There is a growing realization that the Israeli-Islamist War now well into its second week will not alter the basic realities in the Middle East that led to the conflict in the first place.
After the guns fall silent in Gaza and Lebanon, Hamas will still be leading the Palestinian Authority and far from being chastised, may in fact become more radicalized. President Abbas, trying desperately to broker a cease fire, is finding that his authority does not extend throughout the territories as several armed groups seem hell bent on continuing the fight with Israel:
The Egyptian-initiated plan consists of freeing abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, a joint cease-fire and the cessation of IDF assassinations in the Gaza Strip. The release of Palestinian prisoners would be part of the deal, but come at a later stage.It is not clear, however, whether the Hamas political leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshal, would agree to such a deal.
Representatives of several military factions in Gaza denied Saturday reports of a unilateral cease-fire. Palestinian sources stated that they are only willing to accept a joint truce that would include an end to Qassam fire in return for a halt in IDF actions in Gaza.
While continued resistance will result in a further weakening of Hamas in its ability to inflict damage on the Jewish state, the fact is that any respite Israel achieves in its war with the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas will be relatively brief. The Palestinian people have shown no desire to kick Hamas out of power and given time, the terrorists will have the opportunity to regroup and rearm until they once again, pose a grave threat to the security of the Israeli people.
But the Israelis never expected to do anything to Hamas except degrade their ability to harm civilians. Did they expect anything different when going to war against Hizbullah?
Clearly, the Israelis realized that by not only attacking Hizbullah positions in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut where much of Hizbullah’s infrastructure is located but also by destroying much of the tiny nation’s infrastructure that they would be scrambling Lebanese politics in hopes of getting a political solution to the problem of disarming the terrorists. Under United Nations Resolution 1559, Hizbullah was to be disarmed and the Lebanese government was to reestablish sovereignty over all of Lebanon, including the south where Hizbullah had established a state within a state.
The Israelis believed that by making the war extremely painful for other Lebanese factions – Christian, Druze, Sunnis – that the Lebanese government and their majority of anti-Syrian reform minded politicians would finally take the bull by the horns and take the initiative in disarming the terrorists while sending the Lebanese army to occupy positions in the south formerly held by Hizbullah.
But while little is clear at this point (Lebanese politics being an obtuse study to say the least) the chances of the Lebanese government attempting to disarm Hizbullah after the war appear to be somewhere between slim and none. As I pointed out yesterday, the war has placed Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a clearly ascendant position in government – so much so that the terrorists have maneuvered successfully to co-opt the government on everything save negotiating prisoner exchanges. The reason for this is simple; the Lebanese government is just too weak to stand against a determined armed group whose power and popularity grows daily. In fact, Prime Minister Siniora has said that if Israel invades southern Lebanon, he will send the army to fight side by side with Hizbullah, thus further legitimizing Hizbullah “resistance.”
If the Lebanese government will be unable or unwilling to disarm Hizbullah, will the Israelis be able to do it for them? Not hardly. While the IDF will be able to weaken their striking power by substantially reducing the number of rockets and missiles in Hizbullah’s possession as well as making it much more difficult for the terrorists to hit civilian targets by creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that would put most of the remaining missiles out of range, the major problem for both Israel and the Lebanese government will remain; who is going to disarm Hizbullah?
For in the end, when the shooting stops and the negotiators are sitting around the table, the fact of the matter is that Hizbullah will still have several thousand armed men whose allegiance to the Lebanese government will be an open question. And believing that Nasrallah can be convinced to give up his guns is a chimera. He will fight before he disarms. His power and the political juice of Hizbullah comes not in their ideas as a political party but out of the barrel of a gun. Without arms, Hizbullah is just a minority party representing a minority faction in Lebanese politics. Those who have watched Hassan Nasrallah since the end of Syrian occupation last year realize that this is something he (and his patrons in Iran and Syria) will never settle for.
Would the United Nations force Hizbullah to give up its arms? Forget for a moment that the UN would have no desire to get into a shooting war with anybody. The sad fact is that the United Nations doesn’t have the capability to force anyone to do anything.
What if an international force was constituted to occupy southern Lebanon as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon? Could they force Hizbullah to give up their arms? On the surface, this may be a promising solution. It may, in fact, be one of the calculi used by Israel as it denudes Lebanon of its infrastructure, making them an international basket case and forcing Europe and the United States to do what the Lebanese government is incapable of doing with regards to Hizbullah’s weapons.
But it is highly unlikely that the French, the Germans, or any NATO country would shed blood in the Middle East for this or any other reason. There doesn’t seem to be the international will to fight a continuous guerrilla war with Hizbullah in order to disarm them.
So the question of who will disarm Hizbullah doesn’t have an answer. Israel can only weaken, not destroy them. And the Israelis will not repeat their occupation of southern Lebanon that cost them so dearly in the 1980’s and 19990’s. The Lebanese government can only deal with Nasrallah in a political sense not as an enemy to be destroyed. That road leads to civil war, something no sane Lebanese wants. The UN is helpless. The international community paralyzed. And the United States does not have the political will at home to fight a never ending war against Hizbullah while we are already struggling in Iraq and Afghanistan with insurgencies.
So Hizbullah will keep its guns. Some deal will be brokered that will please none of the parties. And a few years from now after both Hamas and Hizbullah have had a chance to rest, refit, and rearm, we will probably go through this entire exercise again.
I guess that’s why they call it a “cycle of violence.”
9:44 am
Will All This Be For Nothing ?
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10:25 am
It is Sunday, so its time to play fantasist. I haven’t tackled the battle raging between the IDF and Hezbollah before this post and probably shouldn’t now, except that I am playing fantasist. It’s too early to tell what strategic goals the IDF has been tasked with. I certainly think Ralph Peters has jumped the shark.
It is no secret that the IDF prefers surprise and maneuver to static and broad front offensives. In his foreword to his book “Strategy: The Indirect Approach” Capt. Basil Henry Liddell Hart maintains that his best students had been the Germans in WWII and the IDF. I believe the IDF remains so.
The IDF is employing the IAF, artillery and rocket forces to prep the battlefield. They are degrading the aforementioned Shi’ite Seigfried Line; they are purposely leaving a very small force of about 3,000 soldiers and a few dozen tanks on the border area; they are attempting to separate the fighters from the civilians (if that is possible in the Jihad culture); they have cut off the asymmetrical communications network of TV and radio stations, as well as, the cell phone infrastructure and they are taking a few isolated high points (see Gettysburg: Little Round Top) and setting up observation posts.
It is my guess that the Israelis by not following the Peters’ playbook and are trying to accomplish three tasks before they strike at the heart of Hezbollah. First, by following a seemingly limited strategy of pinpoint incursions with limited forces they are showing the face of weakness to the enemy and thus emboldening them. Following that setup, the IDF seeks to have as many Hezbollah and IRG units stream south from Beirut past the Litani River. They want the enemy to see an opportunity to change its tactics from static defense and rocket attacks to an offensive that can’t resist the very enticing morsel of the small IDF presence on the border with seemingly isolated outposts on their territory. Whether studied or not, the chance to deliver a coup de main and perhaps seize Israeli territory is a morsel too enticing to be ignored. As history has proven, sagely counsels to refuse to be baited by such conditions have almost always been thrown into the wind in favor of the gleam of great victory.
The IDF counterstroke is what I am looking for. If they achieve the massing and concentration of enemy forces south of the Litani and leverage them out of their fortifications, the real battle will commence and Hezbollah and the IRGs will cease to exist except for a fleeing rabble leaving behind all that is left of their deployed arsenal and fortifications. Or, they will all be dead.
11:45 am
Israel will do the initial Hezaballah disarmament, followed by NATO semi-enforcement. My guess is that this will give Israel a 7-10 to year semi-quiet period to catch up to US technology which will further surpass Hezballah. By then, Iran, Syria, and Hezballah will be so far behind that there will not be much chance of catch-up. Game over…
Okay, I’m dreaming…but I sure like the scenerio…
2:04 pm
Rick, I have an even bigger question for you: who will “disarm” the Mahdi Army and all the other Iraqi militias? The Maliki government sure as hell looks like it can’t do it, all the while Iraq is becoming more and more of a basket case. I’m sure you heard about the bombing in the oil city of Kirkuk in the North. Three different ethnic groups are basically slugging it out for control of the oil. Doesn’t look good—sort of like the buildup of what happened to the former Yugoslavia, aka partition.
3:37 pm
This is a pattern. They start fights and then plead for ceasefires. I realize that Israel isn’t equipped to take on Syria and Iran, but the rest of the world needs to recognize what’s going on and come up with a strategy to deal with this tactic, and lay it at the doorstep of Iran. If we don’t work to isolate Iran and cut off the aid going to Syria and various terrorists, we’re headed for real world war. China and Russia ought to know it, and consider whether that’s really what they want.
5:52 pm
Leave the matter of will aside for the moment. Do the Europeans have the ability to project that kind of power beyond their own borders? This isn’t fighting rebels in the Cote d’Ivoire or police duty in Bosnia.
Iran has substantially upgraded Hezbollah’s ground abilities as it has its rocket arsenal. Take a look at any of the various assessments of Hezbollah’s ground capabilities.
The question, I think, is does anyone’s army other than Israel’s, ours, or, just possibly, the Russians’ have the ability to disarm Hezbollah?
1:18 am
The Lebanon War Enters the Talking Phase
We are now in the talking phase of the Lebanon War. People nowadays have great faith in the talking phase, the idea being that since war is senseless, all you have to do is get people talking to each other…
4:08 am
The spotlight is on the scurrying cockroaches of Islamic terrorism, now is the time to use the pesticide.
10:17 am
According to the clueless left in this country, they are pissed that Condi stopped FIRST in Lebanon and was kissed on each cheek by the pm there. They want her to take a walk up the hills to the Hez leader and have a sit down with him.
They’ve been allotvr msnbc, cnn and Fox bitching about how little Bush and Condi are doing.
I wanted to see IDF take planes up and carpet bomb the hills where the weazels are hiding in bunkers, not that deep by the way, and blow them to hell. I know I am a dumb female but Isreal is letting civilians know to leave so why not carpet bomb like we did trying to find binnieladen.
Just a thought from a very pissed off broad.
1:17 pm
Diplomacy and the Hounds of Hell, Part VII
Condi Rice is in Beirut, a surprise stop in her Middle East diplomacy tour that will next visit Jerusalem. This stop has mostly symbolic significance. The Lebanese are incapable of fighting Hizbullah, let alone Israel, so they need outside support.
1:44 am
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
10:50 am
Eye on the Watcher’s Council
As you may know the members of the Watcher’s Council each nominate one of his or her own posts and one non-Council post for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this week’s Council nominations is here.
The Watcher’...
10:50 am
[...] Right Wing Nut House, “Who Will ‘Disarm’ Hisbullah?†[...]
12:29 am
The Council Has Spoken!
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are A Perspective on Tribes and Anti-S…