Transparent Maneuver
Al-Thawrah Questions Israeli Remarks on
Quitting Lebanon
Damascus al-Thawrah in Arabic 4 Feb 98 p 13
Article by Muhammad Khayr al-Jamali: "Transparent Maneuver"
It would be wrong to take seriously recent statements made by Israeli
leaders
about Israel's preparedness to withdraw from the border strip it
occupies in
south Lebanon. Nor should anyone believe that the statements are a true
reflection of Israel's stand on UN Security Council Resolution 425 or on
its
occupation of that zone.
Such statements are little more than a transparent maneuver designed,
among
other things, to undo an inseparable connection between the Syrian and
Lebanese tracks and to lift Israel from a state of crisis resulting from
its failed
security case in the area and the painful blows its forces of occupation
have
been dealt by Lebanese resistance.
Talk in Israel's political corridors of power about the possibility of
an Israeli
withdrawal from south Lebanon is not unconnected to the maneuvering
tactics
that have been a hallmark of Netanyahu's policies since he came to
power.
The idea is to exert pressure on and coerce Lebanon with a view to
bringing
resistance to Israeli occupation to a halt and decoupling the Syrian and
Lebanese tracks so that Netanyahu's government can deal with Lebanon on
its own and foist on it a security and political agreement that would
be, if not a
carbon copy of the capitulationist one that was concluded in the wake of
the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a slightly amended version so that
the
Israelis would portray it as a peace treaty. The old agreement is later
to be
toppled.
The "Lebanon First" option floated by Netanyahu as he launched his drive
to
wreck the peace process was aimed at dealing with Lebanon apart from
Syria.
He had hoped to achieve that by a combination of decoupling the Syrian
and
Lebanese tracks, exerting pressure on Lebanon through the means of
aggression, and halting the progress of the national accord in Lebanon.
The
frequency of recent statements made by Israeli officials about a
possible
unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon is yet further evidence of an
Israeli
insistence on dealing with Lebanon independently of Syria.
It was not by sheer coincidence that these statements were made as
resistance to Israeli occupation of south Lebanon intensified. It was
not
coincidental either that some Israeli military officers and other
Israelis have
made a pullout from south Lebanon conditional on security arrangements
being worked out with the Lebanese Government -- arrangements that would
compromise the country's sovereignty over its southern territory and the
ongoing national accord process.
An Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon should not be a subject for
debate
among Israeli politicians; all it will take is for the government of
Binyamin
Netanyahu or any other government succeeding it to commit to Resolution
242 and to declare a clear willingness to unconditionally abide by it.
Since no such decision has been made in Israel, all talk about a
possible
Israeli pullout from south Lebanon remains a ruse to detach the Syrian
and
Lebanese tracks and portray Israel as the party anxious to have peaceful
relations with a naysaying Lebanon.
If Israel really has a mind to quit Lebanon, what's stopping it?
Resolution 425
is clear enough in letter and spirit. It provides for Israel's
unconditional
withdrawal from south Lebanon. None of the Lebanese sides will settle
for
anything short of the kind of withdrawal stipulated in that resolution.
If Binyamin Netanyahu's government thinks that by talking about a
conditional
withdrawal it will be able to split the ranks of the Lebanese and detach
the
Syrian and Lebanese tracks, it is laboring under an illusion. This is
because
Israel's transparent maneuvers and attempts to fiddle with UN
resolutions will
make no dent in a national Lebanese consensus to obtain an unconditional
liberation of the south and a common resolve in Beirut and Damascus not
to
go their own separate ways in any peace transactions with Israel.
Email: yona@netvision.net.il