The lessons of Lebanon.

Salt, Jeremy

 The violence you have done to Lebanon
 will overwhelm you.

 Habbakuk 2:17 (Book of the Old Testament)

Within a month of Israel retreating from Lebanon the news was being announced in the Syrian Parliament that President Hafez al Assad had died. After Lebanon what? After Assad what? In these new circumstances there were more questions than clear answers. Assad's son Bashar was quickly elected secretary of the ruling Ba'ath party and then president, once the constitution had been amended to allow someone of his age (thirty four) to take over and a referendum held. His father had clearly taken all the necessary precautions ahead of time, ensuring continuing support for Bashar from within the military and the mukhabarat (intelligence services) as well as preparing him for the pressure he would come under from the US and Israel to be more 'reasonable' than he had been himself. Assad senior framed a 'strategy for peace' years ago based on acceptance of Israel as a quid pro quo for the return of all territory seized in the 1967 War, and whatever else he does it is likely that Bashar will adhere to this position for the foreseeable future.

Assad had many enemies. The Americans, the Israelis, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose uprising in 1982 he ferociously crushed, and the Lebanese Christians who drove their country into civil war. Though showing few signs of religiosity even for public consumption, he was nominally an Alawi and thus the member of a schismatic Shi'i minority sect regarded as heretical by many Sunni Muslims. Yet, partly because of the divisive way the French administered the country in the days of the Mandate, from the end of the First World War to the end of the Second, the Alawis were well placed in the armed forces. Taking advantage of this head-start and using the support both of his community and his family, Assad (then the air force commander) was able to seize power in 1970. Although for a long time it was common for Sunni Muslims to grumble about Syria being an 'Alawi state', Assad always made sure that Sunni Muslims in the armed forces and his government were given positions of real authority. This was not just to deflect criticism. He was a shrewd judge of character. In those he decided to trust, talent and loyalty were far more important than religious or family affiliations. He sent his brother Rif'at into exile once that trust had been broken. If there were reasons on many grounds for not liking Hafez al Assad, or more likely, of fearing him, over the thirty years he was in power, many of his enemies at least came to respect him for his shrewdness. In Lebanon he out-manoeuvred every American president and every Israeli prime minister. Their joint policy was to batter the Palestinians and the Syrians into submission but they all got their fingers badly burnt: the Americans lost hundreds of soldiers as well as diplomats and senior CIA staff in suicide bomb attacks, and Israel was eventually driven out of the territory it had occupied for more than twenty years by Hizbullah, an organization established with Iranian support and operating throughout with the backing of Syria. The Ta'if Agreement of 1989 which ended the civil war was also largely Assad's doing.

These were substantial achievements for a small country deprived of its main backer when the Soviet Union collapsed and economically weakened by an American boycott. Even though Assad had placated the Americans by joining the 1990 Gulf War alliance against Saddam Hussein, his refusal to follow Anwar Sadat and Yasser Arafat in making a peace dictated by Israel ensured that he would remain on the outer until he effectively gave in. The problem with Assad was that he kept insisting on the return of all Syrian occupied territory and consequently it was he who was routinely vilified as 'inflexible' and 'extreme' and an 'obstacle' to the 'peace process' rather than the government which seized this territory and colonised, settled and even annexed it in flagrant violation of international law. But such inversions of language and meaning are typical of western media reporting of the Middle East.

In the short time he had before his death Assad must have taken great satisfaction from the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. The reason for the withdrawal was not any sudden desire of Israel's to comply with UN General Assembly resolutions insisting that it get out, but the refusal of the Israeli public to tolerate the rising number of young men being killed there. Of the two main protagonists involved--Israel and Hizbullah--one learnt that in certain circumstances force does not pay, while the other learnt that in certain circumstances it does. The post-mortems began immediately but the final undignified flight of the Israeli army was an unparalleled victory in the history of the Arab confrontation with Israel. Never before had Israel been defeated in the field, and when it happened it was not at the hands of regular Arab armies but of a well-trained and ideologically committed guerilla force operating from the smallest and weakest of what is left of the 'front line' states. The Palestinians immediately began making comparisons between what they have lost through negotiations and what Hizbullah gained for Lebanon through resistance. How this will be reflected in their own situation remains to be seen.

The retreat back across Israel's northern border ends an unremitting cycle of violence which goes back to 1968 when Israel destroyed thirteen civilian airliners on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport, and even further back, to 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homeland and ended up in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It was from Jordan and then Lebanon that the Palestinian guerilla movement began striking back in the 1960s and from that time until a few months ago Lebanon knew no peace. Palestinian attacks across Lebanon's border and Israeli 'reprisals' continued for a decade with sporadic attempts by the Lebanese Government and other interested parties failing to stabilize the situation.

In 1978 Israel launched its first major invasion, Operation Litani, which took its army right up to the river of that name. This attack was followed by the onslaught of 1982, cooked up by Israeli Prime Minister Menahim Begin and Defence Minister Ariel Sharon to deliver a blow intended to destroy the Palestinians once and for all, scattering them physically from their refugee camps and simultaneously sending a message of despair to the Palestinians of the West Bank. The carnage that ensued culminated in the siege of Beirut and the massacre of Palestinians by Israel's Lebanese allies in the camps of Sabra and Shatila. The total death toll across Lebanon, but mostly in Beirut, reached something in the order of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. It could be said that the invasion was a partial success for Israel because the PLO was driven out of Lebanon. But in the process a far deadlier enemy was stirred up--Shi'i radicalism.

The Shi'ites--the majority within Lebanon's plurality--had been going through a process of social and political awakening generated by such religious luminaries as the Imam Musa Sadr (later to disappear in Libya in circumstances which have never been explained) when the Shah was overthrown and the Islamic republic established in Iran. Towards the end of the revolution, men and material support were sent to Lebanon. The consequences of Islamic activism in Lebanon included hostage taking and killing; the suicide bombings of the American Embassy in Beirut and of the French and American marine barracks; and resistance to Israel's occupation of the south by Hizbullah. Growing in sophistication over the years, fighting on their own territory and ideologically committed, the Hizbullah guerillas turned southern Lebanon into Israel's own Vietnam, if on a smaller scale. The comparison can be overblown, but the rhetoric of invasion and occupation eventually had the same effect on young Israeli soldiers as it had previously had on American conscripts sent to Vietnam in the 1960s. They could see no good reason for being in Lebanon and certainly did not want to die there.

In fact, from the time of Israel's first major invasion (Operation Litani of 1978), close to 1000 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon. On the other side 1276 guerillas died fighting them or their SLA (South Lebanon Army) allies since the founding of Hizbullah in 1982. Civilian deaths (both Lebanese and Palestinian) were vastly higher and the infrastructural damage Israel has intermittently continued to inflict on Lebanon was huge. Initially the Israeli Government said it wanted a negotiated withdrawal, and that is certainly what Lebanon and Syria both wanted, but once Israel had declared its intention of withdrawing by July the game was up. The South Lebanon Army began to disintegrate in May, and with Hizbullah quickly moving into abandoned territory and taking over SLA positions, as well as the notorious Khiam prison, Israel was left with no option but to get out as quickly as possible.

This precipitate withdrawal left Syria on the back foot because now that Israel is out, the pressure will grow for it to withdraw its own 35,000 troops based in Lebanon in the name of the Arab deterrent force 'invited' in by the Lebanese Government in 1976. Syria has now lost the leverage Assad senior had hoped would bring about a simultaneous Israel withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights. It could have tried to maintain pressure on Israel from Lebanon but the Barak government quickly warned that any attacks across the northern border would be met with a severe riposte which Syria knew would be far more justified in the eyes of the world than a response to attacks on Israelis inside occupied Lebanon. Furthermore, the Lebanese Government will not want to jeopardise its newly restored integrity and the peace and stability that the country needs after thirty years of conflict. Finally, Hizbullah has evolved into a Lebanese national organisation with Lebanese as well as Shi'i concerns. It is a political party as well as a resistance movement, with a number of members in parliament. Its interests certainly include the connections with Syria and Iran, but as a Lebanese movement, Hizbullah must play the game of confessional politics alongside the other factions. Accordingly, it has behaved with caution and prudence since its victory and has taken especial pains to reassure Christians living in the newly liberated south.

This is not to say that the Lebanese part of the conflict is settled --there are still many knots to be untangled and even pockets of territory that Israel has not yet vacated--but for the present the political pointer swings back to the 'negotiations' between Israel and the Palestinians. Here even those who have faithfully supported the 'peace process' all along are beginning to look askance at what is going on. A recent issue of the Economist drew attention to the fact that a return to the pre-1967 War borders, which Israel is not even contemplating, would still mean West Bank Palestinians getting a state in twenty-two per cent of their homeland, and described as 'madness' the piecemeal distribution of land that has been taking place. Barak has expanded settlements on the West Bank as enthusiastically as his predecessor and has been strongly criticised for this by the Israeli peace movement. Israel obviously has no intention of sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem (again, Peace Now says the Palestinians should at least be given some symbols of national authority in the city) although in spirit and mood 'united' Jerusalem is as divided as much as it ever was before. The territory incorporated into the patchwork Palestinian statelet--divided or overlooked by soldier and settler-only roads and settlements--will be subject to Israeli constrictions and demands, ranging from air and border control to the continuing exploitation of Palestinian water resources. Estimates of how much territory was offered to the Palestinians during 'final status' negotiations in the middle of the year, vary but it appears that some of it (dense in settlements and close to Jerusalem) would be annexed to Israel and the disposition of a substantial part held in abeyance for a few years longer.

Insofar as the Palestinian diaspora is concerned, the UN position since 1948 has been that the refugees should be offered a choice between repatriation or compensation. Even if return is now unrealistic a partial offer, along with compensation for all Palestinians, would go a long way to setting the stage for eventual reconciliation. This is an issue that Israel has so far declined to discuss, but as long as the status of the refugees is not resolved what 'peace' can properly be called a peace? In Jordan the Palestinians have citizenship but in Lebanon the confessional balance is too delicate for the refugees (most of them Sunni Muslim) to be given it (irrespective of whether they actually want it). In any case, the prime responsibility for coming up with solutions surely lies with Israel. The United States and France are reported to be thinking of an international conference and Iraq recently floated a proposal to take in 300,000 of the refugees, presumably as a means of getting on the right side of the Americans and bringing sanctions to an end. What the Palestinians think of this particular proposal has yet to register.

Alongside criticism of the ambiguities and 'lack of substance' (the Economist again) that have characterized the Oslo process from the beginning, there is growing acknowledgement that the Palestinians have been done down in the 'peace process'. Israel's 'final offer' (as of July) was evidently contingent on Arafat accepting a token presence in Jerusalem and agreeing to postpone the refugee question for a further indeterminate period. In effect this would mean the final abandonment of Palestinian rights as enshrined in international law, and the Palestinians know it. Across the occupied territories there have been manifold signs that they are turning away from the leadership which has brought them to this point. Arafat cannot now even rely on his own Fatah organization. Marwan Barghuti, its leader on the West Bank, said recently that 'no Palestinian, leader or otherwise, will dare or will be able to compromise Palestinian national constants ... and if he does Fatah and all the Palestinian people will stand against him'. (1) According to Saqr Habash, a member of the organization's central committee, any concessions beyond UN resolutions 242 and 338 (issued after the 1967 and 1973 wars, and calling for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories) would be regarded by Fatah as treason, which would justify 'carrying arms in the face of whoever signs such a sellout'. Arafat further angered Palestinians (and Lebanese) by insisting in a television interview that Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon because it wanted to comply with UN resolution 425, and by setting up a separate 'secret' (but soon known to everyone) channel to the Israelis in Stockholm he brought about the resignation of Yasir Abd al Rabbu, the head of the official delegation to the final status talks, who described the secret channel as 'an Israeli conspiracy aimed at extracting fundamental concessions [the 'national constants'] from us'. Typically, the 'secret' channel talks did not seem to be getting anywhere anyway.

After the failure of the Camp David negotiations between Clinton, Barak and Arafat, world attention focussed on what Arafat would do on September 13. Would he actually take the plunge and declare a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital or would he put it off? The outcome will be known by the time readers are leafing through this issue of Arena Journal; but Barak quickly warned in an interview with Time that if Arafat declared a state 'he might do it in a way that we will have to respond immediately the same evening, respond with our unilateral steps since he will not declare it within the borders that we would wish or with the kind of limitations that we would like to have'. (2) The Palestinian leader has often threatened to 'heat up the Palestinian street', and the eruption of violence on the West Bank in May which ended with Palestinian police and Israeli troops shooting at each other could be read as his warning signal to Israel and the United States to stop putting so much pressure on him. By September his position seemed to be thoroughly invidious.

For the moment though, enough of Palestinian desperation. The question for Israelis is whether a 'peace' based on the deliberate avoidance or indefinite postponement of the core issues really serves their interests. After all, what have they got so far? Fifty-four per cent of Palestine awarded to them by the United Nations in 1947, a further twenty per cent seized during the conflict of 1948 (including the western half of Jerusalem) and the rest conquered in 1967. This is quite a haul considering that when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917 the population ratio in Palestine was roughly 60,000 Jews (most of them recent arrivals even then) compared to about 600,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians. The Palestinians have effectively conceded the loss of all territory lost up to 1967, yet through the 'peace process' they have been driven into giving away even more. The recent reference by the editor of the Jerusalem Report--supposedly a liberal publication--to their 'maximalist territorial demands' (3) shows the width of the gulf separating the two sides. Not that there are only two sides, and that is a large part of the problem. There are even more fractions on the Israeli side than on the Palestinian. With his coalition government already crumbling around him (largely over the demands of the ultra orthodox Sephardi Shas party for more school funding), peace is not only a question of what Ehud Barak is prepared to do (not enough as things stand) but what he is able to do.

If amongst the Palestinians there is at best sullen acceptance of what cannot be avoided, amongst the Israelis there is the feeling that the Palestinians are simply ungrateful for the 'concessions' that Israel has already made in recent years. The peace euphoria of a few years ago has dissipated. Israelis are themselves now resigned to a sour peace that 'won't eliminate hostility', as the Israeli commentator Ehud Ya'ari wrote recently in the same issue of the Jerusalem Report, 'but will perhaps at best reduce its violent eruptions'. On top of all of this has now come Lebanon and how it might be interpreted. In a recent issue of Al Ahram newspaper the correspondent Graham Usher wrote the following from Beirut:

 Hizbullah's resistance certainly offers an alternative to the various
 snarled peace tracks that presently pass for the Arab-Israeli 'peace
 process'. And it may well be that the ultimate impact of the
 resistance will be felt less within Lebanon than in the trail
 Hizbullah has lit there. It is the threat of a good example Israel
 would do well to digest, says [Lebanese secularist writer Elias]
 Khoury. 'If peace does not result from the negotiations the
 resistance need not erupt on the Lebanese border. It can start in
 Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, even along the Jordanian
 border. On all fronts--if the "strategic choice" of peace fails--the
 Hizbullah model will become the model for the region'. (4)

Even if we read 'will become' as 'may become' such warnings need to be taken seriously.

(1.) Middle East International, 5 June 2000.

(2.) Time, 5 June 2000.

(3.) Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000.

(4.) Al Ahram, 8-14 June 2000.

Jeremy Salt teaches in Politics at Bilkent University, Turkey.