Tucked away at the bottom of a news item in Haaretz on Monday, there’s a quote from a “senior official in Jerusalem” who predicts that the plans to send an international force to Lebanon will never materialize.
“There won’t be an international force,” the official says, “because there will never be an agreement on it.” In the light of the current muddle over the wording of a UN Security Council about “cessation of hostilities”, his prediction may well be correct.
In any case, I’m not sure that sending an international force was ever a very smart idea — though offering to lead it has given the French some useful leverage in Washington. The main effect, as far as I can see, would be to provide Israel with a dignified way of extricating its ground forces from Lebanon by handing over the problem to someone else.
In that sense it’s not very different from Afghanistan, where other countries’ forces are now trying, with little success, to clear up the mess left by the Americans.
One idea behind an international force is that it could serve as a buffer along the border, between Hezbollah’s militia and Israeli forces. This might prevent further incidents like the capture of Israeli soldiers that triggered the present conflict but it would be powerless in maintaining a cease-fire. It could simply end up sandwiched in the middle as Hezbollah’s rockets and Israel’s F-16s whizzed overhead.
The other idea is that international troops would take on the task of disarming Hezbollah but this, too, is unrealistic. The events of the last three weeks have shown that Hezbollah cannot be disarmed by force alone; it’s a matter of creating the right political conditions for disarmament to happen.
Ultimately, this can only be done by the Lebanese themselves, with international help if necessary.
In an interview published in the Washington Post, the Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora puts forward an alternative plan under which 15,000 Lebanese troops would be deployed in the south as Israeli troops leave.
They would be supplemented by an extra 2,000 international troops to beef up the UN’s existing UNIFIL force.
The plan would enable Lebanese government forces to be in charge of the border zone south of the Litani River for the first time since 1978, Siniora added. “This is a Lebanese objective and it suits the Israelis’ objectives as well,” he said.
One advantage of this plan is that it could be implemented quickly, without having to wait for large numbers of troops to arrive from abroad. It would also increase the prospects of a cease-fire taking hold, by allowing Israeli forces to withdraw from Lebanon straight away.
Looking further ahead, it could pave the way for a Lebanese-supervised disarming of Hezbollah that would have a better chance of success than any foreign efforts.
