DAMASCUS - When United Nations Resolution
1701 was passed on August 11, it was seen as a
diplomatic breakthrough to end 33 days of war
between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Many today, however, are having serious
doubts whether this ceasefire will last and
whether 1701 is actually a diplomatic victory - or
failure - for the UN. In addition to a ceasefire,
the resolution demands the deployment of the
Lebanese army, and eventually multinational
troops, on the border to prevent any future
war
between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and
Hezbollah. It gives Israel the right to
self-defense, however, while denying this right to
Hezbollah, explaining why the party's secretary
general, Hassan Nasrallah, accepted the resolution
"with reservations".
If implemented to the
word, the resolution would deprive Hezbollah of
the territory it has used to wage war against
Israel since the 1980s. A Hezbollah that is
deprived of southern Lebanon would be a Hezbollah
that cannot fire rockets against northern Israel.
The resolution also asked for implementation of
Resolution 1559, which calls for the complete
disarming of Hezbollah, and strongly says that no
arms should be transferred to the Lebanese
military group.
The first loophole in 1701
is that it does not give any mechanism for the
disarming of Hezbollah, something that neither the
United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL)
nor the Lebanese army - nor Israel - has been able
to do. The expanded UN troop presence on the
border will not be able to disarm Hezbollah. If
the troops try to do that, they will certainly be
attacked.
This was something made clear by
French Major-General Alain Pelligrini, the UNIFIL
commander in Lebanon, who said: "The Israelis
cannot ask UNIFIL to disarm Hezbollah. This is not
written in our mandate." He added that the
ceasefire "is tense, very fragile, very volatile.
Any provocation or misunderstanding could escalate
very, very rapidly."
Speaking to the
Financial Times on August 3, Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert related what he saw as the
perfect objective of UNIFIL in Lebanon. He said it
should aim at "stopping violence against innocent
Israelis from Lebanon and disarming this murderous
organization, the Hezbollah, which is the long arm
of Iran".
Olmert's distorted version of
UNIFIL, however, seems to be very different from
the one that is likely to emerge in Lebanon in the
coming weeks. French newspaper Le Monde leaked a
21-page document distributed at the UN last week
showing what the new expanded UNIFIL troops would
look like.
First, very clearly, they would
not be authorized to disarm Hezbollah. They would
also lack the authority to search Hezbollah
strongholds or bunkers. Second, they are
authorized "to use force, up to and including
deadly force", to implement peace on the
Lebanese-Israeli border and to defend themselves
against attack by either the IDF or Hezbollah.
Third, they have to protect civilians, and fourth,
they will have to provide backup to the Lebanese
army.
Actually, bringing 15,000 troops
from the Lebanese army to the border is easy. It
has even been accepted by Nasrallah, who
previously had rejected deployment of the Lebanese
army to the south. Deploying an equal number of
multinational troops is more difficult - but
doable.
The history of multinational
troops in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion of
1982 showed that these troops are vulnerable and
could be driven out of Lebanon with ease. In
October 1983, an attack on US marines in Lebanon
led to the killing of 241 US and 58 French troops
and the exodus of about 5,000 multinational troops
from Lebanon.
No Arab country today,
except Morocco, is willing to take part in such a
force, since it would be viewed by the Arab street
as a multinational force used to protect Israel
from Hezbollah. Given Hezbollah's popularity in
the Arab world, such a step would be political
suicide - even for moderate Arab regimes such as
Egypt and Jordan.
Turkey showed
willingness to send troops to Lebanon, but this
proposal was vetoed by the Lebanese-Armenians, who
cannot forget Turkish massacres against the
Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World
War I. Germany at first showed similar willingness
to comply, but then backed down and said it would
send advisers rather than troops. As one German
journalist told this correspondent, this U-turn
was because German troops on the border with
Israel would be entitled to shoot - and use -
"deadly force" to prevent any confrontation
between the IDF and Hezbollah. Because of the
historical luggage carried by the Germans from
World War II, a German soldier today simply cannot
fire against an Israeli.
Yet despite these
obstacles, Greece, France and Italy, which alone
will contribute 2,000-3,000 troops to UNIFIL, have
all agreed to send troops. On Thursday, French
President Jacques Chirac agreed to increase the
number of French troops to 2,000.
Olmert
made things more difficult for the UN by saying he
would not accept troops at UNIFIL whose countries
didn't have diplomatic relations with Israel. He
was referring to Indonesia, Malaysia and
Bangladesh. The Israeli premier does not have the
luxury of hand-picking what countries will join
the multinational troops in Lebanon, since not
many countries have shown great enthusiasm to get
involved in a new war in the Middle East.
French Foreign Minister Philippe
Douste-Blazy said on Wednesday that UNIFIL forces
in Lebanon would have two missions. One would be
to let the Lebanese army deploy in the south. The
second would be "to guarantee the embargo on arms
delivery across all borders - I repeat - across
all borders".
The Syrian factor The minister was referring to the
Syria-Lebanon border, which is considered by many
in Lebanon and the international community to be
the only source from which Syria can channel arms
to Hezbollah.
According to Resolution
1701, this supply of arms must end, to bring
Hezbollah to a gradual military end. Syria
immediately snapped back by turning down the
request to station troops on Lebanon's side of the
Syrian-Lebanese border, with authority to
administer checkpoints searching for arms coming
in from Syria.
Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad said on Dubai TV that UNIFIL troops on
Lebanon's border with Syria "is an infringement on
Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile position"
toward Syria. He added, "First, this means
creating hostile conditions between Syria and
Lebanon. Second, it is a hostile move toward
Syria, and naturally it will create problems."
Assad's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualim
threatened from a state visit to Finland that if
multinational troops were stationed on the
Syrian-Lebanese border, Syria would close its
border with Lebanon. The White House immediately
responded to Syria's stance through its
spokeswoman Dana Perino, who said, "If the
president of Syria were not supplying Hezbollah,
this wouldn't have been a problem in the first
place."
Closing the border with Lebanon is
an old trick practiced by the Syrians ever since
prime minister Khalid al-Azm did it in 1950 to
prevent the influx of Lebanese goods into Syria.
President Adib al-Shishakli did it again in 1954
when he accused Lebanon of supporting a Druze
uprising against his regime in Damascus. President
Shukri al-Quwatli did it in 1957 when Lebanon
retaliated to a series of overt Syrian
intelligence operations on its territory by
funding anti-regime activities in Damascus to
obstruct Syria's honeymoon with Egypt.
It
was semi-repeated by Assad last summer when
Lebanese cargo trucks were held up for weeks at
the Syrian border, causing some goods to rot, and
forcing Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora to go to
Syria to solve the crisis.
This was at the
apex of strained Syrian-Lebanese relations over
the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister
Rafiq al-Hariri. If Syria does carry out its
threats and shut the border with Lebanon, it would
cause a severe economic crisis in its neighbor,
since Syria is the only land route for Lebanon.
The other country bordering Lebanon is
Israel, with which diplomatic relations and
passage routes are impossible at this stage.
Currently, all sea routes to Lebanon are sealed by
the Israelis, and so is landing at Lebanese
airports.
With Israel controlling the
skies and waters, and Syria controlling the ground
routes, Lebanon would be stranded, with no
connection to the outside world. Syria believes
that only through such a harsh measure can it
force the Lebanese government to say no to
international troops on the Syrian border.
After all, it cannot say no to the troops
itself, since they would not be stationed on its
territory, but Damascus can use its leverage in
Lebanon to force Siniora to say no. It does not
mind UN troops on the Lebanese-Israeli border, nor
does it mind the deployment of the Lebanese army,
but it is categorically opposed to troops on the
border with Syria.
Olmert has that he had
no immediate plans of ending the air and sea
blockade on Lebanon until an international
peacekeeping force was deployed on Lebanon's
borders, to prevent the arming of Hezbollah and
their attacks on north Israel.
As things
stand, multinational troops will be placed on the
Syrian-Lebanese border in addition to the
Lebanese-Israeli border. Otherwise, they would be
useless. But if that happens, Syria could strangle
Lebanon by closing down the border. Yet Olmert's
rules say that only when Syria's border is
monitored - meaning when Syria's ground route is
closed - will Lebanon regain its air and sea
routes.
To understand Syria's position one
must understand how the Syrian regime is thinking
in relation to the Israeli war in Lebanon. Assad
claimed victory in this war, for his unconditional
backing of Hezbollah, just as Syria claimed
co-victory with Hezbollah when it liberated south
Lebanon from the Israelis in May 2000.
The
Syrians will not let Resolution 1701 destroy these
victories by ruining or disarming Hezbollah. Not
only is patrolling the Syrian border offensive to
the Syrians, but if this is done, it would
actually mean that no arms would in fact arrive in
Lebanon to be used by Hezbollah. It would mean the
military end to the Lebanese group - something
Syria will not permit.
Hezbollah is the
last-standing Syrian card in Lebanon. It is the
card that will launch a political coup in Lebanon
against the coalition government of Saad al-Hariri
- the group that launched its own putsch against
Syria in 2005 and drove the Syrian army out of
Lebanon.
Syria will do all that is in its
power to preserve Hezbollah. The Syrians believe
that if this means obstructing UNIFIL on Lebanon's
border with Syria, ruining Resolution 1701 or
shutting Syria's border with Lebanon - then so be
it. All is fair in love and war for Damascus,
especially when it comes to Lebanon.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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