Status Quo Ante

August 14, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115550845644234541.html

Ever since war broke out last month on the Israeli-Lebanese frontier, the Bush administration has said it wouldn't tolerate a return to the status quo ante, in which Hezbollah behaved as a power unto itself within the Lebanese state. Yet after reading the text of the U.N. Security Council's cease-fire resolution adopted unanimously on Friday, we'd say the status quo ante is nearly what we've got.
And perhaps worse than that, because Hezbollah has now shown it can battle Israel to a military draw. The new resolution does call for disarming Hezbollah, just as resolution 1559 previously did, but without saying who will do it. Presumably that task is intended for the Lebanese Army, which is supposed to occupy the parts of southern Lebanon from which Hezbollah launched its attacks on Israel. But Lebanon's army is a weak force, consciously undermined over the years of Syrian occupation, and is largely Shiite. There's reason to doubt it will be able to disarm Hezbollah's still-powerful Shiite military.
The resolution also calls for beefing up Unifil, the existing U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon that also couldn't disarm Hezbollah. The addition of French troops to Unifil will help, but the resolution fell short of invoking the Chapter VII powers that U.S. officials had previously said were necessary to ensure a strong enough U.N. presence.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that the resolution has Chapter VII powers in all but name, but we'll see what happens the first time Hezbollah again challenges Unifil authority. The likelihood is that Unifil and the Lebanese army will co-exist with Hezbollah, which will slowly re-arm to intimidate Lebanon's government and strike Israel or the U.S. again at the time of its choosing.
All the more so because Hezbollah's main suppliers, Syria and Iran, have suffered no negative consequences from their role over the last month. If anything, their regional clout has been enhanced, with growing calls in the U.S. and Europe for appeasing both countries with assorted carrots. Yes, the new resolution calls for an arms embargo against Hezbollah, but Iran and Syria have evaded such strictures before. And both countries will now attempt to extract more diplomatic concessions from the U.S. and Europe as a price of not re-arming Hezbollah.
Syrians are under U.N. investigation for their suspected involvement in last year's murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Iran's nuclear activities put it in material breach of another Security Council resolution. Syria wants the Hariri investigation dropped or at least its findings downplayed, and Iran may feel better positioned to flout the U.N.'s August 31 deadline to suspend uranium enrichment.
Perhaps it is true that the Bush administration had little choice but to accede to a cease-fire resolution. President Bush took some political risks for resisting an immediate cease-fire, not least in Iraq where the fighting in Lebanon was helping radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stir up anti-U.S. sentiment.
Last weekend's much better U.S.-French draft resolution was also resisted by the Sunni dictators of the Arab League fearful of a political backlash at home after their early criticism of Hezbollah. As usual, the likes of Egypt and Jordan chose to direct this public anger toward the U.S. and Israel. No doubt some of them are intimidated by Iran and the growing power of Hezbollah. The French also flipped their position -- which serves us right for saying something nice about them last week.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is also responsible for indecisive war leadership. Mr. Bush gave him time and international political cover to act militarily, yet Mr. Olmert made the mistake of insisting on war without prosecuting it with sufficient speed and force. To paraphrase Napoleon, if you decide to disarm Hezbollah, then disarm Hezbollah.
After his Cabinet agreed to the cease-fire, Mr. Olmert said yesterday that Hezbollah won't continue to exist as a state and that the Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the agreement. For him to say anything else would be an admission of defeat after a bloody month. But even many Israelis in his own party are saying that, after firing more than 3,000 rockets into Israel, nearly 800 into residential areas, Hezbollah is emerging from this conflict stronger than either Sadat or Nasser after their wars with Israel.
Perhaps, for a time, this cease-fire resolution will stop the violence, as Kofi Annan likes to exhort. But the price for letting a transnational terrorist group like Hezbollah claim victory is likely to be far more bloodshed in the future.