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Lebanon – the morass gets muddier By Gil Zohar JERUSALEM - The withdrawal of all Israel Defence Force soldiers from Lebanon on September 29 gives occasion to review this summer's 34-day war, which led to the deaths of some 1,500 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hizbullah gunmen. Israel launched the war, which it called Operation Change Direction, following the July 12 kidnapping of two IDF reservists - Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. They remain in captivity, and their fate unknown.
Perhaps the most absurd vignette came September 24 when the New York Times' correspondent Craig Smith reported in an article about the Shabaa Farms - the postage stamp-sized, Israeli-occupied territory which the UN says belongs to Syria but which Hizbullah claims is sacred Lebanese soil. The New York daily, one of the English-speaking world's newspapers of record, quickly issued a "Correction Appended" note on its Internet site. What was the egregious error? The New York Times can't tell the difference between sheep and goats, nor is it very careful about measurements – whether metric or imperial. "A picture caption with an article on Sunday about Shabaa Farms, an area controlled by Israel and claimed by Lebanon, misidentified the animals shown. They are goats, not sheep. The article also misstated the size of the area. It is 10 square miles, not a 10-mile-square area," stated the newspaper correction. That admission frames the absurdity of the media coverage of the war in Lebanon, a conflict in which, as the adage goes, truth was the first casualty of war. So what is the truth about the conflict in Lebanon, a country which claims a historical connection to the ancient sea-faring Phoenicians, the origins of Christianity, the Crusaders, and the halcyon days of British and French imperialism? Therein lies the rub; Lebanese identity is as confused as the New York Times reporting. It is a matter of subjective interpretation, and the result will not just impact on the estimated 3,875,000-million citizens of this beautiful yet cursed Levantine country – of whom some 35,000 carry dual Lebanese Canadian passports – but may yet trigger a much larger war than this summer's carnage. Time will tell if the UN resolution 1701 that opened the way for the current ceasefire merely delayed the next salvo. Some wonder if the war provoked by Hizbullah, Iran's proxy Shiite militia, will be merely a sideshow to the larger conflict between that country and those Western states which will use force to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons. But it is the people of Lebanon who paid the price for Hizbullah's adventure, a fact acknowledged on August 27 when Hizbullah's charismatic leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah apologised to the Lebanese people for the attack that sparked the war, saying "Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it." One can only speculate if Iran's warmongering President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and stated that Israel should be "wiped off the map", paid attention to Nasrallah's apology – notwithstanding the bravado and claims of victory. Lebanon is still paying the price. On July 13 and 15 the Israeli Air Force bombed the Jiyeh power station, 30 km south of Beirut, resulting in an ongoing environmental disaster. The plant's damaged storage tanks leaked 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of oil into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, comparable in size to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A 10 km wide oil slick covers 170 km of coastline, and is threatening Turkey and Cyprus. The Lebanese government estimates it may take up to 10 years to recover from this spill. * * * Lebanon was created by the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916 whereby Britain and France agreed to carve up the collapsing Ottoman Empire into their respective mandates. In an act of imperial hubris, France created a dysfunctional country whose ethnic and tribal composition doomed it to sectarian strife. The population of Lebanon is composed of three predominant ethnic groups and religions: Muslims (Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Alawites); Druze; and Christians (mostly Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Melkite Greek Catholics). Almost all of the historic Jewish community, mostly living in central Beirut, fled as a result of the 1975-1990 civil war which devastated Lebanon and from which the country was finally re-emerging when it was pummeled again this summer. Such is the fragility of Lebanese demographics over the county's confessional (religious) balance that no official census has been taken since 1932. It is estimated that about 40 per cent are Christians, 30 per cent Shia Muslims, 25 per cent Sunni Muslims and five per cent Druze. There is also a tiny community (less than 1 per cent) of Kurds (also known as Mhallamis or Mardins). The larger picture would have to take into account the approximately 15 million people of Lebanese descent, mainly Christians, spread all over the world, Brazil being the country with the biggest Lebanese community abroad. Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Mexico, Venezuela and the United States also have large Lebanese communities. Toronto's highly active Our Lady Of Lebanon Maronite Church on Queen Street West in Parkdale is just part of this huge Diaspora of Arabic-speaking Christians who have fled from the violence of their homeland for safer havens in the West. Key to the Lebanese puzzle are the hapless Palestinian who fled north from their homes in the Galilee – or were driven own – during Israel's 1948 War of Independence. A second wave of refugees were driven from Jordan during that country's 1970 Black September war – during which the Palestinians failed to depose the Hashemite regime. About 360,000 Palestinian refugees have registered in Lebanon with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) since 1948. Estimates of those remaining range between 180,000 and 250,000. Over these six decades the Palestinians have been consistently denied Lebanese citizenship. The Palestinians in their heavily armed refugee camps spread across the country have been wild card in Lebanon since 1970, and their political struggle contributed to the aforementioned Civil War. Constitutionally guaranteed Christian control of the government had come under increasing fire from Muslims and secular left wing groups in the 1960s, leading them to join forces as the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in 1969. The LNM called for the taking of a new census (the last one had been conducted in 1932, as noted above) and the subsequent drafting of a new governmental structure that would reflect the actual population balance. This was perceived as a mortal threat for Christian (especially Maronite) power in Lebanon, although alliances were admittedly much more complex than the "Muslims versus Christians" rubric posited by some Maronite leaders and many outside observers. The two sides were unable to reconcile their conflicts of interest and began forming militias, first for self-protection, but as things escalated ever more in parallel to the regular army. This rapidly undermined the authority of the central government. The government's ability to maintain order was also handicapped by the nature of the Lebanese Army. One of the smallest in the Middle East, it was composed based on a fixed ratio of religions. As members defected to sectarian militias, the army would eventually prove unable to contain the militant groups, rein in the PLO or monitor foreign infiltration. Also, since the government was Christian-dominated, and the officers' ranks especially so, trust among Muslims for central institutions including the army was low. The disintegration of the Lebanese Army was eventually initiated by Muslim deserters declaring that they would no longer take orders from the Maronite generals. In its place rose scores of militias. The weak central Lebanese government, which for years allowed Hizbullah to run a "state within a state" in the south, has long argued that disarming the militants could be done only through agreement between the country's major political groups. Since the end of the Civil War in 1990, the Lebanese have conducted several elections, most of the militias have been weakened or disbanded, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have extended central government authority over about two-thirds of the country. Following the cease-fire which ended the July 12 war, the army has for the first time in over three decades moved to control the southern areas of Lebanon. Only Hizbullah retains its weapons, due to what it claims is legitimate resistance against Israel in the Shebaa Farms area. One can't make sense of this summer's war without remembering the deep scars Lebanon still bears from the Civil War. In all, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed, and another 100,000 handicapped by injuries. Approximately 900,000 people, representing one-fifth of the pre-war population, were displaced from their homes. Perhaps a quarter of a million emigrated permanently. In light of all of this, will Lebanon's central government be able to complete the task of reconstruction and reunification that has been ongoing since 1990? Will the Lebanese army be able to disarm Hizbullah, which steadfastly refuses to surrender its remaining arsenal of thousands of long-range surface-to-surface missiles that can strike the heart of Israeli population centers?
The 5,000 soldiers of the international UNIFIL stabilization force that has been deployed in southern Lebanon alongside Lebanese army forces will not participate in a campaign to force Hizbullah to disband. . Maj. Gen. Alain Pelligrini, the man in charge, told reporters, "The disarmament of Hezbollah is not the business of UNIFIL. This is a strictly Lebanese affair, which should be resolved at a national level." UN officials insist that the responsibility for disarming Hizbullah rests solely with Lebanese army forces, explaining the international force is only intended to serve as a back-up for the 15,000 Lebanese army troops. UN officials taking part in pre-withdrawal talks with IDF commanders explain the international force will monitor the situation, but will not take the initiative to disarm Hizbullah terrorists in the area of Israel’s northern border. It's really up to the Lebanese army, then, to disarm the terrorists. But Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has already said his army won't actively hunt for hidden Hezbollah arsenals. So there are thousands of troops on the ground in Lebanon, but no one with the will to do the job of getting the weapons away from the Hezbullah gunmen. Meanwhile, those fighters has blended back into the daily life of Lebanon. Hizbullah is paying off the civilian population (as much as $12,000 per family) toward reconstruction while its troops prepare for the next battle. The rebuilding of Lebanon has begun. But as long as the deep rift remains between two of the major political blocs in Lebanese politics, Hezbollah and the anti-Syrian majority bloc known as the March 14 forces, then August's UN-brokered cease-fire is unlikely to bring lasting peace. - 30 -
Born in Toronto, Gil Zohar is a freelance journalist now living in Jerusalem, Israel.
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