Who owns the northern border?
By Zvi Bar'el
Last week the army, very late in the day, reached out toward a withdrawal from Lebanon. The chief of staff, the headlines said, agrees to a unilateral pullout.In two or three months' time, and certainly as the date for the withdrawal nears, it will be difficult to remember that the army, or more accurately the chief of staff, was the chief hindrance that caused the decision on a withdrawal to be inordinately delayed.
It is difficult for the army to give up Lebanon, just as it would be difficult to give up any occupied territory. Few armies anywhere have had a comparable opportunity to conduct a war that was cut off from the media and from public criticism for so long. What other army has been given a large tract of land and unlimited budgets to try out all types of combat? From minor tactical warfare to cooperation between armor, infantry and air power to the trial of all of the Air Force's sophisticated weaponry, from the latest warplanes to precision-guided munitions.
Over the course of 17 years, three generations of technology have succeeded one another, and in Lebanon the IDF has tried them all. Lebanon also provided a free hand for every military man with an idea to try it out in the field. Evacuating villages; damaging the infrastructure; in-depth operations, broad-scale operations and target-specific operations; subcontracting for a local militia; village associations and more. Lebanon, far more than the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is a deluxe laboratory without settlers, without holy places, without an international commitment to the occupied population - because Israel declared that there was no occupation - and with the entire package wrapped neatly in an agreed motive: protection of the northern settlements. There could be no greater luxury for an occupying army, which need only take care that its soldiers not get killed.
The result is that the war in Lebanon became a habit that is hard to break. And because in Israel the army is the sole arbiter of what is necessary to determine security, anyone who demanded a withdrawal was perceived as a busybody who understood nothing about security, at best, and as a traitor in the worst case. The army thereby acquired the ownership of assets to which it had no title: It determined the consensus on the Lebanon question, it gave orders to the government and thus became not only a polic-implementing body but also an integral element of the policymaking apparatus, and it had the final say on the fate of the settlements in the north.
In an ongoing display of political negligence, successive governments permitted a strategic asset to be whittled down into tactical fragments. Over the course of many years, Israel did not succeed in turning the war in Lebanon into a threat against Lebanon or Syria or in using it to generate momentum for a diplomatic dialogue. Israel squabbled with the Shi'ite villages, used missiles against the cars of Hezbollah leaders, destroyed a few transformers and turned the northern border and its settlements into a no-man's-land, available as a target for every random Katyusha rocket. The fact is that the army, too, now understands that the results of the balance between us and Hezbollah are at best a draw, meaning a loss, and there is no reason to think that a redeployment will be any worse than the current situation.
The IDF, which was unable to impose its will during the past 17 years and therefore did not provide the government with an effective strategic instrument, is now at long last permitting the government to make a policy decision and initiate a move of its own.
This has had an immediate impact: Lebanon is already starting to organize. Its prime minister, Salim al-Hoss, has made it clear to Islamic Jihad that it will not be permitted to attack Israel from Lebanese soil; the problem of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is now becoming the most crucial political and policymaking issue for Beirut; Syria, seeing which way the wind is blowing, is making every effort to tighten the Syria-Lebanon track before Lebanon feels free to decide its own future; and senior Syrian officials are suddenly leaking reports about secret Israeli-Syrian contacts. In fact, the Israeli initiative appears to have left Syria without an appropriate response - Damascus, too, got used to believing that the Israeli presence in Lebanon was everlasting.
This is precisely the time for Israel's next strategic move, one that will translate the war in Lebanon and the withdrawal from that country into political and diplomatic terms. The army will also benefit in no small measure: It will be able to restore its deterrent capability and its strategic status
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