The unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1701 will at best reduce the fighting in Lebanon. In the immediate context it will wind down the Israeli aggression and the retaliatory Hezbollah attacks. Some fighting will continue since the text of the resolution virtually concedes Israel the right to remain in south Lebanon until the arrival of UNIFIL and Lebanese forces. That could take at least two weeks. Israel has also declared that it will not lift the sea, air and road blockade on Lebanon until an international force is in place.
Hezbollah, while agreeing to abide by the resolution, has reserved the right to self-defense in case it is attacked. There has been minimal change in the context that prompted Hezbollah’s antagonism toward Israel that facilitated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
Significantly Israel has failed to achieve its objectives of enhancing its security by defeating and destroying Hezbollah, expanding its zone of political and military influence into Lebanon and breaking the Lebanese spirit. In fact its problems have multiplied. Hezbollah enjoys greater support within Lebanon and in the entire Arab world. Those Arab states who were openly critical of Hezbollah in the beginning of the Israeli attack are now silent. The Palestinians next door bearing the brunt of the Israeli assault have been emboldened. All around those suffering at the hands of Israel and damaged materially, ideologically and sociologically by Washington’s blundering policies in the Middle East, feel emboldened by Hezbollah’s capacity to fight back Israel.
Washington’s Middle East policy which supposedly seeks to promote democracy and reform is in tatters. US policies plus mistakes of its friends combine to politically weaken its allies and friends in the region. Some are even retracing their steps on issues they believed they could comfortably support the US and Israel. For example, on the need to disarm and destroy Hezbollah. Similarly even tacit support from some Arab states for Washington’s diplomatic war backed by the threat of military force, against Iran and Syria will slip in direct proportion to Israel’s aggression.
The Bush administration’s Orwellian talk of promoting democracy and freedom in the Middle East cannot fly. Iraq and Lebanon are powerful reminders of the actual reality.
Despite the political and diplomatic support extended to Israel through Resolution 1701, the Jewish state has suffered a major military and psychological setback after a month-long encounter with the world’s most effective guerrilla force. Correspondingly, the Lebanese, Palestinian and broadly Arab spirit has acquired a new robustness.
Meanwhile for the second time Washington’s policy has failed in the Middle East. In Lebanon even though the United States was not directly engaged in causing death and destruction, it must share the responsibility for the Israel’s aggression and its fall-out by virtue of its complete support for Israel. The US failure in Lebanon is more ominous.
A more formidable force has emerged to challenge Washington’s dangerously naive plans of constructing a ‘new’ Middle East, of completely supporting state aggression, of labeling struggle against occupation as terrorism, of seeking to banish states like Syria and Iran from any dialogue process by branding them terrorists or supporters of terrorists. Its ways of tackling terrorism are augmenting the forces of political extremism and swelling the ranks of those resorting to terrorism.
But even failures so stark are unlikely to move Washington into a wiser direction. For now the Bush administration has its eyes on the November congressional polls. Already having lost sizable support because of the Iraq fiasco, the administration will go into overdrive on its support of Israel.
Meanwhile, the US president has been propagating Israeli innocence and Hezbollah’s defeat! Helping to reinforce the Israeli narrative of the war, Bush’s own fantastic narration was: “Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis.”
Desperate to counter the reality of Hezbollah’s military achievements, Bush argues that “Hezbollah, of course, has got a fantastic propaganda machine, and they’re claiming victories.”
Similarly Bush portrayed the Israeli war on Lebanon as part of a broader struggle between freedom and terrorism, with Israel on the side of freedom and Hezbollah promoting terrorism.
Against this backdrop, there is little or no likelihood of an immediate end to Israeli aggression, not to say anything of a “sustainable peace” in the Middle East. And indeed of global peace.
This resolution will be another addition to the plethora of unimplemented UN resolutions on the Middle East.
