The last time I was in Israel’s former southern Lebanon security zone I was being driven around by a nervous Israeli army press officer called Alex in his beat-up old Mercedes. We were barreling down some road near Merj ‘Uyun when an armored personnel carrier belonging to the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army came barreling along the other way. The Lebanese militiamen in the A.P.C. weren’t very good drivers and their vehicle swerved and scraped our Mercedes. We were both going so fast, and the A.P.C. was so heavy, that it knocked the driver’s door right off our car. It just went flying off the hinges. And that was my last image of the security zone – being driven around by an Israeli officer in a beat-up Mercedes with no door.
The Israeli security zone in Lebanon was that kind of a place – slightly makeshift, slightly madcap, part killing field, part theater of the absurd, a place where everything goes and everything went. Anyone who thought the Israeli withdrawal there was going to be neat and clean has simply never been to southern Lebanon. But don’t get caught up in the momentary messiness. That’s not the story. The story is that this Israeli withdrawal is of huge geopolitical significance for the Middle East.
In its own weird way, southern Lebanon has been the keystone of recent Middle East politics. It held together a whole set of relationships and made possible the avoidance of a whole set of big questions. And guess what? Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s gutsy and strategic decision to withdraw Israeli forces unilaterally from the security zone has just removed this keystone, and now everyone in the region will have to adjust.
For the past 20 years the security zone has been the off-Broadway of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was the place where Israel and Syria could fight a proxy war, and let off steam, by killing Lebanese instead of each other. It was a place where the Syrians could keep the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters busy so they wouldn’t shoot at the Syrians in Lebanon. It was the one border where Iran, working through Lebanese guerrillas, could draw Israeli blood. And it was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that allowed all the Arab governments to tolerate Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. If southern Lebanon hadn’t existed, the Arabs and Israelis would have had to rent Cyprus for the same purposes. But now watch what happens with the Israelis gone: Syria, without being able to bleed Israel through southern Lebanon, now has much less leverage. It either has to go to war with Israel directly, and risk everything, or move decisively on peace by accepting Israel’s basic terms for a Golan Heights deal. Without Israel in Lebanon, Syria not only will have a much harder time justifying and explaining its continued occupation, but the other Arab states will also have a much harder time explaining why they could not tolerate Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait but can tolerate Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, has to decide what to do with its victory. It just evicted Israel from Lebanon and has earned enormous prestige from that. Hezbollah has two choices: Push on to Jerusalem and get totally chewed apart by Israel or turn to Beirut and use this military victory to leverage a bigger slice of power in governing Lebanon. My bet: Hezbollah eventually turns toward Beirut.
At the same time, Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran, must decide whether to push Hezbollah into war against Israel proper, in which case Iran will be denounced by France, Lebanon’s patron saint, as well as the U.N. and the whole world community. Or Iran could focus on strengthening Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon, which will put it in competition with Syria.
Finally, if the border between Israel and Lebanon stabilizes, Barak may conclude that unilateral withdrawal might be the best way to deal with the West Bank as well – just draw the line that Israel wants, say goodbye and forget trying to reach a deal with the Palestinians. Remember: Now that Hezbollah has evicted the Israelis from southern Lebanon by force, instead of by negotiation, this will make it much harder for Yassir Arafat to give up any territory to Israel or make any compromises. He will look like a wimp in Arab eyes.
And you thought southern Lebanon was just some insignificant little backwater.
