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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Israel's Lebanese factor
By Graham UsherIsrael's decision on Monday not to continue its assault on Hizbullah in reprisal for the loss of six soldiers in as many days in occupied south Lebanon suggests that Binyamin Netanyahu -- for now -- is not about to emulate the electoral campaign of his predecessor.
In April 1996, Shimon Peres unleashed operation Grapes of Wrath on Lebanon, aimed ostensibly to protect Israel's northern border, but actually to restore Peres' "security" credentials after the mauling they had received from Hamas suicide attacks inside Israel. At the end of the 16-day blitz, Israel had forced an exodus of most of south Lebanon's population and killed 200 civilians, including 106 civilians sheltering at a UN base in Qana.
But Peres' low standing in the polls remained stubbornly unchanged, as did the "understandings" reached after Yitzhak Rabin's similar Operation Accountability onslaught in 1993, which attempted to confine the war in south Lebanon to non-civilian targets. One month after Grapes of Wrath, Peres lost the Israeli elections.
Fear of a similar fate probably stayed Netanyahu's hand this time round. Following a Hizbullah ambush and the killing of four Israelis in the occupied zone on 28 February, Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz vowed an Israeli response "by land, sea and air". But he added the "strikes" would be confined to Hizbullah's "infrastructure" rather than civilian targets. According to Hizbullah, Israel launched 12 raids that night, targeting alleged Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley and a base belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command at Naame south of Beirut. "There were no casualties," said Hizbullah spokesman, Ibrahim Moussawi.
Israel's unusual restraint is born of the experience of Grapes of Wrath. Had Israel launched a military offensive on anything like that scale, Hizbullah would have pitched Katyusha rockets into northern Galilee. With 200,000 Israelis in the north ordered to take to bomb shelters on 28 February -- and opinion polls showing 63 per cent of Israelis "dissatisfied" with their government's handling of the Lebanese imbroglio -- Netanyahu was keenly aware that a full-scale assault could land him in the same quagmire as Peres, and with the same political consequences. As Ze'ev Schiff, one of Israel's leading military analysts, admits, Hizbullah's military prowess has created a situation of "mutual deterrence" in south Lebanon, "where [Israel's] northern towns are hostages in the struggle." Given this balance of power, Netanyahu appears to have opted for the status quo.
But it is a status quo that an increasing number of Israelis are finding intolerable and that, as a consequence, is forcing itself on Israel's election campaign. Following Hizbullah's first ambush on 23 February -- in which three elite Israeli paratroopers were killed and five others were injured -- Labour parliamentarian and leading advocate of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, Yossi Beilin, denied that there was "no difference" between Israel's three main prime ministerial candidates.
While Netanyahu "had not talked to the Syrians for three years" and the new leader of Israel's Centre Party, Yitzhak Mordechai, was "silent", Labour leader Ehud Barak was committed to resuming negotiations with the Syrians from the point they reached under Yitzhak Rabin. Barak "wants to leave in the framework of a settlement with Syria," said Beilin.
If true, this would mean that Barak had embraced Rabin's formula of a full Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the occupied Golan Heights in return for a full peace treaty with Syria. After three years of Netanyahu, this is music to Damascus' ears, which, on 24 February, through the state-run Tishreen newspaper, again urged Israel to reach an "honourable solution" by resuming "serious talks" with Syria and Lebanon.
But such music is less sweet to Netanyahu, who has long believed that a deal can be struck with Syria for less than Israel's full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Since his election in 1996, Netanyahu has pursued a strategy of prising apart Israel's occupation of south Lebanon from its more strategically valuable (and far less costly) occupation of the Golan Heights. In 1996, he floated the idea of a "Lebanon First" scenario in which a withdrawal from south Lebanon would precede "negotiations without pre-conditions" with Syria. And last year the Israeli cabinet announced that it would implement the 21-year-old UN Resolution 425 calling on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon but only in exchange for "security guarantees" from Beirut and Damascus. Given Netanyahu's views on the Golan, no sooner had the proposals been floated than they were shot down by Syria, Lebanon and just about everybody else.
This leaves the Israeli leader with either the status quo or that variant of the "Lebanon First" proposal advocated by his foreign minister, Ariel Sharon. In January, Sharon suggested that Israel should withdraw unilaterally in stages from south Lebanon and from two Druze villages on the Golan in return for Syrian curbs on any Hizbullah resistance actions. Should Syria fail to do Israel's bidding, Sharon said Israel would be free to retaliate by hitting Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and, possibly, the bases of the 35,000 Syrian troops currently stationed in Lebanon.
Netanyahu rejected Sharon's proposal when it was aired. But with the Lebanese quagmire now threatening to smother the Israeli elections and with Labour perhaps offering a genuine alternative to the war, he may be tempted to throw his weight behind Sharon's proposal as the only means he has left of de-coupling Israel's increasing aversion to south Lebanon from its constant desire to keep hold of the Golan Heights.
