Up in Flames
With Hezbollah's rockets still falling, Israel is not nearly finished with its efforts to remove the threat
Israel also experienced a new level of vulnerability, as Hezbollah rockets reached the city of Haifa, Israel's third largest, for the first time. Even though most of Hezbollah's rockets landed harmlessly, the threat shut down a large swath of northern Israel. "I leave my house only to get cigarettes for me and chocolate for my brother," says Limor Ginsberg, 36, a Haifa resident who works in advertising at a local weekly paper.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an immediate cease-fire, but Washington's reaction was restrained. The conflict returned U.S. marines to Beirut for the first time in 22 years, but only to help organize an evacuation of Americans from the besieged city. The Bush administration is privately content to allow Israel to smash Hezbollah a while longer before pushing for a settlement. U.S. News has learned that Israeli officials showed their U.S. counterparts a "long" target list in arguing for more time.
Still, there is an air of inevitability that the United States will have to wade into the diplomatic mess. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is planning to visit the region this week. The leading option appears to be a Hezbollah withdrawal from the south that would allow the Lebanese Army to move in and create a buffer zone. The idea is appealing to Israel, but Lebanon's army is very weak.
Some countries want to send international peacekeepers to southern Lebanon to supplement the Army, but Israel has rejected this in the past. The White House is becoming more receptive to the proposal but is leery of creating a permanent mission. "That's something we're looking at," a senior administration official tells U.S. News. "It's basically a transition to get to the point where you want to be, which is the Lebanese Army extending security throughout the country." The idea has support in Lebanon, as well. "I sense that many Lebanese--some Shia, many Sunnis, many Christians--think the Army should go to the border," says Rabil, an expert on the area who wrote Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East. "But how are you going to translate this feeling into a political dynamic?"
A look at the roles of the key actors:
Hezbollah. Standing in the way, of course, is the powerful group of Shiite radicals that has long led a dual existence in Lebanon. Hezbollah is best known in the West as an effective and deadly terrorist group, backed and armed by Iran and Syria, that claims to be leading the resistance against Israel. But in Lebanon, it is also a legitimate and thriving political party that funds many schools, clinics, and charities. Even after Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, the military wing of Hezbollah kept up its fight, using the past six years to dramatically improve its arsenal (story, Page 32).
Some in Lebanon hoped that bringing Hezbollah into the government would help moderate the group, but its leaders seem intent on provoking Israel. "This crisis has exposed Hezbollah for what it is--a still-untamed rogue element operating in a rather frail and vulnerable political environment in the wake of all those years of civil war," says Wayne White, a former top Middle East intelligence analyst at the State Department.
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