It’s Up to Lebanon

Israel has ended its ineffective 22-year-long effort to pacify southern Lebanon, weeks ahead of schedule and in conditions far different from the orderly withdrawal it had planned. In a matter of days Israel’s proxy militia, the largely Christian and Druze South Lebanon Army, collapsed before the advancing forces of Hezbollah, abandoning outposts, military equipment and entire villages to the Shiite Muslim guerrillas. Hezbollah has succeeded where all other Arab armies failed. It has bested Israeli units in the field, and its flag now flies within sight of the nervous residents of northern Israel.

Unless that flag is quickly replaced by the Lebanese banner, and unless Beirut sends its army and civil administrators to reassert sovereignty over the south, peace in the region is bound to be precarious.

Hezbollah is now at the peak of its popularity and strength, its achievement a source of pride that cuts across sectarian lines in Lebanon. The danger is that Hezbollah will be tempted to claim as a fruit of its victory the right to turn south Lebanon into its own fiefdom. Trained and armed by Iran and abetted by Syria, which has often used the organization for its own political ends, Hezbollah threatens to become a permanent armed presence in the south and a constant menace to northern Israel.

Israel has repeatedly warned that if Hezbollah attacks, all of Lebanon and perhaps even the 30,000-man Syrian army in eastern Lebanon could be exposed to Israeli attacks in return. There’s no reason to doubt that intention and every reason to fear what it could lead to. That’s why it’s urgent that Hezbollah not be allowed to make permanent the control it has extended over what had been a nine-mile-deep zone occupied by Israeli troops.

The United Nations force that has stood by in Lebanon for decades while fighting raged all around is certainly not an answer. Lebanon and Syria have consistently demanded that Israel leave Lebanese soil. With the Israeli withdrawal complete, Lebanon must now accept its responsibilities to administer and provide security for its regained territory. To fail to do so would simply mean that a foreign presence has been replaced by an indigenous one that takes its political guidance from other foreigners whose interests in keeping the pot boiling do not reflect the wishes or needs of most Lebanese.