Dr. Joseph Hitti writes in “Lebanon Pays a High Price“:
With UN Resolution 1701 now a fact, has Hezbollah achieved the goals it set for itself when it attacked Israel on July 12?
1. Release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.
The resolution only asks that the issue of those prisoners be worked out later.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
2. The “liberation” of the Shebaa Farms.
Hezbollah had wanted the Shebaa Farms free of Israeli troops. The resolution again only calls only for the delineation of the border between Israel and Lebanon in the Shebaa Farms. This requires Syria to deliver on officially ceding sovereignty back to Lebanon, a demand Syria has constantly rejected in the past. Meanwhile, Shebaa remains under Israeli control.
The subservient Lebanese government had wanted the resolution to place Shebaa under U.N. control. Shebaa will remain under Israeli control.
Israel has agreed to withdraw from Lebanese territories it had never wanted to control. Any claims to the contrary by Hezbollah are moot and self-serving.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
3. Lebanese sovereignty over the entire South of Lebanon.
After ceding sovereignty over south Lebanon to the PLO in 1969 (The Cairo Accord), then to Hezbollah in 1989 (under a semantic interpretation of the Taef Accord that Hezbollah is a “resistance” not a “militia”), Lebanon’s government now has been forced to stop leasing its own territory to foreign militias to fight other countries’ delusional wars against Israel. Had the Lebanese government been more united and accountable to its people, and less corrupt and accountable to other countries, the devastation and the killing would not have gone for so long.
The Lebanese government now is under obligation by the international community to send its own troops to take control of its own territory. The government can no longer use the ridiculous argument that it will not send its army to the south so as “not to protect Israel against Hezbollah”.
Moreover, with up to 30,000 foreign troops to be injected into UNIFIL under resolution 1701, Lebanon in fact will still be under some form of foreign control for a long time to come.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
4. Freedom of action for the “Sacred Weapons of the Resistance”.
With a buffer zone created between the border and the Litani, Hezbollah lost its ability to import, parade and use its “sacred weapons”. Also, the Lebanese government is now under a re-stated obligation (per UN resolution 1559) to disarm Hezbollah. This time, Hassan, the M-16 will have to come out from under the robe and the turban.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
5. Foreign/Western intervention:
As in 1860, Lebanon now has been saved, not by an Arab League resolution, not by brotherly Syria, not by Iran, and not by the Arab or the Islamic Umma. It has been saved by a Western intervention.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
6. Lebanon’s economic future:
Lebanon is now economically much worse off than prior to July 12. Not only the setback is monumental, but Lebanon is again a beggar country in the community of nations. Even the US has increased its assistance to US$50 million, and the Lebanese government will be rebuilding Hezbollah’s offices with dollars from the great Satan, from the Sunni Hariri Junior whose Solidere Company may confiscate the entire south of the Litani in exchange for rebuilding what Israel has destroyed, and also from the decadent Sunnis of the Gulf who house secret Israeli trading offices. Where do the Lebanese get their pride from?
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
7. Wiping Israel off the map:
Hezbollah’s dream, and that of its sponsor Iran, will have to go unfulfilled. In fact, Israel has learned so much from its mistakes in this war that it will come out stronger from this experience.
Conclusion: Hezbollah’s reckless attack on July 12 failed.
And now, with nothing left to liberate, what will Hezbollah do? We have seen Hezbollah rise to glory by blowing up peacekeeping forces, hijacking planes and kidnapping innocent civilian Westerners in the Lebanon of the 1980s.
There is great anxiety that Hezbollah, now on its way to losing its false territorial and nationalist pretexts, will:
–Turn back to its roots of being the Shiite cognate of Sunni Al-Qaeda: Attacking Western interests to avenge the great Islamic fundamentalist inferiority complex towards the West, and to impose its Fascist Islamic Supremacist ideology over other cultures and religions. Thus, the expanded UNIFIL may become a target.
–Destabilize Lebanon: Even the Lebanese army may be their next target. Recall that Hezbollah succeeded for close to 24 years in preventing the Lebanese State and Army from exerting any control in the south. Hezbollah now may see internal Lebanese cohesion as its new target in order not to become irrelevant. It may infiltrate the Lebanese army to regain control in the south and force a clash between the Lebanese army and Israel. It may try to destabilize Lebanon internally through civil strife. Chances for combustion remain strong in the Lebanese south as long as Hezbollah’s ideology is beyond simple Lebanese nationalism and rests on the belief that Islam is the superior religion on Earth, that God sent its final message to the world through Islam, and that the rest of the (non-Moslem) world is an apostate and a sinner for not embracing the true religion.