - it is trying to do through
the US-French ceasefire draft. Despite objections,
and amendments to the original document, the UN
Security Council is expected to issue a resolution
on Monday, officially calling on Hezbollah to
disarm.
In effect this would be
implementing what the Franco-US document says,
without consent of the Lebanese government - or
even with hidden consent from the Siniora cabinet.
After all, the Lebanese government has been trying
to disarm Hezbollah through dialogue since the
exodus of Syrian troops in April 2005.
Getting an international resolution
calling on Hezbollah is one thing, however, and
actually disarming the Shi'ite resistance is
another. For now, nobody is seriously thinking of
how Hezbollah will be disarmed. It certainly
cannot be done by the Lebanese army. Nor can it be
done by Siniora, or the UN.
It needs to be
willingly done through Hezbollah's consent -
otherwise it will inflame the bloody battle in
Lebanon. Or it has to be done through Iran. Only
Iran has the ability to disarm Hezbollah with
minimal damage to Lebanon and the entire Middle
East. Only Iran can command Hezbollah, and only
Iran will Hezbollah obey. Yet Iran will only do so
if it is given carrots - big carrots - by the US
administration.
Thus, by seeking a UN
resolution, the Americans and the French are
actually looking in the wrong direction.
Although Hezbollah may be tired and ready
to stop fighting, it will not do so unless Israel
halts its fire first. And Israel will not do that
as long as it is being injected with weapons - and
confidence - by the United States to stay
fighting.
If indeed Israel and the US want
an end to the war, they should look for answers in
Tehran, not at the UN.
Failing Iran, a
better solution to the entire crisis would be to
follow through with the seven-point truce plan
made by Siniora on July 27. It calls for the
mutual release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners
under the auspices of the International Committee
of the Red Cross. If this were done, it would be a
victory for Nasrallah, because he said the two
Israeli soldiers abducted on July 12 would only be
released in a prisoner exchange.
The
Siniora plan also demands the withdrawal of the
IDF from the south, and the return of the
displaced to their villages. It also requests a
commitment from the Security Council to place the
Sheba Farms area and the Kafar Shouba Hills under
UN jurisdiction until border delineation and
Lebanese sovereignty over them are fully settled.
Also, the IDF must give Lebanon all land-mine maps
of south Lebanon, made during the 1978-2000
Israeli occupation of the south. Finally, it says
the Lebanese army should take full control of
south Lebanon. This would be complemented by a
strong multinational force under UN auspices.
The difference between the Siniora plan and
the Franco-US plan is that Paris and Washington
insist on Israel's withdrawal only after an
international force is deployed in south Lebanon.
Their proposal also permits Israel to launch
defensive attacks against Hezbollah, if the latter
provokes it or if Hezbollah does not cease its
attacks on northern Israel. It also calls on
Hezbollah to hand over Israeli soldiers, but makes
no mention of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
Supporting the Siniora plan are the
European Union, the Syrians, the Arab League and
Hezbollah.
Much diplomatic activity is
expected over the weekend, although it is highly
unlikely that the war will come to an end soon.
Any UN resolution that can't find a satisfactory
way to disarm Hezbollah is worthless: the answers
lie in Tehran.
Sami Moubayed is
a Syrian political analyst.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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