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Column. Part two of a short three part series on President Bush, U.S. foreign policy, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas. (Back to Articles)

Why UNSC Resolution 1701 will not end the fighting in the Middle East
It does not touch the root problem
by Charles Strohmer

Let’s stop obfuscating. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, unanimously passed on August 11, is a worthwhile ceasefire. “But no one thinks it will last,” former U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke said recently.

The way to a permanent end in the fighting between Israel and the militant wing of Hezbollah begins when it formally accepts the existence of the state of Israel in the Middle East. If that has not been clear before, recent actions have made it clear. We can also fold the militant wing of Hamas into this assessment. Throughout 2005, Ariel Sharon led Israel through the gut-wrenching process of dismantling every Israeli settlement in Gaza and then turning the entire region over to the Palestinians. This was huge. It was an unprecedented gesture of good faith to the Palestinians, and can probably be implicated in Sharon’s massive stoke at the end of the process.

What did Israel receive for withdrawing? In June, Palestinian militants in Gaza started firing rockets into Israel, and Hamas fighters participated in an attack with other militant groups. They tunneled into Israel and on June 25 lobbed grenades at the Israeli military outpost near Karem Shalom, killing two soldiers and abducting a third, corporal Gilad Shalit.

Hezbollah followed suit. In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. Since then, the Lebanese people and Israel had been living fairly peaceably side-by-side. Neither country had any reason to fight the other, and both have reasons for living together in peace. What did Israel receive for withdrawing? While the Lebanese and Israel were working at peace for six years, Hezbollah had been amassing and hiding thousands of rockets throughout southern Lebanon, a part of the country it had controlled.

For six years, Hezbollah had been using southern Lebanon to carry out or sponsor attacks in Israeli territory, engage in cross-border operations with Syria to smuggle terrorists and weapons, and disrupt efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It also refused compliance with UNSC Resolution 1559, which in September 2004 required the disarming of all militias in Lebanon.

On July 12 of this year, Hezbollah militants crossed into Israeli territory near Shtula and captured two Israeli soldiers near their Army Humvees, resulting in the death of three others. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the unprovoked aggression an act of war. The Israeli military began its heavy response; Hezbollah began launching its stockpiled rockets into northern Israeli towns.

Hamas wanted Israel out of Gaza. Hezbollah wanted Israel out of southern Lebanon. Both groups got what they wanted. Both groups trampled under foot these huge gestures of peace. What does this indicate? What is Israel supposed to do?

Israel has a problem, but it is not with most Palestinians, who want peace, nor is it with most Lebanese, who have shown that they can live with Israel next door. Hamas and Hezbollah militants are the problem. Certainly Hamas (founded in 1987) does a lot of social good for the Palestinians, running hospitals, food banks, clinics, schools, and charities. As does Hezbollah (founded in 1982) for the Lebanese. But this is depressingly ironic.

They have been selling the Arab world a bill of goods, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained to NPR host Terry Gross during the recent border war between Israel and Hezbollah. Having just returned from Damascus and wearing his heart on his sleeve, Friedman said it makes him “enormously angry” to see “what they do to their own people, the future they have deprived their own children of. The fact that they hate Israel more than they love their own kids, that is such a travesty.”

Fighting Israel seems to be their reason for living because the root political problem is that both Hamas and Hezbollah have Islamic militant wings dedicated to a Middle East minus the state of Israel. Neither has yet to formally renounce this goal. Instead, they act on it repeatedly. Their ultimate political aims are grounded in their rigid religious beliefs. The militant wing of Hamas is comprised of radical Sunni Muslims who want to establish an Islamic Palestinian state encompassing Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The militant wing of Hezbollah is comprised of radical Shiite Muslims who want to liberate Jerusalem, eliminate Israel, and establish Islamic rule in Lebanon. 

If Hamas and Hezbollah don’t have the ability to live with Israel, then the international community must stop shirking its responsibility to this intractable issue as if it were just going to go away or solve itself. Instead, the international community must begin to discover what it would take for these two militant groups to lay down their arms, accept Israel’s existence, and become peaceably a part of the political process. Once that becomes acceptable to Hamas and Hezbollah, then all the other issues, so often discussed, so often in ruins, will stand a better chance of success.

UNSCR 1701 lays out a series of steps “to help secure a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict.” It is vital that these steps be implemented if a lasting peace is to be found. Not one of the Resolution’s provisions, however, addresses the root problem of Hezbollah’s rejection of the state of Israel. Of course solutions to the other vital issues must be found, but this Resolution will become, as all others have to date, just so much huffing, puffing, and failing until Hezbollah and Hamas formally accept Israel’s existence in the Middle East. Without that, the driving force of violence against Israel in the radical ideologies of Hamas and Hezbollah will deliberately derail all attempts at a lasting peace.

An impossible turnaround? Neither group would ever agree to it? The Iranian and Syrian governments would never agree to it? It’s not impossible. Egypt and Jordan have had solid peace treaties with Israel for many years. Syria and Israel even entered into long, serious talks during the mid-1990s and came this close to a peace agreement. But it will certainly never occur without wise and long U.S. talks with those governments. President Reagan called the former Soviet Union an evil empire, but Washington still did deals with Moscow. 

Rapprochement of Hamas and Hezbollah toward Israel would not guarantee an immediate Middle East peace. Other militant groups would continue cause trouble. And this is not to argue that Israel shares no blame, or that there are no Israeli extremists who would want to keep fighting. But it now seems clear that until Hamas and Hezbollah accept the state of Israel in the Middle East, that region will see war without end.

Recognition of the state of Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah is where the international community must start directing its considerable efforts. Regrettably, if that root political issue is not solved, it may be only a matter of weeks, months at best, before this most recent ceasefire ends in escalating violence. (Charles Strohmer is the author of several books and a commentator on religion and politics. He has written for the BBC, and his articles have been appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and the U.K.)

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