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.
