Today's Situation

Rice pudding Monday, July 24, 2006

Condoleezza Rice is due here tonight, but will only meet with Olmert tomorrow. She doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to dictate a ceasefire to Israel -- and according to most commentators here, not only doesn’t she want to dictate a ceasefire, she wants the Israelis to keep up the pressure on Hizbollah. The theory is that Israel is now as much a proxy of the U.S. as Hizbollah is a proxy of Iran, and the exchanges of missiles, rockets and bombs -- and lately small arms fire just inside the Lebanese border -- is the new showdown between the West and radical Islam, at least in its Shiite form. Rice will spend the day here tomorrow and then head for Rome, where she is convening European and Arab foreign ministers to discuss ways to end the crisis. While she can dictate to Israel, that’s really about all she can dictate to. Indeed, more than anything, she’s calling the meeting in Rome because she needs help -- and a lot of it -- from the Europeans and those Arab countries ready to help the West, whatever their reasons.

The outlines of an agreement are pretty clear, it’s the order in which things happen that has to be worked out: a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange (Israel holds a few dozen non-Palestinian prisoners, including Lebanese, some other Arab nationalities, and Europeans), a handover of the Shaba farms to Lebanon (even though it is actually Syrian), a Lebanese Army deployment into south Lebanon with help from a multinational force ‘robust’ enough (to use a Rice term) to confront Hizbollah if necessary, and along the Lebanese-Syrian border, to prevent rearmament of Hizbollah. Theoretically, says Fouad Siniora, the pro-western prime minister of Lebanon, it could even lead to a peace agreement with Israel.

Can it be all done? Perhaps. It requires prying Syria out of Iran’s grasp, a task that will fall to the Saudi Arabians, who are behind the overall plan and are even rumored to be indirectly in discussions with the Israelis, via their ambassador in London and some American Jews. The Saudis used to finance Syria, but that was in the days when Hafez controlled Hizbollah and not the other way around, as it has been since he died and his son, Bashar, has fallen under the spell of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s leader. Iran has been the main financier of Damascus since then.

Syria meanwhile is rattling its own rusty swords, warning it will enter the war if Israel’s ground incursions into southern Lebanon get too close to the Syrian border. On the other hand, Bush -- and Rice -- keep pointing out that Syria is to blame for Hizbollah’s arms and free reign in Lebanon, making some wonder if the U.S. is trying to foment an Israeli-Syrian war, which Israel would no doubt win quite easily (more easily than it can defeat the guerrillas of Hizbollah), but which could led to chaos or worse, a radical Islamic regime, in Damascus. Assad is believed to be potentially malleable, but Rice refuses to speak with him directly -- after all, Syria is part of the axis of evil -- and therein lies the problem. The U.S. is not speaking directly with several key players, not only in the current hostilities, but throughout the region: Tehran, Damascus, Hizbollah, and Hamas. That’s why she needs the Europeans, particularly the Germans and French, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the emirates.

They’re all involved, by the way, in other diplomatic efforts underway, to break the deadlock on the Palestinian front, which is no less troublesome to Israel. In a way, the entire crisis in the north broke out because of the crisis in Gaza, where a cell of militants comprised of Hamas militiamen who refuse to obey the Hamas government, Popular Resistance Committee members who were only obedient to a leader Israel killed, and a hitherto unknown group known calling itself the Islamic Army, are holding Corporal Gilad Shalit, whom they grabbed two weeks before the Hizbollah captured another two IDF soldiers on the Lebanese border.

There is much speculation and rumor mongering. Israeli troops, who rolled in and out of Gaza applying pressure -- in vain -- for Shalit’s release and an end to Palestinian rocket fire into Israel, have been out of Gaza for more than 48 hours and there are rumors that Hamas is ready for a ceasefire deal that would include prisoner releases. Rice will be asking about the Gaza situation, but as in the case of Lebanon, she is in no hurry to see anything done yet, if it means that Hamas or Hizbollah can claim any kind of achievement. Indeed, Washington is being more Catholic than the pope, meaning Israel, on what Israel should be doing. In any case, she’ll listen to the Israelis over the coming 24 hours, then go to Rome to listen to the Europeans and Arabs and then she’s off to Kuala Lumpur. The earliest she’ll be back is next week. That gives the Israeli army’s generals, who keep saying they need more time, another week. They’re using it to ‘clean’ the immediate border region and hint of the need to invade all the way to the Litani River. But Israel has been to the Litani River and back more times than it wants to recall. Olmert and Peretz are meanwhile saying no to any repeat of that folly. But who knows if Bush and Rice have other plans for them.

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