Up in Flames
With Hezbollah's rockets still falling, Israel is not nearly finished with its efforts to remove the threat
Normally at this time of year, tourists would be swarming Lebanon's famously well-preserved Temple of Bacchus. But last week, the god of fertility and good cheer was nowhere to be found in Lebanon. Instead, the area around Roman ruins at Baalbek is eerily empty, patrolled only by a detachment of tired and jittery Hezbollah fighters. Everything is closed, except for a food stand selling shawarma and hamburgers to the fighters. The ruins remain intact, but a number of buildings in the town have been reduced to rubble by Israeli missiles. The gunmen grudgingly admit that Israel has been precise; only five civilians were killed in the first week here. But they aren't taking any chances. At night, they retreat to a series of caves carved out of the surrounding ridge. At night, Israel tries to bomb those, too.
The scene in Baalbek is deceptively placid compared with the worst-hit sections of Beirut and the bulk of southern Lebanon, which have been hit by a withering Israeli air assault. These are Lebanon's new ruins--entire city blocks, reduced to skeletons of buildings, and whole villages in the south, a Hezbollah stronghold, flattened. Huge swaths of Lebanon's modern infrastructure--bridges, highways, even a big power plant--are gone. At the same time, many of Beirut's tonier areas, including its famous luxury shops, remain largely unscathed. Most shops and restaurants are closed, but the few bars that remain open are packed.
It is, after all, not quite an all-out war. For the first week of the conflict, most of the fighting was conducted at a distance--Israeli airstrikes were answered by salvos of Hezbollah rockets. But the battle--sparked by a Hezbollah raid into Israel that killed eight soldiers and resulted in the capture of two more--is poised to escalate at any moment. Israel is pursuing slightly conflicting objectives--crippling the Hezbollah militia without taking down Lebanon's government as collateral damage. "We didn't remove the gloves completely," says a top Israeli military official.
Civilian toll. Still, in the first week, Israel's Air Force bombed over 1,000 targets; more than 300 people were killed in Lebanon, many of them civilians. The ferocity of Israel's assault, at least in the short term, deflected some of the blame from Hezbollah for provoking the crisis. The militants, with the apparent support of Iran and Syria, want to rally the Muslim world by surviving the onslaught and making it as costly as possible for Israel. Hezbollah has kept up its barrage of Israel, flinging more than 700 rockets indiscriminately toward Israeli towns, killing more than 30 Israelis.
Lebanon's government was merely a bit player, caught between two juggernauts. But for a country that had clawed its way out of a lengthy sectarian bloodletting back into the modern world, the siege was particularly demoralizing. "Not only has its economy been shattered, but Lebanon is a disaster area," says Robert Rabil, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, who was in Beirut with his wife and 13-month-old child when the fighting broke out.
The human cost is high on both sides. More than 500,000 Lebanese have been forced from their homes. Many are taking shelter in schools, where Hezbollah is delivering food. There is growing concern about water and food shortages, as supplies are scarce with so many bridges destroyed and ports blocked by the Israeli Navy. Still, many are putting on a brave face. "This is Lebanon--we'll find a way to get what we need into the country," says Hassan, a young Lebanese Sunni in Beirut. "but we'll charge tons of money for it."
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.
Hezbollah leaders remain confident in public, but many Lebanese are blaming them for the crisis. "They declared war without notifying the Lebanese people, without our permission," says Elie Khoury, a Lebanese Christian in Beirut. "Today we see the result--[Israel wants] to destroy Lebanon unless we disarm Hezbollah. So we must disarm Hezbollah." Still, even though there is a U.N. resolution calling for the group's disarmament, the topic is very sensitive in Lebanese political circles. After an Italian newspaper quoted Lebanon's prime minister, Fuad Saniora, as saying, "The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah," his office promptly insisted that he was misquoted.
A drawn-out crisis could recast the entire Lebanese political scene. The powerful Israeli assault could prompt many to rally around the only force willing to take on the Israelis, but growing numbers of Lebanese could also decide that Hezbollah is acting in Iran's, not Lebanon's, interests. "When there's no water, no food, no power, the Sunnis and Christians will turn on Hezbollah, which they don't even like anyway," says Hassan, the young Lebanese Sunni. Still, all it might take to reverse that is one or two particularly deadly Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians--intentional or not.
Syria. Even before this latest outbreak, Syria was under a cloud of suspicion in Lebanon for its suspected involvement in the assassination of Lebanon's previous prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in February 2005. President Bush has blamed Syria for its support of Hezbollah. "Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me," he said last week.
Damascus denies Bush's charge and says it wields no control over Hezbollah. "Whether they like or not, Hezbollah is an independent, autonomous organization," says Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador in Washington. There is some truth to this. While Damascus was a key Hezbollah patron when Syria had troops in Lebanon, it is now more of a patron and facilitator. Syria still has some sway over the group, however, and could influence Hezbollah and its chief backer, Iran.
Already, Syria appears to be trying to set itself up as a peacemaker, calling for a cease-fire. Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to such a move without pressure from its sponsors. But some experts warn against enlisting Syria's help because it could reverse the gains Lebanon made after Syria removed its troops from the country last year, after nearly three decades. "To go to Damascus now would be to betray the Lebanese people," says Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who is now at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "They would in effect have our invitation to meddle in Lebanese politics, with the rationale that they are doing our bidding in dealing with Hezbollah."
Arab Gulf states. Perhaps the most surprising reaction to the fighting has been from several key Sunni Arab regimes. In a remarkable first in Arab politics, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan have been openly critical of other Arabs engaged in active conflict with Israel. "We see what happened in Lebanon as an adventure, and we're afraid that everybody is going to pay the price," says a senior Egyptian diplomat. These Arab regimes are still blasting Israel, but their tough words for Hezbollah suggest a new level of concern about its motives, and particularly its backers in Tehran (story, Page 34). Still, it's not clear how long these governments can maintain their criticism of Hezbollah. The group remains popular on the Arab street and might only gain deeper support if the conflict drags on.
Israel. The kidnapping of its soldiers was a useful pretext for launching an operation that military leaders had been eager to pursue for several years. Not only was Hezbollah building up its stocks of rockets, but Israelis are also worried by a growing perception in the Arab world that its withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip was a sign of weakness.
Israeli military brass admit privately that they cannot hope to completely destroy Hezbollah, a goal they were unable to achieve during an 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Instead, the Army is working fast to try to eliminate as many rocket launchers as it can before a potential cease-fire. Before it's over, Israel aims to weaken the militant group by imposing a no man's land half a mile deep into Lebanon. Instead of occupying the land, Israel will send in bulldozers to "flatten the area and remove any sign of a Hezbollah outpost and even trees so that Hezbollah can't enter again," says an Israeli military official. One other option: carve out a deeper buffer zone with a ground invasion.
Palestinians. Even after Israel opened up a second front against Hezbollah, it continued its three-week-old assault on the Palestinian militant group Hamas. This also began with a kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, but it has become very much the forgotten front of this war. In fact, Israel's Army has been moving in and out of the Gaza Strip and even opened up another front on the West Bank last week. Israeli soldiers raided a Gaza refugee camp for two straight days last week, while besieging a Palestinian security post in the West Bank suspected of being used by Hamas militants.
Ironically, Hezbollah, which claims to have acted in sympathy with the Palestinians, has succeeded mostly in overshadowing them completely, leaving Israel with a relatively free hand to move against Hamas. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed so far. "No one is noticing what is happening to us," complains a Palestinian legislator. "Everyone has forgotten about us."
THE REGIONAL POWERS
How the key Mideast nations in the conflict shape up
| IRAN | SYRIA | ISRAEL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL POPULATION | 69 mil. | 18.9 mil. | 6.2 mil. |
| MILITARY EXPENDITURES | $4.3 bil.(2003 est.) | $858 mil.* | 9.45 bil. (2005 est.) |
| AS PERCENT OF GDP | 3.3% | 5.9% | 7.7% |
| MILITARY MANPOWER TOTAL ACTIVE | 540,000 | 296,000 | 168,000 |
| TOTAL RESERVE | 350,000 | 354,000 | 408,000 |
| MAIN BATTLE TANKS | 1,613 | 1,613 | 3,090 |
| ATTACK AIRCRAFT | 163+ | 520 | 399 |
| NUCLEAR WEAPONS | Not yet | No | Yes |
*Based on official budget data (fiscal year 2000) that may understate spending.
Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CIA's World Factbook
With Mitchell Prothero in Beirut, Orly Halpern in Haifa, Israel and Thomas Omestad in Washington
This story appears in the July 31, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.