In the harshness of political realism, unexercised sovereignty deserves no respect.
The failure of the Lebanese state to exercise its sovereignty has been painful to this nation. For years, this was a country locked in bloody civil war and overrun by militias of every variety. In a cruel exchange, the period of civil war was ended at the cost of Lebanon becoming an unwilling appendage to neighboring Syria.
Only recently, the Lebanese people rose in peaceful rebellion and forced Syrian forces to withdraw. That paved the way for the establishment of a democratic regime.
A democratic government, however, did not ensure a strong state capable of exercising sovereignty.
The new Lebanese government had to endure coexistence with the Hezbollah. The Hezbollah has been a heavily armed militia, arrogating representation of the Shiite minority, controlling areas of Southern Lebanon and establishing itself as a state within a state. With generous funding from the radical Shiite government of Iran, the Hezbollah has operated a large organization that ran schools, public services and charities to cultivate support among the Shiite communities.
The Hezbollah is also fanatically committed to the destruction of the State of Israel. To that end, it has conducted terrorist operations against the Israelis and stockpiled a substantial armory of lethal weapons coming from Iran.
This direct and devastating threat sat just across the border from Israel. It was a weapons buildup Israel could not tolerate for very long.
Although Lebanon is a country with very deep historical roots in the crossroads of ancient civilizations, it is nevertheless divided into diverse cultural communities with animosities that are deeply rooted as well. There are Muslims and Christian Lebanese, Druze and Arabs. Among the Lebanese Muslims, there are Sunnis and Shiites.
The largely Christian northern part of Lebanon is highly Europeanized, sitting as this country has for centuries, on the vital Mediterranean trade routes. In the southern and eastern parts of the country, the virus of Islamic fundamentalism has taken hold.
It is hard to build a fully functioning state under these historical circumstances. The difficulty is magnified by the fact that in truly free elections, the Hezbollah won significant representation courtesy of the Shiite vote.
Not only was the Lebanese state unable to control the Hezbollah; the Hezbollah was threatening to control the Lebanese state.
There is a standing United Nations resolution commanding the Lebanese Army to disarm the Hezbollah and create a secure buffer zone on the border with Israel. That, obviously, has not been complied with.
The Hezbollah is not accountable to the Lebanese state. Its presence, however, compromises all of Lebanon.
As a weak Lebanese Army watched helplessly, the Hezbollah accumulated an estimated 30,000 rockets. It has located its heavy armaments in population centers – a practice that effectively uses civilians as human shields. It is that sort of deployment that has invited Israeli counterattack close to where the civilians are, resulting in ghastly collateral damage – the most horrendous being the incident at Qana last Sunday.
Beirut has been calling for an immediate ceasefire in order to stop the humanitarian catastrophe that the war between Israel and the Hezbollah has caused. But that call lacks credibility because Beirut has never shown either the will nor the capacity to hold the Hezbollah to any agreement.
Without any demonstrated capacity by Beirut to control the Hezbollah, Israel is understandably reluctant to agree to a ceasefire until it has satisfactorily degraded the terrorist group’s military capacity. Otherwise, all that has happened will be for naught. The Hezbollah will merely use the ceasefire to replenish itself and continue its fanatical terrorist campaign to destroy the state of Israel.
It is not enough for third-party governments to merely echo the call for an immediate ceasefire. The rest of the world should be able to offer support to ensure that the security of Israel will not be threatened by a terrorist force acting with impunity from within Lebanon. If that requires stationing a peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, the other nations should be willing to contribute the troops required for that.
Over two weeks since Hezbollah raided Israel and took two Israeli soldiers hostage, Tel Aviv’s response has reduced much of southern Lebanon to rubble. Despite heavy Israeli bombardment and tough ground incursions, the Hezbollah continues to fire thousands of rockets into Israel’s northern towns. A million and a half Israelis are hankered down in bomb shelters and definitely more than that number of Lebanese have become refugees.
Anxious as we all might be to end this brutal war, a ceasefire is something that will have to be worked out by creative diplomacy.
Hezbollah, which is Iran’s proxy fighting force in the region, has no place in any imaginable peace configuration. If this fanatical terrorist group is not thoroughly destroyed by the ongoing Israeli ground offensive, its remnants must be disarmed and its political organization disbanded.
If the Lebanese Army cannot do that, then a substantial international force will have to be sent into Lebanon to accomplish that. If Beirut is too timid or too intimidated by the Hezbollah to do what it must do, then an international assistance package should be put together to entice the Lebanese government to act more properly.
The bottom line is: there will be no peace in Lebanon for as long as the Hezbollah remains.
The lesson the Lebanese situation teaches all of us is this: if nations fail to exercise sovereignty, that will be an invitation for calamity.
This war should end in a few days – although not soon enough to avert the human disaster that has happened.