Lebanese war; post-war; role of UNIFIL

Here’s the short version of the 33-day war that wracked Lebanon and some of northern Israel this summer.
On the morning of July 12, Hizbullah undertook two cross-border actions against Israel. One of them (the diversion) was to rocket a couple of border areas (no casualties recorded.) The other– the “real thing”– was to ambush a two-jeep patrol. In the ambush they killed three IDF soldiers, wounded two, and captured two others, taking them to captivity somewhere in Lebanon.
The diversion had been so successful– and the IDF’s operating procedures so sloppy– that it was half an hour before any one in the IDF Northern Command even realised the jeep patrol had been attacked. At that point, the IDF sent a tank unit in “hot” (or by that time, decidedly “cool”) pursuit after the Hizbullahis into Lebanon. The tank unit went straight into a land-mine trap. One tank was completely blown up. It took the IDF nearly a further day (and one further life) to get the tank and the bodies of its four dead crew members out of there.
PM Olmert had never faced a national-security challenge like this before and may well have felt flustered and humiliated. He and his equally inexperienced defense minister Amir Peretz clearly felt they had a lot to prove… and they had chief of staff Dan Halutz, a former chief of the Air Force, whispering in their ears that he “had the solution” to all the government’s problems… By the end of that day, July 12, the Olmert government had decided to launch what was clearly signaled as a full-scale reprisal attack against all of Lebanon.
That CNN report there, from July 12, spells out that Olmert had stated that,

The raid was “not a terror attack, but an operation of a sovereign state without any reason or provocation… The Lebanese government, which Hezbollah is part of, is trying to undermine the stability of the region, and the Lebanese government will be responsible for the consequences.”

The head of the IDF’s northern command, Udi Adam, said,

“This affair is between Israel and the state of Lebanon… Where to attack? Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate — not just southern Lebanon, not just the line of Hezbollah posts.”

And Halutz said,

“If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years.”

So, the attack was quite evidently (and declaredly) not just against Hizbullah, though later the Israeli leaders tried to claim it had been. And that very night, the Israeli air force, navy, and long-range artillery units started attacking infrastructure targets throughout the whole of Lebanon.
* * *
What were they thinking?
As best as I can reconstruct it, Olmert’s very inexperienced leadership team was fighting at that point for one major goal: They sought to bomb Lebanon’s government and people into compliance with their request that the Lebanese authorities agree to disarm and hopefully also dismantle Hizbullah. And they would do this through “strategic counter-value bombing”, a strategy whose time, Halutz evidently felt, had finally come! Never mind that this time round, Israel didn’t even have any allies inside Lebanon in the way it had back in June 1982, when Ariel Sharon had launched his earlier war against the country. This time, Halutz evidently felt Israel didn’t even need any allies: they had total air superiority, plentiful supplies of extremely enormous and lethal American and Israeli munitions; and they could simply bomb the Lebanese people into submission.
(And never mind, either, 80 years’ worth of experience indicating that airpower on its own is only very, very rarely able to effect political change on the ground.)
Well, it didn’t work. Not only did the Saniora government not bow to Olmert’s demands– but Hizbullah’s rockets started coming into northern Israel in far greater numbers than they had done during that first, limited diversionary bombardment– and on a regular and seemingly unstoppable basis.
For Hizbullah, whose claims that they hadn’t expected the full-scale Israeli Blitzkrieg may or may not be true, the war had rapidly become one about something very important to them: their ability to “deter” a full-scale Israeli attack on Lebanon, which had been very badly eroded by Olmert’s decision to launch Halutz’s long-planned Blitzkrieg. Hizbullah’s people evidnetly felt they needed to restore the credibility of their deterrent.
But guess what? Once Hizbullah’s rockets started raining regularly on and around communities in northern Israel, the Olmert/Halutz leadership felt it needed majorly to restore the credibility of Israel’s military deterrent, too. (That feeling had anyway been percolating throughout rightwing circles in Israel ever since PM Barak’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and had become stronger after Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza last year…)
And so the fighting ground on, between these two parties each fighting determinedly to restore the credibility of its own “deterrent.” Also, Hizbullah was understandably anxious not to let the Saniora government fall into the grip of Israel’s political schemes.
So Hizbullah’s very expert political operatives– who included two members of Saniora’s government, a dozen MPs, and numerous other pols very experienced in the intricacies of Lebanon’s internal situation– went into action. In the Lebanese political field, the Israelis had almost no assets at all with which to counter them. I mean, what could they say: “Dear Fouad Saniora, we’re so sorry we’re bombing your country and killing your people but please enter into an alliance with us anyway?”
So Halutz kept promising the Israeli government that “within ten days”, or “within two weeks”, or whatever, his bombardment would bear fruit. And they had the Bush administration (and lapdog Blair) totally on their side, running serious interference for them by blocking any possibility of a ceasefire for almost a full month there, at the UN and elsewhere.
The IDF was given all the time (and emergency resupply of munitions from the US) that it needed. But Halutz’s Blitzkrieig still didn’t have the desired political effect. Finally, during the first week of August, the Israeli leaders started getting serious about supplementing the air attack with a ground invasion. But Gen. Adam apparently understood full well that his ground forces were in lousy shape. He stalled (I think) and there was evidently a massive set of debates in the Kirya (Israel’s mini-Pentagon) in those days. Israelis anyway– and quite understandably– have a lot of wariness about sending ground forces for any length of time into Lebanon. When the ground incursion came it was late– it started, indeed, even after the text of the ceasefire resolution had been agreed at the UN in New York on the evening of August 11. It was also just as disastrous as Gen. Adam had feared it would be.
On August 14, ceasefire day, Israeli ground troops started pouring back home from Lebanon, carrying with them the many casualties they had suffered during those last two days, and a massive sense of shame, frustration, bewilderment, and anger that continues to rock Israel to this day.
On that same day, starting at 8 in the morning, the hundreds of thousands of civilian supporters of Hizbullah who had been violently displaced from their homes in south Lebanon by the fighting started flocking back to their homes in any way they could get there. Here’s what the very experienced military analyst Pat Lang wrote on his blog that day:

A basic lesson of history is that one must win on the battlefield to dictate the peace. A proof of winning on the battlefield has always been possession of that battlefield when the shooting stops. Those who remain on the field are just about always believed to have been victorious. Those who leave the field are believed to be the defeated.

Well, yes and no… I did note with interest, however, the stress that Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah put in his most recent (Sept. 22) speech, on the evidently well-planned actions his adherents undertook on August 14. He told that adoring crowd of his supporters,

When 14 August came, [the Israelis’] wager was that the presence of the displaced in the areas to which they were displaced would put pressure on the resistance to impose more conditions on it. The resistance did not submit to any conditions.
Once again, you amazed the world when the displaced returned in their cars and trucks, and some on foot. At 0800, the southern suburb of Beirut, the south of Lebanon, and Al-Biqa were full of their proud and honourable residents, who returned with raised heads.

* * *
It seems clear to me that at this point, in the “battle” for the loyalty of the Lebanese government and people, Hizbullah has come out streets ahead of the Olmert government. Olmert in 2006, like Shimon Peres in 1996, sought to use extreme military pressure on the people and the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon to try to turn the country against Hizbullah. In 2006 as in 1996, this project not only failed, but it back-fired significantly, leaving Hizbullah politcally stronger inside Lebanon than it had been before the Israeli assault.
In the other “battle” that both sides were fighting, meanwhile– the one in which each was seeking to re-establish the “credibility” of its ability to militarily deter the other, both sides won. There is an element of good news in this. The Lebanon-Israel border is now marked by a return of the basic strategic stability– underpinned by effective reciprocal deterrence– that marked it from 2000 through July 12 of this year. That is the reason why the August 11 ceasefire has “stuck” so amazingly, and has been so remarkably successful since August 14– and also why it can be expected to continue to stick well for some further time to come. This stability has almost nothing at all to do with the presence of (now) about 5,000 more UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon than were there before the war.
So a world that is crying out for proficient peacekeepers in so many trouble-spots might indeed ask today: What on earth are all those well-trained European and other UN units actually doing in South Lebanon at this time?
Good question.
Philippe Bolopion of Le Monde described a leaked version of the force’s new Rules of Engagement and “Operational Concept” as follows:

The provisional rules of engagement … authorize the Blue Helmets to open fire to defend themselves, to protect civilians, or to disarm militia that they come across in passing. The 15,000 soldiers, who will be placed under the UN’s flag, will nevertheless not have the mission of actively looking for Hezbollah’s weapons, nor of interposing themselves should fighting resume.
The 21 page document, marked “UN restricted” and distributed to all the countries involved on Friday, August 18, asserts that the reinforced UNIFIL will operate according to tenets “principally defensive in nature,” but that “authorize the use of appropriate and credible force if necessary.” These rules of engagement unambiguously preserve the Blue Helmets’ “inherent” right of self-defense.
Beyond that, use of force is authorized to prevent the buffer zone between the “Blue Line” and the Litani River being “used for hostile activities,” to “resist” attempts to hamper UNIFIL’s mandate, or to “protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” Use of force must nonetheless be “proportionate.”
The “Operation Concept,” another provisional document marked “UN confidential,” clearly establishes that it’s up to the Lebanese armed forces to “take control” of the buffer zone and “disarm Hezbollah.” However, the UN could develop “effective information operations to counter Hezbollah propaganda.” [Whatever that means– HC.]
“We will not actively go looking for Hezbollah’s weapons,” explains one senior UN official, adding: “But if, during a patrol, we should come upon a cache, our mandate is to seize those rockets.” UNIFIL will also establish fixed and mobile checkpoints. “If a truck goes by with weapons, we stop it,” explains this UN military official. Then the Lebanese army will be called upon to intervene. “If the vehicle attempts to push its way through, we will use lethal force,” he warns.
On a daily basis, the Blue Helmets would have to, according to this source, “patrol the streets, day and night, show their presence, be in contact with what’s happening in the area.” If UNIFIL observes Hezbollah’s men launching a rocket against Israel, it will call on the Lebanese army and should not, according to this source, use force, even though a strict interpretation of its mandate would authorize it to do so.
In the same way, in the event of an Israeli raid on Lebanon and a Lebanese response, UNIFIL would remain “outside.” “We would not interpose ourselves, we would attempt to stop them by other means,” continues this UN official. “But if Israel targets civilians, we would have to find counter-measures, blocking access routes or putting observers in place, even if it’s very dangerous,” he asserts. [And how about protecting civilians against future Israeli air attacks, I wonder? Would the UN at least do that next time? He didn’t say. ~HC]
At Lebanon’s request and contrary to Israel’s desires, Resolution 1701, which reinforced UNIFIL, does not fall under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which allows a less restricted use of force than Chapter VI, which is based on consent of the parties. But UNIFIL enjoys “a robust Chapter VI,” one UN high official explains, according to whom the UN “has taken bits of Chapter VII and placed them in the rules of engagement.”

… Anyway, for now, the bland little series of daily reports that UNFIL is issuing continues to confirm that matters are extremely peaceable in the south– even if the IDF has been taking quite a while to complete its withdrawal from there.
It is great news that the situation is so stable. Civilians living on both sides of the border can now start to rebuild their lives and repair their damaged property. Obviously, the rebuilding north of the border will be a much more challenging task than that in Israel.
Let’s hope this situation of stability-thru-mutual-deterrence can buy at least as much stability and safety for the residents of the border areas as the one that preceded it, from 2000 through last July. Indeed, maybe the smarter political figures in the region and the world can even start to see the opportunity this (relative and localized) stability provides, to restart a truly serious, comprehensive peace negotiation that would involve Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and Lebanon… so that real peace and normal interactions can be instituted across all of threse borders, before we see another instance of the catastrophic breakdown of deterrence???
Meantime, I hope all those soldiers in UNIFIL have a nice restful time in Lebanon.