George Ball, in his canonical 1992 Right Arabist book The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (hereafter, PA), argues that the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon had two objectives.
At a minimum, Israel wanted to undermine the PLO as a political force in Lebanon. Likewise today, only with Hezbollah playing the role of the PLO (the distinction is mainly important because it has significant implications for the reaction of the Arab world; the PLO could rely on far greater support from Gulf Arabs than Hezbollah).
But, Ball insists, Israel’s “first objective” was accompanied by its second:
“the installation of a minority Maronite Christian government to rule over a Lebanese protectorate which would conclude a separate peace with Israel” (PA, p.120).
Ball calls this second objective the “grand design” that dates at least as far back as David Ben-Gurion’s 1948 diary entry cited by Ball:
“the weak link in the Arab coalition is Lebanon… A Christian state must be established whose southern border will be the Litani. We shall sign a treaty with it” (PA, p.120).
As regards the current situation, a very similar “dual objective” position has been outlined by Dore Gold in his July 17 brief regarding the outbreak of fighting with Hezbollah, “The Opening Round of Iran’s War Against the West.”
Gold elaborates the specifics regarding a “first objective”:
So what should be the aims of the entire Western alliance – including Israel – in the current conflict? The chief goals are: First, full implementation of UN Security Council resolutions that call for the complete dismantling of Hizballah and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the Israel-Lebanon border instead. Second, the removal of all Iranian forces and equipment from Lebanese territory, along with any lingering Syrian presence.
But Gold goes on to suggest that the contours of a contemporary “grand design.”
At the same time, there is a need to recognize that this is a regional war. Iran is seeking to dominate Iraq, particularly its southern Shia areas – the provinces where British troops are deployed – and hopes to encircle both Israel and the Sunni heartland of the Arab world. Syria is Iran’s main Arab ally in this effort. There is no question that Iran’s main aim is to dominate the oil-producing areas by agitating the Shia populations of Kuwait, Bahrain, and the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia. Defeating Iran’s opening shot in this Middle Eastern war is not just Israel’s interest, but the collective interest of the entire civilized world.
There are at least two things worth mentioning in reference to Gold’s grand design. First, unlike the 1982 Israeli invasion described by Ball–which aimed to court Lebanese Shia animosity toward Sunni and PLO political domination–the current “design” is intended to court Sunni Arab animosity toward Hezbollah, Syrian, and Iranian political domination in Lebanon.
Second, Gold’s “design” has not necessarily been adopted by the incumbent Israeli government. Gold is a Netanyahu Likudnik. Labor party Zionists like David Kimche who favor negotiations with Syria were relieved when the Likuk party–which refused to join Sharon in the formation of the “centrist” Kadima party–did relatively poorly in the most recent Israeli election.
Indeed, there are signs that the Right Zionists (neocons; US Likudniks) may be closer to power in Washington than they are in Israel. This may account for some of the recent tension between the Right Zionists in Washington and the government of Israel.
See, for example, an article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled, “US Neocons Hoped Israel would Attack Syria.”
The White House, and in particular White House advisors who belong to the neoconservative movement, allegedly encouraged Israel to attack Syria as an expansion of its action against Hizbullah, in Lebanon. The progressive opinion and news site ConsortiumNews.com reported Monday that Israeli sources say Israel’s “leadership balked at the scheme.”
See, also, Charles Krauthammer’s criticism of the Olmert government, noted in a previous post.
War As Politics?
In his account of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, George Ball suggests,
“Israeli leaders knew that timing was of the essence. Lebanon was required to elect a new president by August 23, 1982, and the IDF had to be in Beirut before that… Israel’s problem was to find, or create, an ‘internationally recognized provocation’…” (PA, p.122).
Back in ’82, Ball reports “a terrorist group obligingly furnished Israel with at least a shadowy casus belli by shooting in the head an Israeli envoy post in London” (PA, p.123).
In 2006, the July 12 Hezbollah raid furnished the casus belli.
The Israeli response to the Hezbollah raid is not merely “disproportionate,” however. It involves ambitious goals that seek to go beyond a return to the “status quo ante,” as Secretary Rice said at the start of the crisis.
So if the Hezbollah raid was the “manifest” trigger, what was the “latent” trigger, in terms of long-term Right Zionist “grand designs”?
Can the current war be either divorced from–or worse, at odds with–an Israeli agenda for the long-term contours of Lebanese politics?
One increasingly popular view is that the Israeli military tactics have actually undermined Israel’s political objectives. This perspective finds some support in an important Newsweek article, “Now Comes the Next War.”
Soon comes its next fight—a postwar political reckoning. Whether the [Hezbollah] party emerges from the current conflict weaker or stronger—and stronger seems the answer now—it will then have to battle the country’s other political, religious and ethnic groups for the soul and identity of Lebanon…
This face-off will transcend borders, for it is a microcosm of the wider struggle in the Middle East. On one side is the American-led West and Israel, with some very quiet Arab allies; on the other is the movement to affirm an Arab-Iranian-Islamist identity…
Even now, the military clash is largely a political war of wills, deterrence and resistance, at least in Hizbullah’s view. Holding out for a month and emerging to negotiate a ceasefire represents, to many, a considerable victory. Yet within Lebanon itself, the fighting has both accelerated and camouflaged deep political tensions.
Before the war, just over half the Lebanese said they supported Hizbullah’s role as an armed resistance group that deterred Israeli attacks. Two weeks after the fighting started, more than 85 percent of Lebanese in one poll said they supported Hizbullah’s military attacks against Israel. This included 80 percent of Christians, a figure that was obviously inflated by anger against Israel for its savage attacks against all parts of Lebanon, not just Hizbullah strongholds in the south.
Joshua Landis over at Syria Comment has been quoted along similar lines in the Los Angeles Times.
The decision by President Bush not to support the Lebanese government’s plea for a cease-fire, even though that government has been backed by the United States, has dealt a further blow to public feelings about the U.S. in the region.
Members of the governing bloc in the Lebanese parliament, led by Saad Hariri, “are the most pro-American Arabs in the Middle East. They have promised, ‘America will protect us if we stand against Syria,’ ” said Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert and professor at the University of Oklahoma.
Now Israel is “blowing the hell out of them, and America isn’t taking one step to protect them,” Landis said. “The whole Arab world is going to look and see that Hariri has been sacrificed on the altar of Israeli power.…”
The most important thing to know about Saad Hariri is not that he is “the most pro-American” Arab in the Middle East, but that he is the most pro-Saudi Arab in Lebanon.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was the father of Saad Hariri. It was the murder of Rafik Hariri in February 2005 that focused a powerful spotlight on Saudi-Syrian rivalry over political and economic control of Lebanon, especially once Saudi Arabia pushed Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.
For Right Zionists, the murder of Hariri established the conditions for a dramatic realignment of Lebanese politics by prying Saudi Arabia away from Syrian and Iranian political forces in Lebanon. In the so-called “Cedar Revolution” Right Zionists hoped to establish and support an alliance between Lebanon’s pro-Saudi Sunni Arab political forces–now led by Saad Hariri and Rafik Hariri’s former aide (and current Lebanese Prime Minister) Fouad Siniora–and the traditional anti-Syrian Christian (and Druze) opposition that Israel has always courted.
If that alliance–the so-called “March 14 Forces,” named for the day in 2005 when there were huge anti-Syrian rallies in Beirut one month after Mr Hariri’s assassination–was strong and steady prior to the Israeli invasion, then it would be difficult to discern what plausible Israeli advantages might have been anticipated on the basis of the invasion.
Although it is far from certain that the invasion will in any way help the “March 14 Forces,” Israel might have had good reason to fear that prior to the Hezbollah raid, Saudi Arabia was doing everything within its power to paper over Saudi-Syrian tensions in Lebanon and to re-align pro-Saudi forces in Lebanon with pro-Syrian forces and Hezbollah.
Setting aside some fo the important details of Saudi involvement in Lebanon after the murder of Hariri, it is clear that by January 2006 a Saudi-Syrian rapprochement was in the works.
According to news reports (here and here) and commentary (esp. that of Pat Lang, here, and–for a different interpretation–that of Tony Badran, here) the deal was sealed at a meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Saudi Kind Abdullah in January 2006.
As Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis suggested at that time,
Now, Washington will have to deal with the Kingdom. If the “kowtow” was convincing, Abdullah et al will not want their “satellite” disturbed much more.
It is into this context–not the full-flowering of the Cedar Revolution–that Israel intervened.
Will the Israeli invasion “save” the Cedar Revolution and reinvigorate Saudi-Syrian tension? It may be too early to say for sure, but the chances look increasingly slim.
Did the Israeli invasion “kill” the Cedar Revolution? No. It was already dead.
Okay, so despite my efforts to somehow frame all of this in the Wallersteinian language of “in the cut/in the mix,” I cannot stop wondering more about Syria. From Bush’s famous “birthday sweater audio clip,” I gather that either the Arabists or Zionists(or both maybe) think that al-Assad can indeed “stop this shit.” I wonder that myself. What makes Bush think that? What are the terms of the friendship between “wipe Israel off the map and supersize my order for plutonium” Ahmadinejad and “I introduced the Internet to Syria” al-Assad. Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite leader of an Arab nationalist party(Baath) and has done much to support the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Why? How have the Alawites been at the top of the political food chain in Syria since ’63 and will their minority status make any difference or consequence in the new Grand Design? Will his connections to the Sunnis in his country(his wife is also Sunni) place him in an awkward position that gets him caught in between a rock and a hard place(you decided whether the rock is Shia or Sunni or vice versa)? I can only imagine…
I don’t think “wipe Israel off the map and supersize my order for plutonium†is a particularly intelligent or insightful description of Ahmadinejad, nor is it especially to the point of this post.
I had rather formed the hypothesis that Rafiq Hariri was, among other things, caught in the crossfire of a Lebanese investment war between capital blocs, Saudi versus Jewish. The fact that he vastly enlarged Lebanon’s international debt is frequently quoted against him, and at least demonstrates that he was the tool of certain investment bankers, who would doubtless have been opposed by other investment bankers, as is the way of investment banking.
I welcome and encourage comments from all readers–especially current and former students of mine, and also from the general public.
To Rowan Berkeley:
I will not tolerate efforts on your part to attack those who try to comment on this blog and/or to dominate the comment space. Although I prefer to leave the blog open to all comments, I will delete your comments if you persist in such activity.
Specifically, I object to your double standard regarding the comments of others. You criticize the prior comment for the fact that it is not “especially to the point of this post.” A great number of your own comments on this site would fail to meet this standard. And who are you to police this blog? If there is policing to be done–and I would prefer that there were not–then it would be for me to do.
I am left with no choice other than to conclude that your true aim is to intimidate others who seek to comment in a space that you currently dominate.
As a secondary issue, I also object to your ad hominem attack on the previous comment, I have in mind your blunt assertion–without thoughtful reason or explanation–that the description of the comment as something less than “particularly intelligent or insightment.” I have no desire to weigh in on the substance of the issue. My focus is on the mode of discourse.
Please reconsider your approach to other readers or find an alternative space for commenting.
Thank you.
As always, a very interesting analysis. When you cite the NewsWeek article, you include an intersting paragraph about the increased support Hezbollah has found as a result of Israel’s military barrage. Question is, why do you think that there was not an A)popular uprising B) coalition between Israel and the Lebanese military against the militant arm of Hezbollah? Clearly Hezbollah is deeply integrated into into Lebanese culture/society, but there is constant talk of the southern territories as being a “state within a state.” Any speculation on the political (mis)calculations regarding Hariri’s virtual withdrawal (both vocal and physical) from the battles being waged on his territory? Why not use this as an opportunity to wipe out Hezbollah?