LONG LIVE FREE LEBANON!

The images of Lebanese civilians breaking open the cells of the infamous prison of El Khiyyam, where the Israeli occupants and their Lebanese henchmen kept captive and tortured hundred of Lebanese patriots, the emotion and the joy of the prisoners and their relatives, the triumph of freedom over bondage, of right over brute force, and the end of a twenty-two year chapter of cruelty and suffering under foreign occupation - all these are exalting, genuinely beautiful and inspiring to any human being with a a normal preference for beauty over ugliness, for liberty over slavery, and for life over death. The symbolic power of images telling a story of liberation is always mighty, under all latitudes, and the events of last week in South Lebanon are no exception. Indeed, they are a striking and enlightening illustration thereof. But for Palestinians, these images do not only tell a story of untamed resistance triumphing over tyranny and darkness. They do not only arouse irrepressible emotions, as they unfold in a piece of territory once soaked with the blood of Palestinian fighters, and a high place of Palestinian-Lebanese brotherhood-in-arms. They also convey particularly crucial and relevant political messages, which should be properly deciphered and accurately read, for the sake of all the peoples of our area.

What has happened ?

After 22 years of occupation, Israel has withdrawn from South Lebanon. Its occupation of that country had been an act of aggression from the onset, and throughout the years it was accompanied by war crimes, summary executions, mass destruction, invasion of other parts of the Lebanese territory, wholesale population displacement, systematic torture of resisters, and wide-scale acts of state-terrorism against Lebanese civilian infrastructures. It achieved none of its proclaimed "security" aims, encountered growing and increasingly successful armed resistance on the ground, and became so costly a burden that Israeli public opinion itself grew increasingly wary of it, and started demanding unilateral withdrawal.

What is happening now ?

Because of the lack of negotiated agreement between the governments of Israel and Lebanon, and because of the hurried and anticipated unfolding of the Israeli withdrawal, the vacuum left by the departing occupation forces and the collapse and decomposition of its agent militias was immediately filled by the Lebanese resistance forces, mostly by Hizbollah, the dominant fraction over the resistance movement and the main political force in the South, as well as by forces of the Amal movement. In spite of all alarmist claims, however, these forces have been able to ensure a minimum level of law and order in the newly liberated territory, pending the return of the legal institutions of the Lebanese state, itself dependent upon the UN assessment and assertion that full withdrawal, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426, has indeed been completed. Self-restraint and discipline, however, have been the dominant features of the last days. There has been no witch-hunt and no revenge campaigns, no inter-community tension, strife or violence. The only minor incidents have taken place along the border itself, where two populations long separated by a curtain of fire and a river of blood are now literally face-to-face in an unexpected and improbable physical proximity. These incidents underline the urgent need for the deployment of international forces, and they are the ransom of the lack of Israeli-Lebanese diplomatic agreement.

For Palestinians, the lessons of Lebanon are multiple. First of all, the victory of our Lebanese brothers has an immediate effect of boosting the morale of a frustrated people. As the streets spontaneously formulates it, Hizbollah has restored a sense of dignity, of pride, that our area seemed to have forgotten. Second, and most of all, the myth of Israeli invincibility has been shattered and Israeli military arrogance has suffered a severe blow, the durability of which it is still too early to evaluate. Third, the proof has been made that when it feels it must, Israel can withdraw to international borders, cooperate with the UN, implement its resolutions and even take calculated security risks.

The lessons, however, go together with the temptation to ignore the concrete circumstances. It is the Syrian Foreign minister, Farouk El Shara’, who was speaking in Lisbon, a few days ago, of the “ messages sent to Syria and to the Palestinians ” by the Lebanese resistance. Not all of these, let us say it clearly, are positive messages, and some of them could easily be turned into counter-lessons. For the model of resistance which has so brilliantly succeeded in Lebanon cannot be mechanically applied to the Palestinian situation.

The differences between the Lebanese and the Palestinian situations are obvious. But let us list the most obvious, briefly.

First of all, Lebanon is an independent sovereign state and a full member of the United Nations. Its borders have been internationally recognized for three quarters of a century and the Israeli occupation of part of its territory has been condemned by innumerable international resolutions, and annulled by a special Security Council Resolution, which precisely demands immediate and unconditional Israeli withdrawal to the international border. The international community has never wavered in its recognition of the legitimate character of Lebanese armed resistance to Israeli military occupation, and the "understandings" which founded the activity of the international committee to monitor the situation in Lebanon since the massive Israeli aggression of 1996 had formally consecrated the legitimate role of the Lebanese resistance in its operations against occupation forces. Both the Lebanese government and the government of Syria, bearer of an Arab "Mandate" over Lebanon, endorsed and supported the activities of the Lebanese resistance. Moreover, the Resistance had moved into a vacuum of state authority already created by an earlier Israeli invasion, in 1982, and partial withdrawal, in 1984.

On the other hand, the State of Palestine is still striving to become a full-fledged member of the commonwealth of independent nations. Proclaimed in Exile twelve years ago, recognized by the powerless majority of UN member-states, but not by the almighty few who enjoy a veto right on world affairs, the State of Palestine - which existed in Law since it was placed under British Mandate at the outcome of World War I - is still unborn, still in process, still a program. Since the beginning of the century, and while Lebanon was becoming an independent republic, Palestine was confronted with the multi-faceted onslaught of Zionist settlement colonisation, and underwent the mass expulsion of 1948, the loss of three quarters of the country, and the 1967 occupation of the rest. After decades of armed struggle to resist annihilation, after years of Intifada to challenge the status quo of occupation and place Palestinian national demands on the agenda of the international community, the PLO has succeeded, by combining popular struggle and diplomatic efforts, to force the world, and Israel, to recognize the existence of the Palestinian people. This is the basic achievement of Oslo. But the state and its territory, its lands and its sovereignty, its borders and its capital, as well as its legitimate right to self-defense, are still far ahead of us, and cannot, unfortunately, be taken for granted. That's for the legal aspect.

There is of course, and going with it, a physical aspect: the settler state erected in stead and place of historical Palestine not only occupies most of it and encircles it totally, sealing it hermetically from any conceivable Arab hinterland. Its population is twofold that of the fraction of the Palestinian people left on the territory, and hundreds of thousands of "armed civilians" (the settlers) are scattered throughout the territory according to a strategic plan of spatial control, which makes the whole distinction between "civilians" and armedforces, and therefore between terrorism and armed resistance, extremely difficult to operate. On the other hand, economic life in the Palestinian territories, in spite of massive international aid, is still almost totally dependent upon the whims of the occupant regarding free circulation of goods and persons.

This entails a series of political aspects, both in terms of international public opinion, and particularly in Europe and in the US, and in terms of the dynamics of conflict and conflict resolution with Israeli society itself. For any struggle, however heroic, can only succeed if conditions permit so. The emotional calls, from outside or from inside Palestine, urging Palestinians (and/or Syria) to abandon the lure of negotiations and follow the path of Hizbollah can be understood: for frustration is legitimate in the face of the crisis of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian negotiations. But one should take care not to indulge in gratuitous comparisons, and especially not to transform nostalgia into a substitute political program.

For it is not in anyway to underrate the heroic struggle of the people of Lebanon, under the leadership of Hizbollah, to take into account the fact that the government of Israel, which had never formulated any territorial claims to Lebanese land, was also interested in a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in order to deprive Syria of what it saw as a crucial card in its own negotiations with Israel. But it is undeniable that it is the military-human cost of occupation exacted by the Lebanese resistance which made Israeli public opinion ready to absorb this change of policy after more than two decades of indoctrination.

For the Arab world in general, Hizbollah's military victory is also a political achievement. Because it was made possible by its concrete practice in its relation to Lebanese society, but also because an openly "Islamic" political force has gained an undisputed national and international legitimacy, and that will undoubtedly weigh in the much needed re-definition of democracy and democratic life in our area.

For the Israelis, finally, the end of their occupation of Lebanon eliminates one of the dimensions of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Commentators have wondered about this paradox: in spite of the anxiety of northern Israeli residents, most Israelis (72%, according to Israeli press polls) are satisfied with their Prime minister’s decision. This is the first time that the perception of an event on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide does not amount to a zero sum game, but to some new kind of positive balance where interests converge. In this sense, the struggle of Hizbollah has also been a factor which reinforces the drive of this area towards peace.

But Israelis must, above all, understand the meaning of the Lebanese precedent: withdrawal, with no condition, and even no agreement, is always better than occupation, and it can be done practically overnight. It has now been demonstrated that Israel could also, when necessary, take some calculated security risks. It has demonstrated that UN Resolutions were a sound basis, and efficients instruments, and that UN forces could provide both the legal and the practical answer. Finally, it has shown that the international border was the safest of borders, because it is mutually accepted.

For the international community in general, and for Europeans in particular, who are watching with understandable concern that which takes place at their very door, the teachings of the recent events in South Lebanon should also be clearly deciphered. And one of the universal lessons here eloquently exemplified, but too often discarded by the experts, is that the peoples' will is a parameter one cannot exclude from any diplomatic equation.

What remains, therefore, once all this is said, is the utmost importance of the will of the people to confront adversity and their determination to fight. The events of the last weeks in Palestine, the Naqba demonstrations, the prisoners' hunger strike and the mobilization of the street to support their demands are only a few examples of the fact that this element is not absent from our situation. What remains is the need to elaborate a clear and sustainable strategy, adapted to the means available and likely to make the political process move forward, and not stall or regress.

29.5.2000

The Editor