A shaky cease-fire
THE CEASE-FIRE in Lebanon has begun to seem all too tenuous, threatened by Israel's weekend raid of a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley and by renewed arms shipments to Hezbollah from Iran and Syria. At the same time, European governments are hesitating to commit peacekeeping troops to Lebanon, fearful of plunging into a perilous mission without a clear mandate.
To preserve the cease-fire, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan should issue a public warning to Iran and Syria to cease rearming Hezbollah. Annan should also remind Israel that no UN peacekeeping force will be able to fulfill the terms of the Security Council resolution calling for the disarming of Hezbollah without an end to Israeli military operations inside Lebanon.
For his part, President Bush should call on Israel to refrain from further military actions while it waits for UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops to arrive in southern Lebanon. At a news conference yesterday, Bush spoke of ``doing all we can" to make the UN peacekeeping mission ``a success." The most practical way for Bush to pursue that goal would be to prevail on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to suspend all attacks on Hezbollah. In this way, Bush could help create conditions on the ground that might encourage the Europeans to send peacekeepers. He would also be doing Olmert a political favor.
Olmert and his government are the targets of withering criticism in Israel, not only from opposition politicians and pundits but from reservists returning from combat in Lebanon. One petition signed by hundreds of citizen-soldiers said, ``lack of foresight and inability to make rational decisions lead to the question -- were we called up for nothing?" Olmert is also facing pressure to permit a commission of inquiry to examine his decision to go to war and his conduct of the war.
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it plain they backed Israeli war aims by delaying consideration of a war-ending UN resolution until Hezbollah's forces and its Iranian and Syrian-supplied weapons were amply degraded. So the administration has an obligation to do everything it can to mitigate the after-effects of a war that appears to have backfired -- on Israel and on the United States.
The sooner Israel halts military operations, the sooner Hezbollah, and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors, will be held responsible for keeping the peace. At that point, the underlying realities in the region, such as Arab states' wariness of Iran's ambitions and Lebanon's internal political rivalries, are sure to revive. It will then be clear that Israel, the Palestinians, and most Arab states share an interest in preventing another war and in countering the influence of Iran and Islamist radicalism.
