A Victory for Islamism?: The Second Lebanon War and Its Repercussions

Executive Summary

This study, translated from the original Swedish, examines the international community’s long series of failures in Lebanon between the May 2000 Israeli withdrawal and the 2006 war with Hizballah— failures caused primarily by an inability to confront Lebanon’s truly divisive issues. These problems have repeatedly led to new crises and pose a danger to the entire region.

The conflict between Lebanon and Israel is no longer a conflict between two states. Since the end of Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, Hizballah has remained strong enough to drag the country into war against the will of the sovereign government. In tandem with its military operations, Hizballah, or the “Party of God,” has provided legal, social, and political services to many Lebanese. Hizballah is thereby able to keep its conflict with Israel alive, making any attempt at a peaceful solution impossible.

At the same time, Syria and Iran are working both regionally and internationally to interfere with the various initiatives intended to strengthen the Lebanese government. This situation is an embarrassment for the international community. In the face of threats from Damascus and Tehran, the United Nations and, to some extent, the European Union have allowed themselves to be run over. The best example of this trend is the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), whose presence in the South was supposedly bolstered with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701 near the end of the 2006 war. Shortly afterward, Syria made it clear that any attempt to patrol the Lebanese-Syrian frontier—the main access route for arms from Iran to Hizballah—would be seen as a hostile act and met by force and closure of the border. The threat had its intended effect. Even before the ink had dried on UNSCR 1701, the UN declared that it had no intention of patrolling the border it had been empowered to control. Today, three years after UNSCR 1701 expanded UNIFIL’s authority and increased its size from 2,000 to 15,000 personnel, the force is still incomplete. This reluctance to seriously confront the basic problems of Lebanon and its neighborhood is rooted in a fear of placing the UN in conflict with Hizballah, even if such a move would benefit the Lebanese government.

In contrast, Hizballah has been able to reinforce its position in southern Lebanon at a time when the government is held hostage by an ineffective “national dialogue” process. Hizballah has no interest in ending this dialogue; rather, continued discussion ensures the indefinite postponement of demands for disarmament and allows the party to keep the conflict with Israel alive, effectively hindering any breakthrough in Arab-Israeli negotiations. Since the armistice went into effect in August 2006, Hizballah has received regular shipments of arms and other matériel from Syria, across the same border the UN has scrupulously avoided monitoring.

Although assistance to the Lebanese government has been the stated goal of a long series of generous UN resolutions, in the end they have become nothing more than rhetorical dust. The harsh reality is that when confronted with the prospect of conflict that may not be resolved though dialogue alone, the UN chooses to bow down to threats of force. For Lebanon, this amounts to a tragedy. The country has no chance of strengthening its tenuous democratic structure if Hizballah is permitted to remain a state within the state, backed by its own militia.

Repercussions for Lebanon

The political fallout of the 2006 war continues to be felt in Lebanon. In November 2006, Hizballah suspended its participation in the Lebanese cabinet, paralyzing the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Simultaneously, the party erected a tent camp in central Beirut, bringing normal business to a standstill. Hizballah and its supporters then laid siege to the parliament and the prime minister’s headquarters, further undermining the state. Despite these actions, Siniora’s rump government continued to function, albeit without Shiite ministers.

The crisis escalated in spring 2008 when the government demanded an investigation into Hizballah’s security cameras at Beirut airport and its autonomous telecommunications network. Tensions turned to violence in May of that year, when Hizballah took over West Beirut by armed force. The government and opposition struck an agreement in Doha, Qatar, to defuse the crisis, and a coalition government was formed that once again included Hizballah ministers. In fact, Hizballah’s position in the government was strengthened by the Doha Accord, which provided the opposition with a blocking third of ministers and essentially gave the Party of God veto power over all government decisions.

Hizballah’s increasingly obvious influence as a kingmaker in Lebanese politics has allowed the party to emphasize its demands for a more Islamic society and perpetual war against Israel. Its success to date is based on a strategy of adapting to the local political structure while maintaining its long-term regional goals.

Repercussions for Syria

The 2006 war provided Syrian president Bashar al- Asad with an opportunity to portray his nation as the leading regional force in the larger, strategic struggle against Israel. This, of course, was nothing new: such rhetoric dates to Israel’s founding in 1948. The 2006 war instilled new life in the rhetoric, however, allowing Asad to claim that Hizballah’s victory was a new beginning on the path to total victory and Israel’s destruction. Damascus was therefore able to demand increased influence in broader political processes that began as a result of the war.

The recurring political crises in Lebanon have underscored the country’s importance in facilitating Syria’s role as a regional actor. Through Lebanon, the regime in Damascus is able to influence the situation in the region and undermine any peace deal with Israel that does not also satisfy Syria’s claim to the Golan Heights. Furthermore, by serving as a way station for all Iranian support to Hizballah, Syria has considerable control over both Iran and Hizballah’s ability to act. This situation allows Damascus to keep its options open in the event of new, direct negotiations with Israel. The regime saw the outcome of the 2006 war as confirmation that its political approach had been successful.

Repercussions for Iran

Iran has shown that it is not above supplying very sophisticated matériel to Hizballah and other nonstate players. Examples include the Chinese C-802 missile used in the near sinking of an Israeli ship in July 2006, and the more advanced rockets and missiles that Hizballah provided to Hamas during its six-month ceasefire with Israel. Iranian support is visible all over Lebanon, with each Iranian ministry and department having a branch office in Beirut. In addition, several Tehran-funded institutions operate independent of direct government control, such as the Iranian Red Crescent; the Committee of Ayatollah Khomeini, which focuses on education and propaganda; and al-Alam, an Arabic-language television station that Tehran founded in 2004, with offices adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Beirut. These Iranian interests in Lebanon reach far beyond purely military factors or rhetoric against Israel. Tehran’s financial support to various Lebanese social and charity organizations has had a significant impact on Hizballah’s popularity.

Today, Tehran has partially fulfilled many of its regional goals. While Iran’s Arab neighbors have lost regional and international influence, Iran has increased its clout, making it practically impossible to ignore Iranian wishes when formulating regional policies. From its status as special observer at Gulf Cooperation Council meetings to the fact that the Obama administration has announced a willingness to engage it in dialogue, Iran has become the Middle East’s only regional superpower. The country has significantly expanded its influence not only in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, but also in Afghanistan. It has developed a close alliance with Syria to ensure that the conflict with Israel remains alive and that any serious peace initiatives in the foreseeable future will be destined to fail.

Conclusion

Seen in the light of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Lebanon is just one of many unfinished Middle Eastern conflicts. But the 2006 war did clarify an important point: the conflict is not primarily about occupation or Israeli settlements, although these factors are obviously significant. Hizballah attacked Israel just as it has done on several occasions since 2000 because it could not imagine a future in which Israel exists. The conflict is about Hizballah’s active attempts to prevent any form of peace process that might potentially end in a long-term agreement with Israel.

This point has regional significance as well. Israel and Hizballah were not the only parties that clashed in summer 2006. Regional actors such as Iran, Syria, and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Egypt were active as well. In this respect, the tensions that are fragmenting the region today—between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Israelis, Islamists and moderates, not to mention Lebanon’s own sectarian communities— have deepened.

Therein lies one of the war’s most tragic consequences: Hizballah continues to proclaim the 2006 war as a victory for armed struggle. Indeed, the war represents a victory for the belief that there is no need to compromise or get involved in complicated political processes with uncertain outcomes in order to get results. It works just as well, perhaps even better, to defeat Israel on the battlefield and force it to make concessions. If a sufficient number of other Arab actors adopt this destructive analysis of the war, the foundation will be laid for a new series of armed conflagrations and small-scale wars that could continue for many years to come.

View the full study on The Washington Institute website