Home  Opinion Disengage Lebanon from regional turmoil |
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Disengage Lebanon from regional turmoil |
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Written by Farid El Khazen
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Disengage Lebanon from regional turmoil
Will the war between Israel and Hizbullah be the last armed conflict in Lebanon's long list of wars? These began in the South, when the post-1967 Palestine Liberation Organization opened the military front with Israel and turned Lebanon into a "confrontation state" by default.
Gradually, fighting in the South was detached from wars in the rest of the country and acquired a raison d'etre of their own. In the South, conflict was an extension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, while in the rest of Lebanon war was sustained by a combination of internal and external factors involving Lebanese and non-Lebanese parties.
It was only after Camp David in 1979 and the strategic shift the accords created in the regional balance of power that Israel turned its attention to the only active battlefront in South Lebanon, where the PLO was based and had complete autonomy to operate politically and militarily. Aiming to tighten its grip on the Occupied Territories, Israel sought to destroy the PLO's military and political infrastructure in Lebanon. The Israeli invasion in 1982 achieved the objective of forcing the PLO's leadership and guerrillas out of Lebanon but did not end warfare in the South, nor did it make northern Israel secure.
The newcomer to the post-1982 South Lebanon war was Hizbullah. Formed in the early 1980s and closely linked to Iran, the party provided the militant Islamic drive to fight Israel. While the Civil War ended in Lebanon in 1990, South Lebanon continued to be a war zone and Hizbullah monopolized the armed resistance against Israel's occupation. That opened a new phase. With full backing from Syria, Iran, and the Syrian-controlled Lebanese government, Hizbullah entrenched itself and developed a sophisticated military infrastructure while the Arab-Israeli peace talks were under way. The 1996 April Understanding gave the Hizbullah-Israel war international legitimacy, with US and French support, and served to manage warfare between the two sides while excluding civilian targets.
The withdrawal of the Israeli Army in 2000 and the Syrian Army in 2005 resulted in little change in the situation in the South. While military operations declined, the potential for armed conflict persisted in two areas: across the Lebanese-Israeli borderline and in the disputed Shebaa Farms claimed by Lebanon as Lebanese territory and considered by the United Nations as Syrian territory occupied by Israel. In 2003, Hizbullah succeeded in exchanging three dead Israeli soldiers for over 400 Lebanese and non-Lebanese held in Israeli prisons.
For over 35 years, South Lebanon has been on open battlefield and a convenient sideshow for all parties. It was business as usual in the South until Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. This brought an end to the state of affairs prevailing in the South since the late 1960s, when the Lebanese state lost control of the South, leaving a vacuum.
For a long time, major powers, notably Washington, dealt with Lebanon's wars with neglect since their interests were not at stake there during the Cold War. Even after the end of the Cold War, neglect continued and was justified by the imperatives of the peace process in the 1990s. Everything changed on September 11, 2001, including the rules of the peace process in 2000. For the US, the September 11 attacks effectively signaled the end of the Cold War in the Middle East, while the Iraq war in 2003 could be likened to the collapse of the Soviet Union in Europe. South Lebanon was the only place in the region where the Lebanese state hosted armed conflict but had no control over it. It was only in Lebanon where an armed non-state actor - Hizbullah - engaged in warfare with Israel on its home territory and in the midst of its communal power base.
Although for a long time the South Lebanon war was regarded as a containable, marginal conflict by all parties concerned, the current conflict has elevated the strategic significance of that war zone to unprecedented heights, at a time when the tremors of the Iraq war are being felt throughout the region and at a time when the international community is taking interest in Lebanese affairs. This phase began in September 2004, when the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1559, calling for a Syrian withdrawal, and it culminated in the withdrawal of Syrian forces in April 2005, following the so-called "Cedar Revolution."
For the international community's efforts to succeed the security vacuum in South Lebanon must end. And that is not possible except through the revival of the role of the Lebanese state. While in previous years the vacuum served the interests of various parties, it has now produced a war that has regional and international ramifications that can no longer be ignored. Nor can the vacuum be filled by third parties, notably Syria. That recipe has run its course and has produced the present anomalous situation that cannot be altered except by war.
A comprehensive settlement is needed to address all pending issues rather than piecemeal arrangements, as has been the practice in the past. The settlement's broad lines are well-known: a UN force to assist the Lebanese Army to take over, an exchange of detainees, placing the Shebaa Farms under UN control, and revising the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel. But that will not be possible until after hostilities end and before the destruction and death in Lebanon attain proportions that would make a settlement impossible.
The basis for settlement should in essence disengage Lebanon from regional turmoil and preserve Lebanese unity, of which Hizbullah is an integral part. National unity is badly needed for a viable political order that will make a settlement work. Any attempt to link this settlement to broad schemes will keep Lebanon hostage to whatever greater or smaller Middle East may or may not emerge, old or new.
Unless the root causes of the conflict are addressed, South Lebanon, indeed Lebanon, may again become a chronic war zone in a region saturated by sacred causes, clashes of states and civilizations, and lost opportunities for peaceful and orderly relations between states and societies.
Farid El Khazen
August 14, 2006
Farid El-Khazen is a member of the Lebanese Parliament and a professor of political science at the science at the American University of Beirut. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
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Madness takes over Lebanon.
Militants are fighting in the streets of Beirut. Military guns are on both sides. What is the prospect of such a situation. Aren't the Lebanese fed-up with wars?
23 November 2007
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud left the Baabda presidential palace without handing over the power to a new president. This is the first time since independence in 1943. |
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