The UN in a Corner
The draft of the recent (August 5, 2006) UN Security Council Resolution, worked out by the United States and France, has not been well received throughout the Islamic world. What are the details of the draft that so many find unacceptable?
First, the draft points a finger at Hezbollah. If accepted as is, the Security Council will express (bolding is mine) “its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons. . . .”
Second, the draft calls for a ceasefire in place. The Lebanese/Hezbollah position is that a resolution must call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
Third, the only actual action called for in the draft, other than the ceasefire, is the “unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. . . .” Hezbollah’s issue, “settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel,” is left to a future resolution.
Fourth, the draft leaves to the future any possible resolution of the Lebanese claims to the Shebaa Farms region and instead calls for all sides to respect the “Blue Line,” i.e., the de facto Lebanese-Israeli border, less the Shebaa Farms area.
Fifth, the draft calls upon “the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the Government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbours for verifiably and purely civilian purposes. . . .” In other words, the draft ties reconstruction to the willingness of the Lebanese to stop the shipment by sea and air of weapons from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah. Elsewhere, the draft resolution calls for the “establishment of an international embargo on the sale or supply of arms and related material to Lebanon except as authorized by its government. . . .”
Sixth, the draft “[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords [1989], for it to exercise its full sovereignty and authority. . . .” The resolutions and accords mentioned here, among other things, called on the government of Lebanon to establish its monopoly on military power in the south of Lebanon. In short, the Lebanese government was supposed to disarm Hezbollah, along with all other Lebanese or non-Lebanese militias. The draft, for example, calls for (my bolding) “security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Lebanese armed and security forces and of UN mandated international forces deployed in this area . . .” as well as “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006) that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state. . . .”
The lack of enthusiasm among the Arab states (and Iran) for the draft resolution is thus understandable. Nevertheless, excepting the absence of a call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal, the other demands in the draft reflect nothing more than restatements of previous and numerous UN and other agreements going back for the better part of two decades. For a recent example, the January 2006 resolution that kept UNIFIL in Lebanon urged “the Lebanese Government to do more to assert its authority in the South, to exert control and monopoly over the use of force and to maintain law and order on its entire territory and to prevent attacks from Lebanon across the Blue Line including through deploying additional numbers of Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces. . . .” The call for an arms embargo is new, but if Hezbollah was disarmed, as the UN has been demanding for years now, that would no longer be an issue.
I would argue that the United States and France (I admit, here, my surprise at French cooperation in this instance) have placed the Security Council in a difficult position. If the UN—an organization of states—is to retain any semblance of consistency and relevance, it has to stick to the draft wording that reflects past resolutions aimed at insuring that the Lebanese state holds a monopoly on the possession and use of force. If the Security Council proves unwilling to do that, it will offer Hezbollah and other non-state jihadists everywhere an enormous victory and drive yet another nail into the coffin in which the UN ideal can be, and will be buried.
But no matter how the Security Council ultimately acts, adopting a resolution will only be the beginning. No matter which way the Security Council moves, there exists a substantial possibility that one side or the other will ignore the UN. I do not see the Israelis accepting any agreement that permits Hezbollah to remain armed in south Lebanon with continued access to Iranian weaponry. Conversely, I find it hard to believe that Hezbollah will disarm itself, and even harder to believe that the Lebanese army or any thrown-together UN force will possess the will to forcibly disarm Hezbollah.
Given the situation, the safest scenario for the Security Council may well be to take no action and to allow the fighting to continue until either the Israelis or Hezbollah signal their desire to call it quits. Of course, while that might be the best course for the UN, it is not the best course for the people of Lebanon, nor is it a course likely to minimize the risk of the war expanding, or to defuse tensions and divisions in the region.
