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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Biting the Lebanese bullet
By Graham Usher
Twenty-two years after its army invaded the country -- and at the cost of tens of thousands of Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis who have since died as a result -- on 5 March the Israeli Cabinet unanimously and officially decided to "deploy" Israeli troops out of south Lebanon by July 2000. It further declared that the government of Ehud Barak would "act to ensure that this deployment will be carried out in the framework of an agreement" with Syria and Lebanon. Should the agreement not be forthcoming, "implementation" of the decision will be carried out anyway, the cabinet ruled. Thus 10 months after his electoral triumph the Israeli leader has finally given flesh to his vow to have Israeli soldiers stationed on the northern border with Lebanon (rather than beyond it) "within a year of my government being formed".
But the question that has perplexed Israeli analysts -- and not a few Arab ones -- is whether Israel's "historic decision" of 5 March represents a calculated throw of the dice the better to free up the currently jammed negotiations with Syria? Or whether it amounts to a seal on what is already a done deal? What is not in dispute is why Barak has chosen now as the time to bite on the Lebanese bullet.
Ever since his first substantive discussions with President Bill Clinton last July, Barak has seen spring 2000 as the most propitious moment to cut a deal with Syria on the occupied Golan Heights and south Lebanon. The coming April and May are perhaps the last functioning months Clinton has before his presidency becomes suborned to the electoral race of his anointed successor, Al Gore. And Barak desperately needs a functioning US president. He sees promises of massive amounts of US military and financial aid as vital to selling an agreement to a sceptical Israeli Knesset and people, 50 per cent of whom remain resolutely opposed to a peace treaty with Damascus that involves Israel's full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
Secondly, a May-time agreement would enable Barak to lay before the referendum he has promised on the issue the inextricable link between Israelis paying "a painful territorial price" on the Golan and ending their lost war in Lebanon. Combined with US aid aimed at "the long-term strengthening of Israel", he believes such a package can garner the "sweeping majority" he predicts for an agreement, even if few of his coalition partners are nowhere near as confident. It was for these reasons that Barak told his cabinet on 5 March that "If the talks [with Syria] do not resume within the next two or three months, it will be very difficult to achieve an agreement during the next year, year and a half".
A young Lebanese girl looks at the shell-damaged roof of her house a day after it was hit in an Israeli air raid. Despite the Israeli cabinet's decision to pull its troops out of southern Lebanon in July, Israel has been waging nearly daily attacks on suspected Hizbullah hideouts and civilian targets (photo: AP)
Yet, with the current impasse in official negotiations, setting an irreversible deadline for July appears an uncharacteristic gamble by the Israeli prime minister. Virtually every military chief and political analyst in Israel is warning that a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in the absence of an agreement with Syria would lead not only to an upsurge in fighting in the occupied south between now and July, It could also -- should any attack reach deep into Israel in the aftermath -- risk a full-scale military confrontation with Syria. Nor are the alarms confined to the Israelis. Last week, Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouk Al-Sharaa, told Al-Hayat newspaper that Israel would "bear the consequences" of a unilateral pullback from Lebanon. Nor should Israel "use that possibility as a means of pressuring us" in the negotiations, he said.
The alternative to this high risk scenario is that Barak has confirmed the July deadline because he knows something that most of the world does not, regardless of his comments to the cabinet that there is presently neither "direct contacts with Syria" nor "any date for renewing the talks". This at least is the view of elements of the Israeli media, who have a track record of knowing a deal when they smell one.
On 3 March, the usually well informed Israeli reporter, Amnon Abramovich, told Israel's Channel 1 TV that an agreement between Israel and Syria is already "in the bag" and will be presented to the Israeli cabinet and Knesset "within three to five weeks". So confident of his sources was Abramovich that he even divulged details of what the deal would include. Thus -- according to his report -- the future border would not only be set between Syria's 1923 border with Mandate Palestine and the 4 June 1967 lines, but also Israel would retain "full control" over the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River's sources. Not surprisingly, a senior Syrian official dismissed Abramovich's scoop as "totally unfounded", as did the Americans. But certain Israeli ministers -- including those known to be close to Barak -- were a good deal more ambivalent. "It's not impossible that an agreement between us and Syria will be sealed in several weeks," said Education Minister and Meretz leader, Yossi Sarid, on 4 March. This is because the "peace agreement is there, and if we put out our hands I reckon we will able to touch it".
Whether the agreement is "there" or Barak's endorsement of a July pull out from Lebanon is in fact a gambit remains to be seen. What is clear -- and to nobody more so than Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- is that for the next few months Barak is going to preoccupied with Lebanon and Syria to the exclusion of all else. If anything moves on the Palestinian track, it will be a side-show. The main feature -- from now until July and perhaps beyond -- is Israel versus Syria.
