Cut off the head

Every effort must be made to isolate Hezbollah inside Lebanon

By TRUDY RUBIN

On my office bulletin board hangs a yellowing Newsweek cover from Oct. 3, 1983, with the headline: &#8220Lebanon – Is There a Way Out?”

The headline refers to getting U.S. troops out of Lebanon, where they were sent by Ronald Reagan on a humanitarian mission that soon soured. I came to The Philadelphia Inquirer that fall from Beirut, where I had been covering Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath.

Scenes of U.S. Marines wading ashore last week to help evacuate Americans made me flash back to the destruction of a U.S. Marine barracks by a Hezbollah truck bomber, 20 days after that Newsweek cover appeared. American troops pulled out of Lebanon in 1984. Israeli troops got mired there for 18 years until they left in 2000, an exit for which Hezbollah took credit.

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just beginning to seek a diplomatic way out of the new Lebanon war, my tattered Newsweek cover is a reminder of lessons from that earlier conflict. Those lessons need to be heeded if U.S. and Israeli leaders are to avoid a new Hezbollah trap.

Back in 1982, the Israelis sought to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization from southern Lebanon, from which it used to launch bloody terrorist attacks. At the time, Israel also bombed Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut, which caused enormous suffering to civilians. Israeli officials told journalists bluntly that they were trying to pressure the Lebanese government to expel the PLO.

The pressure worked, in part because the Lebanese government and people were sick of paying a price for PLO operations – and also because Arab states refused to aid the Palestinians.

Facilitated by intense U.S. mediation, the PLO sailed out of Beirut to exile. But, worried that the border area would again become unsafe, Israel stayed on to occupy the South. Hezbollah was born – with Iranian help – as a resistance group to fight Israeli troops.

Flash forward to 2006. This time, Hezbollah provoked the confrontation with Israel. Having morphed into a political party, Hezbollah has refused to disband its militia, which controls the entire south of Lebanon. It attacked across the Israeli border – a border recognized by the United Nations. Israel had every right to respond.

But here comes Lesson One. Hezbollah is not the PLO. Unlike 1982, Hezbollah is not a foreign group that can be driven out of Lebanon. Hezbollahis are Lebanese citizens who run all manner of charitable services in the south, where they have substantial support.

Lebanon’s democratically elected but weak government failed to reign in Hezbollah’s militia because it feared a new civil war. Lebanon has just begun recovering from nearly two decades of sectarian warfare in the 1970s and ’80s; its people don’t want to live through those horrors again.

Lesson Two: Hezbollah (unlike the PLO in 1982) does have foreign backers – Syria and Iran – with whom U.S. officials have little influence. Those countries will continue to funnel money, and try to funnel more arms, to their Hezbollah proxy.

Much has been made of the fact that Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have openly criticized Hezbollah for provoking Israel to attack Lebanon. But these three Sunni Arab countries have little leverage on the Shiite Hezbollahis. Again, Syria and Iran are the countries that count.

Which leads to Lesson Three. The best hope of isolating Hezbollah is to strengthen (not weaken or destroy) the government of Lebanon. But that government, led by the valiant but besieged Fuad Siniora, is being driven to the brink by an Israeli bombing campaign that is destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Israel is trying to cut Hezbollah off from resupply by its Syrian and Iranian supporters. But the bombing of roads, bridges, airports and ports is destroying Lebanon’s economic present and future. Moreover, the only way Prime Minister Siniora can risk confronting Hezbollah, or invite a strong international force to police the border, is if he has the broad support of Lebanon’s leaders and public.

Many Lebanese are indeed angry at Hezbollah. But the massive numbers of refugees and the bombing of civilian convoys fleeing the fighting are turning Lebanese against Israel rather than Hezbollah. This will make it very hard for Siniora to take action.

Hezbollah is eager for more bombing, indeed for an Israeli ground invasion, which it hopes would mire Israel in another occupation so its soldiers could be picked off in bunches. Hezbollah also expects that scenes of the massive suffering of Lebanese civilians will turn the international community against Israel.

So it is essential to outsmart Hezbollah, which revels in martyrdom and is willing to see Lebanon martyred alongside it. The organization can’t be wiped out or kicked out, but every effort must be exerted to isolate it inside Lebanon and in the international arena.

Weeks more of bombing or a lengthy invasion will play into Hezbollahi hands. The time for intense U.S. diplomacy is now.

True friends of Israel can’t let Dems take power

By DICK MORRIS

Ten years ago, on April 18, 1996, Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon for 16 days in an operation called Grapes of Wrath. The global condemnation of Israel was fierce, especially when it bombed a U.N. refugee camp, killing 107 people, an attack that Tel Aviv said was a mistake.

At the time, the United States did nothing to stop the tide from turning against Israel and President Clinton said, &#8220I think it is important that we do everything we can to bring an end to the violence.”

In private, Clinton seethed at the Israeli attack, saying he had discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres the possibility of concluding a military defense treaty with his nation, pledging U.S. aid in the event of an attack.

&#8220They really want this guarantee from us,” Clinton told me. &#8220I would have given them the commitment, too, but now I can’t because of the uproar over the refugee camp bombing.”

No such treaty was ever signed.

Clinton’s willingness to use American power to force a cease-fire on Israel before it had fully eradicated Hezbollah stands in stark and sharp contrast to George Bush’s insistence on letting Israel proceed with its attacks until the terrorist group is neutralized.

In a nutshell, this illustrates the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to Israeli security.

Bush and his administration clearly see the Israeli attack as an opportunity to clean out terrorist cells that have come to be pivotal in Lebanon. With Hezbollah’s power extending into the cabinet in Beirut, it is clear that Israeli military action is necessary to forestall the creation of a terrorist state on its northern border.

While Clinton said he embraced the need for Israeli security, when the going got rough, he bowed to world opinion and called for a cease-fire. When the United States asks Israel to stop fighting, it is like a boxer’s manager throwing in the towel. The bottom line is that true friends of Israel cannot afford to let the Democrats take power in Washington.

But American Jews have voted Democrat in the past and will continue to do so in the future. It is really the Christian evangelical right that stands up for Israel.

The reason Israel has to fight in Lebanon today is that the United States did not permit it to finish the job of destroying Hezbollah in the ’90s. Now, fortunately for Israel’s true friends, the White House is letting Tel Aviv win without reining her in.

Nothing so illustrates the generic anti-Semitism of the global community than its current obsession with proportionality in judging Israel’s response to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket bombing of its cities. The Vatican, the European Union and Russia have said nothing about the almost daily bombardment of Israel’s northern border by Hezbollah or the constant attacks from Gaza after Israel magnanimously vacated the strip. But now that the Jewish state is defending itself, the global community is outraged at the &#8220disproportionate” Israeli response.

Only Jewish lives have to be dealt with proportionately.

Israel’s defensive barrier has succeeded in sharply curtailing the once daily suicide/homicide bombing of civilian Israeli targets. Now the Israeli invasion will push back the frontiers from which the terrorists can work their mayhem through missiles.

Bush and the Republican administration realize that Israel is only acting in self-defense. It is obvious that she would not be attacking Lebanon if the terrorists had not made a habit of using it as a base for attacks on Jewish cities.

The global condemnation of Israel is simply illustrative of the low esteem attached to Jewish blood in this world where anti-Semitism comes disguised as morality and a commitment to peace.