Thanks to Tree Hugger for the first ever comment on this blog - I did only turn comments on last week - and Eastcost for the email. I was away for the weekend and things have just been getting worse - at least one of the things I was talking about last week is simply no longer true. The rockets being used by Hizbollah now are not the katyushas they were using in 1995 - firstly, katyusha is somewhat of a generic term used to mean rockets of that class, rather than any particular munition, and secondly, they have newer rockets with significantly longer range and significantly higher destructive power. They have, of course, come from Iran through Syria, as most of Hizbollah's weapons do.
As I mentioned last week, in 2000 Israel pulled out from their occupation of southern Lebanon, unilaterally. It was the action of a new government, which had promised such a withdrawal as part of their campaign platform, and oddly they followed through on their promise, unlike almost all campaign promises from almost all political parties in almost all the world. Lebanon had become Israel's Vietnam - or in more modern terms Iraq - the place where you sent young soldiers, who would often come back injured or not at all - the place parents were scared for their sons (usually) to be, but where it didn't seem like they were actually achieving anything or doing anything which had a visible end. Things had been relatively quiet along the border, and as relations with Jordan and Egypt were stable, and things were progressing with the Palestinians, it seemed that it might be safe to pull back to the border and, while still maintaining it as an actively defended area, end the occupation. The Israelis went ahead and did this - again, as I said yesterday, to the satisfaction of the UN, but not Syria and Lebanon - and there are plenty of symbolic photographs online of Israeli soldiers locking the border gate behind them, their Lebanese allies fleeing, and Hizbollah terrorists - not Lebanese police or soldiers - waving flags at the retreating Israelis. It seemed, at the time, despite the fighting which preceded the pull-out, and the symbolic value of what seemed to be a retreat under fire, that it had been a success - cross-border attacks didn't significantly increase in either number or strength, and Israeli casualties in the area were significantly reduced.
In March of last year, I went to Israel for the first time in years. I was going to see if I wanted to move there, and I decided that I did, notwithstanding the fact that the plan was delayed - not derailed - by my moving to Hong Kong for a while first. While I was there, I, of course, drove up to Netuah, to see my old haunts, to surprise and confuse my adopted family (who hadn't seen me in 9 years), and generally to reconnect. It never once crossed my mind that I was a mile or two from the nearest Hizbollah post, that I was back in katyusha range for the first time in years, that I was quite possibly invalidating my travel insurance - I was going back to an old home, as everyone like to do every now and again. Honestly, when I move to Israel, I will probably end up living in the centre of the country - in the areas defined by the cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem - but I expect I will visit Netuah, Nahariya and Ma'alot regularly, since they were places where I had good times, where I was comfortable and at home. That area is now right in the middle of the current problems. Actually, that's not quite true. Over the weekend, as Hizbollah has rolled out the longer-range missiles, they've been going a bit further, but they've still been dropping shorter-range katyushas over the border. I have been keeping an eye out, but while I've seen plenty of familiar names in the Israeli press this week, I haven't seen Netuah mentioned.
According to the BBC archives online, the last Israeli soldier left Lebanon at about 3:45 in the morning on 24th May 2000. I would be shocked to learn that at that moment, there weren't detailed plans filed away in the Israeli Ministry of Defense regarding re-occupation, destroying Hizbollah, or taking Lebanon apart piece by piece. The withdrawal was largely a political move, not a military one, but the Israel Defence Forces are, understandably, a large and powerful body, and while there may not have been orders anything like those plans - or even orders to make the plans - I have no doubt that the military planners will have done their job and laid down the plans. Last week, it seems those plans were put into action.
I cannot say exactly what Israel's aims are. It's pretty clear that they are not just trying to get back their hostages - in fact, to be blunt, I would have to say that the only honest thing to do right now is to consider those two man as casualties - if they are rescued, it would be a great thing, but other soldiers have been lost in Lebanon, and it feels like more will be in the future. Ron Arad is an Israeli air force officer who was captured in 1986 in Lebanon, with clear proof that he was taken alive. There have been a couple of other snippets of information since then, but it seems that he is probably dead. He has a 20-year old daughter who has never known her father other than as a hostage - in this case, a true prisoner of war. Israel has engaged in prisoner swaps with Hizbollah before, but for one reason or another the decision was taken this time that things have gone too far - it's past time for negotiations, particularly when the catalyst is a terrorist attack with the explicit aim of taking hostages.
As a moral issue, there is a terrible problem here. The actions of Hizbollah are absolutely not the actions of the sovereign government of Lebanon, yet Hizbollah are an active member of that government. Israel has no interest in going to war with Lebanon at this point - if nothing else, they've got enough to deal with in Gaza - but acts of war are being committed from Lebanese territory. People are calling on the Lebanese government to restrain or even disarm Hizbollah, which, it's true, is their responsibility under international law - but completely and utterly misses the point. Lebanon, until last week, has been going through a period of relative stability and prosperity, after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 followed by the Syrian withdrawal last year, but everybody in the country older than their late 20s will remember the civil war(s). For quite a long time, Lebanon was torn to pieces by fighting between different Muslim and Christian groups, which took it from being one of the most stable and successful Middle Eastern states until the early/mid 1970s to being a wreck, on the verge of a 'failed state', with Israel and Syria no doubt making things worse. The Lebanese government may have the physical strength to restrain or disarm Hizbollah - and even that is questionable - but there's no way they have the will. It would mean consciously and voluntarily restarting the civil war, and there's simply no way that's going to happen.
Unfortunately, I also don't think Israel is going to be able to 'defeat' Hizbollah. They are a terrorist army, with a religious/ethnic background with powerful and rich foreign backers, and I can only think of 2 ways of defeating an army like that - removing their reason for existence (i.e. replacing at least Israel and Lebanon with Islamic states), or wiping out a significant proportion of their membership and resources, while at the same time removing their backers. Neither of those things are going to happen. There are three possible positive outcomes I can see - positive for Israel, but also, in an optimistic light, positive for Lebanon:
- Hizbollah's capabilities are severely weakened. From reading analyses online, and from what I know, they don't have a huge stockpile of weapons - particularly not the more advanced ones being used for things like shots at Haifa and ships. Hopefully, by the time things are over, they will need some time to re-arm, so things will go into a de facto calm due to lack of ammunition. Of course, this assumes they can't get supplies from Syria and Iran in a hurry, and that's one of the main reasons Israel has been attacking roads and bridges from Syria into Lebanon.
- The 'international community' sees Hizbollah as they are - a radical Islamic organisation, which carries out significant terrorist activities - to be fair, along with non-terrorist activities - and which is funded, supplied and largely controlled by Syria and Iran, not the most stable or peaceful regimes themselves. There does appear to be a reasonably wide consensus at the moment that Israel is striking against people who are attacking civilians, and that their actions are therefore just - but that sort of consensus is pretty fragile and could tip over at any time, most likely due to a tragedy like a misplaced bomb hitting a sensitive civilian target.
- Between pressure from Israel, pressure from the 'international community', and pressure from their own people, combined with the weakened state of Hizbollah, the Lebanese government manages to fulfill their responsibilities and take back their sovereign land from Hizbollah. Israel and Lebanon are not friends, and will not be for quite a while - hopefully, not as long as you might think - it only took 6 years from Israel and Egypt to go from a state of war to a state of stable, if cold, peace - but I for one would far far prefer to see Lebanese soldiers on the border than Islamic terrorists.
There are more thoughts to come. Given my speed of writing, I hope that by then I'll be writing a retrospective - that things will have calmed down - but I doubt it. I think the immediate conflict will continue for at least another week, leading to significant casualties on both sides. I can only hope that, as I suggested above happened with Egypt, this will be the conflict which, in the future, will be looked back on as the one which cleared enough stuff up to allow a stable peace in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. I fear for my friends in Israel and, as I've said, I bear no malice towards the Lebanese - I would very much like to see a stable and successful Lebanon, and I don't see any reason why - with Syria largely gone, and their proxies hopefully on the way out - that shouldn't happen.