All quiet on Israel’s northern front?

AHRON SHAPIRO

POLITICALLY speaking, Lebanon is like the neighbourhood beer barn that gives a homeowner so much grief.

The rowdies inside — who from time to time spill out and trample your begonias — don’t seem to much like each other and they don’t like you. The police aren’t much help. Moreover, even if things quieten down for awhile, there are no illusions that the underlying problems have solved themselves.

In this little analogy, the frazzled homeowner is Israel, the impotent police are the United Nations (UN), and the rowdies are the splintered groups that make up the political constellation that is the Lebanese parliament — groups that not all that long ago were engaged in their own civil war.

The country’s elections in June, not surprisingly, did nothing to change this basic formula. Driving this point home, last week, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s new cabinet agreed to retain the same policy statement from the previous coalition, acknowledging Hezbollah’s right to use its weapons against Israel.

This ended speculation over whether the new unity government would have the strength to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which forbids the rearming of the terror group in southern Lebanon following the 2006 Lebanon war with Israel.

Reassuringly, there is a significant number of coalition voices who want to see Hezbollah disarmed, in particular the Christian-dominated Phalange and Lebanese Forces parties. They contend that an armed Hezbollah undermines Lebanon’s ability to control its entire territory and creates a situation where a war can be instigated by militant interests not beholden to the country’s democratically elected government.

Unfortunately, this rogue element in southern Lebanon, identified in official political parlance as “resistance”, has been a part of the Lebanese system for more than 30 years, since the days when it was the secularist Palestine Liberation Organisation, and not the Shi’ite Hezbollah, shelling northern Israel.

In its perennial state of political paralysis, Lebanese policy has long been influenced, even dominated, by Syria and Iran to varying degrees. The question that then needs to be asked is this: To what extent does the unique balance of power in Lebanon represent the will of the people? Would Hariri, for example, prefer to disarm Hezbollah and impose Lebanese control right up to the Israeli border if he could have his way? Or, is Hezbollah acting with the approval of the Lebanese government?

The Taif Agreements of 1989, which ended Lebanon’s civil war, required the disarming of all militias, but exempted anti-Israel “resistance” movements. There are unquestionably those in the country who continue to call for the elimination of this exemption in the belief that it is in the best interests of most Lebanese.

It would be only natural to assume that Hariri would like the ability to control the spigot of illegal arms in the country and have more sway over the actions of Hezbollah.

However, without getting into too many specifics regarding the various factions involved in Lebanese politics, it would appear unlikely that even a strengthened government would view acting to substantially change the status quo as in its best interests, essentially because it would risk plunging the country into another civil war.

Given the parity -— some would say stalemate -— that has typified Lebanese politics since the civil war, strengthening any one party artificially would likely be doomed to failure.

If solving the Lebanon problem -— which is in the interests of not only Israel but the United States also -— were as simple as propping up Beirut in the face of Syria and Iran, the US would have been the first in line to adopt this policy.

It’s not as if there isn’t some basis for a hope such an arrangement would work. After all, is it not true that historically, Lebanon has had among certain subgroups of its population some of Israel’s most sympathetic neighbours? Lest it be forgotten that it was less than a decade ago that Israel held a Security Zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by the South Lebanese Army -— whose members at one time comprised a battalion of the sovereign Lebanese army before the civil war.

Unfortunately, Lebanon not only has among its citizens the most moderate voices towards Israel, but also the most extreme. And, frankly, the extreme voices are louder and carry a bigger stick.

This is one reason that Lebanon is never mentioned as a potential peace partner with Israel, despite the fact that the Jewish State would have the most to gain from a peace treaty -— or even a state of non-belligerence such as was typified by the Israeli-Lebanese relations in the late 1960s.

Peace with Beirut would be far more desirable than peace with Damascus. This is not only for strategic reasons, because giving up the Golan Heights -— a certainty for any prospective peace treaty with Syria —- puts the upper Panhandle of the Galilee at a disadvantage on battlefield terms and would put Israel’s water supply at risk. It is also because it is Lebanon that has been the thorn in Israel’s side for more than 30 years.

Yet it is Syria that is the subject of on-again, off-again peace negotiations, and not Lebanon.

For a moment, imagine a scenario where Lebanon was no longer a border of confrontation with Israel: call it the Good Fence redux, named after Metulla’s erstwhile crossing into the Security Zone, while it existed.

As the sole intransigent link in a ring of peace treaties around Israel, Syria would find it difficult to remain the odd man out. However, even more importantly, the strongest arm of Iran’s military proxy would be amputated overnight.

Without the proximity to wreak havoc on Israel, Hezbollah’s guerillas would have literally no place to set up shop, and would surely wither. The entire balance of power in the Middle East would shift.

Unfortunately, this is not an attainable reality at this time, nor is it a realistic prospect.

Instead, peace strategists continue to favour overtures to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad -— a powerful, autocratic leader -— as the more feasible avenue for a peace agreement. The reasoning is that without Syria as an enabling power, Iran would lose its ability to rearm Hezbollah.

Last month’s Israeli naval seizure of the cargo ship Francop, which was carrying a massive Iranian arms shipment that was likely en route to Hezbollah via Syria, demonstrates the logic of the argument clearly: without the Syrian middleman, Hezbollah’s forces would be in isolation. In this scenario, it would be Lebanon that would be pressured to follow in Syria’s footsteps to peace with Israel.

In June’s Lebanese general election, a staggering 19 parties gained representation in the 128-seat parliament, including five parties that only eked out a single seat and four that only managed to get two seats. Compare that to the 12 parties that gained seats in the Israeli Knesset — and even that number is considered to be quite high to manage.

The Lebanese parties have gravitated into two principal alliances. Ostensibly, Hezbollah was in the losing alliance, although you’d have a hard time telling it by the way the unity government shaped up.

For the purposes of evaluating the country’s current and future role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the situation can be described in simple terms.

Lebanon, gun-shy after a lengthy civil war that still looms large in people’s minds clings to a tenuous governance that avoids confrontation with its more powerful neighbours and interlocutors.

The passivity coming from Beirut, aimed at satisfying domestic concerns, is not likely to change over the course of the current government. As a result, the consensus among Israeli security strategists is that Hariri cannot be counted upon to rein in Hezbollah, even symbolically.

For that reason, Israel, while continuing to seek peace with a Syria that would isolate Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, continues to plan for a future Lebanon war it sees as inevitable given the ­current climate.

Lebanon at a glance

1920: France proclaims the creation of a separate entity of Lebanon out of its post-World War I mandate for the former Ottoman Empire’s province of Syria.

1943: Lebanon moves towards independence, which becomes official on January 1, 1944.

1967: Following the Six-Day War, in which Lebanon plays no active role, and an expulsion from Jordan some three years later, Palestinian militants use Lebanon as a base for activities against Israel.

1975: The Lebanese Civil War begins.

1978: In response to an onslaught of Palestinian attacks from Lebanese territory, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) enters southern Lebanon in Operation Litani. It withdraws following the passage of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 425.

1982: Israel re-engages Palestinian Liberation Organisation forces in Lebanon in the First Lebanon war.

1985: The bulk of Israeli troops withdraw; however, a Security Zone remains in southern Lebanon.

1989: The Taif Accords are signed, providing the political outlines of a post-civil war Lebanon.

1990: The civil war ends.

1993: The IDF launches Operation Accountability.

1996: The IDF launches Operation Grapes of Wrath.

2000: The IDF withdraws from southern Lebanon.

2006: After two IDF soldiers are kidnapped by Hezbollah, the month-long Second Lebanon War erupts. UN Resolution 1701 ends the fighting and demands the disarming of Hezbollah.

2009: Israeli naval forces seize the cargo freighter Francop in the Mediterranean and discover a massive Iranian arms shipment that is likely intended for Lebanese Hezbollah militia via Syria.