Ehud Barak is a corrupt traitor, but to accuse him of withdrawing from Lebanon is superficial. After 18 years of occupation, Israeli soldiers continued to be killed there and Muslim guerrillas multiplied. In war, there is no middle way. Israel could not install a collaborationist government in Lebanon because that patchwork country is simply ungovernable. Lebanon’s various groups operate by consensus, not authoritarian decision. A totalitarian government led by the Lebanese Christians could be forced through; a hard-line Christian state in the Middle East would be acceptable to the West and beneficial to Israel. But such a Lebanon could only be created with Syrian cooperation, because a transparent Lebanon-Syria border allows Islamic guerrillas a free hand. Syria doesn’t care whether Lebanon is Christian or Muslim, as long as it is embedded in the Syrian sphere of influence. Feeding north Lebanon to Syria and creating a militant Christian state in the south is the most viable option for Israel; at any rate, Israel is better off if Syria annexes Lebanon than merely influences it: Israel can counter a conventional Syrian army, but lacks the political will for a thorough anti-guerrilla warfare. In return for a large chunk of Lebanon, Syria would agree to resettle the Israeli Arabs who now constitute a majority in many parts of the Galilee.

A worse alternative to dividing Lebanon with Syria is an unconditionally supported Christian strongman there. He would have to engage in ugly, Sabra- and Shatila- style massacres in order to terrify the local Muslims into abandoning support for Islamic guerrillas. In such a scenario, the IDF would have to directly assist Lebanon’s Christian army on occasions.

The least desirable of workable options is to foster any Lebanese government with a firm grip on the militants. So far, the only candidate to form such a government is Hezbollah. The Lebanese army’s protracted fight with the insignificant Fatah al-Islam group in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp shows that army incapable of cornering the many guerrilla groups embedded in several Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, each seething with weapons. Even if a Palestinian state is created, it won’t let the refugees back – Abbas understands that these inner-city throngs, with no experience of productive work for three generations, would blow up his state. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are immensely more radical – patriotic – even than Gazans, to say nothing of the relatively affluent and moderate West Bankers. Abbas’ partitioning of what they see as a Palestinian homeland with Israel is inconsequential for them. With a population density of over 50,000 jobless Arabs per square kilometer, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon will erupt, launching immense guerrilla warfare around that powerless country. Hezbollah, popular among the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, is the only force that can keep the otherwise uncontrollable Palestinian militants at bay.

Hezbollah is radical and irresponsible now, but would behave differently when ruling the country. A Hezbollah burdened with the civic responsibilities of government, engaged with France and the West generally, would moderate as every other revolutionary group has done upon coming to power. Now, Hezbollah is engaged in terrorism only because it can afford irresponsibility – in fact, it is paid to be that way. But at the national level, Iran wouldn’t be able to provide meaningful aid to all of Lebanon and would inevitably lose influence with a Hezbollah in power. It is inconceivable that a Hezbollah government would launch a conventional war against Israel, or sponsor terrorist operations, if risking a conventional reprisal. A Hezbollah in power, unlike a Hezbollah in opposition, would care a lot about Israel bombing the Beirut airport. Even now, Hezbollah is not exactly a terrorist organization. It mostly works in welfare projects and defense. Hezbollah’s bunkers along the Israel-Lebanon border are defensive; bunkers are not used for offense. Hezbollah stocks mid-range missiles, also a strategically defensive weapon. Hezbollah only demanded that Israel go from Lebanon and now from the unimportant Shebaa farms, not that the Jewish state be taken off the map. Kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, if planned by Hezbollah central command at all rather than by its local mavericks, are a little something that Hezbollah must show its sponsors and supporters. At any rate, isolated cross-border kidnappings are not war, and historically Israel had demonstrated a high tolerance for such incidents with Egypt, Jordan, or Lebanon; Hezbollah did not imagine that it would start a war with Israel by kidnapping the IDF soldiers.

It’s ethically unpleasant to cooperate with Hezbollah, but Israel cooperates with the PLO, so the moral aspects should be no problem. Israel continuously carps at Hamas for kidnapping Shalit, but rarely utters a word about the soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. After France had invited Hezbollah for talks, Europe would eventually welcome the militant group. Face it: Hezbollah is the only real power in Lebanon. Killing them off would create a power vacuum. If Israel wants to talk with Lebanon, there’s no one else to talk with but Hezbollah.

Fighting Hezbollah is strategically worthless for Israel. In the best-case scenario, if Hezbollah goes away from the scene, another militant group will arise to fill the power vacuum. Lebanon, besieged by powerful neighbors and internal religious conflicts, is weak and susceptible to militants. When there is an opportunity in Lebanon, insurgents will rush in to exploit it; atheist Palestinians yesterday, Shiite Hezbollah today, Sunni Palestinians or whoever else tomorrow. Israel can strain Hezbollah’s resources with sabotage, police enforcement, and low-level military activities, but need not extinguish the group.

Hezbollah enjoys Iranian subsidies and free arms shipments from Syria. While Israel cannot realistically establish aerial control over the Syrian-Lebanese border, periodic rocket attacks on unauthorized traffic could restrict the arms flow to Hezbollah. Drive out Lebanese merchants – who financially support Hezbollah – from Sierra Leone and Congo, replace them with Israeli diamond traders. Take control of the drug trade now handled by Hezbollah. Also, flood Gaza with cheap drugs to divert the Arab youth, instead of Hezbollah’s drugs that are now flooding Israel.

The Israeli passive defense against Lebanon won’t work; no passive defense does. The Soviet Union agreed to every German demand, showered Germany with aid and supplies, assembled forces at the borders which should have deterred the aggressor – but was attacked anyway.

Peace does not come abruptly, especially when only one side wishes it. Peace is a product of exhaustion. No single move such as disengagement can achieve peace, but only protracted efforts – military efforts. Israel tried the opposite approach with Egypt, hoping that a peace treaty would lead to peaceful relations; nope. Both the Israeli and the Egyptian armies grew qualitatively after the Camp David accords and the Egyptians still hate the Israelis. Countries usually achieve peace through total wars. Limited expeditions suffice only over non-critical objectives, but even then, accumulated grievances often lead to a total war. Britain did not annihilate Argentina over the insignificant Falkland Islands, but after several attempts to establish the status of Alsace-Lorraine through limited war, France and Germany resorted to two total wars, incidentally dragging in many other nations. Israel lacks the resources for a total – necessarily protracted – war even with Lebanon, short of nuking that country. Israel’s two viable strategies in relation to Lebanon are a strong government there of whatever orientation or a centuries long, seemingly indecisive, low-intensity conflict. Lebanese guerrillas will shell Israel, Israel will bomb the Beirut airport, the UN will intervene, Israel will withdraw, the guerrillas will regain their forces and so on in an almost endless cycle. Rationalist children of the Enlightenment want clear-cut solutions with immediate results. In social relations, such solutions do not exist.

Welcome to the good old world of realpolitik, where violence still rules.

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly. Analysts, like generals, use to fight past wars. Experience is indispensable, but it blinds to new developments. So it is in Lebanon.

The previous civil war ran substantially along the Christian-Muslim line. Now, significant numbers of Christians and Druzes align with Shiite Hezbollah. Christians see better hopes in aligning with Muslim opposition against Sunni Muslim majority. Many are appalled by pro-American, anti-Syrian hard line of Saniora’s government. Hezbollah attracts others with honesty, non-corruption, determined strength, socialist welfare and egalitarianism, and anti-imperialism. The current standoff is not religious, but ideological.

Hezbollah’s monopoly on opposition to pro-Western government should be ended. Israel has to foster an opposition competitor to Hezbollah. Any pro-Syrian, anti-Western, leftist, or Christian group would do. The point is not to make another South Lebanon Army, but to stop Hezbollah from being the center of anti-government gravitation.

The West needs to evaluate the immediate causes of the civil conflict in Lebanon. They are: American disregard for the power realities and unthinking drive for democracy. There is no country named Lebanon; it is the land of Greater Syria. Multi-religious Lebanese society could never govern itself with modicum of stability. Spoiled by French hedonism, mainstream Lebanese urban types don’t want to defend their country against insurrection. Syria is Lebanon’s only hope for oppressive safety. Alternatively, the world has to accept partition of Lebanon into religiously homogenous enclaves and create oh-so-needed Christian buffer state, a lightning rod between Israel and Muslims.

The Lebanese conflict was triggered by the US-imposed democratization, a much-touted Cedar revolution which brought Hezbollah to power in free elections. Hezbollah demands its legal right to have the government representation proportional to the election results. Saniora sticks to the correct, tribal, undemocratic arrangement of the religious groups’ quotas in government and parliament. The West pushed democratization enough to destroy the fragile Lebanese power equilibrium, but then stopped, stunned at the results.

The West promised Israel to beef up the Lebanese army to rein in Hezbollah. Now the Lebanese army cannot even stop Hezbollah’s tire-burners. Lebanese government lacks political will or army’s support to crush Hezbollah. Israel licks PR wounds from the two Lebanese wars. American government just doesn’t understand what goes on. Syria is the only force that could control Lebanon. At least, Israel would have a weak conventional enemy, rather than guerrilla opponent hiding behind civilians.

Besides the many tactical errors, a major accusation against the outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz is the strategic mishap of bombing Lebanon rather than invading it. As if he could. Israeli voters only recently forced the IDF to abandon pointless occupation of Lebanon, and large-scale invasion was politically unrealistic in 2006. With all the protest, media outcry, government instability and corruption, Israeli public opinion would not support a long-term ground operation which, in any case, would have solved nothing but embroil the IDF into another urban war with no realizable political objectives.

Small incursions are no solution: when IDF withdraws from Lebanese villages, Hezbollah moves back in. Halutz’s bombing of Lebanon into compliance was a viable strategy. If anything, Halutz wasn’t consistent: limited bombing terrifies little. All Lebanese must have felt endangered in order to abandon their support for Hezbollah. Then again, Halutz was politically limited to pinpoint strikes. He could not massively retaliate against Hezbollah’s sponsors: Iran and Syria.

Halutz shoulders the responsibility, but also shares it with others. Chief of Staff is a team player, but Sharon beheaded the army by retiring many competent officers who did not agree with Gush Katif’ destruction.

One thing rarely brought up against Halutz is the state’s policy of murdering Israeli Special Forces which largely consist of religious Jews and settlers. The Staff routinely sent them into fighting without tactical planning or firepower support in the unnecessarily deadly urban combat.

Israeli police shows little corruption on the mid-level, and regularly attempts to bring political thugs to justice. Silent collaboration of their subordinates is disgusting; frauds remained widely known in the narrow circles for years. Forcing the corrupt Olmert out of the office is a just thing to do, but Netanyahu is also no messiah: he is weak politically. That’s why I don’t actively support the efforts to oust Olmert. Beyond the fringe politicians like Baruch Marzel, there is no alternative to the Olmert-like ruling clique. Instead of changing the government yet another time, the Jews should abandon the idea that the government chosen by leftist and Arab majority could do any good to Israel. Rather, we should dictate our will to any government through violent no-step-back opposition to uprooting the settlements.

Despite the protests even from the leftist activist-turned-defense minister Peretz, Olmert proceeds to remove checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. Would the families of the Jews killed because of the relaxed security sue Olmert for wrongful deaths? A building contractor would be sued for neglecting safety rules.

It came out almost unnoticed that the guerrillas arrested for the October 2006 shooting are members of the Hamas and PIJ simultaneously. The differences between the groups are exaggerated. Rank-and-file members are more radical than each group’s leadership: activity of a single group was insufficient to them, and they joined another group to get more of the action. Settlement with Hamas won’t neutralize all the guerrillas.

With the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon hardly heads into civil war. Iran wouldn’t want that. Iran means to manipulate itself into the position of a respectable regional hegemon, not a terrorist state that jump-starts civil wars abroad. Young Assad is smart but so far has not demonstrated his father’s reckless attitude that underpinned Syrian involvement in Lebanon. He wants rapprochement with the West, and a guerrilla war would impede his policy of whitewashing Syria. Israel abandoned the South Lebanon Army and would hardly bankroll a Christian army now. Hezbollah expects to take the state over democratically and doesn’t want a civil war that would derail its plans for governing Lebanon legally. Christians accept Hezbollah, especially when it distributes Iranian money.

Israel must partition Lebanon with Syria, and set up a Christian state between them. Alternatively, the West could pour enough money into Lebanon through the existing government to bribe voters away from Iran and Hezbollah. Otherwise, Lebanon is going to become a shia state or slip into another civil war.

Lebanon’s choice is between civil war and a putsch. Hezbollah won’t betray its reason for existence and submit to the Lebanese government. The Lebanese army, if paid very well with US aid, could oppose Hezbollah and start a civil war. Hezbollah, prompted by Iran and Syria, could overturn the Lebanese government and establish a sharia state.

So far, Hezbollah pushes for a peaceful takeover of the Lebanese state. They attract Lebanese Christians with reconstruction aid. Hezbollah procured a Christian screen for itself, the presidential candidate Aoun. Lebanese Christians dislike the American-installed anti-Syrian government and will submit to strong but secure Islamic rule. Iran is pumping money in Lebanon to create a shiite axis or rather an Iranian-dominated empire. Syria prefers any Lebanese government to an anti-Syrian nationalist democracy. With Hezbollah in power, Iran will de facto border Israel and influence the Mediterranean. Iran and Syria will all but encircle Israel.

Hezbollah attracts voters with money, glory, and security. Israel must discredit those claims: destroy the hospitals and other institutions in Hezbolah’s social services network, bomb neighborhoods rebuilt with Hezbollah money, and target villages with Hezbollah presence. Israel cannot feasibly destroy Hezbollah, so she must humiliate it and destroy its public credibility. Israel must show the Lebanese that Hezbollah bears no fruit. Short of that, Lebanon will become a radical Islamic state in the image of Iran.

The Lebanese publicly support Hezbollah but privately criticize it. The Lebanese are very extraverted, even compared to generally extravert Arabs. For them, show is everything. That attitude promotes glorious guerillas but also makes them vulnerable; a crack in that credibility would extinguish the support.