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The war in Lebanon. An Analysis
Israel’s will, Lebanese weakness,
Arab states’ tacit approval and international consensus
made the conditions ripe for a full scale Israeli war on Lebanon
On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah, the Shia armed group based in
the south of Lebanon, launched a military operation against
Israel. In the attack, two Israeli soldiers were abducted
and seven were killed[1] . Israel, which said it considered
the assault/abduction an act of war, swiftly responded initiating
operation ‘Just Reward’, massively bombing areas
in the south of the country and also in Beirut, the capital
of the Levantine state. Hezbollah’s counter reaction,
the launching of rockets into some northern Israeli cities
including Haifa, prompted Israel to unfold a full scale war,
the sixth one in the history of the fifty-eight year old Israeli
– Arab conflict [2].
To disband Hezbollah, Israel is adopting two strategies aimed
respectively at compelling the Lebanese government to disarm
Hezbollah and deploying its army on the Israeli border, and
at wiping out Hezbollah’s military ability. To achieve
the former, the Israeli army is meticulously targeting Lebanon’s
infrastructure, hoping that this will raise a tide of popular
anger against Hezbollah for igniting Israel’s ferocious
reaction. To tear Hezbollah’s military machine down,
the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are heavily shelling the
villages of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s arms
stocks, rocket launchers and headquarters are believed to
be located. In both cases, civilian costs are calculated as,
yet lamentable, consequences of the attack’s general
goals.
The situation at the international level has arguably favoured
Israel’s decision to wage such full scale, massive war
against Lebanon. Inside Lebanon, the disarmament of Hezbollah
has been on the political agenda for the last two years, spurring
tensions among the Lebanese public. At best, Israel thought,
the Lebanese government would blame the attack on Hezbollah
and confront it openly; if not, Israel could plausibly expect
that long established sectarian divisions within the country
and the recent UN inspired debate on the role of Hezbollah[3]
would prevent the creation of a compact front behind the Shia
group.
As for Hezbollah themselves, Lebanese analysts are inclined
to believe that the Shia leadership miscalculated the extent
of Israel’s reaction. Arguably, Hezbollah expected that
after bombing some positions in the south, Israel would sit
down and negotiate the release of the abducted soldiers[4]
. Israel thought otherwise and opted to make the most out
of the incumbent conditions.
The Jewish state upheld that the Arab world or, more appropriately,
Arab leadership would not launch outraged protests against
a major Israeli attack on Hezbollah. In the aftermath of the
kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, regional powers such as
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in fact officially blamed Hezbollah’s
initiative, claiming that it was ‘inimical to Lebanese
and Arab interests’[5] . Besides de façade reasons,
such as the defence of the peace process, the protection of
Arab interests was mainly related to those states’ own
domestic problems, notably the rise of Islamic opposition
movements, and externally to the fear that Iran would increase
its influence in the region through Hezbollah.
At the international level, it was quite unlikely that a
full fledged attack on Lebanon would generate a split among
western countries like the one that preceded and followed
the US invasion in Iraq. In any case a resolution of the Security
Council condemning Israel would undoubtedly have run into
the veto of the United States, but the main difference with
the Iraqi war is that France, the major opponent to the Iraqi
campaign and strongest advocate of multilateralism then, is
now the co-drafter, with the United States, of UNSC resolution
1559, a piece of international law of crucial importance to
the current conflict. Adopted in September 2004, UNSC resolution
1559 consists of three points: it calls for the evacuation
of foreign troops from Lebanon – a reference to the
Syrian presence in Lebanon; it calls on the Lebanese government
to deploy its troops on the internationally recognised southern
border with Israel, the so called Blue line; and it calls
for the disarmament of militias, read Hezbollah.
In the absence of a political consensus inside Lebanon, in
the light of an international consensus embodied in UNSC 1559
calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and for full Lebanese
sovereignty on the entire Lebanese territory, and provided
that Arab leaders tacitly favoured a military intervention
against Hezbollah, it appears that Israel, the only regional
super power, calculated that the conditions were ripe to rip
down Hezbollah and took action. So far, it has been vindicated.
[1]
According to available reports, the combat operation against
Israel led to the death of three Israeli soldiers and the
capture of two. In the course of the Israeli pursuit, an IDF
tank was destroyed and four soldiers died.
[2] In chronological order, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982.
Indeed, one might correctly dispute that the current war is
in fact a war tout court on the grounds that only one of the
warring parties is a state. Hezbollah is in fact considered
a state in the state because it has own militias which are
not integrated in the Lebanese army. Such ‘anomaly’
has always been of greater concern to the state of Israel,
which sees the presence of militias on its northern border
a gruesome threat to its security.
[3] Security Council resolution 1559 (2004) - The situation
in the Middle East, http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892.pdf?OpenElement
[4] After the abduction of the IDF soldiers, the group’s
Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah appeared on television
to explain the conditions for the release of the captives,
namely a prisoners’ swamp with Israel. In 2004, a prisoners’
exchange took place with the mediation of Germany.
[5]
On Tuesday 18 July 2006, in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers
held an emergency meeting over Israel's expanding assault
on Lebanon. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, the summit witnessed
a division on ‘how far should Arab countries go in criticising
Hezbollah (and Hamas) for what many insisted to call ‘miscalculated
moves’ and how much should they blame Iran for instigating
such moves on the part of Hamas and Hezbollah’. Arab
leaders divided into three camps: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
supported by Morocco, Kuwait and Bahrain, who were very critical;
Syria and Lebanon with had the support of Algeria, Sudan,
Yemen and Qatar; and a third camp made up of countries apparently
indifferent.
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