IT is, to say the least, an interesting concept that the inclusion of Hezbollah in the new Lebanese government should be “confirming legitimacy” on the organization, as both Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert and now also his Environment Minister Gideon Ezra have maintained in recent days. If the Hezbollah is part of the national unity administration in Lebanon, it is only because they have won sufficient votes from the electorate to be part of the political process.
Olmert’s Kadima party is itself part of a coalition and in July 2006, four months after winning power, launched an attack on southern Lebanon, which was repulsed largely thanks to Hezbollah. How would the Israeli government react if its own legitimacy were questioned because of its aggression? This highly partial interpretation of the results of democratic elections, of course, goes further, since it was Israel’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the fairly elected Hamas government that plunged the occupied Palestinian territories into division and further bloodshed and misery.
Hard though it may be for the Israelis and their faithful allies in Washington to accept, the Hezbollah and Hamas have won their electoral mandates precisely because of Israel’s past refusal to deal with more moderate politicians, and its insistence on using force wherever it can to destabilize and weaken its Arab neighbors.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abdul Gheit was, therefore, absolutely right to demand yesterday, during a visit to Lebanon, that Israel stop threatening the country with further military action if Hezbollah continued to be part of the Lebanese political process.
There will be those who believe that Olmert’s hatred of Hezbollah arises from the humiliating defeat its fighters inflicted on invading Israeli forces just over two years ago. But can he not see that the antipathy of Lebanese voters who chose to be represented by Hezbollah MPs stems from Israel’s own bloody interventions in Lebanon? Extreme actions beget extreme reactions. No one did more to foster support for both Hezbollah and Hamas than the Israelis themselves. Therefore how dare they question the legitimacy of votes cast in support of people or movements that campaigned successfully on the perfectly legitimate platform of matching force with force?
More than 60 years of violence have brought nothing but instability and misery to Israel and its Arab neighbors alike. Now is the time to start talking — not just as a public relations exercise to gull the world into thinking Israel is bending over backward to be reasonable, when it patently is not — but as a real route to peace and a lasting settlement. The fact that in Lebanon and in Palestine, different shades of opinion and indeed of militancy are reflected in elected governments may make negotiation difficult, but this is effectively counterbalanced by the reality that all parties have indeed had legitimacy conferred on them by the political process. To try and deny this is nonsense. It is high time that the Israelis stopped the threats and started negotiating. Politicians do not have to like each other in order to make a successful deal.
