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When Israel last withdrew from southern Lebanon, six years ago, the United Nations resolved that terrorist militias should be disarmed, not only to safeguard Israelis but also to help Lebanon develop a more stable and democratic political culture. The world appeared to realise that if Hezbollah were allowed to maintain and indeed expand its armed presence, then Israel’s security would be under constant threat, and Lebanon’s political development would be disastrously compromised by a force owing allegiance to the Islamist regime in Iran. But while UN Resolution 1559 seemed to recognise all this, the international community failed to act upon its own deliberations. Hezbollah was allowed to grow, sustained by Syria, armed by Iran, threatening democratic Israel and holding hostage Lebanese democracy.
The international community has an opportunity now to atone for those past sins of omission. If Israeli forces are to withdraw from Lebanon, then there has to be a secure zone, purged of Hezbollah forces, from the Litani river to the Israeli–Lebanese border. The Lebanese government has declared its willingness to deploy its own forces in such a zone, but the Lebanese army will be incapable of dealing with the Hezbollah threat without the support of a suitably robust international force. That force must be deployed under rules of engagement that are sufficiently clear and muscular to make possible the disarmament of Hezbollah. It must be in a position to seal the Lebanese border and control those passes and transport routes through which Syria and Iran could renew supplies to the terrorists.
The effective containment of Hezbollah is, it must be emphasised, not only the least that Israel deserves. It is also a minimum precondition for Lebanon’s secure political development. The basic requirement for any functioning state is an effective monopoly of the use of force. No national government can govern effectively, or build secure relationships with its neighbours, if its territory is a playground for a terrorist army that takes its orders, and secures its weapons, from other powers.
The world welcomed the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon because the withdrawal of Syrian forces appeared to allow a breathing space for Lebanese democracy, and the emergence of another, plural and modern, state in the Middle East promised a brighter future for the whole region. But this promise could never, and will never, be fulfilled while Iran continues to exercise de facto control over Lebanese territory and uses its military muscle to promote a totalitarian Islamist ideology. It should never be forgotten that the promotion of Islamic fundamentalism and the destruction of Israel are Hezbollah’s governing principles. There is indeed a vital role for the international community in providing long-term structural support to Lebanon to help repair its damaged infrastructure and weakened political culture. But that support will bear fruit only if the threat posed by an Iranian-armed Hezbollah is dealt with once and for all.
It is also in the broader interests of regional stability, and indeed the West’s security, that this conflict ends with the removal of the Hezbollah threat. While that threat persists it will be impossible for any Israeli leader to take whatever actions may be necessary to revive steps towards peace with the Palestinians. Hezbollah’s rocket assaults on Israel have already led to a huge internal displacement of Israeli civilians — a grim consequence of war that will have a significant impact on the future of Israeli politics when the present conflict ends.
More than that, any settlement of this conflict that allows Hezbollah plausibly to proclaim that it has successfully ‘resisted’ Israeli ‘aggression’ will be no sort of settlement at all. Israel is the victim of aggression here and, whatever some elements in the Tory party may say, her response has not been ‘disproportionate’. To allow Hezbollah to claim any sort of victory would hearten Islamists everywhere and send another signal that the West lacked the resolve to deal with terrorism. Iran would conclude that the international community did not have the staying power required to prevent Tehran fulfilling its nuclear ambitions.
Perhaps it is a sober assessment of those factors which has led the French — not always the most robust actors in the Middle Eastern drama — to sponsor a UN resolution that displays a sound grasp of the need to make good some of the failures of the past. In this country, the debate about the Lebanese conflict has become a subset of the interminable argument about Tony Blair’s political longevity. But much more is at stake in this conflict than the fate of one politician. This is a time for clear-sighted action, not self-indulgent rhetoric: a test, if ever there was one, of the UN’s capacity to be more than a talking-shop.
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