OPINION:
Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal last week got into hot water for urging caution in the approach to Hezbollah’s disarmament — a historic policy enacted last year by the Lebanese government.
In his statement, Gen. Haykal suggested that relying exclusively on a military solution could endanger civil peace and coexistence.
The issue of Hezbollah’s arms couldn’t be more urgent right now given the group’s decision to fire rockets at Israel in support of its ally Iran, once again dragging Lebanon into another devastating war.
Israel has responded by bombing various parts of the country, including the capital Beirut, so far killing at least 634 people, including 91 children, and displacing 800,000 others. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat.
Everyone in Lebanon knows that a direct military confrontation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army could lead to communal bloodshed and split the army along sectarian lines. And tasking the army with disarming Hezbollah without providing it sufficient political backing and material resources is as reckless as it is delusional.
It’s true that the Lebanese government doesn’t have the funds to support the army. Washington, the top provider of military assistance to Lebanon, is similarly in no mood to increase its financial backing of the army because it’s disappointed with the army’s poor performance, and rightly so.
But there’s much that the Lebanese government can do to make Gen. Haykal’s job easier. He can resign or get fired, but this will hardly solve the problem. The next army chief, along with his political superiors, will face the same dilemma: How can the country balance sovereignty and independence with internal peace?
Lebanon’s leaders must ponder this existential question while Israel escalates its attacks and considers a large-scale ground invasion to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure and create a buffer zone deep inside Lebanese territory. The ultimate Israeli aim is to sign a favorable peace treaty with the Lebanese government.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has called for direct negotiations with Israel to stop the killing. But Israel has shown no interest in talks. It has little confidence in Beirut’s ability to disarm Hezbollah and wants to solve the problem itself.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that even if the United States stops military operations against Iran, his country’s campaign against Hezbollah will continue.
How deep Israel might invade is unknown. In 1982, the Israeli military went all the way to Beirut to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been launching attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.
Israel succeeded in evicting the PLO but failed to install a friendly Lebanese government due to Syrian and Iranian obstruction. Around that time, Hezbollah had begun to emerge with the help of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to resist Israeli occupation. Rising casualties from Hezbollah attacks forced the Israeli military to withdraw in 1985 to a “security zone” in southern Lebanon.
Fifteen years later, Israel pulled all its soldiers out of the country, an outcome Hezbollah hailed as a “divine victory.”
Will history repeat itself? Two years ago, when Israel decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership and significantly degraded the group’s military capabilities, many (including Israel) assumed it was finished, at least as a coherent fighting force. But clearly, it wasn’t.
Today, Hezbollah is still able to operate from southern Lebanon in areas supposedly cleared by the Lebanese army and to fire hundreds of rockets at Israel. The group was able to regroup with the help of Iranian personnel stationed in Lebanon who are coordinating with their colleagues in Iran on joint attacks against Israel.
Whether Hezbollah can sustain the current fight is unclear given the questions surrounding supply lines, but what’s certain is that the Lebanese government can and must further weaken Hezbollah politically, and Mr. Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Gen. Haykal should be fully in sync on how to manage this crisis.
Tiptoeing around the issue of Hezbollah’s arms all these years has gotten Lebanon into its current predicament. Hezbollah has made its choice, and it is Iran. It’s time for the Lebanese to make theirs.
The priority for Lebanon’s leaders is to convince the Lebanese people first and Israel second that Lebanon is ready to enter into serious peace negotiations with Israel, determined to regain its sovereign rights — Israeli-occupied territory and freedom for Lebanese individuals imprisoned by Israel — and more deliberately tackle the issue of Hezbollah’s arms.
Messrs. Aoun and Salam can convey that seriousness by mounting a systematic pressure campaign against Hezbollah that includes outlawing its economic activities/organizations and kicking its ministers — whose allegiance is to Tehran — out of the cabinet.
• Bilal Y. Saab is senior managing director of Trends US, an associate fellow with Chatham House, and a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.