Turning Point At Qana By Rami Khouri
July 31, 2006 Tom Paine
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
The Israeli attack that killed scores of elderly people and handicapped children in the southern Lebanese town of Qana early Sunday has triggered reactions that collectively may prove to be a turning point in the current fighting, and perhaps even in the 58-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict.
Television images throughout the world focused Sunday on two parallel scenes: the removal of smashed bodies in Qana, most of them children, and an angry demonstration in front of the U.N. building in central Beirut where a small number of enraged young Lebanese entered the facility and trashed parts of it.
Those sentiments of rage by Lebanese citizens are the core of wider political feelings that may soon be translated into novel, and potentially historic, diplomatic dynamics. This was reflected most dramatically Sunday morning when Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Speaker of the House Nebih Berri told a press conference that, in view of the massacre at Qana, the Lebanese government has nothing to discuss except an immediate and unconditional cease-fire.
Berri, the highest Shiite figure in the government and a key link with Hezbollah, stated emphatically that all Shiites and Lebanese stand firmly with the government position. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then announced that she was postponing her scheduled Sunday visit to Beirut to discuss how to end this crisis.
The unprecedented nature of these moves comprises the convergence of five forces in the Arab world that have never come together as they do this week:
- impassioned public opinion,
- sustained armed resistance by non-state actors,
- firm government positions that align with both of these elements,
- non-stop mass media dissemination, and
- a sense of Israel’s military vulnerability.
Many Lebanese and others in the region passionately debate Hezbollah’s ultimate aims, often mistrust its motives, and question the wisdom of its abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Yet, that abduction, the subsequent massive Israeli attacks against much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, and Hezbollah’s continued resistance against Israel have now pushed the region into uncharted diplomatic territory. Hezbollah’s strategy, tactics, and capabilities are at the heart of this process.
Hezbollah’s response to the Israeli attacks includes four key elements: it has absorbed massive Israeli bombardment without its military, media or leadership capabilities being significantly diminished; it has retaliated almost daily with missile strikes, progressively ever deeper into Israel; it has inflicted relatively heavy casualties on Israeli ground troops and forced them to withdraw from the Bint Jbail area in southern Lebanon; and, it has succeeded in synchronizing its diplomatic position with that of the Siniora government, thus tempering criticisms that it acts alone against the interests of Lebanon and its government.
For the Lebanese government effectively to tell Rice to stay away, as it did Sunday, reflects a newfound resoluteness among official Arab circles that has long been absent from the scene. It is an important response to the mounting rage in Lebanon and the region to the Qana massacre. It also mirrors the deeper sense in Lebanon that the longer Hezbollah holds out and keeps retaliating against Israel’s vaunted armed forces, the more likely it is that this conflict will soon shift into a negotiated diplomatic resolution.
The elements of a diplomatic solution are obvious to all parties, though their precise order of implementation remains contested, and politically important: a cease-fire, an exchange of prisoners, an international force to separate the parties and cement the cease-fire, allowing all displaced persons to return home, ending cross-border attacks and breaches of sovereignty, negotiating the return of the Shabaa Farms area that Lebanon considers Lebanese land, and addressing reconstruction and reparations demands.
The hope on the Arab side is that the combined Hezbollah-Lebanese government diplomatic position and Hezbollah’s continued military steadfastness will channel increasingly angry Arab public opinion towards pushing Arab governments to support a negotiated solution. If this solution essentially responds to all the key demands of Hezbollah and the Beirut government, while also meeting Israeli legitimate demands, Hezbollah will emerge as a big winner.
As attention shifts to the United Nations deliberations in New York, a striking new aspect of this novel political landscape is the isolation and perhaps even the temporary impotence of the United States. Washington is feeling the pain of its own self-inflicted diplomatic castration, as a consequence of siding so strongly with Israel. It refuses to talk to key players like Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and the Syrian government, is now cold-shouldered by the Lebanese government, and speaks only to Arab governments with increasingly less credibility and impact.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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