Only the hypocritical, double-speaking and indecisive Muslim Lebanese officials are to blame for the ongoing war and the nefarious consequences of the draft ceasefire agreement being fashioned by everyone except the Lebanese.
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer was in Russia last week discussing a ceasefire in Lebanon. The visit likely aims to secure Russia’s cooperation through its client, Syria’s Assad regime, in restricting the flow of arms from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Whether the Syrians would be pressured enough by the Russians to deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah’s arsenal supplies remains doubtful, as Hezbollah is Syria’s last instrument of its chronic destabilization efforts of Lebanon and continues to fight in defense of the Assad regime in the war inside Syria. Dermer is slated to go to the US as well, while Israeli president Herzog will also be visiting Washington this week.
But Bashar Assad, the Damascus butcher, was welcomed in Riyadh yesterday at the Arab-Muslim conference, having been re-admitted into the incompetent club of Islamic radicalism and economic decadence, even though what he did in Syria by far suprasses Israel's barbarity unfolding in Palestine and Lebanon. I often wonder how can a Stalinist terrorist regime like the Assads' survive this long (since 1969) with all the enemies it has created, all the prisoners and victims it has tortured, all the people it has assassinated, all the wars and occupations of other countries.... The answer is that Zionist Israel loves him: He surrendered the occupied and annexed Golan Heights and never waged any resistance against Israel while promoting it in neighboring Lebanon. And now the Arabs too love him. Everyone is wondering if he will turn against Iran and Hezbollah. He's done these about-faces many times before.
Meanwhile, the semblance of a state and government in Lebanon is, as usual, waiting for others to make decisions on its behalf. Caretaker Prime Minister Mikati is a Hezbollah man and his government is beholden to the Iranian terrorist organization. Yet, he goes around the world mendicating help from Hezbollah's enemies. With Hezbollah decapitated, the Shiite Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, has been granted the authority to negotiate on behalf of Hezbollah and the Shiites of Lebanon. Therefore, there is neither will nor capability by Lebanese state officials to negotiate terms that would inevitably be unacceptable to Hezbollah. You see, the likes of Hezbollah think with their gonads, not their brains. They want to throw the colonial Jews into the sea and they think that only violence can achieve this goal. Which is why there has been no ceasefire so far, as Iran dictates policy to Hezbollah.
Sudden outbursts and attempts by billionnaire PM Mikati and senile corrupt Speaker Berri, seconded by the Druze chameleon Walid Jumblatt, to placate the international community by declaring their intention to fully implement UN resolution 1701 were quickly trashed when visiting Iranian officials (Foreign Minister and Speaker) visited Beirut and scolded the Muslim trio for its dissidence.
The outline of a draft ceasefire in Lebanon seems to favor Israel as it provides guarantees for Israel that Hezbollah will no longer be a threat to its northern border, but the agreement leaves intact the domestic problem of the Iranian occupation of Lebanon via Hezbollah. The latter will still be powerful enough on the Lebanese domestic scene to maintain Lebanon in the orbit of Tehran. This would be a major concession by Israel to Iran.
The international community has apparently tired of the doublespeak and hypocrisy of Lebanese officials who say one thing and do another. The agreement, as far as its early provisions are known, seems to ignore the repercussions of a still viable, albeit weakened, Hezbollah on the domestic political scene inside Lebanon. If Hezbollah is not utterly defeated, at least militarily, it will survive and transfer its “resistance” away from the Israeli border and into the Lebanese interior, which is exactly what the PLO did in the 1970s when Israel waged invasion after invasion to dislodge it from the south and send it to the north where it waged war (1975-1990) against the Lebanese state, army and people.
In the ceasefire agreement under discussion, Israel is demanding guarantees that Hezbollah will not be present in areas south of the Litani River and that it will not launch attacks against it. Furthermore, Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) will be dispatched to those areas along the border with a yet to be defined mission:
- Is it to secure the return of the displaced to their villages, many of whom are Hezbollah operatives?
- Is it to prevent Hezbollah from launching rockets into Israel, thus reducing the LAF to a border guard police force for Israel?
- Will the presence of the LAF in Hezbollah territory be a trigger for a military confrontation between the two?
- The international community has slated some $300 million to the LAF in preparation for its assuming its duties south of the Litani. How can anyone guarantee that Hezbollah operatives will not still be present south of the Litani?
- Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles will not be deterred by a 10 Km separation distance from the border, so what if Hezbollah fires them from farther north than the Litani at a time when Israel is bound by the presumptive agreement not to violate Lebanon's sovereignty?
- Will the LAF be granted sufficient authority to control both the Israeli border AND MORE IMPORTANTLY the Syrian border from which Hezbollah’s Iranian weapons supplies and mercenaries arrive?
In the agreement, Lebanon is demanding guarantees that Israel will no longer violate Lebanon’s sovereignty in the air, land or sea, and that UN resolution 1701 is fully implemented which, for the Lebanese, means primarily that Israel withdraws from the disputed areas along the Blue Line (which is the border that resulted from Israel's withdrawal in 2000, and which differs in a few meters here and a few meters there from the official border set in the 1949 armistice agreement). Hezbollah’s continued “resistance” hoax has been premised on the continued occupation by Israel of these areas. But Israel continues to argue that it seized those areas from Syria during the 1967 and 1973 wars, and can only relinquish them legally to Syria, even if they might be Lebanese territories.
Israel’s demand to keep some troops in south Lebanon to monitor implementation seems to have been dropped, as no one will countenance another occupation and another pretext for resistance.
Assuming that the above provisions become part of an agreement that does not impose the complete disarming of Hezbollah, and with the army supposedly in charge of the border area, to what use will Hezbollah put its weapons? Even decapitated and weakened, and with Israel no longer able to pound Hezbollah sites inside Lebanon, what will Hezbollah do with its surplus of power? Will it turn it internally? Against the LAF? Against its Lebanese opponents? If not addressed by the Lebanese themselves, short of an enforceable international mechanism or an agreement with Tehran, Hezbollah’s continued holding of a powerful arsenal carries the potential for clashes between LAF and Hezbollah, and for civil war between Shiites and other communities. Iran might compensate its loss of a direct front against Israel by completing its political seizure of Lebanon through Hezbollah's military control. That was the exact same deal that the international community imposed on Lebanon in the 1989 Taef Agreement: Cessation of Syrian shelling and barbarity in exchange for a lovely Stalinist Syrian occupation of Lebanon for the next 30 years.
In other words, just as was done in 1989 with the Taef Agreement, then again in 2006 with UN resolution 1701, then again in 2008 with the Doha Agreement, Hezbollah will, again, survive and claim to have scored a “divine victory” against Israel by simply not completely losing. This would give Iran a face-saving exit. If the ceasefire does not include enforceable mechanisms to disarm Hezbollah, then Israel would have secured its interests, while Lebanon would, again, be abandoned to Syria and Iran.
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