July 26, 2006

Hezbollah's Staying Power

Roula Khalaf:

Israel’s offensive has caused massive damage, killed more than 400 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and displaced over half a million others. More than 40 Israelis have died. Yet Israel has yet to achieve its objective: limiting the military capabilities and the political power of Hizbollah, a disciplined political party representing a large part of Lebanon’s largest minority which is backed by both Iran and Syria.

Instead, the offensive has incited Arab anger and elevated Mr Nasrallah to hero status in the Arab and Muslim world. It has also forced many of his political rivals in Beirut to mobilise against the Israeli onslaught, and shelve – for now, at least – their fury at the party that started the conflict.

Alarmingly for Israel, ordinary Lebanese, whether Shia, Sunni or Christian, are becoming convinced that the Jewish state, which invaded Lebanon in 1982, is waging war against the whole country. At the entrance to the Beirut port, in front of a building damaged by Israeli strikes, Lebanese families have been gathering in hope of evacuation. Asked why the conflict has broken out, a customs official raises his hands in the air in exasperation. Plainly an opponent of Hizbollah, he says the question should be addressed to Mr Nasrallah as well as Syria and Iran. He adds: “I don’t know why it’s going on but I know it won’t end until we’re over, until Lebanon is gone, until everything we built is gone.”

The determination – and the military sophistication – of the group is at the heart of the international conundrum over how to resolve what is happening in Lebanon. The world has been seized by the tragedy of Lebanon. The small Mediterranean country is seen as paying the price for the standoff between the US and the axis of Syria and Iran.

Envoys have rushed to Beirut to offer their sympathy to a government dominated by a pro-western coalition that, while not endorsing Hizbollah’s actions, has implored the world to intervene to halt Israel’s retaliation. A similar show of support will be mounted on Wednesday when foreign ministers from the US, Europe and Arab states gather in Rome to hammer out the shape of a possible ceasefire.

But most of the ideas for a ceasefire assume that Israel will be able to neutralise Hizbollah, paving the way for the implementation of UN Security Council 1559, which calls for the group’s disarmament.

The comments of those who have found a temporary home in Keyfoun help to explain why that assumption is flawed, ignoring as it does the relationship between Hizbollah and the Lebanese people. The US considers Hizbollah a conventional terrorist organisation such as al-Qaeda that is ripe for obliteration. But in Lebanon it is viewed as a legitimate resistance movement that forced Israel out of southern Lebanon in 2000. As well as being one of the country’s largest political parties, it is also its most organised.

The US this week proposed the deployment of an international force alongside the Lebanese army south of the Litani River, which runs some 25 miles from the Lebanon-Israeli border, in order to push the guerrillas and their arsenal of rockets away from Israeli cities and towns.

Lebanese officials, however, know Hizbollah would reject such proposals out of hand. They fear that attempts to enforce them could lead to a renewal of the internal sectarian conflict that ended only in 1991, after 16 years of war.

In the Grand Serail, the former Ottoman barracks that act as the seat of government, Fouad Siniora, the country’s mild-mannered prime minister who has pleaded for an end to the Israeli offensive, says a resolution to the conflict requires a comprehensive deal that addresses all the outstanding disputes between Lebanon and Israel, and gives the government cards to negotiate with Hizbollah.

This deal, he says, would include a prisoners’ swap as well as the settlement of the dispute over Shebaa farms, a strip of occupied border land over which Lebanon claims sovereignty but the UN and Israel consider part of the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

So far, at least, Hizbollah has not felt under pressure to negotiate an end to the conflict. Israel has entered a new phase in the offensive, emptying Lebanese areas close to its borders of residents and sending troops on missions to take over Hizbollah strongholds.

The group has perhaps 5,000 fighters but many more reservists – and, Israel suspects, more longer-range missiles than it has deployed so far. As Anthony Cordesman, security expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says, Hizbollah can easily disperse, replace its fighters, then regroup and improve its ambush techniques.

His assessment is that Israel’s strategy could only succeed if the Shia population turned against the group, something which he and many analysts in Beirut believe is unlikely.

Read the whole thing, which makes for a sobering read, in large part. Whatever the 'Rome Declaration' to be hammered out by Condi Rice in the next day or so, if we might call it that, it must not only signal a persuasive way forward on bona fide security assurances that are directly and persuasively responsive to Israeli concerns, but also must signal to Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora that he will have real cards to table with Nabih Berri, who in turn will have to pitch them to Nasrallah. This will likely have to go beyond face-saving linked to Sheba Farms (and on this last, wouldn't it be easier to have the Syrians at the table, at some point relatively soon, keeping in mind too the Israelis want a NATO or EU led-force to monitor Syrian-Lebanese border crossings--and assuming using the UN as proxy negotiator won't be particularly efficacious, or even the Saudis and Egyptians?), not least because Nasrallah will be very resistant to any 'occupation'-style force with a robust mandate, so will be looking for concessions in return beyond Sheba.

Frankly, with Hezbollah putting in a stronger military showing than many expected, and Olmert therefore particularly keen to keep the offensive afoot for a while yet--the situation still appears very ripe for potential miscalculations, leading to further escalation and potentially even a spreading conflagration. I wish I was as apparently sanguine as some that we have the luxury of good time in terms of waiting for a ceasefire that we deem to be appropriately "sustainable" in nature, but I'd think the basic parameters of a workable cease-fire have to be in place by not much later than very early August, if not sooner. With significant military action underway, various recalcitrant parties cleaving to maximalist positions, humanitarian conditions dire and worsening--and some key actors not even at the table--it is clear a massive amount of deft diplomatic activity is going to be required in the next week, involving significant pressure on all the key parties, not to mention a good dose of luck too, if real progress is to be made in an acceptable timeframe. To what extent this is our Secretary of State's mandate, I'm not yet really sure, and obviously more will become clear during the Rome meetings--but I'd again stress allowing this conflict to fester for too long will increasingly, I believe, help extremists in the region rather than moderates.