Lebanon
Crisis Fails Mediation,
Plays Into Israeli Hands
By Nicola Nasser
31 January, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
crisis in Lebanon is rapidly accumulating the potential to plunge the
country in a second civil war, while Israel is closely watching on the
sidelines for the right moment to exploit the ensuing security vulnerability
and finish the Lebanese divide off by intervening militarily to conclude
what it officially describes as the “inconclusive” war last
summer. Meanwhile, the most influential external potential mediators,
regional and international, are more or less part of the crisis than
they are part of the solution and pre-empting possible mediation efforts.
The dead end which the crisis
has reached is paralyzing Lebanon politically and economically, revealing
the “country's deeply flawed institutions and the flimsy constitutional
processes that … have proven woefully inadequate … to keep
them functioning in times of crisis” where “no mechanism
exists that might end it in an orderly fashion,” and the crisis
is testing the limits of the “Lebanese version of the democratic
process,” pushing its institutions “beyond their breaking
points,” according to the editorial of Lebanon’s The Daily
Star on January 24, leaving to external mediation the mission of defusing
the crisis.
Historically the only external
moderating influence that is qualified for a credible mediation role
is that of Saudi Arabia, who is a major aid contributor to Lebanon and
who mediated the Taif agreement, which extinguished the fires of the
first Lebanese civil war. However this potential Saudi mediation is
constrained by the conflicting interests of Riyadh’s Syrian and
U.S. allies, and unless Riyadh could neutralize the U.S. contributing
factor to the Lebanese crisis as a pre-condition to neutralize the Syrian
influence, her mediation efforts could not take off in Lebanon.
Mediation efforts by the
Arab League, have so far failed to break through the crisis. Several
major internal and external interacting factors have doomed these efforts.
The Israeli-backed U.S. and French siding with one Lebanese party against
the other for reasons that have nothing to do with the country’s
interests is exacerbating the dangerous divide; it is unfortunately
welcomed by a receptive attitude from Lebanese parties who historically
used to resort especially to western powers either to settle scores
internally with political foes or to redress an imbalanced internal
realignment of the 18 sectarian ingredients of the political system
that was left over by the French mandate in 1943.
The U.S. and French factors
are thus excluded as possible mediators in the crisis, and have turned
in practice into obstacles blocking possible United Nations and European
involvement.
Syria Provoked in Lebanon
The Israeli factor is the
major raison d’etre for the Syrian defensive influence in Lebanon.
Syria’s national security cannot tolerate a military threat from
Lebanon, be it Israeli, French or American, some thirty kilometers away
from the country’s heartland while at the same time the Israeli
Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Syrian Golan Heights are only some thirty
kilometers from the capital Damascus. The occupation of Syria’s
eastern neighbor, Iraq, by Israel’s U.S. strategic ally has had
the Syrian decision-makers on the edge.
Israel and its U.S. ally
are provokingly ringing more alarming bells to alert the Syrian defensive
instincts and at the same time adding fuel to the Lebanese crisis. President
George W. Bush in his last “state of the union” speech singled
out Lebanon as one of the major arenas in the Middle East where “nothing
is more important at this moment in our history than for America to
succeed.” He proclaimed an agenda there that puts Washington on
a collision course with Damascus.
Aligning his country with
the current government of the “Cedar Revolution,” the one
party in the Lebanese crisis that “drove out the Syrian occupiers,”
against the “Hezbollah terrorists” - led opposition, Bush
practically pledged to continue meddling in Lebanon’s internal
affairs by taking sides in the crisis, thus pre-empting all mediation
efforts and promising to perpetuate the crisis that is paralyzing the
presidency, government and parliament and eroding the infrastructure
of the Lebanese state.
It was sarcastically ironical
for Bush to describe the Syrians as “occupiers,” a word
that he has so far missed to learn or utter in reference to his country’s
four-year old occupation of Iraq or to the 40-year old Israeli occupation
of the Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese Arab territories.
Hence the Israeli-U.S. coordinated
intervention in Lebanon is antagonizing the Syrian influential role
in the country, which historically has been decisive in making or breaking
Lebanese crises.
In a rare U.S.-Syrian convergence
of interests Damascus intervened militarily in Lebanon in the seventies
of the twentieth century, which stabilized the country. Unfortunately
this stabilizing convergence of interests was abruptly interrupted by
the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation in 1982, which ironically led to
the ousting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - - Israel’s
declared pretext for its invasion -- but led to the emergence of Hizbullah
as a legitimate Syrian-backed Lebanese resistance to the occupation
that lasted until 2000, when it was driven out unconditionally 18 years
after the PLO left the country. Hizbullah, a party that might not have
been born were it not for the Israeli occupation itself, has become
Israel’s new pretext to pursue its expansionist policy in Lebanon.
Iran Seeks Mediation Role
The Israeli occupation, the
ensuing Syrian alarm and the emergence of the Hizbullah-led Lebanese
resistance were Iran’s gateway into Lebanon. Iran’s negative
and passive performance in Iraq vis-à-vis the American occupation
and the Iranian convergence of interests with this occupation vis-à-vis
the Iraqi national resistance, dubbed by both as “terrorist,”
explicitly indicates the Iranian role in Lebanon as having more to do
with regional plans than with credible solidarity with the Lebanese
resistance.
The recent statements of
Hizbullah leader, Hasan Nassrullah -- who publicly opposed the stances
of Iran’s ruling allies in Iraq vis-à-vis the U.S. occupation,
the U.S.-led “political process,” the “multi-national
forces,” which he condemned as the occupation forces, and the
Iraqi resistance -- were informative indications of the Iranian role.
Moreover the survival of both Syria and Hizbullah make them more closely
interrelated than their separate interrelation with Iran, as both are
targeted by the two U.S.-French drafted United Nations’ Security
Council resolutions 1559 and 1701. Washington has designated Syria a
terror-sponsoring nation because of its support for Hizbullah.
Another informative development
was Tehran’s approach to Riyadh to coordinate a joint effort to
defuse the Lebanese crisis. Despite the U.S.-Israeli condemnation of
Iran as a spoiling intruder into Lebanon together with Syria, Tehran
chose to pose as a possible mediator rather than a foreign partner to
the crisis, obviously distancing itself from Damascus. However the Iranian
top national security official Ali Larijani visited the Syrian capital
recently to coordinate jointly the new Iranian-Saudi mediation. He then
held talks twice within ten days with the Saudi officials. Iran’s
foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, also held telephone talks with
his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud Al-Faisal.
Donors Play Politics
The donors’ factor
is not promising to do much better. Pouring billions of foreign aid
into Lebanon’s treasury would not buy the Lebanese peace and unity,
because the donor’s’ role is initiated to play into the
hands of foreign as well internal partners to the conflict and as an
integral part of reinforcing one party against the other. Most Lebanese
and non-Lebanese experts and observers fear the donors will squander
their taxpayers’ money unless their donations are channeled through
Lebanese national consensus and a national unity government. The incumbent
government is too embroiled in the national crisis and may be too paralyzed
to fully deal with reconstruction even if the money comes in.
More than $2 billion already
in Lebanon’s treasury, mostly paid by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
following the Israeli invasion last summer, neither alleviated the economic
duress of Lebanese nor rebuilt some 119,000 houses which were home for
more than 200.000 Lebanese made homeless by the Israeli bombardment.
Moreover, the economic deteriorating
situation has been a major factor contributing to the crisis. The Lebanese
national debt is now reportedly an astounding $40-60 billion, making
Lebanon one of the highest debt-GDP ratios in the world, with each family
now indebted to the tune of $75,000. Last Thursday, 35 donor nations
pledged in Paris more than $7 billion in aid and loans to help rebuild
Lebanon. The loan portion of the pledges is viewed with skepticism as
an economic mechanism to hold Lebanon a political hostage to the U.S.-led
western strategic agenda in the Middle East.
Israelis Watching for Right
Moment
The status quo in Lebanon
is also threatening to disintegrate its national security system. The
national army and the security forces are preoccupied with the mission
of preserving their neutral unity, which in any time now could prove
impossible amid a snowballing national divide. “True the army
is suffering from pressure … The army has been bearing above its
load for months,” the commander General Michel Suleiman told As-Safir
newspaper. At the same time Hizbullah, the backbone of the national
defense against the Israeli looming threat, is preoccupied with a national-political
crisis that is driving the country into the brink of a second civil
war. Both parties to the crisis are becoming more vulnerable and less
immune to resist the external factors and their internal extensions,
which are pushing the divide towards its inevitable conclusion.
The crisis is creating the
exemplary environment for a successful Israeli military intervention.
On January 23 the Associated Press reported an Israeli military drill
the previous day on a mock Arab city in the Negev desert complete with
mosques, apartment buildings, even a faux Palestinian refugee camp,
built on eight square miles with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. The AP quoted a veteran of the war on Lebanon, Sgt. Shalev
Nachum: “We're definitely training for the next war. Next time,
it will be different.” The $40 million Urban Training Center was
unveiled to coincide with naming a new Israeli army chief of staff,
Gabi Ashkenazi.
Ashkenazi is a veteran of
Israeli wars on Lebanon, commanded major operations in the invasion
of 1982 and oversaw the eventual withdrawal of all Israeli occupying
forces from south Lebanon in 2000; he replaced Dan Halutz, who resigned
after criticism of his handling of the war on Lebanon last summer. Ashkenazi’s
“mission,” according to AP, is to “restore Israel's
deterrent posture and public confidence, both dented by last year's
costly and inconclusive Lebanon war.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert and “Defense” Minister Amir Peretz “expressed
confidence in Ashkenazi's ability to … implement the lessons from
the war in Lebanon,” said a government statement announcing his
appointment.
Israel is wasting no time
to redress what she considers the 2006 “inconclusive war”
on Lebanon. The determination of all the Lebanese parties to the crisis
to emerge winners in a divide that if continued will only condemn all
of them as losers is a determination to make the Israeli “mission”
much easier. Their national consensus on national unity as the only
way of survival is also the only background on which potential mediation
efforts could take off to neutralize the adverse external factors, avert
a civil war and at least make the price of a new Israeli military adventure
too high to have a “decisive” instead of an “inconclusive”
conclusion.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran
Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories.
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