Today's Situation

Between war and diplomacy Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The assessments before the meeting fell into three categories: the hawks among the diplomatic and military correspondents and columnists assumed that the cabinet would approve the plan. The less strident and jingoistic expressed hope that Prime Minister Olmert, who has resisted calls for massive IDF ground operations an further north than the immediate border area, would prove courageous enough to turn down the army’s recommendation. And the pessimists, while hoping for a dramatic diplomatic breakthrough that would render the ground operation unnecessary, reckon that the pace of diplomacy is simply too slow to prevent the tanks and infantry from racing to the Litani River -- or beyond -- in a repeat of the 1978 Litani Operation (which quieted Fatehland for less than six months) or the initial stages of the 1982 Lebanon War, which was also supposed to be only about a 40-kilometer push of Fateh out of south Lebanon but turned into a grand scheme to redraw the political map of Lebanon -- and an 18-year occupation of south Lebanon.

Olmert is worried about two aspects of the army’s plan: There’s the casualty forecast on the Israeli side -- some 300-400 soldiers, and no way to estimate how man civilians as Hizbollah responds with all its remaining strength. The other major concern is whether the operation might not draw an increasingly (and isolated) Syria into the fighting. The IDF would probably find it easier to fight the Syrian army head on, than to fight Hizbollah’s guerillas -- but Syria’s missiles are much larger with much greater range than Hizbollah’s and there is no guarantee that faced with a military defeat, the Syrian regime might not press the button for a missile barrage into the center of the country.

The diplomatic effort is underway in New York, at the UN, with diplomats here in the region, and in Europe, doing what they can to press for a ceasefire that satisfies both Lebanese and Israeli needs. The Israeli press today seems to have nothing but scorn for the Lebanese position, but Olmert and President Bush have indicated that Lebanese Prime Minister Fu’ad Siniora’s proposal to move 15,000 Lebanese troops into south Lebanon where Israel is now occupying a narrow strip just north of its border with Lebanon, is a step forward.

But Olmert has climbed a very tall tree, and his Amir Peretz’s popularity nowadays is entirely hinged on their promises that the suffering of the one million Israelis who live from Haifa north will have been worth it, once the war is over. While Lebanon imposing its sovereignty on south Lebanon might have enormous significance for strategic reasons, it is hardly the image of victory that the tabloid press insists is necessary before the war can be ended. And there is no guarantee Hizbollah would be disarmed by the Lebanese Army or any international force that beefs it up.

Still, even if the war continues for another two weeks, the current guesstimate of the amount of time the IDF would need to take a northern line and then work back to Israel’s border, catching Hizbollah fighters and finding their arms depots, the prevailing view is the war is closer to the end than the beginning. And the talk about what happens on the day after the war has begun. It is divided into three groups.

Most are focused on finding officials, whether military or political, to blame for the war’s management or mismanagement. Some argue that this is only a first skirmish in the much longer ‘war against terrorism’ and that Israel, which long argued to the West that such a war was coming, has finally assumed its proper place as one of the vanguards of that war. And a few have begun talking about leveraging the war into a broad move to peace negotiations, arguing that the risks of the compromises at stake in peace agreements with the Palestinians and Syrians are much less dangerous than the risks of ‘the next missile war,’ when warheads, instead of explosives, could contain chemicals or biological agents.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation