Lebanon: A Solution in the Making
Dr. Joseph Hitti
July 20, 2006
Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora yesterday made statements that indicate a shift in the position of his beleaguered government towards an alignment with the will of the Lebanese people and the international community. This shift, characterized by a more direct finger-pointing towards Hezbollah as the sole culprit for unleashing “the Israeli war machine”, presages a greater convergence with the direction likely to be taken today at the UN in New York by the overwhelming majority of the international community.
Last week, Prime Minister Siniora begged for a ceasefire, but while he blasted the Israeli assault on Lebanon for being out of proportion with the triggering event, namely Hezbollah’s attack on Israeli troops across the Blue Line and the kidnapping of two soldiers, and appeared to side with Hezbollah’s stance by advocating “steadfastness” and “resistance” to the “aggression”, he contended himself with saying that his government was not consulted a priori by Hezbollah about the kidnapping operation.
Yesterday, Siniora was more forthcoming in accusing Hezbollah of being “A State within a State”, and saying what was still an unthinkable taboo just a little more than a week ago, which is that “Hezbollah must be disarmed”. It must be recalled that the Siniora government, albeit aware of the requirements to disarm Hezbollah under UN Resolution 1559 and its corollaries, as well as under the infamous Taef Agreement of 1989, brought 3 pro-Hezbollah ministers into the Lebanese government for the first time and adopted a Ministerial Statement that unambiguously defined Hezbollah as a “Resistance” rather than a militia to circumvent UN resolution 1559 and the Taef Agreement. The Ministerial Statement of the Siniora government also proclaimed its support for Hezbollah’s “Resistance” against the Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms and ignored the UN resolution’s requirement to send the Lebanese Army to the border, notwithstanding the fact that it was Syria that occupied the Shebaa Farms from Lebanon in 1956 after killing two Lebanese gendarmes there, that Syria then lost Shebaa along with the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, that the UN had certified the “Blue Line” border between Lebanon and Israel after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and that therefore only an official acquiescence by Syria to cede sovereignty back to Lebanon under UN certification would then make Israel’s withdrawal from Shebaa a legitimate Lebanese demand.
As rumors surfaced yesterday about a fracture in the French-American unity that has characterized the handling of the Lebanese dossier since UN resolution 1559 was passed in September 2004, it may be that the visit by French Prime Minister De Villepin to Beirut two days ago inspired Siniora to execute this shift in position in order to make it more palatable for the Americans to agree to a ceasefire, since the basic American demand is that any ceasefire should include a mechanism to address the primary “root cause” of the problem, namely Hezbollah’s armed presence – instead of the legitimate Lebanese Army – along the international border with Israel. In other words, the French may have encouraged Siniora to take Hezbollah on – but without a military confrontation with the Lebanese Army – in exchange for the international community’s stepping in with an offer for a ceasefire and the dispatch of a strong UN force alongside the Lebanese Army to the border. While Hezbollah would not be militarily defeated in the immediate term, its emasculated presence some 25 miles north of the border would make its “Resistance” platform moot, lead to its de facto dissolution as a military organization, and fulfill the remaining clauses of UN resolution 1559.
If this scenario unfolds as described, Lebanon would be finally on its way to a genuine pacification. However, as the organization which invented “suicide operations” as we know them, since its double bombing of the US Marines barracks and the French Paratroopers barracks in Beirut in 1983 was the first ever such operation – killing 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers, Hezbollah may be faced with the existential dilemma of reinventing itself or facing certain death. Gone will be the glory of “Resistance” against “Crusaders” and “Zionists”, gone will be the social services it provided the Shiite Lebanese (to replace the services the Lebanese government would have provided if it were not evicted from the south by Hezbollah), gone will be the millions of dollars from Iran, and gone will be the holding of Lebanon and the Lebanese hostage to the Iranian-imported fundamentalist Moslem ideology.
In 1983, the eviction of the PLO from Beirut by Israel under conditions not unlike today’s, led to an emasculated PLO-in-exile in Tunis. That gave Arafat ample time to ponder what he and the Palestinian people stood to loose if they did not recognize Israel as a valid interlocutor in the peace process. This led to the Oslo and Madrid agreements of the early 1990s which, despite their failures, have made Palestine a reality. Hezbollah is not the PLO. It is an Iranian-Syrian creation of 1982 destined originally to replace the evicted PLO in managing the war of attrition against Israel from Lebanese territory. It has no objective beyond the blindness of its radical Islamic ideology. It neither represents a people in exile, nor a nation in the making. Lebanon and the Lebanese people are more than ready and willing to spit the Hezbollah phlegm from their choking throats.
In an act of ultimate desperation at watching its own decomposition, Hezbollah may resort to going underground and re-connecting with its true origins of an Al-Qaeda-like terrorist organization that bombed, kidnapped, hijacked and killed ad libitum in the Lebanon of the 1980s. Both Lebanon and the international community should exercise extreme caution in giving the Shiite community in Lebanon a decent, dignified, non-humiliating exit, so that its long-standing association of incestuous dependence with Hezbollah may be severed without convulsions or regrets
Dr. Joseph Hitti
Joseph Hitti, President of New England Americans for Lebanon
Political Commentator
Active Lebanese Lobbyist in the USA
E.mail joehittimass@yahoo.com
Last week, Prime Minister Siniora begged for a ceasefire, but while he blasted the Israeli assault on Lebanon for being out of proportion with the triggering event, namely Hezbollah’s attack on Israeli troops across the Blue Line and the kidnapping of two soldiers, and appeared to side with Hezbollah’s stance by advocating “steadfastness” and “resistance” to the “aggression”, he contended himself with saying that his government was not consulted a priori by Hezbollah about the kidnapping operation.
Yesterday, Siniora was more forthcoming in accusing Hezbollah of being “A State within a State”, and saying what was still an unthinkable taboo just a little more than a week ago, which is that “Hezbollah must be disarmed”. It must be recalled that the Siniora government, albeit aware of the requirements to disarm Hezbollah under UN Resolution 1559 and its corollaries, as well as under the infamous Taef Agreement of 1989, brought 3 pro-Hezbollah ministers into the Lebanese government for the first time and adopted a Ministerial Statement that unambiguously defined Hezbollah as a “Resistance” rather than a militia to circumvent UN resolution 1559 and the Taef Agreement. The Ministerial Statement of the Siniora government also proclaimed its support for Hezbollah’s “Resistance” against the Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms and ignored the UN resolution’s requirement to send the Lebanese Army to the border, notwithstanding the fact that it was Syria that occupied the Shebaa Farms from Lebanon in 1956 after killing two Lebanese gendarmes there, that Syria then lost Shebaa along with the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, that the UN had certified the “Blue Line” border between Lebanon and Israel after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and that therefore only an official acquiescence by Syria to cede sovereignty back to Lebanon under UN certification would then make Israel’s withdrawal from Shebaa a legitimate Lebanese demand.
As rumors surfaced yesterday about a fracture in the French-American unity that has characterized the handling of the Lebanese dossier since UN resolution 1559 was passed in September 2004, it may be that the visit by French Prime Minister De Villepin to Beirut two days ago inspired Siniora to execute this shift in position in order to make it more palatable for the Americans to agree to a ceasefire, since the basic American demand is that any ceasefire should include a mechanism to address the primary “root cause” of the problem, namely Hezbollah’s armed presence – instead of the legitimate Lebanese Army – along the international border with Israel. In other words, the French may have encouraged Siniora to take Hezbollah on – but without a military confrontation with the Lebanese Army – in exchange for the international community’s stepping in with an offer for a ceasefire and the dispatch of a strong UN force alongside the Lebanese Army to the border. While Hezbollah would not be militarily defeated in the immediate term, its emasculated presence some 25 miles north of the border would make its “Resistance” platform moot, lead to its de facto dissolution as a military organization, and fulfill the remaining clauses of UN resolution 1559.
If this scenario unfolds as described, Lebanon would be finally on its way to a genuine pacification. However, as the organization which invented “suicide operations” as we know them, since its double bombing of the US Marines barracks and the French Paratroopers barracks in Beirut in 1983 was the first ever such operation – killing 241 US Marines and 58 French paratroopers, Hezbollah may be faced with the existential dilemma of reinventing itself or facing certain death. Gone will be the glory of “Resistance” against “Crusaders” and “Zionists”, gone will be the social services it provided the Shiite Lebanese (to replace the services the Lebanese government would have provided if it were not evicted from the south by Hezbollah), gone will be the millions of dollars from Iran, and gone will be the holding of Lebanon and the Lebanese hostage to the Iranian-imported fundamentalist Moslem ideology.
In 1983, the eviction of the PLO from Beirut by Israel under conditions not unlike today’s, led to an emasculated PLO-in-exile in Tunis. That gave Arafat ample time to ponder what he and the Palestinian people stood to loose if they did not recognize Israel as a valid interlocutor in the peace process. This led to the Oslo and Madrid agreements of the early 1990s which, despite their failures, have made Palestine a reality. Hezbollah is not the PLO. It is an Iranian-Syrian creation of 1982 destined originally to replace the evicted PLO in managing the war of attrition against Israel from Lebanese territory. It has no objective beyond the blindness of its radical Islamic ideology. It neither represents a people in exile, nor a nation in the making. Lebanon and the Lebanese people are more than ready and willing to spit the Hezbollah phlegm from their choking throats.
In an act of ultimate desperation at watching its own decomposition, Hezbollah may resort to going underground and re-connecting with its true origins of an Al-Qaeda-like terrorist organization that bombed, kidnapped, hijacked and killed ad libitum in the Lebanon of the 1980s. Both Lebanon and the international community should exercise extreme caution in giving the Shiite community in Lebanon a decent, dignified, non-humiliating exit, so that its long-standing association of incestuous dependence with Hezbollah may be severed without convulsions or regrets
Dr. Joseph Hitti
Joseph Hitti, President of New England Americans for Lebanon
Political Commentator
Active Lebanese Lobbyist in the USA
E.mail joehittimass@yahoo.com
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