Israel's Lebanon Lesson
T
Philadelphia
.
he recent rocket attacks
coming out of Lebanon
and directed against Israeli
troops, followed by a tough
Israeli response, serves as a poignant
reminder that the Israel's withdrawal
from Lebanon a year ago this week
did not exactly live up to its expecta-
tions.
It may be useful to recall jnst how
high those expectations were. 13y a
nearly 4-1 margin, Israelis endorsed
the retreat from Lebanon as an excel-
lent strategic move.
On the left, Internal Security Min-
ister Shlomo Ben-Ami thought that
Syria's president was "very stressed by
Israel's decision to withdraw from
Lebanon." On the right, Foreign Min-
ister David Levy declared that th1/4..
pullout would weaken Syria's position.
Others speculated further. Dan Mar-
galit of the Haaretz newspaper forecast
that it would "spur Syria to come back
to the negotiating table." Novelist Amos
Oz boldly predicted about Lebanon's
most aggressively anti-Israel organiza-
tion: "The minute we leave South
Lebanon we will have to erase the word
Hezbollah from our vocabulary' ,
A year later, how do things look?
The idea that an Israeli retreat
would scare Damascus into restart-
ing negotiations turns out to be as
silly as it sounds. Hafez al-Assad
went to his grave without returning
to the bargaining table and his son
Bashar has so far shown no willing-
ness to talk.
The expectation that Israel would
enjoy a peaceable northern border
proved similarly misguided. Hezbol-
lah concocted a new claim to a piece
of Israeli-held land (the Shebaa
Farms) to justify continued hostili-
ties. No longer restrained by Israel's
security zone in Lebanon, it threat-
ens to use Katyusha rockets against
Israel proper, prompting an alert as
far away as Israel's third-largest city,
Haifa.
Hezbollah has already attacked
Israel seven times, attempted many
infiltrations, abducted three Israel sol-
diers and killed two others. In
response, Israel's government has
deployed helicopter gunships and
attacked a Syrian radar site, killing
three Syrian soldiers.
In brief, "Hezbollah" has hardly
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle
East Forum. His e-mail address is
pipes@MEForum.org
been erased from
the Israeli vocab-
ulary.
Trickle-Down
But the greatest
consequence of
the Israeli retreat
was felt among
the Palestinians.
DANIEL PIPES That impact is
Special
partly practical,
Commentary
with Hezbollah
providing
instruction and
arms to the Palestinian Authority
(PA). For example, Hezbollah reached
an agreement with the PA "to train
fighters and provide weapons against
tanks and aircraft" reports the Middle
East Newsline.
Palestinians took up Hezbollah's
distinctive tactics and tools — suicide
bombings on the one hand, roadside
bombs detonated by mobile phones
on the other. They even adopted the
Hezbollah technique of filming them-
selves carrying out attacks on Israelis,
then making the film available to the
Arab and Muslim media.
The impact is also psychological.
Palestinians watched Hezbollah
impose every last one of its demands
on Israel, without having to sit around
a table with Israeli diplomats; this
served as an object lesson. Palestinians
concluded that if they used enough
violence, they too could get all they
wanted from Israel, without having to
compromise.
This "Lebanon-ization" of the
Palestinians has had major conse-
quences.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
draws a connection between the
Israeli retreat from Lebanon and
"what happened later on" with the
Palestinians. The head of Israel's for-
mer Lebanese allied force puts it
more strongly; Israel's every conces-
sion to Hezbollah, he says, has been
- "very costly" for it in dealing with
the Palestinians.
Specifically, Hezbollah's success first
inspired the Palestinians to turn down
even the amazingly generous terms
that Prime Minister Ehud Barak sub-
sequently offered them, confident that
they could do better on the battlefield.
It prompted the Palestinians to aban-
don the bargaining table and revert to
violence against Israel. It helps
account for the escalation in that vio-
lence, which started with rocks and
now includes long-distance mortar
shellings.
A Hollow Hope
The great majority of Israelis a year
ago lived in the sweet delusion that
unilateral concessions to neighbors
would eventually win acceptance and
quiet. After eight months of Palestin-
ian violence, violence partly attribut-
able to their withdrawal under fire
from Lebanon, the hollowness of this
hope is becoming increasingly appar-
ent.
As they shudder back to reality,
Israelis can console themselves with
the knowledge that by abandoning
their Lebanon delusion, however
painful that process is, they are taking
the necessary first step toward dealing
with today's crisis. The second step
will be to understand that acceptance
by neighbors will result not from
Israel's making unilateral concessions
but from its being respected and
feared. ❑
What Israel Means To M
• • •
Representative Gilda Z. Jacobs
Democratic Floor Leader
My first real awareness of Israel was when the
movie "Exodus" was released. What I learned in
Sunday school and what I had heard over the din-
ner table clicked. Israel was the Jewish homeland,
a safe refuge for displaced Jews. In college, being
Jewish was important to me. I knew that I wanted
to build a Jewish home and have a family connect-
ed to Jewish culture. I didn't visit Israel though until
my oldest daughter became bat mitzvah age. Then
we all went and my understanding of Israel's impor-
tance expanded. I felt connected to a larger con-
cept - "Peoplehood." My family and I saw the Bible
come to life and our Jewish past became a living
history. My most recent trip during a "Partnership
2000 Women's" trip - helped reinforce the personal
connection for me. At that time, I met women just
like me. I felt right at home.
AWN
AI WWI
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2001
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