Israel and the Arab Turmoil by Itamar Rabinovich

Author:Itamar Rabinovich [Rabinovich, Itamar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780817917357
Google: A1PboAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 21912486
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Published: 2014-01-15T10:23:20+00:00

REPERCUSSIONS FOR LEBANON

In the 1950s and 1960s the conventional wisdom in Israel was that “Lebanon will be the second Arab state to make peace with Israel.” Underlying this cliché was the assumption that as a state dominated by Christian Maronite elements, Lebanon implicitly saw itself as allied with Israel, another non-Arab Muslim state in the Middle East confronting similar challenges by Muslim and Arab nationalist forces. Indeed, negotiations were conducted and some understandings were reached between the leadership of prestate Israel and religious and secular leaders of the Maronite community. Israeli policymakers and analysts believed that Lebanon’s leadership would be happy to establish a formal peaceful relationship with Israel, but they also saw that a state led by a minority group did not have the power and legitimacy required to be the first to break the Arab taboo and would therefore be able to do so only in the wake of a more powerful mainstream Arab state like Egypt, Syria, or Iraq.

With the passage of years, Lebanon was transformed by demographic and political changes and the Lebanese-Israeli border became another active arena of Arab-Israel hostilities. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an alliance was created between Israel, led at the time by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, and a segment of the Maronite community and the Phalange Party led by Bashir Gemayel. This alliance culminated in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and Gemayel’s election, with Israel’s help, as Lebanon’s president. This ill-conceived adventure ended in a disaster affecting all those involved and left a “Lebanese trauma” in Israel. Less than three weeks after his election, Gemayel was killed by a massive bomb in the headquarters of his party. His older brother Amin was chosen as his successor. But he was a different kind of political man, and he was to take Lebanon into the orbit of Syria. Israel and Lebanon signed a peace treaty of sorts in 1983, but it was not a legitimate, durable agreement and had no real value. Lebanon, thus, was not the second Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, nor is it likely to be the third. Israel retained a security zone in south Lebanon that became a battlefield between itself and Hezbollah, the party cum militia cum terrorist organization built in Lebanon by the Ayatollah’s regime in Tehran. Iran and Syria shared turf in Lebanon while preserving the formal structure of a Lebanese state headed by a Maronite Christian.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 to the international boundary and watched nervously as Iran built an arsenal of more than 20,000 rockets and missiles held by Hezbollah as a deterrent against an Israeli attack on either Iran or Syria. Despite the trauma of 1982 and the subsequent years, Israel under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, provoked by Hezbollah, launched a second Lebanese war in 2006 which ended with mixed results. It was the classic case of the “asymmetrical wars” that Israel now has to wage in the “new Middle East.” Israel’s

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