After succeeding - at least on the surface - in clinching a deal between Lebanon and Israel over their maritime borders, Amos Hochstein naively or treacherously believes he can do the same with the land borders between the two countries. The key thing for readers to understand is that when the US, the EU or the UN negotiate with Lebanese officials, they are in reality indirectly negotiating with the terror organization of Hezbollah that dominates Lebanon, and the Lebanese state officials who talk and meet with Western and UN envoys are hostages and servants of the Iranian Hezbollah.
The Maritime Agreement was possible only because both Israel and Hezbollah see the financial benefits of selling oil and gas, in complete disregard for the sovereignty of Lebanon, the pacification of south Lebanon and the security of its citizens. While acting as enemies on the surface, Israel and Iran (with Hezbollah representing Iran in Lebanon) are in fact complicit in maintaining Lebanon in a state of war and instability because this preserves their ability to intervene as they see fit.
In fact, in 2000 when the Israelis withdrew their forces from the southern strip along the border, they did not coordinate their withdrawal with the Lebanese Armed Forces, or the Lebanese Government, or even the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon) contingent in place since 1978. Israel withdrew and essentially handed over control of the south to its own enemy Hezbollah on a silver platter. Had the Israelis acted in good faith and arranged that the area be controlled by the Lebanese Armed Forces and the UN forces, Hezbollah would not have taken control and would not have perpetuated the instability and the state of war along the border. In this, the Israelis have done what they did in Gaza: Support Hamas in Gaza to weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and thus divide the Palestinian resistance.
What Amos Hochstein (US envoy) and Yves Le Drian (French envoy) do when they visit Lebanon to supposedly find a solution to the 6-decades old nightmare in south Lebanon and by extension in all of Lebanon, is fundamentally hypocritical. They choose to ignore the fact that the border between Lebanon and Israel, just like the border between Lebanon and Syria, has been a lawless border from which the Lebanese state and its legitimate armed forces have been expelled for the past 55 years. In 1969, tiny, weak and partly Christian Lebanon was cornered by the coward Muslim Arab states of the Arab League (who were losing every war with Israel) into becoming the only open war front with Israel: The Cairo Accords between Lebanon and Yasser Arafat's PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) granted the Palestinian terror militias freedom of action against Israel from Lebanese territory, and forced the Lebanese state to withdraw its army from the region.
The solution to the instability in Lebanon is to enable the Lebanese state to recover its sovereignty over every inch of its territory along its borders with both Syria and Israel. That should be the sole objective of the Americans, the French and the UN, and not some half-ass deal where the cirminal enterprises of Iran, Syria and Israel get to dictate their conditions, and in which the Lebanese state has no say other than being the object of, and not a player in, the negotiations.
Both Syria and Israel are Lebanon's enemies. Syria maintains a lawless border with Lebanon through which smuggled goods, mercenaries, terrorists, and Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah enter Lebanon. Nearly 2.5 million illegal Syrian migrants travel across the border pretending to be "refugees" and are responsible for all the criminality on Lebanese soil. Hezbollah, the only illegitimate terror militia that remained armed in contravention to the Taif Agreement of 1989, thrives in the chaos orchestrated by Syria. A stable Lebanon in which the Lebanese Armed Forces are in full control of the border and the country would essentially eliminate Hezbollah by depriving it of its lifeline. But that is not what the Americans, the French and the international community apparently want: They recognize and accept the Iranian occupation of Lebanon, and negotiate with the Lebanese state puppets of Iran for a deal with Iran, not with Lebanon itself.
The Americans keep pretending to help the Lebanese Army by dumping on it every piece of junk equipment they no longer need. All the US junkyard military hardware given to Lebanon, in grand media fanfare every time, is not useful and does not allow the army to overcome Hezbollah's might which is allowed to grow thanks to Iranian shipments directly to Beirut Airport or by land through the Syrian land border. The UNIFIL forces have been in place since 1978 and have not made a dent in the problem: UNIFIL soldiers from many countries continue to die in south Lebanon at the hands of Hezbollah and ISrael, as their mission consists in counting the missiles flying overhead and the dead Lebanese civilians. UNIFIL does not "keep the peace" as its name implies. It should first establish peace before saying it keeps it. Rather, it promotes instability and the state of war by creating a false sense of security, by preserving "stable war conditions".
The West and the international community are lying to the Lebanese people. They do not really want a definitive end to the state of war along the Israeli-Lebanese border, which they could easily do by seriously backing the Lebanese Army, and using the UN to enforce a return of the Lebanese Army to the border region as required by a dozen UN Security Council resolutions. All that Amos Hochstein does is to negotiate irrelevant and short-term details that perpetuate the problem rather than find a permanent solution. Is it really that critical a difference if Hezbollah withdraws 5 miles or 10 miles or 20 miles north of the border? It could still shell Israeli targets with its long range missiles from anywhere it is located in Lebanon. Is it really that critical if Israel withdraws from the half a dozen disputed points along the border, which are tiny spots of useless barren land?
Here is Hochstein explaining himself for the umpteenth time, as he inadvertently admits that 1- he is not negotiating with the Lebanese state but with the Iranian terror organization of Hezbollah, and 2- that his objective is not permanent peace:
"I'm not expecting peace, everlasting peace, between Hezbollah and Israel," Amos Hochstein said in an interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But if we can reach a set of understandings and ... take away some of the impetus for conflict and establish for the first time ever, a recognized border between the two, I think that will go a long way."
But, Mr. Hochstein, there is a recognized border since 1949. It just needs to be enforced. You should be negotiating to impose a full return of the Lebanese state's sovereignty and the Lebanese Armed Forces to the border, backed by an empowered United Nations Force that can use force to impose its mission.
Some of Hochstein's so-called proposals pay only lip service to the problem, as they would require a
strengthening of the Lebanese armed forces, including recruiting,
training and equipping forces. But he never elaborates on any detail as to how his proposal would be implemented. Amos Hochstein's job is a con job: he knows he is negotiating with the wrong people.
Then Mr. Hochstein does not address the bigger problem of Syria's overwhelming role in detabilizing Lebanon. It doesn't take much to give the Lebanese Army full control of the border with Syria. There is no official state of war there, as is the case with the Lebanese-Syrian border. There is only lawlessness nurtured by the Syrian bucther's regime in Damascus. Why doesn't the US, which supposedly hates Syria's Assad, help the Lebanese army take full control of the border with Syria? If it did, then smuggling of weapons from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah would cease, Hezbollah's ability to continue undermining the state and posing a threat to Israel would be instantaneously diminished, the level of tensions in the south would be significantly reduced, the Lebanese state would be able to begin fixing the collapsed economy, and the rule of law and constitutional life (including the election of a president that is obstructed by Hezbollah and Syria) would resume in the country.
Syria and the Assad regime are Hezbollah's lifeline and umbilical cord. Any action by the international community to sever that line would greatly tilt the balance in favor of a strong Lebanese state, a stabilized economy, the return of the Syrian illegals back to Syria and a reduction in tensions and violence. Why doesn't Amos Hochstein address Syria's 6-decades old cancerous and pernicious violations of Lebanese sovereignty? Why is he haggling like a bazaar merchant over the symptoms of the problem rather than addressing the problem itself?
Why has the West accepted that the fall of Lebanon some 55 years ago to the Syrian dictatorship's dominion is an inevitable and permanent condition? Is the West aiming, again, for a "civil" war between the Lebanese and the Syrians like it did in the 1970s and 1980s with the equally misnamed "civil" war between the Lebanese and the Palestinians?
The only explanation for this insidious Western foreign policy on Lebanon is the following, which every Lebanese citizen sees as the only explanation for the torment and fall of a once prosperous and democractic Lebanon: The West wants to terminate Lebanon as we know it:
1- As a model of coexistence and accommodation between two religious groups (Christian and Muslim), Lebanon stands like a thorn in the side of the Zionist supremacist model of constant warfare between Jews and Muslims in Palestine. You see, no one cites the Lebanese model as a prototype for one binational Palestine-Israel state, which is the one viable alternative to the ever vanishing two-state model, since the only other solution is what the Americans and the Zionists are actively pursuing: The expulsion, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the remaining Palestinians.
2- The ongoing destruction of Lebanon serves the interests of the two parties that stand to benefit the most from it: Syria and Israel. The elimination of Lebanon means the permanent settlement of the million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and the relief of Israel from its obligations to accept the return of those Palestinians to their homeland. With Lebanon ceasing to exist as a state, the Zionists would have the perfect alibi to annex the south including the ancient Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon and what they represent for the ethos of the country. Further, the elimination of Lebanon means the settlement of the 2.5 million illegal Syrians in the country, the transformation of Lebanon into a Muslim Syrian province as promoted by the Baathist ideology of the regime in Damascus, in exchange of which Syria would give up (it already has) the Golan Heights and accept the territory's annexation by Israel.
The disappearance of the small, weak and useless Lebanon - along with its Christian community, the last free Christian community to survive the annihilation of the Christians of Iraq, Syria, and Israel - would benefit both fanatic Islamic and Jewish terror regimes in the region. Peace in the Middle East, according to Western policies and practices since the 1970s, is achievable at the cost of the elimination of Lebanon.
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