| | How the Second Lebanon War Came About:
Looking Back, Looking Forward
A Special Report on Israeli and Middle-Eastern Affairs
July 16, 2006 Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
The American Jewish Committee Two passages from Winston Churchill’s memoirs of World War II have been haunting me in recent days. The first, which easily comes to mind in the tragic circumstances of our life here (and which I may have quoted before), has to do with the days of the Blitz in London:
The bomb had fallen in Peckham. It was a very big one.... When my car was recognised the people came running from all quarters, and a crowd of more than a thousand was soon gathered. All these folk were in a high state of enthusiasm.... One would have thought that I had brought them some fine substantial benefit that would improve their lot in life. I was completely undermined, and wept. Ismay, who was with me, records that he heard an old woman say, “You see, he really cares. He’s crying.” They were tears not of sorrow but of wonder and admiration.... When we got back into the car a harsher mood swept over this haggard crowd. “Give it ‘em back,” they cried, and “Let them have it too.” I undertook forthwith to see that their wishes were carried out; and this promise was certainly kept…. Certainly the enemy got it all back in good measure, pressed down and running over. Alas for poor humanity! The second is more succinct, and comes to explain the aggressive language used by Allied leaders in some of their communications in 1944: When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.... [T]o soften all harsh expressions about the enemy nations of those days would prevent a true picture being presented. Time and Truth are healers. Indeed, we are going to give it back in good measure, as if to avenge the deaths of twelve civilians killed (in addition to the same numbers of soldiers and seamen who have died in battle) and the rain of ruin falling upon Haifa and the Galilee. Tonight, these attacks have been extended south to Afula and the Jezreel Valley. Then we hope that time will heal the wounds, and the Lebanese of the future, like the Germans of today, will become our friends—once they are free to choose their own way forward, rather than submit to the Syrian strategic game and the Iranian ideological imperative. Alas for our poor region! And yet we need to look back at how we landed in this morass, for the second time in a generation—if we are ever to find a workable outcome for this crisis. The larger cause for our present three-way conflict—with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s ambitions—lies beyond the reach of Israeli decisions: It has to do with the political and ideological void yawning in the minds of men (and women) across the region:
- Liberalism, once quite strong (in the first quarter of the twentieth century) sank under the combined blows of Western (British and French) weaknesses, the rise of the European totalitarian model, and the double bind of the Cold War years.
- Communism never really took hold. (Some of the most prominent Arab Communists were Jews.)
- Arab nationalism (some would say, National Socialism) stumbled with Gamal Abdel Nasser, failed with the FLN (Frontde Libération Nationale) in Algeria, and collapsed with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In Syria, Bashar Assad’s Ba’ath Party is a bizarre relic, and in effect, a transparent cover for Alawite minority rule.
- Into this empty space—made emptier by the utter failure of governance by Yasir Arafat and his likes, regionwide (the choice for Palestinians in 2006 was essentially between the Party of Thieves and the Party of Murderers)—stepped not “Islam” as a religion or a civilization, but a special breed: the Islamists, sophisticated modern revolutionaries who borrow heavily upon deadly twentieth-century European political ideas, but dress them up to look like a religious mission (“jihadism”).
And yet our own mistakes have added their share to the present problems, step by step: - In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon (in itself, a highly controversial decision; but it is often forgotten how dangerous was the Palestinian state-within-a-state, the so-called “Republic of Fakahni,” as a Soviet-sponsored terrorist haven), we failed to befriend the Shi’a, whose bitter years, oppressed, raped and pillaged by Arafat’s thugs in the south, made them enemies of the Palestinian nationalists. The Israeli leadership was committed to the Christians; it turned out to have been a very bad bet.
- In 1983 (from the Shouf Mountains) and finally in 2000, we left—for good reasons—but in a manner that lent itself to be interpreted as a victory for the Islamists, and specifically for Hassan Nasrallah and Iran. The same is true for Ronald Reagan’s retreat in 1984, after the 1983 Marine barracks bombing.
- On the dramatic night of October 9, 2000—then as now, fighting on two fronts, with Palestinian violence going into its second week—Ehud Barak was prevailed upon, by U.S. President Bill Clinton, by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and by elements within his cabinet, not to retaliate in force after the abduction of three Israeli soldiers (dead already, as we soon learned) by Hezbollah. This led to a tense stalemate and ultimately to a dangerous precedent of negotiations.
- Throughout these years of stalemate—interspersed by limited outbursts of violence, to which Israel chose to respond in a very limited way—Iran and Syria kept plying Nasrallah and his organization with huge, almost incomprehensible amounts of weapons: more than 12,000 rockets, in all. And, as the old saying goes about Chekhov’s plays, the gun that appears on the first scene was bound to fire in the third.
It now falls to the Israeli Air Force (and we might get to the stage of using some ground forces, but not the massive 1982-style onslaught that Nasrallah “eagerly awaits”), to Israeli policy, and ultimately to international diplomacy, to undo these mistakes one by one. We must first destroy the missile arsenal (and deny it to Iran as a future tool of policy); we need to restore Israel’s vital deterrent posture; break the myth of Nasrallah’s wisdom and invincibility—which he somewhat pitifully tried to revive yesterday in a taped appearance, while on the run—and then, with the help of sober voices in Lebanon and beyond it, we must also offer the Shi’a, who for too long have been the most poorly treated of all Lebanese communities, better avenues for participation in their country’s prosperity and political life. | |
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