K F A R   K I L A

 
Predictions of mayhem after Israel’s unilateral retreat from Lebanon have not come true, at any rate not yet

 AS A procession of helicopters sweeps in to land, loudspeakers blast Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” over the hillsides of southern Lebanon. The UN peacekeepers’ noisy display is a deliberate reference to the Vietnam war, as depicted in the film “Apocalypse Now”. Pundits had predicted an apocalypse in Lebanon if Israel made good its promise to withdraw from the country’s southern fringes even without a peace deal with Syria. The angry Syrians, it was said, would send mercenaries to fire over the border, and the Israelis would respond with unparalleled severity. But the Israeli-Lebanese border has remained remarkably quiet since Israel’s army retreated to its side of it on May 24th, ending a 22-year occupation.

The most persistent sound on the border these days is not Wagner’s martial bombast but the plonk and tinkle of vans bringing ice cream to merry-makers. At the former crossing at Kfar Kila, where the last Israeli tanks rolled out of the country, curious Lebanese buy vanilla-chocolate swirl in waffle cones before strolling to the border fence for their first glimpse of Israel—or Palestine, as many of them call it. Indeed, many Palestinian families, separated by the conflict, have met at the border fence to reacquaint themselves for the first time in 50 years.

The only disturbers of the peace are the hotheads shouting insults under the noses of the po-faced Israeli sentries standing just three metres (ten feet) across the barbed-wire fence. In the first days after the evacuation, gun-toting youths threw stones and tried to rush the flimsy barricade. The Israelis turned them back with warning shots, injuring a couple. But these, along with several Lebanese civilians killed or wounded by landmines, have been the main casualties.

Israel, too, is celebrating the fact that the withdrawal, however hasty and sloppy, was carried out without any Israeli casualties at all. The approval rating of the prime minister, Ehud Barak, has soared, and he is now turning his attention to the Palestinians in talks with Bill Clinton. Even the embarrassment of the army’s unsentimental abandonment of its Lebanese allies is quickly dissipating as the government offers cash handouts and resettlement promises to the mercenaries and their families who straggled in as refugees.

The Lebanese army has now reimposed restrictions on travel to the former occupied zone, making it difficult for trouble-makers to get near the border. Although the government, in deference to its ally Syria, refuses to send troops to “guarantee Israel’s security”, it has filled the border area with policemen. And Hizbullah, the guerrilla group that spearheaded resistance to the Israeli occupation, is also behaving responsibly. The gunmen who swarmed through the area in the first days after liberation have disappeared. Instead, bulldozers bearing Hizbullah banners are building earth barricades to keep cars away from the most sensitive spots along the frontier.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, insists that the struggle against Israel will go on until Lebanese prisoners are freed from Israeli jails, and a disputed patch of land, the so-called Shibaa farms, is returned to Lebanon. The idea, it seems, is not to restart any fighting straightaway, but to reserve the right to make mischief in the future.

Locals are busy adjusting to life in Lebanon. One Christian shopkeeper announces that the Shia Muslim guerrillas of Hizbullah are his “cousins”, as he hides his last cases of Israeli beer. There has been some looting, and one or two reports of beatings, especially in the Christian villages considered most sympathetic to the Israeli occupation. But most residents profess astonishment at the prevailing peace. The situation seems so calm, in fact, that several hundred of the 5,500 Lebanese who fled with the departing Israelis have now announced that they want to return. Heartened by the peaceful atmosphere and the absence of a pogrom against supposed collaborators, they have started trickling back across the frontier.

The UN says that it is close to setting its seal on the proceedings by certifying Israel’s full withdrawal. Teams of soldiers, cartographers and mine-sweepers have worked their way along the front line, trying to chart the old international frontier. The Israeli army, eager to earn the inspectors’ approval, has been demolishing fortifications that straddle the border. It blew up a communications mast that stood a few metres inside Lebanon on May 29th, and other minor salients are due to get similar treatment.

Yet things could still turn sour. The Lebanese government, like Hizbullah, disagrees with the UN about the Shibaa farms, at the eastern end of the frontier. If, as expected, the UN tries to defer this question and endorses the withdrawal, the Lebanese government may refuse to accept its findings. At best, that would mean the continued threat of cross-border attacks by Hizbullah. At worst, Lebanon could refuse to allow UN peacekeepers to patrol the disputed border. Without their checkpoints, a Lebanese with a grudge, or any of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, could take a pot-shot across the border.

The same thing could easily happen in reverse. The Israeli government has started handing out machineguns to residents of border villages, along with stern but unenforceable warnings to use them only in self-defence. Even if the governments on both sides intend to frighten, not fight, one another, the distinction may be lost on some of their more lawless citizens.