Tuesday, August 8, 2006; A20
ONCE AGAIN yesterday, the headlines on Lebanon were bleak. A proposed United Nations resolution drafted by France and the United States brought an angry reaction in Beirut and other Arab capitals. More people on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border were killed or wounded. Israel threatened escalation in the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough.
Such a breakthrough may be out of reach -- but it shouldn't be, because most of the parties agree on the essential ingredients of a peace deal. Those have to include the deployment to southern Lebanon of the Lebanese armed forces in combination with a serious international force. Such a combined force would take over as Israeli troops withdraw and would prevent Hezbollah's militia from simply returning to the position it occupied a month ago -- and from which it was able to trigger this war. It was a hopeful and significant sign that the Lebanese government yesterday, amid all its angry rhetoric, agreed, without objection from Hezbollah, to send 15,000 troops south to accomplish such a mission.
If agreement can be reached on the substance of such a plan, some diplomatic details will become relatively unimportant. Whether a deal is accomplished with one U.N. resolution or two may not really matter; nor should things be held up on the question of whether the international force is considered an extension of the existing, feckless U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) or instead gets a new name. What does matter, though, is that the Israelis not be forced to withdraw until a serious new force arrives -- one that, unlike UNIFIL, is well-led, well-trained, and able and willing to stand up to Hezbollah. Such a force must deploy not only to the south but to the Syrian border as well, to prevent unauthorized arms shipments. Leaving a vacuum for Hezbollah almost guarantees renewed conflict, and neither the present U.N. force nor the Lebanese army acting alone can fill the vacuum.
Such an agreement would serve Lebanon's interest even more than Israel's. Hezbollah has sought to function as a political party inside Lebanon's democracy and as an independent armed force that subverts the very same democracy. Any cease-fire that allows it to continue to play both roles unimpeded is unlikely to endure for long.