Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Why Lebanon isn't euphoric about the impending pullout of Israeli forces.
May 13, 2000 | Israel has vowed to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon in a few weeks, which will close a chapter of violence and occupation that lasted for 22 exhausting years. But paradoxically, the prospect is causing more concern than euphoria in Beirut.
Only the Islamic guerrillas who have fought Israel to a standstill are poised to celebrate -- with extra gunfire -- as the Israeli soldiers pull out. The guerrilla group, known as Hezbollah ("The Party of God"), will be one of the few Arab military groups ever to succeed in forcing Israel to back down. In the past few days, Hezbollah has stacked three rocket launchers on a pedestal on the Mediterranean seafront here and draped the installation with a banner proclaiming loudly, "Resistance is the answer."
The guerrillas, backed by Syria and Iran, have tried the patience of the Israeli public by inflicting a steady hemorrhage of human losses on Israel since 1985, when Israel established a 9-mile-wide "security zone" in southern Lebanon. The painful casualties made Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's electoral promise to pull out by July 7 a hugely popular pledge in Israel. At the same time, the war has earned Hezbollah patriotic credibility and political support in Lebanon.
Hezbollah propaganda aside, the Israeli withdrawal raises more questions in Lebanon than it answers. The dismantling of Israeli military outposts is only in its early stages, but already there are jitters in Lebanon. The change threatens to crumble a decade-old arrangement in which Syria ensured Lebanon's stability and Lebanon was hostage to Syrian interests.
In editorials and student demonstrations in April, the Lebanese started to challenge the overbearing presence of Syria in their country. Some 35,000 Syrian troops, ubiquitous spies and interference in domestic affairs have made Syria the de facto ruler of the area since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990.
The students -- mostly Christian supporters of exiled Lebanese Gen. Michel Aoun -- have vocally equated Syrian occupation with Israeli occupation and called for the end of both. The Lebanese army (loyal to Syria) crushed recent demonstrations in which 14 students were injured and several arrests were made. Some fear the crackdown could lead Lebanon into a new round of sectarian violence.
Given all that, "people aren't sure how they should respond to Israel's withdrawal," said Michael Young, a political analyst at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut. "On the one hand, people hope the situation in the south will be neutralized after the pullout," he said. "On the other, people fear Syria will attempt to create violence." Violence would help Syria preserve the status quo in Lebanon and maintain some leverage against Israel in its bid to recover the Golan Heights.
Indeed, the guerrilla war waged by Hezbollah against Israel in southern Lebanon has been at the heart of Syria's strategy to reclaim the Golan Heights, a strategic wind-swept plateau that overlooks the Sea of Galilee and has been under Israeli control since 1967.
Syria's calculation was that Hezbollah would bleed Israel until it agreed to give back the Golan Heights in exchange for peace on its northern border. Israel also envisioned a withdrawal from Lebanon within the framework of a peace agreement with Syria. But that plan fell apart in March when Israel and Syria failed to agree on the borders of the Golan. Barak then announced that he would stick to his electoral promise and withdraw his troops from Lebanon anyway.
"The contingency plan became the plan," said Gebran Tueni, publisher of Lebanon's biggest daily, An Nahar. Analysts now speculate that Syrian President Hafez Assad will scramble for ways to sabotage the unilateral Israeli withdrawal and keep pressure on Israel to hand back the Golan. "For the first time the Syrians are reacting and not acting," said Tueni.
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