Today's Situation

To be continued Monday, August 14, 2006

The war, it seems, is over -- or at least is in recess. Much depends on the behavior of all sides -- Israel, Hizbollah, Lebanon's army, the UN forces known as UNIFIL, Syria and even Iran. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 does not provide answers to every question. Everyone is prognosticating according to their political views, the depth of their cynicism or hope, pessimism or optimism. But for now, it seems that it is in everyone's interest to keep the quiet.

The pessimists, of course, say that this is only a lull in the war, which will resume in another year or two or less, and that next time, Israel will be prepared, and not appear so clumsy and unwieldy. Of course, generals tend to prepare for the last war, and nobody knows what the future holds for Hizbollah. For every pessimist who predicts that Syria and Iran will continue funneling arms and cash to it, and that it will never disarm, there is an optimist who says that Hizbollah will discover that the war didn't make Israel popular, but it also did much less for Hizbollah in Lebanese public opinion than has been assumed. As people return to their homes, they'll want to know what the war was for and why Hizbollah started it. Arab honor, as the pro-Hizbollah, pro-Syrian spokesmen of Lebanon, like President Emile Lahoud, say, won't be enough.

This afternoon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who decided on full-scale war within hours of the capture of two Israeli soldiers, will speak to the Knesset to explain his government's decision to accept UNSCR 1701. He'll be followed by opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, whose Likud faction has been sniping at Olmert since the Israelis announced they were accepting the UN's ceasefire. Netanyahu has not appeared much in the Israeli press since the war began -- he was speaking to foreign TV stations, mostly, pressing Israel's case. Netanyahu, like the Bush administration, regarded the war as part of the broader war on terror, meaning Iran, Syria, Hizbollah and Hamas. Like most Zionist Revisionists, he does not believe the Arabs will ever make peace with Israel until Israel beats the idea out of the Arab mind that Israel can be defeated. Netanyahu's Likud faction's 12 seats is less than a quarter of the opposition. And despite all the talk about how commissions of inquiry about how the war was managed will lead to earthquakes in Israeli politics, it is much too soon to say anything about where the political arena will be heading, at least not until it becomes evident if the Lebanese Army really does move into south Lebanon and wields its sovereign authority over the Hizbollah, and everyone finds out if the ceasefire holds.

The IDF now awaits a UNIFIL supposedly beefed up with more and better trained troops who are supposed to take over the areas the IDF is holding. While some of its troops have taken ridges and hills as far north as 20 kilometers from the Blue Line border between Israel and Lebanon, most of the military effort was on removing the Hizbollah's presence directly on the border, in a narrow 1-2 kilometer strip where kilometers of tunnels and bunkers for storing munitions were buried deep underground. The IDF, in any case, is eager for an early withdrawal. The last thing it wants is to be in south Lebanon for the winter.

And meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are supposed to meet this afternoon to discuss the formation of a national unity government, a total ceasefire of Qassams into Israel and the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. But they want to hear from Israel that Jerusalem will put an end to raids into Gaza that killed dozens of Palestinians over the last month, many of them civilians.

Maybe Olmert and his defense minister Amir Peretz have learned the limits of power during the last month. But neither of them have the kind of personality that admits a mistake or even that they changed their minds. Still, both are very aware that they are the most isolated politicians in Israel right now. Peretz seems to have lost all his allies in Labor, Olmert's Kadima party barely exists on paper. More than once, the phrase 'either they'll stand together or hang together' has been used in the last few weeks to describe them. And both were determined to have very different historical records when they finished their terms, than being the civilian commanders of a war that Israel did not win decisively. Olmert wanted to make Israel a place where it is 'fun' to live. Peretz wanted to bring civic social welfare values to the army and had hopes of a political dialogue with the Palestinians. They wanted a dramatic war that ended the Hizbollah rocket threat and undermined Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon. They got a 12-rounder that ended with both sides, as one columnist wrote today, 'wobbling, fatigued and tired.' Many now predict a rematch. But Olmert and Peretz could yet find that the way to survive the hangman is to surprise everyone with an entirely new approach: engagement, instead of disengagement, negotiations instead of war.

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