Insults are not predictions: They’re not meant to come true. But the leading nations of Europe seem bent on proving that every word of abuse rained down on them from across the Atlantic over the past few years was justified. To call the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” once appeared no more than a neocon slander. The American insistence that Europe was a continent of limp-wristed wusses, who were fond of fancy oratory but ran from the first sign of trouble, could be written off as mere Texan bluster.
Not now. With France in the lead, the great powers of Europe are confirming the US right’s prejudices. During this summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, they certainly talked the talk — pressing for a cease-fire, demanding an international force be placed between the combatants. But now it’s time to walk the walk, and the Europeans are finding they’d rather stay on their chaise lounges. The French are the worst offenders. In a hurry to show the Americans how great powers ought to conduct themselves in the Middle East, France boasted of its status as the former colonial master in Lebanon and jointly proposed the UN resolution that would end hostilities. Central to that accord was the promise of a 15,000-strong force capable, alongside the Lebanese Army, of keeping Hezbollah behind the Litani River and Israel behind its own border. France would supply most of the troops and be in command.
But now it’s time to deploy and the French have dispatched precisely 200 troops — far short of the number the UN hoped they would send. They, and the Italians, whose planned 3,000-strong contingent now puts them in line to lead the UN force, are suffering from cold feet. They’re worried that their men will be vulnerable; that they may have to confront Hezbollah; and that, if they don’t, Israel will start do the job itself, leaving the blue helmets in the crossfire.
These are understandable worries, but they cannot have taken Paris or Rome by surprise. That this operation would entail risk was obvious the moment an international force was suggested. The clue was in the word “force.” If this was a walk in the park, the UN would have asked for a multinational platoon of boy scouts and girl guides to patrol southern Lebanon.
Of course this task is risky. It will take a robust force to prevent, for example, the reported attempts by Hezbollah to smuggle in fresh arms from Syria. If those weapons convoys are not blocked, Israel will attack them, so triggering more Hezbollah rocket attacks over the border. The cease-fire Europeans insisted so loudly they wanted will be over. If Europe does not want the war to begin again, with all the death and mayhem among Lebanon’s civilian population that that would bring, then it has to step up. But it is refusing to honor its promise.
And there is no one else who can do it. It can’t be the US: thanks to the lunatic folly of Iraq, the American military is overstretched and the US so hated in the Arab and Muslim world that the very idea is unimaginable. Sadly, the same is true of Britain, for the same reasons. Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh are keen to do their bit, but Jerusalem balks at that since none of those countries recognize Israel: It’s difficult to have an umpire who refuses to accept that one of the two teams on the pitch exists.
So this is Europe’s responsibility. Over the past five years, the continent’s politicians have made great capital lambasting the simple-minded crassness of the Bush approach, its doomed belief that the world could be reordered by force. Americans were from Mars, Europeans were from Venus — believers in the gentle suasions of “soft power.” Much of that made good sense. But these Venusian Europeans usually conceded that there were times when there was no alternative to military might, albeit deployed for pacific ends. Most European leaders guiltily concede that a properly mandated force could have stopped the massacre at Srebrenica and should have stopped the genocide in Rwanda. The lesson of both those calamities is that sometimes Europe has to use hard power. Now is just such a time, and Europe is dithering pathetically. The result is that a Washington Post commentator could yesterday declare with justification that “as we always learn, Europe without American leadership is a mere tourist destination.”
As for Israel itself, it is undergoing a remarkable shift. It began the summer conflict united to an extraordinary degree, convinced that no country in the world could sit back while the proxy army (Hezbollah) of a state committed to wipe it from the map (Iran) trained missiles on its civilians. That mood has evaporated in a few short weeks. Now Israelis are engaged in a round of numbed soul-searching, the nation’s leading commentators concluding that the war of 2006 was a military, political and strategic failure. Much of the criticism is currently directed at the operational errors: the lack of military preparedness, the indecision of commanders, the mistaken belief that a ground force like Hezbollah could be beaten from the air. Some are demanding a state commission of inquiry, like the ones that followed the debacles of the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and the Lebanon invasion of 1982. The fact that 2006 is bracketed in that company tells you all you need to know.
The immediate consequence is already clear: the suspension of the planned unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank that was the centerpiece of Ehud Olmert’s program. As some of us feared, the Lebanon conflict was always a battle for the legitimacy of unilateralism: if Hezbollah could not be quieted, Israelis would conclude that pulling out of occupied territory — as Israel did from Lebanon in 2000 — only leaves them more vulnerable. So now Jewish settlements on the West Bank that would have been dismantled will remain; checkpoints that would have come down will stay up. The settlers should cheer the name of Hassan Nasrallah: hhe has saved them. And Palestinians should curse the Hezbollah leader: thanks to him and his rockets, the occupation of their lands that would have been shrunk, perhaps by as much as 90 percent, will now remain intact. (Those who declared “we are all Hezbollah now” at demonstrations in London this month might reflect on that.)
After that, what? Olmert’s government will not be able to last. His reputation has surely been destroyed, along with that of the Labor leader Amir Peretz, who arrived amid such great hopes nearly a year ago. Voters will look for new leadership, untainted by the Lebanon disaster: perhaps the former intelligence chiefs Avi Dichter for the Kadima party and Ami Ayalon for Labor.
There might be moves toward a new unilateralism-minus: allowing settlements to wither in parts of the West Bank, but retaining a military presence, to prevent the Palestinians building up a hostile Hezbollah-style force there. Occupation without colonization, if you like.
Optimists will hope that just as the scare of 1973 eventually led to the Camp David accord of 1978, so this near-defeat will trigger a new move toward peace. The obvious destination for that journey is Damascus, with Israel seeking to peel Syria away from Iran, in return for the Golan Heights and whatever other inducements the US might offer.
For now, though, Israel contemplates a landscape in which it is no longer feared as much as it was before. In 2006, it fought in such a way that it could not win — and it now wonders when, and how fiercely, it will have to fight again.
