IT IS LEBANON, NOT ISRAEL, THAT FACES A THREAT TO ITS EXISTENCE IN THIS WAR
Ahmad Samih Khalidi

The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
Thursday August 10, 2006

The Franco-US resolution is an absurdity: it would give Israel immunity
while denying Lebanon the right to defend itself

As Lebanon is brought to its knees, and Israeli leaders promise yet
more of the same, there is something truly extraordinary about the
manner in which the war on Lebanon is being portrayed as a war for
Israel's survival, as if it were the existence of the Jewish state
that were at risk.

Whatever else it may be, this is a war between palpable unequals:
a giant nuclear-armed power with the most advanced western military
hardware and a potential ground force of up to 650,000 trained men,
against a tiny third-world guerrilla force of around 5,000 fighters,
armed largely with second-hand former eastern bloc hardware (the first
Katyusha rockets were developed in the early 1940s) and castoffs from
Iran and Syria.

The idea that the latter can pose an existential threat to the
former, under any foreseeable circumstances, is risible at best and
disingenuous at worst.

While it can hardly be comfortable for northern Israel's civilian
population to be forced into shelters for four weeks, the physical
safety of the overwhelming majority - unlike that of their counterparts
in much of Lebanon - has never been seriously at stake. And while
Hizbullah's supposed targeting of Israeli civilians has yielded
relatively few victims, Israel's repeated "mistakes" in Lebanon
have maintained a civilian death rate of about 100 Lebanese to every
three Israelis. The opposite side of this coin is that while Israel's
hi-tech "surgical strikes" have killed hundreds more civilians than
Hizbullah fighters, the Lebanese resistance's low-tech weapons have
killed about three times as many Israeli soldiers as civilians.

After yesterday's decision to expand the ground war all the way
up to the Litani river and beyond, Israel's constantly shifting
war plan is now moving away from its initial relatively cautious
phase and has plunged headlong into grand-scale politico-strategic
engineering. What Israel now seeks is less of a secure border, and more
of a major rearrangement of the Lebanese domestic scene that will crush
resistance not only in Lebanon, but by extension in Palestine as well,
and wherever else it may exist across the seething Arab Muslim world.

If Hizbullah, as many have argued, is indeed the people of south
Lebanon and the voice of Shia Lebanese empowerment, then the Israelis
seem to believe that the best means of defeating them is to disperse
them, uproot the communities in which they thrive, and destroy the
infrastructure that sustains them and provides them with their means
of livelihood.

That is why Israel has been pounding away at the Shia areas of south
Beirut that Hizbullah evacuated even before the bombing began. That is
why it is attacking Shia population centres in the Beka'a valley in the
east of the country. And that is why it is deliberately depopulating
south Lebanon, driving almost a million civilians northwards in the
hope of destroying what remains of the area's infrastructure, so as
to make it impossible for its residents to return home any time in
the near future. As in Gaza - which has been hit by 12,000 artillery
shells over the past six weeks - Israel is creating a system of free
fire and buffer zones, where it will be free to act in response to any
"provocation".

Sadly, there is really not much new here. Depopulation is a
longstanding Israeli expedient, used sometimes for grand strategic
purposes, as in the 1948 war in Palestine, and at other times for
less grandiose aims, but no less painfully, as in Lebanon in the 1978,
1982 and 1996 invasions.

The difference this time is in the purposeful destruction of the social
and economic structure of the south, and the rest of the country. With
no popular sea to swim in, Hizbullah's fighters will have been denied
a secure social base for a long time to come. And now there seems to
be the additional goal of creating a new socio-demographic reality in
Lebanon, one that will make an impact on the already fragile domestic
confessional and sectarian balance.

After "cleansing" the south, Israel expects the rest of Lebanon,
with support from the international community, to continue the
elimination of Hizbullah - politically if possible, but by force of
arms if necessary.

The fact is that it is now Lebanon that faces an existential
threat. And with that comes the threat of a serious meltdown in the
Levant that will have inevitable repercussions, from Syria to Iraq
with its disaffected Shia masses.

And it is precisely because of these grave dangers that the initial
Franco-US draft security council resolution is so outrageous.

The draft effectively gives immunity to Israel's occupying forces,
denies Hizbullah, or any other Lebanese party, the right to resist
the continued violation of Lebanese sovereignty and soil, says not
a word about an Israeli withdrawal, and does nothing to bring the
population back to their homes and thus safeguard Lebanon's domestic
balance and political future.

How any of this could be expected to appeal to the Lebanese, how an
undefeated Hizbullah is meant to concur, and how this could have been
seen as "a step in the right direction" as suggested by prime minister
Blair, beggars belief. And why the strongest military power in the
region needs another layer of defence via an international force,
to secure it from the weakest and least powerful party in the area,
is simply beyond argument or reason.

The only conclusion must be that the real purpose of the British-backed
Franco-US manoeuvre is a deliberate and calculated western attempt
to rescue Israel's ill-conceived war from the jaws of political
and moral defeat. It is also meant to threaten the Lebanese with
dire consequences for refusing to rise up against the party that is
defending their very soil and homes. And it is further intended to
send a message to Tehran and Damascus that those who act with such
violence in Lebanon, as well as Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,
are ready to do the same in Iran and Syria as well.

The UN may yet come to its senses, and stitch together a resolution
that has a minimum chance of success. Its initial, absurd draft may
have been intended to produce a second modified draft that the Arabs,
Lebanese and Hizbullah would find very hard to refuse.

But even if Lebanon survives intact, the hatred of its battered and
bloodied population for those on the other side of the border will have
intensified, and a whole new generation of Lebanese will have grown
up knowing nothing of Israel but its pitiless aerial bombardment and
indiscriminate destruction. Far from being a war for its survival,
Israel has by its actions over the past month only increased the
long-term threat to its own security.

· Ahmad Samih Khalidi is a senior associate member of St Antony's
College, Oxford, a former Palestinian negotiator and the co-author,
with Hussein Agha, of A Framework for a Palestinian National Security
Doctrine (Chatham House, 2006) aswk@yahoo.com (mailto:aswk@yahoo.com).