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El Blog!, Touppi's Super Eleet Blog.
Tuomas Toivonen
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Mon, 14 Aug 2006
So we now have a UN security council resolution, 1701. And an agreed upon time for the ceasefire to come into effect in roughly four hours (on Monday at 0500 UTC). Heavy fighting in the south through Sunday, Israelis bombing southern Beirut and over two hundred and fifty Katyushas in the Isreali north. Lebanese cabinet agrees to 1701 on Saturday, but fails to even have a scheduled meeting the next day to start discussions on the actual (and crucial) implementation details. Nasrallah has also voiced his and Hezbollah's commitment to abide by 1701 except of course that as long as the IDF is present in Lebanon that abidance is effectively null and void.
I don't know. Maybe there would be room for cautious optimism, but still: the truce is very fragile indeed and clashes between HA and IDF seem inevitable. It all depends on Hezbollah. Isreal went to war with a stated objective of Hezbollah's annihilation. Hezbollah is still there, keeping up the barrage of rockets on Sunday as usual. Israelis have advanced up to the Litani river, but certainly haven't secured the territory. Militarily HA has won and IDF lost.
Politically it is still unclear. Maybe Olmert can salvage something out of the disaster, like, why was it all worth it. Lebanon is still hostage to Hezbollah. Why would they give up such a position? Shebaa is a sham, convienient excuse to keep up the "resistance" credentials. Shebaa is only resistance to disarm, resistance to compromise, resistance to participate in a pluralistic democracy, resistance to be truly Lebanese. By virtue of its ability to execute on its own foreign policy Hezbollah has unique control over Lebanese domestic politics. Being "truly Lebanese" Hezbollah would not resist being stripped of such control.
Funny the way Hezbollah is seen as an Iranian/Syrian proxy or champions of Arabism/Islamism. As if Hezbollah is by default part of a bigger game. Certainly it is, but such thinking also merges Lebanon into wider conflicts. Lebanon has suffered enough for being a proxy in regional struggles and has sacrificed enough in championing causes of pan-whatever.
I wrote about it before, but I say it again. Hezbollah must disarm, but Lebanese domestic politics must be reformed. Current model of confessional democracy doesn't work for Hezbollah. Demographic realities must be adhered to and in return Hezbollah must become a true party in the liberal democratic sense. What we'll have then is a real test of the democratic peace theory. Israel is a democratic state. With a democratic, authoritative Lebanese state as a counterpart, could they make the theory work and maintain peace?