Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon and a contributing editor at the libertarian Reason magazine, has an insightful op-ed in today’s New York Times.

He begins by depicting Israel’s incursion into Lebanon “as a spinoff of a general counterattack against American and Israeli power in the region by Iran and Syria, operating through sub-state actors like Hezbollah and the Palestinian organization Hamas.” True enough.

Young then asserts that Hezbollah transgressed three political lines:

The first was its expansion of military operations outside the Shebaa area. While Hezbollah has done this before . . . the latest operation was certain to be intolerable to an Israeli government already dealing with the kidnapping of another soldier . . .

A second line that Hezbollah crossed was its evident coordination of strategy with Hamas; this went well beyond its stated aim of simply defending Lebanon and left Israel feeling it was fighting a war on two fronts.

The third line crossed was domestic. By unilaterally taking Lebanon into a conflict with Israel, Hezbollah sought to stage a coup d’état against the anti-Syrian parliamentary and government majority, which opposes the militant group’s adventurism. [emphases added]

Regarding the last of the transgressions, Hezbollah, which holds seats in the 128-member Parliament, “hoped to humiliate the anti-Syrian politicians by forcing them to endorse the kidnappings and showing how little control the government has over the party.”

Young proceeds to point out something that has been missed by others: “Israeli officials have left Syria out of their condemnations, in jarring contrast to the Bush administration’s statements that have rightly highlighted Iranian and Syrian responsibility for Hezbollah’s behavior.” By this omission, the Israelis have neglected the regional nature of the crisis. Continuing, he avers that “Israel can brutalize Lebanon all it wants, but unless something is done to stop Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, from exporting instability to buttress his despotic regime, little will change.”

He predicts that “Once the Israelis end their offensive, Hezbollah will regroup and continue to hold Lebanon hostage through its militia . . . Hamas leaders in Damascus will continue derailing any negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. And Syria will continue to eat away at Lebanese independence . . . ”

These are Young’s recommendations:

It would be far smarter for Israel, and America, to profit from Hezbollah’s having perhaps overplayed its hand. The popular mood here is one of extreme anger that the group has provoked a conflict Lebanon cannot win.

While the United Nations has been ineffective in its efforts toward Middle East peace, it may be the right body to intervene here, if only because it has the cudgel of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was approved in 2004 and, among other things, calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament. [emphasis added]

The five permanent Security Council members, perhaps at this weekend’s Group of 8 meeting, should consider a larger initiative based on the resolution that would include: a proposal for the gradual collection of Hezbollah’s weapons; written guarantees by Israel that it will respect Lebanese sovereignty and pull its forces out of the contested Lebanese land in the Shebaa Farms; and the release of prisoners on both sides. Such a deal could find support among Lebanon’s anti-Syrian politicians, would substantially narrow Hezbollah’s ability to justify retaining its arms, and also send a signal to Syria and particularly Iran that the region is not theirs for the taking.


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The Wall Street Journal takes exception to Young’s assertion that Israel hasn’t condemned Syria. It says that the Israelis are bluntly stating that the blame for the violence lies in large measure with the governments of Syria and Iran for giving Hezbollah support and encouragement and quotes Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, as saying that “The real masterminds [behind these acts] are in Tehran and Damascus.”

The Journal reports that Ayalon and other Israeli officials said their forces will continue operations in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories to root out the military backbone of Hezbollah and Hamas. Ultimately, they say, true stability will require reining in Iranian support of militia groups. [emphasis added]

This could cause tension in U.S.-Israeli relations:

While the Bush administration is largely sympathetic with Israel’s plight, and also eager to restrain Iran, it is unlikely to be as keen to directly confront Tehran now. With U.S. troops tied down in Iraq and a serious diplomatic drive under way at the United Nations to impose economic sanctions to get Iran to curb its nuclear program, the White House has little desire for a broader regional conflict that could bring a head-on clash with Iran right now.

As a result, the Bush administration faces an immediate decision on what it can do to contain the violence while allowing Israel to defend itself and its soldiers, three of whom have been kidnapped in recent days by Hamas and Hezbollah. Two senior American officials—Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and White House Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams—met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Thursday. The U.S. said the best vehicle to defuse the crisis might be a United Nations delegation that is heading to the region at the behest of Secretary General Kofi Annan. [emphasis added]


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In the Washington Post, Anthony Shadid argues that Hezbollah’s attack on Israel could backfire:

. . . in the wake of Syria’s withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon in 2005, the disarmament of Hezbollah has emerged as one of the foremost issues in Lebanese politics. Since the fighting with Israel started Wednesday, calls for Hezbollah to relinquish its weapons have gathered urgency . . . in meetings Thursday, Lebanese officials began to lay the groundwork for an extension of government control to southern Lebanon.

After a cabinet meeting Thursday, the government said it had a right and duty to extend its control over all Lebanese territory. Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said the statement marked a step toward the government reasserting itself. Other government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, went further, calling it a first move in possibly sending the Lebanese army to the border, a U.N.-endorsed proposal that Hezbollah has rejected.

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In an editorial, the Daily Star—Lebanon’s leading English-language newspaper—views the crisis as a “rare opportunity.”

Israel’s steadily mounting military response to Hizbullah’s capture of two soldiers inside the Jewish state has already imposed human and financial costs that a tiny country like Lebanon can ill afford. Since the damage thus far is still relatively small when compared to that to be expected if and when Israel unleashes the full weight of its might, things can easily get far worse unless cooler heads prevail. With luck and forethought, however, the deeply worrisome situation might still be retrieved to the benefit of all parties.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists that there will be no negotiations over a swap proposed by Hizbullah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. That sort of bluster plays well to part of Olmert’s domestic audience, but this is the Middle East, so anything is possible – especially since previous Israeli governments have engaged enthusiastically in quiet diplomacy on precisely such issues once the time for bombast had passed. One of the dangers on this occasion is that the alacrity with which the Jewish state exercised its military option might cause the crisis to acquire a momentum of its own that neither logic nor compassion can easily reverse.

For these reasons, it has been gratifying to see Lebanese politicians of virtually every stripe express solidarity. The past 17 months have been disappointing, but only because they began with so much optimism: On balance, the accomplishments far outweigh the failures. The current crisis has the capacity to shatter this emerging sense of nationhood, though, so any political act that tends to help solidify it is highly encouraging.

What has been missing is a consensus with sufficient strength and appeal to forge a genuinely Lebanese identity. Hizbullah has always been the missing catalyst in that consensus, and the current crisis provides an opportunity to fulfill the resistance movement’s potential as cornerstone of a new stability. This can only happen, though, if Nasrallah is able to keep his party’s fate – and therefore his country’s – from becoming intertwined with the problems that plague Iran and Syria’s relations with the international community. He has the power to do this by empowering Lebanon’s government – not Germany’s or Egypt’s or anyone else’s – to negotiate on Hizbullah’s behalf. Only thus can he begin to refute, once and for all, the suspicion that his priorities are regional ones, and that local issues and the people they affect are only tools and pawns in a wider game in which most Lebanese have little stake and even less interest.

There is much to be gained by seizing the day. For one thing, it figures to reduce the suffering being inflicted on a civilian population that has endured more than its share of hardship. For another, it offers the possibility that a prisoner swap, however circuitous its execution, could open the door to wider talks aimed at settling all the issues on the Lebanese-Israeli agenda. The two countries will not be friends any time soon, but no law says they have to remain active belligerents in perpetuity.