Pounding the fault lines

News analysis
Pounding the fault lines
David Hirst, in Beirut, examines the fault lines that run through the last militarily active frontier between the Arabs and Israel
It has long been feared that the Palestinian Intifada would widen into a regional confrontation, and that south Lebanon, the last militarily active frontier of the Arab-Israeli struggle, would be the flashpoint from which it does so. Now, with Israel's first deliberate attack on a Syrian military target in Lebanon since its 1982 invasion of the country, that confrontation could be getting seriously underway. And Lebanon itself, resuming its former role as an arena for other people's conflict, is now trapped -- in the words of its most sharp-tongued politician, Druze chieftain Walid Junblatt -- "between Hanoi and Hong Kong."
Hizbullah embodies Hanoi. It was Hizbullah's killing of an Israeli soldier on Saturday which prompted the air raid against a Syrian radar station on Monday morning. He was the third to die in such cross-frontier raids -- three more have been kidnapped -- since Israel withdrew, last May, from its south Lebanese "security zone."
The withdrawal had been a signal triumph for Hizbullah and, as a result, there had been high hopes, among many Lebanese, that it would henceforward exploit the prestige it had garnered in a strictly domestic, political role.
But that was not to be.
Hizbullah cites three motives for keeping up its "resistance" -- national, Islamic, and regional. Nationally, the liberation of South Lebanon is incomplete. There still remain the so-called Shebaa farms. These were under Syrian control when Israel captured them in the 1967 war. Suddenly, in the last months of the Israeli occupation, the Lebanese government staked a claim to sovereignty over them. The claim furnishes Hizbullah with the justification for its continued operations. These are all strictly confined to the Shebaa area. But, essentially, Hizbullah retains its writ along the whole length of the frontier, for, with the dispute over Shebaa farms as its justification, the Lebanese government has declined to deploy its army in the south, despite the repeated calls on it to do so from the UN and Western governments.
Islamically, with the 'liberation' of Jerusalem as a basic ideological tenet, Hizbullah sees itself as a model for the Palestinian Intifada. It takes pride in the great prestige which, through its South Lebanese triumph, it has won in Palestine and the Arab world. Its Al-Manar satellite television station is avidly watched through the region. Its leaders have repeatedly, if circumspectly, indicated that, with raids like Saturday's, its role of model will from time to time shade into that of active accomplice.
Regionally, Hizbullah serves the purposes of its Iranian and Syrian sponsors. South Lebanon, and the pain which, via Hizbullah, Syria could inflict on Israel there, had long been a vital asset in its negotiations for a peace settlement. With Israel's withdrawal, it seemed to be losing that asset; and that is why, most Lebanese believe, it promoted the Lebanese claim to the Shebaa Farms.
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is the personification of Lebanon-as-Hong-Kong. The billionaire tycoon came to power with an overwhelming popular mandate to master-mind Lebanon's post-war "reconstruction" -- though what he really faces is a relentless economic decline that threatens to turn into outright financial collapse. At $24 billion, the country's national debt is perhaps the world's highest in relation to Gross Domestic Product. He desperately seeks foreign confidence and investment.
Nothing will scare them off like renewed hostilities in the south. Though, in principle, he has acquiesced in the 'legitimacy' of continued "resistance," he is in practice deeply at odds with Hizbullah -- and by extension with Syria -- over the need for these trans-frontier operations. On Sunday Al-Mustakbal newspaper, a mouthpiece of his, declared that "no group has the right to decide on Lebanese actions that risk damaging the national consensus," and demanded "a clear and urgent explanation" from Hizbullah as to why it had struck now.
It is hard to separate the economic crisis from another, political one -- centred on Syria's controversial hegemony over the country -- which has lately become so serious as to remind the more despondent local commentators of the atmosphere that preceded the outbreak of civil war in 1975. Under the 1989 Taif Agreement, foundation of the post-war order, Syrian troops should have withdrawn from the rest of Lebanon to the Beka'a Valley in 1992. In effect, the continued Israeli occupation of South Lebanon became their main pretext for staying.
But since Israel withdrew, agitation for Syria to do likewise has steadily intensified. Like most non-sectarian conflicts in this multi-confessional country this one has ended up by taking a grave sectarian turn. Though everything suggests that a reduction in the Syrian presence -- political and economic at least as much as military -- would clearly be welcomed by all the country's religious communities, or at least large swathes of them, the agitation is strongest among the Christians. Whatever they really think in private, most Muslim leaders (and pro-Syrian Christian ers such as President Lahoud himself) insist, in the stock phrase, that the Syrian presence, albeit "temporary," is for the foreseeable future "legitimate and necessary."
Hostilities with Israel, and their impact on political and economic life, can only deepen this crisis. Referring to what most Lebanese believe to be the main pretext for Syria's continued presence in the country, its utility as a bargaining counter in peace negotiations, Jibran Tweini, editor of Beirut's leading newspaper An-Nahar, recently asked: "Why should Lebanon be more royalist than the king; why does not Syria itself open up the Golan for military operations aimed at its liberation?" Syria has not responded in kind to the Israel attack. "It simply doesn't have the means," said veteran Lebanese commentator Tawfiq Mishlawi, "and the question is whether it will ask Hizbullah to do so." It appears likely that, this time, Hizbullah will keep quiet, because it has no civilian Lebanese fatalities to avenge, and it realises how unpopular it could make itself with Hariri and substantial sectors of the Lebanese public. But if it is faithful to its rhetoric -- and it always has been in the past -- the raids and reprisals will go on. Ever since the Israel withdrawal, it has been pointing out that its men have direct access to the Israeli frontier; and -- according to a recent statement of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah -- it now boasts such an arsenal that "one million Israeli settlers will have to flee the area if the orders go out to our fighters to open fire."
Recommend this page
Related stories:
Sharon ups the ante
One crisis dwarfs another
Losing is losing is losing
This is the deal
These are the realities
There will be no knock-out
Beyond the red line 12 - 18 April 2001
Cease-fire or surrender? 12 - 18 April 2001
'Missiles, and more missiles' 12 - 18 April 2001
In the face of recklessness 12 - 18 April 2001
Everyday acts of resistance 29 March - 4 April 2001
Relaxation, Sharon style 22 - 28 March 2001
Intifada in focus
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor