John Hughes/CSMonitor: Disarming Hizbullah is key to Lebanon's peace

[furman]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0802/p09s01-cojh.html

Disarming Hizbullah is key to Lebanon's peace
The Israel-Lebanon crisis should spur efforts for a broader Arab-Israeli peace.
By John Hughes
August 2, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY – While the world was preoccupied elsewhere, Hizbullah quietly accumulated an arsenal of some 10,000 short-range rockets supplied by Syria and Iran. This is not the kind of stockpile that augurs well for peaceful relations of any consequence with neighboring Israel. Nor does it suggest much peaceful inclination on the part of the governing regimes in Syria and Iran.
<snip>
International diplomats seem to be leaning toward some multinational force that would be placed along the Lebanon-Israel border, separating Hizbullah and Israeli soldiers. Three major questions must be answered about this force. From what countries will its troops be drawn? With what armament will those troops be equipped? What will be their mission?

If it is simply to attempt to keep the peace in a region where there is no peace, then the mission is pointless. They would merely be preserving an uneasy status quo.

If it is to fulfill UN Resolution 1559 requiring the disarming of Hizbullah, are they to do it themselves, or in concert with Lebanon's own rather ineffective army? What degree of force will be needed? What degree of armament will the troops require? Tanks? Artillery? Aircraft? To whom will the force report? the UN? NATO? The questions are many. And what will be the stance of Syria and Iran, Hizbullah's mentors, while all this takes place? Will they stand idly by on the sidelines?
<snip>
A democratic Lebanon. A Palestinian state and an Israeli state, living side by side in harmony. This is not the stuff of pipe dreams. Difficult though the outlook may seem, they have been within grasp in the past and are worth striving for in the future.

more at http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0802/p09s01-cojh.html

[Kagemusha]

1. This guy claiming Lebanon wasn't democratic post-Cedar Revolution?

And the blunt truth is that the only force that can disarm Hezbollah is Hezbollah. Otherwise all you can do is kill them and break things until the people and things are replaced.

[furman]

2. That's why a strong international force is needed

in order to keep Hezbollah from committing acts of violence against Israel.

Hopefully diplomacy would also help get Hezbollah to disarm itself.

[Kagemusha]

3. I'm sorry, you're not getting it.

A strong international force could never completely stop Hezbollah from committing acts of violence against Israel and claims to the contrary are wild fantasies. A force that tried would end up simply eating the same guerilla war Israel wants inflicted on international troops that it had inflicted upon itself during 18 years in S. Lebanon when Hezbollah came into being.

And more to the point. Whose forces would really go in for the explicit purpose of waging war upon Hezbollah and trying to root it out of the S. Lebanese Shiite population? (Related: Are the Israelis going to allow the S. Lebanese Shiites BACK to their villages and towns, or try to gun them down if they try to return and repopulate the ocean in which Hezbollah swims, with fish that provide cover to it?)