The Lebanon pullout

” The unilateral pullout from Lebanon, a year ago last Thursday, was in the nature of a grand experiment: What would happen if “Israel” simply acceded fully to Arab and international demands, without asking anything in return? Would “Israel”, as the Left hoped, thereby eliminate the cause of the conflict with Lebanon, paving the way, if not for peace, then at least for non-belligerency? Or would the pullback show, as the Right claimed, that the territorial dispute was merely a pretext for the conflict, and that territorial concessions could not solve it?

One year is too short a time in which to assess the significance of any historical event. Nevertheless, the trends that have emerged in the first year of this experiment are highly disturbing.

By far the most serious consequence of the Lebanon pullout was the blow to “Israel’s” deterrence. The withdrawal convinced much of the Arab world, and particularly the Palestinians, that violence does pay: Despite the IDF's* vast technological and numerical superiority, Hizbullah was able to cause a majority of “Israelis” to want to leave Lebanon merely by inflicting a relatively small number of casualties over a period of several years. The immediate result of this lesson was the bloody war of attrition launched by the Palestinians last September - which most Palestinian militia leaders say openly was inspired by Hizbullah's success. In eight months, this war has already caused roughly the same number of “Israeli” casualties as about four years in Lebanon. Worse, most of the casualties have been civilians rather than soldiers, and normal life has been disrupted all over the country rather than only along the northern border.

But even if we look only at the situation in the North, the results are far from encouraging. To start with, the theory that the pullout would put a stop to Hizbullah attacks has proven nonsense. True, the organization refrained from such attacks for all of four months. But since October, it has kidnapped four “Israelis” and killed three others - a damage level not far below the pre-withdrawal average for that period of time. Furthermore, it has redeployed its forces within meters of “Israel’s” northern border - meaning that should it choose at any point to resume the Katyusha attacks it has suspended for the past year, it is in a position to do far greater damage to “Israel’s” civilian population than it ever was before.

The idea that the pullback would end “Israel’s” dispute with the Lebanese government has also proven false.

Despite official UN certification that it has withdrawn from the last centimeter of Lebanese territory, Beirut still insists that “Israel” has not completed the pullback. It justifies this insistence through the ingenious method of suddenly asserting that a whole new region, to which it had never before laid claim, is in fact "occupied Lebanese territory." Thus far from ending the conflict, the withdrawal has actually spurred Lebanon to make new territorial demands.

The Lebanese government has also made a mockery of the idea of non-belligerency. The one request “Israel” made in exchange for the pullout, which the entire international community backed as reasonable, was that Lebanon then deploy its army in the south to control Hizbullah. But Beirut has refused. Instead, it has given Hizbullah free rein to continue “terrorist” actions along the border.

Finally, there was the hope that “Israel” would at least gain international support through the withdrawal. This, too, has proven to be largely a delusion. For instance, even though the international community agreed that the Lebanese army should be required to deploy in the south in exchange for the pullback, it has done nothing to back up this demand. Lebanon has suffered no diplomatic repercussions at all on account of its refusal.

Worse, however, is the speed with which Lebanon's new territorial claims have been given international legitimacy, primarily by the media. For the first few weeks after the pullback, international media reports did acknowledge that “Israel” had withdrawn to the last inch, as certified by the UN. Now, however, virtually every report about IDF-Hizbullah skirmishing in the area of Har Dov (Shaba Farms) simply refers to the area as "disputed territory." Not territory to which Lebanon has no conceivable claim, according to the UN and all known maps of the international border. Just "disputed territory." And disputed territory, of course, is legitimate grounds for military action - the very justification that “Israel’s” withdrawal was supposed to have removed.

An assessment of the Lebanon pullout is far from an academic exercise, because the “Israeli” Left is now advocating the same panacea of unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank and Gaza. The majority of “Israelis” should therefore study the lessons of this failed experiment carefully. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat it.

Jerusalem Post, 29-5-2001.