An occupation Israel would love to end

The Economist

7 Mar 1998


But if it is to get out of south Lebanon, Israel will either have to make peace with Syria or accept the risk of unconditional withdrawal IT IS a measure of Binyamin Netanyahu’s credibility that when he signals a desire to withdraw Israel’s army from south Lebanon, everyone looks for ulterior motives. Israel, the prime minister said last weekend, accepts United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. This resolution, passed 20 years ago this month, calls on Israel to “withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory”. Israel, which has neither rejected nor obeyed this command, seems this time to be hedging its acceptance-in-principle with slightly fewer conditions than in the past. But it still demands that Lebanon should establish the “proper security arrangements” in southern Lebanon to ensure the safety of northern Israel. “A significant shift in policy,” claims the minister of science, Michael Eitan. What is Mr Netanyahu really after, ask the sceptics.

Some point to the prospect of imminent American intervention—read pressure—designed to resuscitate the half-dead Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Clinton team, worried by the Arab world’s resentfulness during the Iraqi crisis, is considering confronting the two sides with detailed proposals of its own for a phased Israeli redeployment in the West Bank. Mr Netanyahu is openly apprehensive. This week he urged visiting American Jewish leaders to lobby Congress against any such design. A surge of diplomatic activity on the Israel-Lebanon front could, perhaps, be a useful diversion.

In any event, on March 1st Mr Netanyahu sent two aides to Paris for “secret” talks on Lebanon. The defence minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, was himself due in Paris on March 5th. Rumour suggested that France might send its troops to police a cordon sanitaire along the border after Israel pulls out, perhaps by reinforcing UNIFIL , the UN peacekeeping force that has been there since 1978. There was even speculation that Syria might have indicated, through France or Russia, a new readiness to negotiate over the Golan Heights and south Lebanon too.

Mr Netanyahu seems comfortable to let the rumours proliferate. But the more circumspect Mr Mordechai gave warning on March 2nd that “we will probably be stuck with the Lebanon headache for a long time . . . We need solid security arrangements before we can withdraw.” The army chief of staff, Lieut-General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, told a Knesset committee the following day that in practice there could be no withdrawal from south Lebanon without Syria’s blessing. And this, he hinted, was available only as part of a comprehensive accord covering the Golan.

Mr Mordechai, a former general who commanded Israel’s northern front, and General Lipkin-Shahak have set themselves against all talk of unilateral withdrawal. Lebanon’s Hizbullah guerrillas, they argue, would probably continue the fight. And Israel’s surrogate South Lebanese Army might get short shrift if it were abandoned. But theirs is not the only view in the army high command. And, outside the army, advocates of unilateral withdrawal have been gaining strength on both sides of the Knesset. Other cabinet members besides the science minister would like to see the army leave south Lebanon, even without an agreement with Syria. On the Labour side, Shimon Peres, a former prime minister, this week publicly declared his support for withdrawal, although the party’s present leader, Ehud Barak, is firmly opposed to it.

The debate heats up each time the fighting with Hizbullah takes Israeli lives. On February 27th, three Israeli soldiers died when the guerrillas pounded their position with mortars. As they were buried, members of the Four Mothers, a women’s group campaigning for withdrawal, demonstrated around the country. Last year 39 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon, and 73 more died in a helicopter crash. The women are accused of sapping army morale but they contend that it is the seemingly endless, seemingly pointless bloodletting that threatens to weaken the army.

Whatever its motive, Israel’s initiative has provoked no excitement in Lebanon. Faris Boueiz, the foreign minister, has rejected the idea of extra security guarantees, insisting that the resolution leaves no room for creative interpretation. Lebanon’s President Elias Hrawi has often pledged that not a single bullet would be fired across the border from Lebanon should the Israelis withdraw. But he too refuses to contemplate a more formal commitment. Syria, which has the final say over Lebanese foreign policy, is equally unimpressed, a government newspaper describing Israel’s move as a “new trap”. The Syrians, who use the guerrillas to exert pressure on Israel, have no intention of giving up a valuable bargaining point in future peace talks.

If Israel wants to end its occupation of south Lebanon, say the Lebanese, it must either risk a unilateral withdrawal without preconditions, or offer the Syrian government inducements to accept a negotiated peace. Otherwise, any talk about pulling out is simply grand-standing. The Lebanese shrug off Israeli fears of guerrilla attacks on northern Israel after a withdrawal. They argue that with UNIFIL ’s help they are perfectly capable of disarming Hizbullah and preventing any attacks across the border. UNIFIL officials agree. After 20 years of sitting in the crossfire, they are keen to fulfil their original mission of supervising Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

But UNIFIL ’s position is weak. It is a lightly armed force of 4,500 peacekeepers, at the mercy of both the Israeli army and the Lebanese guerrillas. Both sides criticise what it does. When it (occasionally) takes weapons from Hizbullah, it is accused of defending the Israeli occupation; when it tries to shield civilians from the fighting, it is accused of protecting terrorists. Its budget has shrunk from $400m in 1991 to $125m this year. After it was first deployed in 1978, the UN , in a hurry to salvage a shaky Israeli-Egyptian peace, did not wait for the front line to stabilise before setting up camp. In some areas, the battle moved on, but UNIFIL did not. Concentrated in the west, it no longer even separates the combatants along the entire front.

Without much co-operation from the Israelis, the Lebanese and, by extension, the Syrians, the most UNIFIL can do is to offer its services as an intermediary when the fighting flares up. It does its best to shield the 500,000 civilians in the zone it patrols from the worst of the fighting—though it was signally unable to protect the people sheltering in its compound at Qana, more than 100 of whom were killed by Israel during its bombardment of Lebanon in 1996. The peacekeepers are useful as observers but have to step aside when the dispute becomes political: a special American, French, Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese group was brought in to monitor the sensitive post-bombardment agreement not to direct attacks at civilians.

Email: yona@netvision.net.il