In the jigsaw puzzle of Middle East peace talks under way, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun is trying to remind the warring parties in the current Middle East wars that his country is important, too.
He worries because two powerful adversaries, Iran and the United States, appear to regard Lebanon as a kind of sideshow to the main event of their conflict. Iran views its military aid to, and diplomatic defense of, its proxy ally Hezbollah, as a key to its status as a regional force. “The efforts of Lebanon’s brave fighters and the powerful diplomacy of Iran will guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of beloved Lebanon,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s rubber-stamp parliament.
US President Donald Trump seems dismissive of Lebanon’s concerns. He expresses concern about Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and complains that all Israel seems to know is to “bomb buildings.” Last Sunday, as Israel kept bombing, Vice President J S Vance, who is overseeing peace negotiations with Iran, groused to Israel that it “can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem.”
Hence, Aoun’s appeal for attention. He demanded that Iran stop intervening in Lebanon via its military arms support for Hezbollah. “It is not your country, it is our country,” he said, and added, “You are not trying to help us. It is the Lebanese who are paying the price for your own interests, and our interests do not coincide with yours. We are tired and we want to live in peace.”
After getting a weekend phone call from Vance about US negotiations the US expected to hold with Iran, Aoun rather testily remarked, “We welcome any assistance to end the war, but we distinguish between assistance and interference in internal affairs. We are a sovereign country and no one negotiates on our behalf.”
Lebanon is sending envoys to Washington on Tuesday, June 22, for talks with Israel. Aoun wants the focus on two issues: Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to leave the country.
But on Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Aoun’s demands on him. “My directive, and that of the Minister of Defense, to the Israeli Defense Forces is clear,” Netanyahu said. “Our fighters in southern Lebanon have full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the North [of Israel]. The IDF has no restrictions in this regard.”
This week’s talks mark the fourth round of negotiations that Trump ordered Netanyahu and Aoun to organize this this year. Israel has proposed that Lebanon’s army disarm Hezbollah. Israel, which intends to keep forces in Lebanon’s south indefinitely, would provide muscle if Hezbollah resisted.
Aoun says Israel’s demands are unrealistic. Lebanon’s army is undertrained and ill-equipped. Moreover, such a move would likely lead to internal strife. Shiites make up 40% of the force; it’s unlikely they would join an anti-Hezbollah battle.
“Any controversial domestic issue in Lebanon can only be approached through conciliatory, non-confrontational dialogue and communication. If not, we will lead Lebanon to ruin,” Aoun said delicately. “We can’t let the country descend into another civil war.”
Such fears reflect experience. Two past efforts to rein in Hezbollah only exposed government weakness and Hezbollah’s determination to hold onto to its weapons. In the first case, in the early 1980s, the government ordered the army to crack down on Muslim militias. Shiites deserted or refused orders en masse.
In the second case, in 2008, the government ordered that a secret communications network operated by Hezbollah in south Lebanon be dismantled. The government also demanded that Hezbollah end the the use of Beirut Airport as a secret transit point for weapons from Iran. Hezbollah sent its forces, along with other allies, to occupy the largely Sunni Islamic downtown in West Beirut. The government capitulated.
‘Pay the price’
Mahmoud Qamati, a Hezbollah leader, has threatened that “a confrontation with the political authority is inevitable after the war” and vowed that Lebanese officials involved with Israel “would pay the price for their betrayal.”
Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s current leader, said efforts to disarm Hezbollah would lead to a “serious crisis.”
“There will be no life in Lebanon,” he added.
Lebanon’s sectarian political system, in which representation is divided among Christian, Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim populations, was birthed during the long Ottoman and French rule. It carried over into Lebanon’s 1945 independence. The presidency is headed by a Christian, prime ministers are Sunni and the speaker of Parliament Shiite. Bureaucracy is also divided along sectarian lines. Druze, a 6% minority, are guaranteed parliamentary seats and bureaucratic jobs.
Meant to reduce confessional conflict, the system instead cemented religious-political rivalries that turned violent with alarming regularity.
Outsiders contributed to unrest, and worse. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was headquartered in Beirut, but also to install Christian leader Bashir Gemayel as president, with expectations he would sign a permanent peace treaty with the Jewish State.
Syria blew up that scheme by organizing the assassination of Gemayel. Guerrillas drove Israeli forces into southern Lebanon, which they occupied for 18 years.
Enter Iran
The south is the heartland of Lebanon’s Shiite population; Iran is also a largely Shiite country and, along with Syria, supported revolt led by Hezbollah. Israel, unable to subdue Hezbollah, fled the south in the year 2,000.
Hezbollah did not disband, but rather found a new, if somewhat bogus, mission: to expel Israel from a small territory known as Sheba Farms. The area is located at the edge of the Golan Heights, territory that Israel wrested from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War. Syria suddenly decided the Lebanese might have a claim to Sheba Farms. Hezbollah decided to “liberate” it.
From then on, frequent border clashes and occasional full scale war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah. Iran upgraded Hezbollah’s mission, calling it the “forward defense” of an “axis of resistance” that includes Hamas in the Golan Heights and Houthis in Yemen.
That’s the history Aoun is up against. Can a separate peace between the US and Iran also spell the end of Hezbollah?
Too often American interest in the Lebanon is overshadowed by Israeli … It shouldn’t …