[LCM Articles] Daily Star Commentary - Michael Young

[Omar Kanafani]

*Revive Taif, as a Shiite safety net
*
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, August 10, 2006

 As debate continues in New York over a United Nations Security Council
resolution dealing with Lebanon, Israel has decided what to do next. It
plans to head for the Litani River, and maybe beyond. The Lebanese
government must prepare for this by reworking the political context that
will accompany an end to the fighting.

Israel intends to expand the ground war for a number of reasons. Its army
has seemed indecisive in weeks of fighting, and must now show that it cannot
be beaten. And while few doubt the resolve of Hizbullah's combatants, Israel
will win that war if it employs whatever it takes to do so. The real
question, however, is whether it can disengage at the right time and avoid
getting bogged down. That's where Hizbullah might try to turn the tables and
reverse its reluctant approval for the Lebanese Army's deployment to the
South - a decision reportedly reached with Iran's acquiescence. Or more
worryingly, the party might try to drag the army into the conflict, which
could destroy its ability to take over control of the border area.

The Israelis are also starting a ground war to avoid being trapped by
diplomacy at the UN. The Lebanese proposal for sending the army to the
border is designed to render unnecessary a wider Israeli assault; however,
the Israelis apparently feel that an attack can both strengthen the Lebanese
government's hand by weakening Hizbullah and reduce any momentum that would
compel Israel to withdraw from the South too early. It's a neat plan, but
the uncertainties are such that that any action might prolong the war in the
South for weeks if diplomacy is thrown into further chaos.

But the land war aside, what can the government of Prime Minister Fouad
al-Siniora do in the interim to prepare for a possible change in the
political landscape, if this comes to pass? The state simply can't afford to
buy into the presumption of a certain Hizbullah victory, particularly when
hundreds of thousands of Shiites are languishing in makeshift shelters.
There will be a boomerang effect from that disaster - whether inside
Hizbullah if Israel makes sizable gains in the South; or among frustrated
civilians if the triumph promised by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah comes up
short.

That's where Taif comes in. In recent months Hizbullah has resisted
disarming under the banner of the 1989 national conciliation document, which
outlined a process for the wartime militias to surrender their weapons.
Party representatives pointed out that the agreement was negotiated in a
different environment, and therefore did not apply to Hizbullah today. This
was alarming to Nasrallah's partners in the national dialogue because it
suggested the party was beginning to deny Taif its legitimacy. There may be
a way out of this. If Hizbullah rejects the disarmament clauses in Taif, it
might be less inclined to do so if they come together with those proposals
for political reform.

 This is not to say that Nasrallah is pining for more seats in Parliament,
or a seat on the Solidere board. Hizbullah's problem is that it doesn't
readily play by the comfy rules of sectarian apportionment, but thinks that,
as a revolutionary movement, it is entitled to establish entirely new rules
of its own. However, within a matter of days or weeks, Hizbullah's leader
may, thanks to the looming dilemma the party is now facing, be obliged to
make a very difficult choice.

What is this dilemma? If Israel pushes Hizbullah back to the Chouf and
steadily destroys its bases in the South, the party may be left with one of
two stark choices: to accept the demand of a majority of Lebanese and hand
over its weapons to the state - which would mean abandoning its reason to
exist; or to save itself by trying to take over the state and pursuing its
resistance, which could lead to civil war. To prevent the latter from
happening, Shiites must be offered some sort of safety net, one that
compensates for the terrible price they have paid in the past month.

There is phenomenal dead weight to the Lebanese consensual game, and
Hizbullah, for all its vitality, would find it difficult to budge that
weight without provoking devastating consequences. At the least, Nasrallah
is in no position to provoke civil strife (nor has he indicated any such
intention) with the reality of a humanitarian catastrophe all around him.
Hizbullah needs normalization to take care of its supporters, who in the
best of cases may face months of torment before returning to normal lives.

Taif was designed to build a post-war state. It should be re-tooled to bring
the Shiite community back into the Lebanese fold, after a decade and a half
when Hizbullah effectively broke it off from the rest of society.
Independent Lebanon was not always kind to the Shiites, but that time is
over. Can Shiites now accept a consensual and sovereign Lebanon, without
seeing the state as just an instrument of their marginalization?

The Israeli offensive will come and go, but it's the war's domestic
consequences that the Lebanese will have to manage very carefully. Israel
can destroy a great deal, but only the Lebanese can destroy their own
country. Siniora should begin thinking now of ways to avert this.

*Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.*
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