Lebanon Fears It Will Pay Price for Middle East Peace

The 25 commandos crept across a field of grapevines thick with foliage, carefully cut the telephone lines to the Dirani house and then burst through the front door and rushed into Mustafa Dirani’s bedroom.

“Don’t worry,” they told Dirani’s screaming wife as she leaped from the bed. “We are Israel.”

Dirani’s 5-year-old daughter, Tiba, was shoved against the wall. His wife was slapped across the jaw. And Dirani, one of Israel’s most implacable enemies and head of the Iranian-backed Faithful Resistance organization, was sedated, handcuffed and led to a helicopter waiting on a nearby hill. No one has seen or heard from him since.

Less than two weeks later, in early June, Israeli warplanes came swooping deep into Lebanon in the middle of the night, showering fire and death on a Bekaa Valley camp of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim resistance group. By morning, Hezbollah had 45 new martyrs and hundreds of Lebanese families in the south were fleeing from the inevitable drama of rocket fire and mortar retribution that would follow.

As Jordan’s King Hussein launches his historic meeting in Washington today with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin--coming on the heels of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat’s recent triumphant return to Gaza and the West Bank--it is easy to assume that the Arab-Israeli conflict is drawing to a close.

But in Lebanon, especially during these last two months, the war is very much alive. It is in the arid, stone-strewn valleys of southern Lebanon that Rabin and his most serious adversary, Syrian President Hafez Assad, talk to each other, miles from the negotiating table, with volleys of mortar fire, bombs and tank shells.

Yet Lebanon, firmly lodged inside Syria’s protective political embrace, finds itself in the middle of an ambitious and faltering post-civil war reconstruction with little or no say in ending the crippling proxy war with Israel.

During U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s latest round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy, Beirut was the one capital he didn’t visit.

The reason is painfully clear: With Lebanon’s president and prime minister traveling to the Syrian capital of Damascus for decisions on everything from the anti-Israeli resistance to a media law, why talk in Beirut when the decisions are made next door?

Most worrying of all for the Lebanese is that Syria, granted a virtual free hand in Lebanon after its support for the U.S.-led allies in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, will seek a permanent role in Lebanon as perhaps the only realistic guarantor of security on Israel’s border with the tumultuous little nation. If Syria finally signs a peace treaty with Israel, will Lebanon be the price?

“What we fear most is that we’re being negotiated between Christopher and Assad--and we’re on the menu rather than at the table,” said Ghassan Tueni, a former Lebanese U.N. ambassador and editor of the independent daily An Nahar.

“The Lebanese feel they’re a dumping pit of all the conflicts and wars and revolutions of the past 25 years. They’re the only country that wasn’t officially at war with Israel, that was invaded, that has been the theater of any number of Arab wars, and yet today, while peace is being negotiated and probably realized on virtually every other front, the only place where there is no movement at all is Lebanon,” Tueni said.

Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has announced Lebanon’s determination to continue supporting the military resistance against Israel’s occupation of a portion of southern Lebanon but has otherwise, apparently at Damascus’ behest, remained silent on the peace overtures evolving around him.

A peace settlement is vital if Lebanon wants to get on its feet again, and peace in Beirut won’t come until Damascus is ready.

But privately, Lebanese officials are concerned that Israel may continue its divide-and-conquer strategy, seeking to drive a wedge in the Lebanon-Syria alliance by making Lebanon an offer it can’t refuse. The Lebanese say both Israel and the United States have made no secret of the fact they believe Lebanon would be well-served by talking directly to Israeli negotiators and not merely through the Syrians.

“The Americans have been talking about separate peace negotiations for Lebanon, and it may be that the Israelis and the Americans are about to make a proposal to Lebanon. It could be a problem,” said Beirut political analyst Adnan Iskander.

“Suppose the Israelis came with a proposal that Israel will withdraw from the territories, subject to certain controls on Hezbollah, U.N. soldiers, whatever. Can Lebanon refuse such a proposal?”

The fact is, Israel and the United States both know that the Lebanese army, barely deployed in south Lebanon, has no way of guaranteeing curbs on Hezbollah attacks against Israel without Syria’s help. And Syria, which has 35,000 troops in Lebanon, isn’t likely to disarm, or even redeploy, the fundamentalist militia unless it gets something in return.

Hezbollah, for its part, says it has no intention of backing out of its war with Israel until Jerusalem agrees to a full and unconditional withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

“We don’t recognize the negotiations, and that’s why we cannot pass judgment on the peace process. It will not achieve peace, and hopefully we will all live to see why,” Hezbollah’s political chief, Hussein Khalil, said in an interview at the organization’s headquarters in Beirut’s steamy southern suburbs.

Hezbollah leaders scoff at threats of a Syrian disarmament of their militia, the only remaining band of fanatic warriors still carrying weapons in Lebanon after the civil war.

“The Syrians only made friends with us because we got to a point where we could prove ourselves on the ground. We are only fighting in order to liberate our country . . . and the Syrians cannot forbid us from executing this right,” Khalil said.

Some Lebanese are setting their sights on Lebanon’s potential role as a trading powerhouse in a postwar Middle East as a way out.

In their view, Lebanon will have to accept a certain period of Syrian domination--perhaps as much as a decade--as the price for peace.

“The Americans would prefer Syria to stay to oversee Lebanon’s signing of a treaty and the implementation, including the weakening of Hezbollah and making sure that all parties go along with the peace,” said Paul E. Salem, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

Indeed, he and others say, Syria may well encourage Lebanon to sign a peace treaty first, to bear the brunt of the political fallout and allow Syria the dignity of being the last to end the Arab war against Israel.

Lebanon, in turn, would be allowed the political cover of Syrian domination. “Everybody will know it was not really the Lebanese who signed--it was really the Syrians on our behalf. It helps deflect the political tension, and that’s a factor for political stability,” Salem said.

“We have zero power, and so you might expect that in a zero-sum game we lose everything. But that’s not reality,” he said. “The negotiations are leading toward a new Middle East, a Middle East of contacts and relations and networks, not a carving up of states.

“Lebanon will remain a state. Technically, on paper, it will remain independent. And gradually, Lebanon will in fact become independent as Syrian influence recedes over six or seven years. In this new system, a country like Lebanon stands to gain a lot, because Lebanon is one of the only states ready now for the new system, in terms of having a political system that is open, a free economy, good relations with the West, experience in trading and markets.”

At the Dirani home in the Bekaa Valley town of Ksarnaba, this optimistic talk falls on deaf ears.

Young Tiba, in a pink dress with a flowered barrette holding back her black curls, squirmed on her uncle’s lap and pointed to the place on her forehead where a huge bruise had only begun to disappear. “We want Papa back,” was the bulk of what she managed to say.

Dirani’s brother, Hussein, stared grimly over the top of Tiba’s head. “There is a saying we have in the resistance, that death is a habit and martyrdom is a joy,” he said. “We will keep fighting the Zionist body until we annihilate it.”