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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Barak's south Lebanon scars
By Graham Usher
"Today, Wednesday, May 24, 2000, we have brought our soldiers home. The Israeli Defence Forces have redeployed along the border between Israel and Lebanon outside of the security zone in accordance with the Israeli government's decision."
With these words, the Israeli army's Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, pronounced Israel's precipitous withdrawal from south Lebanon completed, closed Israel's northern border with Lebanon and admitted that Israel's brutal 22-year "engagement" with Lebanon had finally come to divorce. It was the end of one era. It is wholly unclear what the next will bring -- and for no one more so than the man whose decision, late on 23 May, ended what one returning Israeli soldier described as "this nightmare called Lebanon."
In the wake of that decision, Israeli society ran through a whole gamut of responses, "the full emotional laundry cycle," as one Israeli analyst put it. The initial reaction was one of humiliation and outrage that the mighty Israeli army had been defeated in war by a guerrilla force of less than a thousand fighters. Then came relief that Prime Minister Ehud Barak had made good on his election vow to "bring the boys home" without an additional death or casualty among them. But relief is a transitory emotion in politics; humiliation leaves a deeper scar.
Thus even as the "boys" were being embraced by their mothers, the leader of Israel's Likud opposition, Ariel Sharon, was denouncing Israel's "disgraceful retreat" from Lebanon and "betrayal" of its long-time allies there, the South Lebanon Army, 1,500 of whom surrendered to their Hizbullah victors. And while three of Barak's coalition parties withdrew their support for a bill in the Knesset calling for early election, they made it clear they had done so because of the timing, not out of disagreement with the content.
Barak's dilemma is made more acute because he knows his political future depends on factors largely beyond his control. This was given graphic illustration on 24 May, the day of Lebanon's liberation. Just after Mofaz had delivered his "historic" pronouncement, some 100 guerrillas belonging to Hizbullah and the Shi'ite Amal movement gathered opposite the Metulla crossing point on the Lebanese-Israeli border. They were less than a dozen metres from a group of Israeli soldiers and a hundred or so journalists. It was an absolutely clear demonstration of who now wields control in south Lebanon and who does not. And for most Israelis, including Barak, when they see Hizbullah and Amal guerrillas up close, what they actually see is Syria.
Whatever kudos he has gained for his part in "the first Arab victory over Israel in 50 years" (as described by Hizbullah's General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah), Israeli analysts are convinced that Syria's President Hafez Al-Assad is as apprehensive about Israel's withdrawal as Barak. And with the "nightmare" of Lebanon over, Al-Assad must surely know that Israeli public opinion is going to be even less inclined to negotiate over the "quiet" borders of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. So, the same analysts argue, the temptation must surely be for Syria to make Lebanon as big a problem for Israel from within its borders as it was beyond them.
It is expectation of this scenario that triggered a wave of warnings last week from numerous Israeli defence and political figures that "all sources of power in Lebanon, including Syria," will be hit if a single Israeli civilian or soldier is now attacked. These include Barak. In a ferocious letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announcing Israel's withdrawal, he accused Syria of "cynically using the Palestinian [refugees] in Lebanon for terrorist activity against Israel after the pull-out." He further charged Damascus with "giving Iran and Hizbullah freedom of action to set up an infrastructure liable to harm the stability in the area and bring about an outbreak in hostilities." This was from a man who less than a year ago was describing Al-Assad as the "shaper of modern Syria." He now seems to be a man bent on readying Israeli public opinion for war with it.
Finally, there is the impact Israel's unceremonious retreat from Lebanon will have on the Palestinians in the occupied territories. One of the reasons the United States has upped its input in the Palestinian negotiations in recent months was to urge Barak to reach at least a framework agreement with the Palestinians prior to any withdrawal from Lebanon. The reasoning behind this was clear. A forced Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, as happened last week, would not only strengthen the Islamist movements in the West Bank and Gaza, but would also reduce Yasser Arafat's scope for "flexibility" on such core issues as Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and removal of Jewish settlements from occupied Palestinian territory. If Hizbullah could achieve Israel's early retreat to the international border by force of arms -- so the reasoning went -- how can Arafat demand anything less in the context of negotiations?
There may be something to the US prognosis. On 15 May, Palestinians, for the first time in four years, used arms in protests demanding the release of the 1,650 Palestinian political prisoners still interned in Israeli jails. Asked whether the resort to the gun was worth the cost in Palestinian lives and injury, the West Bank leader of Arafat's Fatah movement, Marwan Barghouti, gave an answer that will send a shiver down every Israeli and American spine. "Look," he said, "we don't like to make sacrifices. We don't like having hundreds of wounded. But we understand Israel left Lebanon due to Hizbullah's pressure. Why should that not be the case here?"
Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon followed an almost classic domino theory. First two battalions of the SLA collapsed, then entire sectors of the "security zone" in south Lebanon and then finally the "invincible" Israeli army was forced to pack its bags and run. But Barak's greater fear is that those dominoes may turn out to be small indeed compared to the ones that may topple in the future -- not just in Lebanon, but in Syria, Israel and Palestine.
