Already a subscriber? Log in
Dr Rice’s prime objective is not to secure a ceasefire at any cost, but to expedite the destruction of Hezbollah. So often this organisation is misrepresented in the West as a noble freedom-fighting force. In fact it is something quite different: a transnational terrorist army, funded, armed and harboured by Iran and Syria. As Douglas Davis explains on page 18, the group is being used quite systematically as a lethal messenger by Tehran, determined not to be thwarted in its mission to develop nuclear weapons.
At this stage, talk of prisoner exchanges is both premature and positively dangerous. Hezbollah’s cross-border kidnap of two Israeli soldiers on 12 July — only days after the abduction by Hamas of 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit — was an outrageous act of provocation. It deserves no reward.
It is no less misguided to imagine that the dispatch of an ‘international stabilisation force’ by the UN to southern Lebanon will resolve this crisis. The precedents for such a strategy are bleak. The existing 2,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) has been little more than a helpless witness since its creation in 1978. After Israel’s 1982 invasion America led a four-nation force with France, Italy and Britain in Beirut — with the result that 241 Americans and 58 French soldiers were killed by truck bombs. Indeed it is far from clear what, precisely, a new multinational force would do in Lebanon at this point. Peacekeeping is only meaningful when there is a peace to be kept.
Mr Blair was right, however, to tell the Commons on Tuesday that the ‘root cause’ of the violence in Lebanon was not Israel’s conduct or Palestinian suffering — real as that remains — but the growth of Islamic extremism under the sheltering wing of Tehran and Damascus. Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war, this extremism long predates that conflict, and would be flourishing today even if the Coalition had not acted against Saddam Hussein in 2003. Now that Hezbollah has opened hostilities, it is crucial that its military machine be disabled. That task falls to Israel, and it is right that America is insisting that Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, be given reasonable time to achieve that objective.
It is routinely alleged that Israel’s acts of self-defence and the West’s complicity in such self-defence are somehow a recruiting sergeant for Islamism in the region. On that ludicrous basis a sovereign state should never react against incursion lest its response upset the supporters of its attackers. It is just as plausible that any show of weakness by Israel under such intense provocation would be the real recruiting sergeant for the mullahs. Hezbollah knows that Israel cherishes its soldiers deeply and that these abductions would give Prime Minister Olmert no option but to retaliate. That being so, it is all the more important for Israel and its supporters not to waver — which is what the terrorists really long for.
What those who want to see the Jewish state destroyed have been shown this week is that acts of aggression will prompt a swift and fearless military response. In such a context, discussion of ‘proportionality’ is absurd. Hezbollah and its state sponsors sent a hugely threatening signal to Israel. They have been sent a signal back.
Remember: Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza last year. It asks only that UN Resolution 1559 — which calls for the disarming of Lebanese militias and the deployment of the Lebanese army into southern Lebanon — be implemented.
What the terrorists want, meanwhile, is another round of Western hand-wringing, equivocation and half-measures, underpinned by the unspoken belief that, somehow, Israel is to blame for its predicament. What the Islamists dread is a clear decision by the international community to let the Israelis finish the job, eradicate as much of the Hezbollah machine as possible, and then — and only then — resume the painful process of transforming Lebanon into a tolerable neighbour. So: let them finish the job.
Also in Society
Also by The Spectator
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in