BEIRUT — I visited the southern suburbs of Beirut yesterday for the first time since Israel had bombed its core to smithereens. It was impressive to watch the clean-up and reconstruction work underway by Hizbullah, the government and scores of local and international non-governmental organizations. Tens of thousands of people walking through the rubble exhibited pride and achievement of having withstood the attacks and seeing Hizbullah fight Israel to a draw.
But I also had mixed feelings as I watched Hizbullah give cash payments of $10,000 and more for families to get through the next year, whose homes were destroyed. I wondered: What if the war had not happened and Hizbullah had given $10,000 to each of the estimated 15,000 eligible families for some other use — to buy computer systems, encyclopedias, and poetry books, and to send thousands of deserving students to university?
But the world does not work like that. Israel’s massive attack against civilian and Hizbullah military targets throughout Lebanon is one sign of irrationality — laced with barbarism — that often defines political decisions in this part of the world. Hizbullah’s response had been honed by a quarter of a century of fighting off Israeli attacks, occupations and threats. Its three thousand missiles and rockets fired into northern Israel caused some material and human damage, but sent a powerful political message that resonates throughout the region: Israel’s military is not invincible, and can be stymied with determined planning and courageous resistance.
That’s correct, but then what? Another war? Better bomb shelters? More accurate missiles? Another 25,000 homes destroyed in Lebanon and Israel? As long as the battle is waged in Lebanon, public opinion in the Arab world, and among governments in Syria, Iran and a few other places, is prepared to fight Israel to the death. Israel, with explicit American diplomatic support and military re-supply lines, is prepared to destroy Lebanon. Period. These are uninviting prospects. We deserve better options.
This was a war that Hizbullah could wage only one time, to prove its capabilities and political will, which it did rather emphatically. If it happens again, though, Lebanon will be destroyed, literally burned by Israeli fire. Hizbullah would not be destroyed, and it will regroup and fight again, perhaps with more destructive power that penetrates deeper into Israel. But Lebanon would become a wasteland, a biblical desolation. Like Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, Lebanon would be burned and left to smolder as an eternal reminder to all generations to come of the utter devastation that people or states can expect if they challenge the divine wrath by threatening Israel’s security or defying Washington too often.
Israel believes it can live with such a scenario as the price of its own security and survival. It would willingly wage such war over and over again, against Syria and perhaps Iran, possibly in collusion with the United States. Some in Washington relish such destruction and chaos in Arab and Islamic lands, feeling that only a sustained frontal assault on the prevailing Arab political culture can break the mould that has defined many of our violent lands in modern times.
Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of this approach. Palestine is halfway there. Lebanon is a candidate for political oblivion, and has just had its warning. The message of Israel’s attack and siege of Beirut is simple: Those who thought they could transform the Paris of the Middle East into its Hanoi would only end up seeing it turned into Mogadishu, the shattered capital of a failed and wayward Somali state, fought over by alternating gangs and warlords.
Hizbullah cannot wage this war again, and must now shift to building on the gains it has made, through political engagement inside Lebanon and around the region. It has not signaled the direction or tone of its political plans, but the signs of the past three weeks indicate that it will reorient its energies to domestic Lebanese politics — if Lebanon, Israel, the United States and others allow it to do so. I see no other interpretation of the four significant decisions Hizbullah has made since early August: accepting Prime Minister Siniora’s 7-point peace plan; accepting the Lebanese government decision to send the army to the southern border region; accepting UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and its call for a beefed up UN force in southern Lebanon; and, energetically repopulating and rebuilding the mainly Shiite civilian areas that had been bombed and evacuated during the war.
Hizbullah will claim, with some credibility, that it has forced Israel and the international community to address the issues that matter to Lebanon, such as Shabaa Farms, prisoners, and cross-border attacks. The UN-mandated political process in Resolution 1701 offers a route to resolve those issues. It could, if successful, even reinvigorate a regional conflict-resolution process that is anchored in law and driven by negotiations, rather than by irrationalism, barbarism and desolation.
We will soon find out if those who fought so fiercely on both sides are equally good at learning the lessons of their combat, and moving us all towards a future that looks more like Paris than Mogadishu.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 22 August 2006
Word Count: 848
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757