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.