Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 54, 101

Special Report

Israeli Withdrawal From Southern Lebanon Would Likely Entail Unacceptable Conditions

By Stephen J. Sosebee

The killing of three Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers by a mortar shell fired at the Blatt outpost three miles inside Israel’s so-called “security zone” in south Lebanon on Feb. 26 rekindled the debate in Israel over a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Last year, when 73 elite IDF combat troops perished in the collision of two helicopters en route to Lebanon, a group of Israeli generals, including the head of the IDF northern command, Maj. Gen. Amiram Levin, called for a withdrawal from Lebanon.

At that time Levin said he “cannot and must not accept” Israeli casualties in the 440-square-mile zone. Israel’s “hold the fort” strategy amounted to “accepting the casualties,” Levin said, sparking a heated debate in the Knesset. On March 4, Levin was appointed deputy director of the Mossad and is bringing many of his advisers from Lebanon with him. Israel occupies 10 percent of Lebanon in violation of international law and United Nations Security Council Resolution 425.

The February killing at Blatt not only caused many Israeli leaders to wonder aloud again about the price of occupation in Lebanon, but also showed that the resistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon will not be easily crushed by military power. In April 1997, Israel upped the ante by supplying its 3,000-strong proxy ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), sophisticated weapons to fight the mainly Shi’i Hezbollah (Party of God) guerrillas in the south.

IDF Gen. Elie Amitay told the SLA’s “Voice of the South” radio that Israel was supplying the SLA with new weapons, including “night equipment in addition to TOW missiles to hit targets at a distance of 3,400 yards.” The training of the SLA troops would take place in northern Israel.

Iran matched Israel’s move, however, by supplying Lebanese Hezbollah forces, via Syria, with armor-piercing missiles and mortars of the kind that killed the three IDF soldiers at Blatt.

The current talk of peace in south Lebanon is therefore largely misleading. While Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated publicly that Israel is not opposed to U.N. Security Council Resolution 425, which calls for an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, privately he not only is supplying Israel’s Lebanese proxy militia with new weapons, but also has increased Israeli air assaults on targets in south Lebanon. Israeli aircraft struck Lebanon more than a dozen times in February, while Israeli artillery pounded Lebanese villages and suspected Hezbollah targets throughout the zone.

“We cannot just leave those who have helped to defend our border.”

Meanwhile, on March 4 the Israeli supreme court ruled that Israel could hold foreign nationals as “bargaining chips” for negotiations over missing Israeli servicemen. Dozens of Lebanese sit in Israeli prisons without trial or charges against them. The most famous of these hostages is Hezbollah leader Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid, who was kidnapped in Lebanon eight years ago. In early March Sheikh Obeid aired his views on the prospect for peace in south Lebanon when he told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, “Hezbollah was established only for the purpose of liberating Lebanon…if you [the IDF] withdraw, there will be peace.”

The fact is that even if Israel took the decision tomorrow to move its 2,000 combat troops out of the zone, there would remain there 3,000 heavily armed Christian and Shi’i Muslim SLA troops, who have been armed, trained and supported militarily by Israel since 1978. That is when Israel, following a full-scale invasion of Lebanon that left hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians dead, set up the militia under the leadership of a former Lebanese army officer, the late Maj. Antoine Haddad.

“We will not abandon our allies and friends,” then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres reassured SLA commanders in Lebanon 17 years later in 1995. It is a position that many Israelis on both the right and left still embrace.

“We cannot just pull out and leave without ensuring that those who have helped to defend our border and citizens there are taken care of,” says IDF Major Gobi Eckstein. “Such a move will have a very negative consequence to other Arabs in the West Bank and elsewhere who are working with our security forces.”

Traitors to Lebanon

However the Syrians, who have more than 20,000 combat troops occupying Lebanon under the Arab League-backed Taif peace accords of 1991, along with Hezbollah leaders and the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, all see the SLA as traitors to Lebanon. “The only thing that would save them is to defect now and ask for forgiveness and not wait until Israel withdraws from Lebanon,” Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem recently told an Arab newspaper in Israel.

Both Hariri and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad have openly dismissed Netanyahu’s recent statement about U.N. Resolution 425. The international community should compel Israel to implement this resolution immediately and without conditions, Hariri recently told Lebanese television.

Nevertheless, Israeli radio reported that aides to Netanyahu have been meeting in Switzerland with an aide to Lebanese President Elias Hrawi concerning conditions for a withdrawal. This prompted the Syrian foreign minister to fly to Beirut to ensure Syria’s position on this matter is well understood.

Any chance of Israel simply packing up and unconditionally leaving south Lebanon seems slim at best. Any new Lebanon formula is “a long time away,” according to Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. “The IDF will continue to act and defend the northern settlements,” he said. “However, the government accepts Resolution 425 according to our interpretation—that the government of Lebanon should rule, and act to secure its rule, and prevent anti-Israeli activity from within Lebanese territory. If it does so, then we will withdraw.”

Even Israel’s opposition Labor Party, which in theory is supposed to have more flexible positions, is officially opposed to a unilateral withdraw from the zone. Labor Party leader Ehud Barak publicly rejected the formula and called instead for a negotiated settlement within a larger peace agreement with Syria and Lebanon.

Further to the left in Israel, the idea of leaving Lebanon under any formula has a wider appeal. Said MK Haim Ramon, “The decision does not mean waiting for an agreement with Lebanon, for which the chances are virtually nil, but rather the gradual start of a withdrawal.” Meretz leader Yossi Sarid called for talks with Damascus. “Only an agreement with Syria will put an end to the killing of our soldiers.”

Indeed, the entire issue of Israel’s illegal occupation of Lebanese territory is tied to that of Israel’s occupation (and annexation) of the Golan Heights, the part of Syria captured by Israel in 1967 and successfully retained in the 1973 war. Any effort to find a solution in Lebanon that does not include return of the Golan to Syria is likely to fail.

In early March, Netanyahu sent two envoys to Paris to ask the French, who traditionally have stronger ties with Lebanon and Syria than does the United States, to help mediate an agreement on an IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon. The French response was that while they are ready to serve as mediators, there is no chance for any agreement without an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan.

Senior Israeli military officers also voiced strong doubts about the prospects for a conditional Israeli withdrawal from the deadly and unpopular quagmire of south Lebanon. Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak, the army’s chief of staff, reportedly questioned the idea that Syria would let Lebanon reach an agreement with Israel without Syria’s blessing in a closed-door meeting of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee.

While diplomats and politicians present various proposals and formulas to try to find a way for Israel to get out of Lebanon, bloodletting on the battlefield continues unabated. In early March, following the killing of its soldiers, Israeli TV showed the bodies of two Hezbollah fighters wrapped in IDF body bags.

Israeli intelligence is warning that the public talk of an IDF withdraw from the zone weakens SLA and IDF morale, while strengthening that of the Shi’i guerrillas. According to Israeli intelligence, Hezbollah is making inroads into villages in the zone that previously were “loyal” to Israel. Even in the Christian villages, from which many SLA officers come, residents fear that Israel will abandon them and therefore now prefer to cooperate with the guerrillas and not risk future accusations of being collaborators.

Since the zone was established in 1985, more than 220 IDF soldiers have been killed in Lebanon, not including those from the helicopter accident. (Thousands of Lebanese civilians also have been killed and wounded, including hundreds of women and children.) But if Netanyahu is serious about ending the slaughter by getting out of Lebanon, he may have to concentrate on reaching a land-for-peace settlement with Syria.