P. David Hornik
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
August 14, 2006
If America got fed up with Israel and decided to accede to a UN “ceasefire” resolution, there were reasons for it. For a month an inexperienced Israeli prime minister who had said he was tired of fighting and wanted to turn Israel into a fun place, with a Peace Now, Marxist defense minister at his side, paraded Israel’s delusions in an effort to defeat Hezbollah on the cheap.
First was the attempt to triumph from the air—a basic plank of Olmert’s “disengagement” and “convergence” philosophy that says Israel can safely cede territory to its worst enemies because the air force can handle any problems that arise. Then there was the attempt to stop Hezbollah’s rocket fire with limited ground forays and a pathetically narrow “security zone” a kilometer or two into Lebanese territory—reflecting a hope that Israel could prevail without mobilizing or losing any significant number of soldiers.
In recent days, though, Olmert and the Israeli leadership had shown that they were on a learning curve and were preparing a major ground incursion up to the Litani River and possibly beyond. At the very least, Olmert realized he was finished politically unless he could show the distressed Israeli public that he could stop the rockets once and for all. Hezbollah, finally, was in for a drubbing. That is why it is so tragic that at this moment, America decided to bend to international pressure, put the brakes on Israel, and endorse a document that is a shameful exercise in moral equivalence and facilitation of ongoing terror.
Security Council Resolution 1701 “Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbullah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations,” drawing a precise parallel between jihadist aggression and the effort to ward it off. The document also calls for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers only in the preamble, while also claiming a need to “settl[e] the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel”—in other words, terrorists who include the sadistic child-murderer Samir Kuntar.
The resolution at least cannot be accused of equivalence when it “Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and . . . calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon”—without mentioning Israeli rehabilitation in so much as a breath.
Here the Security Council, with American consent, adopts the BBC-CNN-Reuters view of the conflict in which suffering within the country that has harbored Hezbollah for over two decades, and elected the organization as a sizable faction in its parliament with two cabinet posts—counts; whereas Israeli suffering, devastation, and displacement do not.
The resolution calls for “delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa Farms area.” This is a direct reward to Hezbollah for using the false Shebaa Farms issue to keep terrorizing northern Israel for six years, the UN itself having affirmed that Israel had left Lebanon completely in 2000 and that any further territorial dispute over Shebaa Farms concerned only Israel and Syria.
The resolution puts Israel on a very short tether in terms of looking out for its future security. “Upon full cessation of hostilities,” it “calls upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL . . . to deploy their forces together throughout the south and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel”—not leaving Israel even a decent interval to try and ensure that Hezbollah does not return to fill the void left by its departing forces.
Then, even more ominously, the resolution “Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken . . . that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations . . . or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons. . . .” If the UN were an institution that had always given Israel a fair shake, this might not be so unpromising. But that, of course, is not what the UN is, and one can particularly expect the phrase “might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution” to be applied liberally to any future Israeli attempts to defend itself militarily.
But Resolution 1701’s most glaring weaknesses are precisely in those areas that some are touting as its strengths. The resolution “Calls for . . . the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL”; “authorize[s] an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops”; and even hints at a military role for UNIFIL by authorizing it “to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities.”
UNIFIL having become a synonym for uselessness at best and collusion with terrorism at worst, a UNIFIL force beefed up with troops from France and other dhimmified countries that relate to Iran as a business partner does not inspire confidence. More significant, though, is Resolution 1701’s treatment of the Lebanese government as the main actor in this story that is supposed to ensure peace and stability.
Essentially, anything the document is supposed to achieve is subject to Lebanon’s veto. The word consent appears three times in the text, each time in reference to Lebanon:
“The Security Council...[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory...so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon....”
“...no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government... ”
“Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel.... ”
Again, if Lebanon were a country (a) solidly in the pro-Western camp and (b) powerful enough to assert its will in its territory, these items would be cause for hope. But the resolution, which remarkably never gets around to mentioning the words Iran or Syria, ignores the facts that Lebanon has basically been a plaything of Syria and, less directly, Iran for at least a quarter-century; that much of its populace, army, and government, particularly the Shiite component, enthusiastically backs the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iran axis and is essentially part of it; and that Lebanon’s weak, ethnoreligiously dissonant army is no more capable of exerting control than a 15,000-man UNIFIL force.
Allowing Israel to take a few more weeks and rout Hezbollah—preferably also with some sobering strikes against Syria—would have created a different scenario and, most important, perceptions of a Western victory and humiliating jihadist defeat. That may have allowed the truly moderate Christian, Druze, and Muslim forces in Lebanon to start trying to retake control of their country while leaving the Iranian-led jihad axis reeling.
Instead the United States and the world community have chosen with this dire Security Council resolution to create a powerful scenario of perceived, and to some extent real, jihadist victory while ensuring continuing instability and endangerment of Israel. It is a moment that will come back to haunt America and the West.
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P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.
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