A Matter of Timing
The American public understands what the war between Israel and Hezbollah is about and what it is not about. It is not about territories; it is not about occupation; it is not about an effort by poor, oppressed Palestinians to get Israel out of their land; it is not about a two-state solution. What it is about is the fate of the democratic State of Israel, which was attacked, once again, by enemies dedicated to its destruction. That Americans see the reality clearly is manifest in a pair of polls: No fewer than 83 percent say Israel is justified in its military action, while fully 76 percent disapprove of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, according to Gallup. A CNN poll found some 57 percent are sympathetic to Israel, while only 4 percent are sympathetic to Hezbollah.
Actually, any other perception would be astonishing. Israel is not an occupying power. It pulled out of Lebanon six years ago (after battling repeated terrorist attacks by Palestinian extremists there). The Israeli withdrawal behind an internationally recognized border back in 2000 was supposed to be followed by the disarming of Hezbollah, as called for by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. That didn't happen. On the contrary, Hezbollah, supplied and financed by Iran and Syria, created a network of rockets and weapons bunkers in southern Lebanon. Last month's kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers not engaged in hostilities, accompanied by the wave of rockets into Israeli cities and towns, was a gross act of warfare and a crime against humanity. The airborne weapons were packed with ball bearings--not to destroy military assets but to maximize suffering by shredding human flesh. This is the barbarous nature of the radical Islamic jihad led by Iran against the free world. Hezbollah, Iran's puppet, has unmasked Iran's intentions of regional dominance and the Iranian threat to the United States and to our friends in the Middle East.
Carnage. For two decades, Hezbollah's Islamic fanatics have been a foreign legion for Iran in Lebanon, dedicated to hate and violence. When thousands of them cried, "Death to America! Death to America!" in response to a speech last year by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, they meant it. Before 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for more American casualties than any other terrorist organization. The tally:
- Two hundred and forty-one U.S. servicemen murdered in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.
- The CIA station chief in Beirut, William F. Buckley, tortured to death after being captured in 1984.
- The young Navy diver Robert Stethem shot to death during the 1985 Hezbollah hijacking of TWA 847.
- Col. William Higgins of the Marine Corps, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, seized by Hezbollah in 1988, tortured, and eventually hanged.
- Nineteen U.S. servicemen murdered in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
Some accuse Israel of a "disproportionate" response. But what exactly is a "proportionate" response when a whole people and their society are threatened with extinction, when hostilities are initiated without provocation, when every act of restraint invites a vicious contempt? Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is one of the most pacific since the state was created. It is without a single general in the cabinet. It has made a commitment to withdraw from approximately 90 percent of the West Bank. How should it defend its citizens?
Hezbollah is not an organization that can be managed by appeasement. Nasrallah showed his true colors when he said Olmert was "small fry," without the capacity to retaliate. For six years, Israel has suffered under sporadic attacks from Hezbollah while the legitimate government of Lebanon (undermined by Syria) and the international community did nothing. Nothing. Israel would have been justified long ago in forcing the issue, and now it is forced to insist that Hezbollah can no longer be allowed to act as a state within a state. It's terrible to think what things might have been like in five years if Israel had not taken action, with Hezbollah in possession of even longer-range, more-lethal, and more-accurate rockets.
But what of the civilian deaths, exemplified by the tragedy of Qana? A truer picture is summarized by a cartoon showing an Israeli soldier standing defensively in front of a baby carriage, while a soldier of Hezbollah fires at Israel from the other side of the baby carriage. To kill Israelis, Hezbollah cynically hides behind women and children, just as it deliberately dug bunkers in the crowded suburbs of Beirut. Yet these abuses don't attract much international condemnation, especially from the anti-Israel United Nations. It is only luck and tough security measures that have prevented large-scale Israeli tragedies. By contrast, Israel warns the Lebanese population in advance of attacks and urges people to leave the area. Warnings preceded the bombing of the Hezbollah rocket site in Qana--which is still a mystery. The building collapse came seven hours after the bomb fell on or near it. If the blast was perceived as a danger, why didn't Hezbollah or the Lebanese get the civilians out? Hezbollah has clearly violated the most basic laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, which require parties to a conflict to "avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" and state that "the presence of a protected person [i.e., a civilian] may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations."
The Geneva Conventions also forbid exactly what Hezbollah was doing at Qana, that is, concealing weaponry among civilians, as revealed in video footage from an Israeli drone showing a Hezbollah rocket launcher firing from a spot directly adjacent to the building struck in Qana. Israeli forces didn't know that dozens of civilians had found refuge there. Hezbollah did when it set up its rocket launcher there. International law is not a suicide pact. A double standard is in operation. The cry against an Israel acting in its self-defense is nowhere replicated when Hezbollah uses UNIFIL peacekeeper bases as a shield against Israeli fire. Where were the calls for Hezbollah to halt when one of its rockets killed eight railroad workers in Haifa? And that is just one of thousands of rockets that have been raining on Israel, where a million and a half people are still living in shelters. Where is the expression of disgust as Hezbollah's friends rejoice at the murder of Israelis? The Israelis don't dance on the rooftops at the sight of the bodies of their enemy's children. They feel deep sorrow and regret and have voiced it over and over.
Words on paper. The images of suffering innocent civilians are moving, but they should not cause the world to forget what Nasrallah would like the world to forget--that he started this war. Israel's bombings are no more or less justified than ours in Kosovo, Belgrade, Afghanistan, and "shock and awe" in Iraq. Israel cannot yield to the naive clamor for an immediate cease-fire. If Israel falters, the iron wall of military power that has enabled it to earn modest acceptance in the Middle East will have been seriously breached. As a matter of self-preservation, Israel cannot stop until it is assured that Hezbollah is disarmed, and only when effective western and Lebanese military forces are deployed in southern Lebanon. The only cease-fire worth having is one that will provide substantial, long-lasting change on the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Lebanese-Syrian border. That is why Israel is seeking control of a swath of land in southern Lebanon to turn over to U.N. forces. If an unconditional cease-fire is declared before a multinational force is deployed, Hezbollah will simply come back, resupply with Iranian rockets through Syria, and resume its war. And you can be sure that as soon as there's a cease-fire, the world will lose interest in other parts of the agreement. That's precisely what happened after 2000.
The Bush administration, supported by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is to be applauded for not joining the grandstanding for an unconditional cease-fire. It has been realistic in demanding a cease-fire that will last, as part of a package that includes control by the Lebanese Army, in conjunction with a multinational force, substantial in terms of size and enforcement powers.
An immediate cease-fire would be no more than a sham, a breathing space allowing Iran to equip Hezbollah with bigger and better missiles that would wreak havoc in a few years' time on Tel Aviv and cause even greater civilian casualties. After all, when Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon six years ago, handing back what had been a buffer zone, the land was immediately seized by Hezbollah as a launching pad for attacks and renewed hostilities, despite Resolution 1559, which had no enforcement mechanism and turned out to be just words on a piece of paper. This must not be repeated. And there must be a recognition that if these international mechanisms fail, Israel has the right to enforce them unilaterally--including the right to destroy weapons shipments to Hezbollah, prevent the return of terrorists to the border area, and halt the construction by Hezbollah of military fortifications.
Another false peace, like the 1993 and 1996 cease-fire agreements with Hezbollah, would be a betrayal of those who have died--and all those who will die in the future if Hezbollah's threat is not eliminated. It must lose its capacity to take over Lebanon, given its genocidal ambitions as expressed by Nasrallah in 2002 when he said, "If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." There is, too, an important issue of perception. Hezbollah must not come out of this with even a perceived victory. Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt and Jordan, as well as other jihadists, will look to Iran for leadership and to Hezbollah for operational assistance. Over time this will pose an existential question for Israel and create still more havoc for the Middle East. If Israel is seen as victorious, Palestinian extremists will be weakened and Syria, and possibly Iran, might be forced to reappraise their approach. Rarely have the stakes been higher.
This story appears in the August 14, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.