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UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com UN/ - 17 August 2006 - Israel’s furious military response to the July 12 Hezbollah raid that abducted two Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border has proved tragically counterproductive—a military stalemate and public relations disaster. But even as recriminations start among Israelis, a more profound debate must be resolved within Lebanon, since the fragile progress under United Nations auspices toward Lebanon’s reemergence as an inclusive and democratic society hangs very much in the balance. For Israelis, the finger-pointing is freighted with the usual posturing of parties jockeying for political advantage. In Lebanon, the debate is existential. A political movement that won just 14 seats out of 128 in the country’s parliament last year was able to drag the entire country into an unwanted month-long war wreaking death and destruction far beyond the territory where it is dominant. For a while, to be sure, Hezbollah will be cushioned by the gauze of pan-Arab pride in having fended off the blows of an Israeli war machine in overdrive. But for Lebanese, the stark losses and the pain of rebuilding will prove far more enduring than an evanescent pride. Indeed, for all their stalwartness in fighting Israelis to a standstill—in a war on Lebanese soil their rashness had provoked—Hezbollah’s fighters could not imagine taking a square centimeter of Israeli territory. Extremists may fantasize about driving Jews into the sea, but even Sheik Nasrallah knows Israel is there to stay. The deployment of 15,000 normally pacific Lebanese government soldiers, along with an equal number of troops in the substantially reinforced U.N. force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), provides the Beirut government with an opportunity to regain authority that it cannot afford this time to fritter away. It needs to put under national control, rather than destroy, what remains of the arsenal the Hezbollah militia had acquired. A good share of the U.N. troop reinforcements will ideally come from Arab countries and not just France, Italy, and Turkey, since Arabs can best facilitate the delicate task of transferring military assets from an Arab sectarian militia to national hands. Many Israelis are understandably skeptical of the prospects for Hezbollah to relinquish its arsenal and its militia dominance of southern Lebanon. But in a very real way, Israel and the United States hold the key to successful implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for disbanding and disarming Lebanese militias and extending the Lebanese government’s control over the entire country—through Israeli implementation of Security Council Resolution 497. Resolution 497, adopted a quarter century ago with the support of the Reagan administration, “demands that Israel, the occupying power, should rescind” the law effectively annexing the Golan Heights adopted by the expansionist Likud-led government at the time. Repealing the law extending Israeli jurisdiction to Golan would not relinquish Israeli control of the territory. But it would signal renewed Israeli willingness to resume the negotiations with Syria that the governments of Yitzhak Rabin had initiated and Ehud Barak brought within a hair’s breadth of completing. Few diplomatic signals could do more to transform the dynamic in the Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian triangle. Unlike Iran, in supporting Hezbollah Syria has a practical, tangible stake on the ground—regaining the territory Israel occupied in the 1967 war. The government of Ariel Sharon, together with that of George Bush, had refused to talk with Syria—a policy of rejectionism whose folly became clear in Washington’s impotence during the month-long war. Having proved in the war that it is not a peacenik coalition, the current Kadima-Labor government has the opportunity to create an opening for Syria to engage constructively in creating the newest Middle East, and Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz has now called for dialogue with Syria. Action on Resolution 497 would be a concrete expression the government intends to realize the opportunity. The impact on the Arab world of Israel starting to implement a long-ignored Security Council mandate would be significant, and translate immediately in Arab pressure on Hezbollah to join in implementation of Resolution 1559. It would, in addition, give new impetus to reopening the negotiating track between Israelis and Palestinians, which has remained closed since Mr. Sharon disavowed the progress in peace negotiations at Taba on taking office in early 2001. President Bush was right to recognize, on July 27, the urgency of dealing with the “root cause” of the frequently erupting conflict in the Middle East—and that root cause is the unresolved status of Arab Palestine alongside Israel. If there is one lesson that Israelis have drawn from the recent debacle, it is that unilateralism does not work—a lesson that Mr. Bush might usefully draw from his own debacle in Iraq. Where Israel has negotiated a peace treaty with a former Arab adversary, such as Egypt and Jordan, it has a solid peace. Where it has unilaterally announced withdrawals without negotiating a pact, it has repeatedly found its unreconciled adversaries don’t share its “understandings.” There is also one complementary lesson the international community should draw: That the credibility of multilateralism in helping solve such conflicts hangs heavily on United Nations impartiality. The bitterly one-sided resolution adopted over Western opposition by the developing-country majority on the U.N. Human Rights Council last Friday—citing spurious statistics to condemn Israel’s military excesses, without offering a word of criticism for Hezbollah’s deliberate targeting of missiles at cities, villages, and kibbutzim rather than military facilities—just makes it harder for U.N. peacemakers to bring the contentious parties into compliance. The African and Latin American delegates who supinely ratified fevered Arab indignation need to learn the first principle of medicine: Do no harm. JeffreyLaurenti@MaximsNews.com Jeffrey Laurenti is a senior fellow in international affairs at The Century Foundation. He is an expert in international security, international law and multilateral institutions. He is the author of numerous monographs on international peace and security, terrorism, U.N. reform, and international narcotics policy. He has authored articles for The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, and the Los Angeles Times, and international policy journals. Jeffrey Laurenti is a Contributor to MaximsNews.com. ~~~ MaximsNews.com, An Independent Voice from the U.N., provides commentary and analysis from leading world figures: King Abdullah II (Jordan), Sir Brian Urquhart, Hans Blix, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, Anwar Ibrahim, Bianca Jagger, Shashi Tharoor, Kerry Kennedy, Ian Williams, Stephen Schlesinger, Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, Marc Morial, Barbara Crossette, Amb. Pierre Schori (Sweden), Amb. William H. Luers, Mehri Madarshahi, Gloria Feldt, Jeffrey Laurenti, Rodney D. Smith, Rory O'Connor, Genevieve Stamper, Max Stamper and others.
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