Some call Lebanon “Israel’s Vietnam.” And in several respects, the analogy is apt. A small, ideologically driven guerrilla army chased the Middle East’s preeminent military out of territory it had occupied for 22 years. In the end, the guerrillas were willing to die for their cause, and the Israelis were not. Israel took in many of its Lebanese allies and their families last week, but hundreds remained behind to face prison terms or worse for collaborating with the enemy (box). Ariel Sharon, leader of Israel’s opposition Likud bloc, who led the disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, called the chaotic pullback “a disgraceful retreat.” Hizbullah officials were giddy. “In village after village, we’d hear the Israelis had left,” gushed spokesman Hussein Naboulsi. “It was surprise after surprise. We didn’t know what to do.”
But the Vietnam analogy has limits. “The distance between Hanoi and Los Angeles is about 10,000 miles,” Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy Defense minister, points out. “The distance between the Lebanese village Adessa and Kibbutz Misgav Am is about a half mile.” The last Israeli soldier may be out of Lebanon, but Israel’s security is still inextricably linked to what happens across the border. In some eyes, Israel seems more vulnerable. Even one of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s top military advisers now calls southern Lebanon, regarded until last week as Israel’s security buffer, “Hizbullah Land.”
Will the Party of God be able to capitalize on last week’s events? It clearly aims to score politically. Banners fluttered across the streets of southern Lebanese villages last week proclaiming, in both Arabic and English, thanks to hizbullah. It may also keep up its attacks on Israeli positions, particularly in an area called the Shebaa farms that it claims is part of Lebanon, but which Israel regards as part of Syria (and thus subject to future negotiations). “Who’s to say the resistance is over?” says Hizbullah’s Naboulsi. “The Shebaa farms are still occupied. After they leave it, then we’ll talk.”
Israel, in this case, will rely on the United Nations to back up its position. “All the maps given by the Lebanese to the U.N., except for one which appears to be false, indicate that the Shebaa farm territory was originally a Syrian one,” says Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Yehuda Lancry. “This is a Lebanese-Syrian maneuver to leave to Hizbullah a role to play in the future against Israel.” Faced with Lebanese and Syrian insistence that the land, captured from Syria in 1967, actually belonged to Lebanon, the United Nations would only say that it lay outside the zone of its mandate for verifying Israel’s withdrawal. The organization last week sent cartographers, a military adviser and a legal adviser to confirm that the pullout was complete, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426 of 1978. It also plans to bolster UNIFIL, its peacekeeping force in the area, from 4,500 troops to roughly 8,000.
Even as it celebrates, Hizbullah has its own reasons to worry. In Lebanon’s grim recent history, military victories have often proved pyrrhic. (Just ask the Israelis.) Yes, Israel retreated under pressure. And yes, Hizbullah’s regional prestige got a boost. (Across the Middle East, fundamentalists were wagging their fingers and saying, in effect, “Negotiations never got you this.”) But in Lebanon, Hizbullah’s shared glory today is likely to provoke jealousy tomorrow. The rival Shiite political force Amal will try to assert its position, the Lebanese Army will assume local responsibilities and Syria will reimpose its authority behind the scenes. “The movement whose symbol is a Kalashnikov in a clenched fist will have less raison d’etre,” says Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish academic who has sometimes served as an informal go-between for Israel and the fundamentalist guerrillas.
Conversely, Prime Minister Barak could reasonably claim success in defeat. The Israeli retreat, originally planned for July 7, was messy and haphazard. In several cases, Israeli weapons (including some tanks) were abandoned in the rush to get out. But no Israeli soldiers were killed during the pull-back. More significantly, perhaps, they withdrew to a morally defensible position, from where they were better able to fight if the need arose.
The real battle in Lebanon, in any case, was never really with the Lebanese. It was primarily with the Palestinians, Syria and Iran. (Tellingly, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rushed to Lebanon last week to offer his congratulations.) Lebanon was just a convenient place to carry on a proxy war. Israel and Syria, in particular, have bled each other here, while keeping their home turf secure: no shot has been fired in anger across the Syrian-Israeli frontier since 1973.
For much of the last quarter century, the Lebanese all too willingly participated in their own ruin. One question now is whether, when the joy subsides, the Lebanese can live with each other. “The biggest challenge we are facing is how to deal with the younger generation,” says Hussein Darwish, a grey-bearded villager who was sitting under a cedar tree in south Lebanon one day last week. “We have to make them work together, and live together, without these religious parties trying to stir things up.”
Not far down the road, two guards from the Shiite Amal militia were guarding the already trashed home of Christian Lebanese Maj. Gen. Antoine Lahad, the commander of Israel’s proxy army who had fled to Paris, then Israel. “All of us, we are Lebanese,” said Ali Diab, a wiry fighter carrying a submachine gun. “This country is for all.” Lebanese politicians from various factions made similarly reassuring comments, but with so many weapons around and Syrian intentions unclear, wait and see was the order of the day. “We are now passing through a very critical situation,” said Jebran Tueni, publisher of El Nahar newspaper. “Anything can happen.”
Lebanon has long been a land crisscrossed with red lines that various sides would violate precisely when they wanted to create a provocation. Now the red lines are actual borders. There are no buffers, no real proxies. Barak has made it plain that an attack on Israeli territory would now be considered “an act of war.” It’s unlikely that Syria’s Hafez al-Assad, with 30,000 troops in Lebanon, will want to provoke a direct conflict with Israel. Assad might instead look for other proxies, including Palestinian Islamic groups anxious to mimic Hizbullah’s success in the occupied territories or within Israel proper. But then, other players will be happy to exploit Assad’s weaknesses. For starters, now that Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon, many Lebanese might be emboldened to ask: why don’t the Syrians leave, too?
