33 Day War

Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences

Gilbert Achcar, Michel Warschawski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317264293
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

This book assesses the causes and consequences of the impact on the recent Middle East war. The authors describe the popular basis of Hezbollah in Lebanon among the Shiites, but also its relation to the country's other religious communities and political forces. They analyze the regional roles of Syria, Iran, and Hamas as well as the politics of the United States and Europe. The authors dissect the strategic and political background behind recent actions taken by Israel; the impact of Israel's incursion into Lebanon and effects on Lebanon's population -- and the consequences of the war on Israel polity and society.

1

Lebanon, from Its Origins to July 12, 2006

As an “independent” state,¹ Lebanon has always been a site of regional and international conficts extending far beyond the country itself. In particular, it was a theater of what Malcolm Kerr called “the Arab Cold War”² as well as of the global Cold War.

The Precariousness of the Lebanese State

Within its present borders, drawn by the authorities of the French colonial mandate over Syria and Lebanon in 1920, the Lebanese state was built on a precarious religious equilibrium: The enlargement of the borders of the original Lebanese entity created a country with a small Christian majority, mainly Maronite.³ France, which prides itself as being the flagship of secularism and republican integration, cut the whole of Greater Syria placed under its tutelage after World War I into denominational (Alawite, Druze) and provincial (Aleppo, Alexandretta, Damascus) states following the worst imperial tradition of “divide and rule.” In Lebanon, it set up a political formula based on a sectarian sharing out of powers that was going to last.

The “National Pact” on which independent Lebanon was founded—a 1943 agreement between representatives of the Lebanese dominant classes belonging to the major religious communities—sanctioned the sectarian distribution of positions and seats in the Lebanese state according to a rule that gave a 6–11 majority to Christians. It set up Lebanon on “two negations,” as Lebanese editorialist Georges Naccache aptly and famously put it⁴: The Christians renounced French protection, and the Muslims gave up the demand of Greater Syrian unity, for a sovereign Lebanon whose Arab character was vaguely recognized. Fifteen years later, this “pact” was put to a major test for the first time.

In 1958, the first civil conflict in the history of independent Lebanon resulted from the clash between two opposite pressures: on the one hand, the impact of “Nasserism”⁵ with its call for the unification of the Arab nation, inaugurated the same year by the union between Egypt and Syria; and, on the other hand, the vehement rejection of this perspective by a segment of the Lebanese population, largely consisting of Christians. Lebanese President Camille Chamoun supported the Eisenhower Doctrine and the Baghdad Pact, and sought to incorporate the country in the Anglo-American regional strategic system.

This first conflagration, which did not last long, led to the landing in Lebanon, in July 1958, of the Marines sent by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. It ended in a compromise that put in power General Fuad Chehab, who ruled the country in a “Bonapartist” fashion, combining authoritarian power based on the military apparatus, arbitration between the various communities, and administrative and social reformism. This compromise exploded under the shock of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war: Although Lebanon was not directly involved in that war, it suffered its consequences in full as it sheltered since 1948 the second-largest number of Palestinian refugees (after Jordan). Radicalization of Palestinians as an outcome of the war, amplified by that of a segment of the Lebanese population, mostly Muslims, disrupted the precarious equilibrium of “Chehabism,” prompting another segment, mostly Christians, to throw itself again into Washington’s arms.

Meanwhile, social tensions had considerably sharpened in Lebanon. The rapid economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s had disproportionately benefited various regions and communities. Whereas the capital and adjacent regions with a Maronite majority thrived—Beirut became an important transport, trade, and finance hub for the whole of the Arab Middle East—the outlying regions, with a Shiite majority, located all along Lebanon’s terrestrial borders, were left behind this dazzling growth.

The differentials among demographic growth rates in the various communities widened, with the poorest bearing the most children, following a well-known sociological trend. In the 1970s, the Shiites became the largest Lebanese community; at the same time, the overpopulation of rural areas triggered an important exodus, which in turn fed the expansion of plebeian periurban zones to the south and east of the capital—to the point that the “Greater Beirut” area alone ended up including one-half of the Lebanese population.

The Civil War, 1975–1990

The combined effect of these structural and political factors led in 1975 to the outbreak of a civil war that was also a regional and international war on Lebanese soil. A year later, after having initially backed the alliance encompassing some Lebanese Muslim groups, all of the Lebanese left-wing forces, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Syrian regime sent its army to rescue the Christian right-wing forces—with Washington’s blessing and a green light from the Israelis. Damascus expected to be rewarded by having its interests taken into account in the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This Syrian-American entente shattered after one year, however, with a new reversal in positions due to the coming to power of the right-wing Likud in Israel, followed by Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat’s “initiative” of breaking Arab ranks in order to negotiate separately a peace deal with the new Israeli government. Israel then allowed itself to invade part of southern Lebanon in 1978 (an action known as “Operation Litani,” named after the river in southern Lebanon beyond which Israel tried to force back the Palestinian armed presence), seeking to create for itself a “security zone” controlled by Lebanese auxiliaries. Having accomplished their mission, the Israeli forces withdrew after a few weeks, giving way to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), whose “interim” seems unlikely to end soon.

Following the completion in April 1982 of Israel’s withdrawal from 1967–occupied Egyptian Sinai, in conformity with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed in 1979, Menachem Begin’s government, with Ariel Sharon at the helm of the defense ministry, believed that the time had come to settle its account once and for all with the PLO. On June 6, 1982, Israel launched a massive military offensive by which the Israeli army invaded Lebanon up to Beirut under the pretext of protecting northern Israel from Palestinian rockets and incursions (the operation was thus named “Peace in Galilee”), even though these clashes had come to a halt several months beforehand. The siege of the Lebanese capital continued for several weeks and led to the evacuation—by sea—of PLO fighters, soon to be followed by the massacre of Palestinian civilians left without protection in the Sabra and Shatila camps under Israeli supervision. After completing its withdrawal from the rest of the country in 1985, Israel occupied southern Lebanon for eighteen years, until the year 2000—affecting more than one-tenth of the Lebanese territory. The fight against this occupation was the first motivation for the creation of Hezbollah and the main source of the considerable popular legitimacy that it managed to acquire.⁶

The Lebanese civil war, which was interrupted in the fall of 1976 under the aegis of the Syrian-American entente and Saudi sponsorship (Riyadh summit, October 1976), erupted again after this entente broke up. The restoration of the same entente brought the civil war to a conclusion in 1990 following several bloody episodes and a new Saudi mediation (Taif Agreement, October 1989). Indeed, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad joined the coalition led by Washington against Baghdad. This earned him a green light from the United States for an offensive in Lebanon aimed at suppressing the rebellion led by General Michel Aoun. The latter had proclaimed a quixotic “war of liberation” against Syrian troops in 1989, a few months after outgoing President Amine Gemayel handed the power over to him. Aoun found himself completely isolated and was obliged to go into exile in France, from which he returned only after the departure of Syrian troops in 2005.

The 1990 episode brought a lasting end to fifteen years of civil war and allowed the situation in Lebanon to stabilize anew on the basis of the Taif Agreement. The latter provided for a new sectarian distribution of power in favor of Muslims: From then on, parliamentary seats were equally split between Christians and Muslims instead of the 6–11 Christian majority decided in 1943. Moreover, the powers of the Sunni prime minister, henceforth elected by parliament, were considerably increased to the detriment of those of the Maronite president of the republic. This led to the establishment of Rafic Hariri at the center stage of Lebanese politics in the 1990s. A close collaborator of the Saudi ruling family, who allowed him to accumulate a huge personal wealth, Hariri ruled in agreement with the Syrians, as well as their army and mukhabarat,⁷ at a time when nobody was asking for their immediate departure since the Lebanese state required reconstruction and temporarily needed a “borrowed army.”

Washington and Paris Versus Tehran and Damascus

The setup that presided over the end of the Lebanese internecine war broke up again with the second Iraq war. In contrast to his father—but aligning himself, like the latter, behind the position taken by Moscow, the main partner of Baathist Syria outside the Middle East—Bashar al—Assad categorically opposed the U.S. invasion, while strengthening his alliance with Tehran. He thus precipitated a break with both the Americans and the Saudis. It was then that Rafic Hariri came into conflict with pro—Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, whose mandate Damascus had decided to prorogate in 2004.

The United States—after consolidating its occupation of Iraq following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Syrian regime’s rival from within the same Baathist tradition—now turned against Iran, the other state in the region that George W. Bush had designated as part of the “axis of evil” after U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in the wake of September 11, 2001. In Washington’s view, the Iranian regime was, from that point forward, first on the list of enemies to be brought down in order to consolidate U.S. control over Iraq itself as well as to complete the drive for U.S. hegemony over the whole Middle East.

Indeed, it has been Washington’s belief that the principal obstacle to its regional domination is a Tehran—led arc of forces that includes Iraqi Iran—allied Shiite forces, the Syrian regime, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Palestinian Hamas. It needed to act against this alliance whose weakest link was apparently Lebanon, where two prime targets could be hit at once: Syrian hegemony over the country and Hezbollah. With this goal in mind, Washington urged the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 1559 (September 2004), which demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non—Lebanese militias”—in other words, the disarmament of Hezbollah and of Palestinian refugee camps (where armed organizations allied with Damascus are located).

Resolution 1559 is both a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and a monument to hypocrisy. Adopted against the will of the Lebanese government, which was then pro—Syrian, it proclaims its attachment to the sovereignty of Lebanon while interfering in its internal affairs in violation of article 2, point 7, of the Charter, which prohibits any intervention “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” Moreover, one would have to be extraordinarily naive to believe for a single instant that the permanent members of the Security Council are attached to the sovereignty of any state other than their own. Resolution 1559—and the fact that it was adopted in 2004, not before, amply demonstrates this—was quite obviously consistent with U.S. action against Iran and its allies, when it became the highest priority, after Afghanistan and Iraq, as the third stage in the imperial offensive launched by the Bush administration in the “Greater Middle East.”

On this issue, France—contrary to its attitude on the issue of Iraq, but in conformity with the attitude that presided over its zealous participation in the Afghan expedition—collaborated fully and actively with the United States. In the Iraqi affair, contradictory interests with regard to each country’s oil designs motivated Paris and Washington. When Israel decided in the 1960s to replace France with the United States as its regular supplier of weapons, Paris changed its Middle East policy. Charles de Gaulle’s criticism of Israel after the June 1967 war signaled this change— a criticism made all the more dramatic by its anti—Semitic undertone. Since then, French policy in this part of the world—chiefy inspired by the interests of oil firms and arms makers, as well as of aeronautics and construction—sought above all to penetrate those areas from which U.S. interests were barred. Paris naturally became the privileged Western partner of Moscow’s allies.

This is how, in the 1970s, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq became France’s privileged commercial and political partner in the Middle East—to the point that Paris, during the following decade, took planes (from the “Super—Etendard” brand) out of the air feet of its own armed forces and “lent” them to Iraq in its war against Iran. This privileged collaboration continued in spite of Paris’s participation in the coalition led by Washington against Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War. For all that, Saddam Hussein did not cease granting market and oil concessions to French firms, as well as Russian firms. He thus strengthened these two states’ motivation to work for lifting the embargo imposed on Iraq, as the indispensable condition for implementing the concessions they were granted.

The same motivation accounts for why Paris and Moscow embraced a negative attitude toward the second war waged by Washington and London against Baghdad. When the Anglo—American coalition finally occupied Iraq from March 2003 on, an occupation that led to the cancellation of the concessions previously granted to French interests, France gave priority to its other major commercial partner in the region— namely, the Saudi kingdom.⁸ The latter, however, in contrast to Saddam Hussein’s regime, is the oldest and most important Arab ally of the United States. In Lebanon this resulted, in 2004, in a “competitive convergence” of interests between Paris and Washington, as the “great friendship” between Jacques Chirac and Rafic Hariri (whose relationship has always been highly “rewarding”) jibed quite naturally with Paris’s assiduous courting of the Saudis. UN Security Council Resolution 1559 was the frst fruit of this convergence.

Lebanon After the Departure of Syrian Troops

The withdrawal of Syrian troops occurred in 2005, but not thanks to Resolution 1559, which met with a fat refusal from both Syria and the then pro— Syrian government in Beirut. In actuality, the Syrian withdrawal was precipitated by the impressive mass mobilization that followed the assassination of Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2005, creating in Lebanon an untenable situation for Damascus.

At the same time, new political and sectarian tensions appeared in the country after years of lull, but in an unprecedented form. In particular, they manifested as two gigantic and opposite demonstrations in March 2005. On one side of the coin was the March 8 demonstration, which regrouped most of the Shiite forces (Hezbollah and Amal)⁹ as well as pro—Syrian minority forces belonging to the other communities. On the opposite side was the March 14 counterdemonstration called for by an alliance regrouping the majority forces within the Maronite, Sunni, and Druze communities, now led by Hariri Jr. The country was clearly divided into two roughly equal camps. The Saudi kingdom feared a test of strength that risked turning sour and aggravating a regional destabilization that could serve Iran. It advocated calming things down.

The tension diminished markedly with the May—June 2005 parliamentary elections, held after the departure of Syrian troops: A grand coalition brought together the anti—Syrian alliance (designated from then on by the date of its gigantic demonstration on March 14) and the bloc consisting of Shiite forces, Hezbollah, and Amal. The only forces excluded from this understanding were the non—Shiite pro—Syrian groups and General Aoun, despite the fact that his supporters had played a fundamental role in the anti—Syrian mobilization, the March 14 demonstration included. Aoun energetically protested against the decision to organize the elections according to the Syrian—inspired electoral law promulgated in 2000—a law that aimed notably at minimizing the representation of the “Aounist” movement then held to command a large majority among Maronites and considered by Damascus to be its most dangerous Lebanese enemy.

The March 14 alliance had chosen to favor the Maronite rivals of Michel Aoun, whose political ambitions and anticorruption crusade, coupled with his vehement denunciation of Rafic Hariri when the latter was in power in close collaboration with Damascus, worried both the Hariri group and its allies—the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in particular. In order to isolate Aoun, the M...