Salving a Raw Middle East

A week of patient shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Warren Christopher has produced still another cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas and demonstrated anew the virtual indispensability of American mediation in Arab-Israel conflicts. The latest understanding seeks to halt 17 days of bombardments and to bind the Lebanese and Israeli governments to preventing future cross-border attacks against civilians. The test of this tenuous, unsigned “understanding” will come in how Hezbollah behaves--or, more accurately, in whether Syria, the military master in Lebanon, chooses to force the Iranian-sponsored guerrillas to abide by the new rules.

Significantly, Syria refused to become a direct party to the understanding, despite the long hours Christopher spent negotiating with President Hafez Assad in Damascus. Syria is instead credited with a consultative role and joins France, Israel, Lebanon and the United States in monitoring the accord. Being part of a five-member group, of course, belies Syria’s true influence in Lebanon. It controls and could at any time shut off the flow of rockets and other war material from Iran to Hezbollah. If ordered to do so, its 40,000-man army in Lebanon could quickly neutralize the guerrillas, just as it disarmed all of Lebanon’s other militias when Assad finally acted to end Lebanon’s civil war in 1991.

Though relatively brief, the latest round of fighting in southern Lebanon was costly. Israel inflicted major damage on the infrastructure, killed at least 150 Lebanese and drove half a million more from their villages. Hezbollah, meanwhile, sent more than 1,100 rockets into northern Israel, forcing about 20,000 Israelis from their homes. Who won? By most reckonings Assad was the big political winner, avoiding direct involvement while allowing Hezbollah to suck Israel into fighting that left it looking both militarily ineffective and politically outfoxed. And, in the end, he again showed that only with his approval could the fighting be suspended.

A true end will come, as everyone involved knows, only when Hezbollah can no longer threaten Israel with rocket fire and when Israel withdraws its army from the “security zone” it controls in southern Lebanon. Before that happens, it seems certain that American secretaries of state will have to do a lot more shuttling among Middle East capitals.