Horrendous Cease-Fire…

Comment: An Unmitigated Disaster, By Caroline Glick

Excerpts;

There is a good reason that Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which sets the terms for a cease-fire between his jihad army and the State of Israel.

The resolution represents a near-total victory for Hezbollah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria, and an unprecedented defeat for Israel and its ally the United States. This fact is evident both in the text of the resolution and in the very fact that the US decided to sponsor a cease-fire resolution before Israel had dismantled or seriously degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

In practice it makes it all but impossible for Israel to defend itself against Hezbollah aggression without being exposed to international condemnation on an unprecedented scale.

This is the case because the resolution places responsibility for determining compliance in the hands of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Annan has distinguished himself as a man capable only of condemning Israel for its acts of self-defense while ignoring the fact that in attacking Israel, its enemies are guilty of war crimes. By empowering Annan to evaluate compliance, the resolution all but ensures that Hezbollah will not be forced to disarm and that Israel will be forced to give up the right to defend itself.

The resolution makes absolutely no mention of either Syria or Iran, without whose support Hezbollah could neither exist nor wage an illegal war against Israel. In so ignoring Hezbollah’s sponsors, it ignores the regional aspect of the current war and sends the message to these two states that they may continue to equip terrorist armies in Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Iraq with the latest weaponry without paying a price for their aggression.

The resolution presents Hezbollah with a clear diplomatic victory by placing their erroneous claim of Lebanese sovereignty over the Shaba Farms, or Mount Dov – a vast area on the Golan Heights that separates the Syrian Golan from the Upper Galilee and is disputed between Israel and Syria – on the negotiating table. In doing so, the resolution rewards Hezbollah’s aggression by giving international legitimacy to its demand for territorial aggrandizement via acts of aggression, in contravention of the laws of nations.

By calling in the same paragraph for the “immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations,” the resolution treats as equivalent Hezbollah’s illegal aggression against Israel and Israel’s legitimate military actions taken in defense of its sovereign territory.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had let it be known that Israel’s conditions for a cease-fire included the institution of an arms embargo against Hezbollah. The government also insisted that the international force it wished to have deployed along the border would work to dismantle Hezbollah.

Paragraph 8 puts both the question of an arms embargo and Hezbollah’s dismantlement off to some future date when Israel and Lebanon agree to the terms of a “permanent cease-fire.” In addition, it places the power to oversee an arms embargo against Hezbollah in the hands of the Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a member.

While the resolution bars Israel from taking measures necessary to defend its territory and citizens, by keeping UNIFIL in Lebanon it ensures that no other force will be empowered to take these necessary actions. Furthermore, paragraph 2 “calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment [of the Lebanese military and UNIFIL] begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel. This means that Israel is expected to withdraw before a full deployment of Lebanese and UNIFIL forces is carried out. As a result, a vacuum will be created that will allow Hezbollah to reinforce its positions in south Lebanon.

Finally, the resolution makes no operative call for the release of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev now being held hostage by Hizbullah. By relegating their fate to a paragraph in the preamble, which then immediately turns to Hezbollah’s demand for the release of Lebanese terrorists held in Israeli jails, the resolution all but eliminates any possibility of their returning home.

Aside from the resolution’s egregious language, the very fact that the US has sponsored a resolution that leaves Hezbollah intact as a fighting force constitutes a devastating blow to the national security of both Israel and the US, for the following reasons:

It grants the Lebanese government and military unwarranted legitimacy. The resolution treats the Lebanese government and military as credible bodies. However, the Lebanese government is currently under the de facto control of Hezbollah and Syria.

It should be assumed that Hezbollah’s presumptive victory in its war against Israel will act as a catalyst for violence by Sadr and his followers against the Iraqi government and coalition forces in the weeks to come. Indeed, the Hezbollah victory will severely weaken moderate Shi’ites in the Maliki government and among the followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Furthermore, because the resolution strengthens the UN as the arbiter of peace and security in the region, the diplomatic price the US will be forced to pay if it decides to go outside the UN to contend with the Iranian threat has been vastly increased.

Many sources in Washington told this writer over the weekend that the US decision to seek a cease-fire was the result of Israel’s amateurish bungling of the first three weeks of the war. The Bush administration, they argued, was being blamed for the Olmert government’s incompetence and so preferred to cut its losses and sue for a cease-fire.

There is no doubt much truth to this assertion. The government’s prosecution of this war has been unforgivably inept. At the same time it should be noted that the short-term political gain accrued by the US by forging the cease-fire agreement will come back to haunt the US, Israel and all forces fighting the forces of global jihad in the coming weeks and months.

By handing a victory to Hezbollah, the resolution strengthens the belief of millions of supporters of jihad throughout the world that their side is winning and that they should redouble efforts to achieve their objectives of destroying Israel and running the US out of the Middle East.

International legal scholar Prof. Anne Bayefsky assisted the author in analyzing the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.