Ending Lebanon's free ride

Since Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora bowed to Hizbullah's demands in Doha last month and agreed to grant the Iranian-controlled, Syrian-supported terror group control over his government, Lebanon has become an official agent of a terror group. That is, Lebanon, as a state, has become a sponsor of terror. But no one seems to notice or to care.

Truth be told, on the surface the situation in Lebanon is quite complicated. There is a power struggle of sorts going on today between Saniora's pro-Lebanese sovereignty March 14th movement and Hizbullah. Even in its diminished status, the March 14th movement is seeking to compel Hizbullah to subordinate its Iranian proxy army to the government. But this is an exercise in futility.

As Hizbullah demonstrated clearly during its armed insurrection in May that led to the Doha agreement, and as it continues to demonstrate in its attacks against Sunni neighborhoods in Tripoli, it is fully willing to use its militia to force its political opponents to accept its complete independence.

But then, while it is clear that the March 14th movement's leaders and supporters oppose Hizbullah's independence from central authority, it is far from clear that they oppose its terrorist operations. The fact of the matter is that none of Hizbullah's political opponents in Lebanon have anything but praise for its aggression against Israel and its clear intention to continue its war against Israel for its Iranian commanders.

MAKING THIS point this week, Lebanon's Finance Minister Muhammad Shatah, explained, "We are all in agreement that it will be crazy not to benefit from Hizbullah resistance capabilities, but the dispute is whether this will be done within the state or outside." The widespread support that Hizbullah's terror war against Israel enjoys in Lebanon was prominently displayed on July 16 when convicted baby killer Samir Kuntar and his fellow Lebanese terrorists were released to Lebanon by Israel in exchange for the mutilated corpses of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser who were killed in Hizbullah's raid on their military position in Israel on July 12, 2006.

All of Lebanon's supposedly moderate leaders were at the Hizbullah-controlled Beirut airport to accord Kuntar a hero's welcome. President Michel Suleiman embraced Kuntar - who crushed four-year-old Einat Haran's skull - and his fellow terrorists as "our freed heroes." Sa'ad Hariri, the head of the March 14th movement, referred to Kuntar's release as "an historic day of joy." Saniora hailed the corpses-for-murderers swap explaining, "The success of Hizbullah in the negotiations led by a third party is a national success for the party and for the struggle of the Lebanese because it secured national goals which Israel always refused to respect." And Druse leader Walid Jumblatt hailed Kuntar's release as "a national holiday."

HIZBULLAH'S DOMESTIC intimidation and international terrorism is enabled by the Lebanese military which refuses to confront it. And this is nothing new. During the 2006 war, when Suleiman commanded the Lebanese armed forces, the Lebanese military actively collaborated with Hizbullah units. Then, as now, Hizbullah was a coalition partner in Saniora's government.

During the war, the Lebanese military guided Hizbullah in attacking the INS Hanit along the Lebanese coastline with an advanced, Iranian-supplied Chinese C-802 missile. The Lebanese military pays pensions to the families of Hizbullah fighters killed in battle. Since the war, the Lebanese military enabled Hizbullah to reassert its control over south Lebanon, to expand its control north of the Litani River and to massively rearm.

Moreover, throughout the war, Saniora acted as Hizbullah's mouthpiece. He condemned all Israeli efforts to defend its territory from wanton aggression and championed all of Hizbullah's demands in cease-fire negotiations. By the same token, the Saniora government backed all of Hizbullah's attacks against Israel - attacks which forced a million Israelis to flee their homes or live in bomb shelters for the duration of the war.

IN JULY 2006, understanding the Saniora government's collusion with Hizbullah, Israel's immediate reaction to Hizbullah's abduction of its soldiers and bombardment of northern Israel was to hold Beirut accountable. In his first press conference of the war, just hours after Goldwasser and Regev were abducted and their comrades killed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made this point explicitly. He declared, "This morning's events were not a terror attack. They were the act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel, without reason and without provocation. The government of Lebanon, of which Hizbullah is a part, is attempting to destabilize the region. Lebanon is the responsible party, and Lebanon will pay the consequences for its actions."

Israel's initial strategy for fighting the war was to disable Hizbullah's war machine by bombing Lebanese infrastructure targets such as highways, the airport, bridges, electricity grids and the telecommunication systems. All of these facilities enabled Hizbullah's war effort. It is possible that if Israel had in fact attacked Lebanon's national infrastructures, the blow to Hizbullah's war machine might have been strategically debilitating. In that event, the task of land forces charged with defeating Hizbullah forces on the ground would have been smoother.

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would have none of it. Already in the earliest stages of the war, she began putting pressure on Israel not to attack Lebanese infrastructure. Her demand was formalized in the G-8 declaration three days after Hizbullah initiated hostilities.

Rice's support for Saniora's government was so strong and consistent, that she eventually forced Israel to cave to all of Hizbullah's demands in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which set the terms of the cease-fire at the end of the war. Rice defended her support by noting the democratic character of the March 14th movement and its success - with US and French support - in forcing most Syrian forces to depart Lebanon in April 2005.

Despite its and the Lebanese military's open and active collusion with Hizbullah throughout the war, in its aftermath, US support for Saniora's government expanded exponentially. In the year following the war, US aid to Lebanon grew from $41 million to $520 million. US military assistance to the Lebanese military since the war has been in excess of $410 million, making Lebanon the second largest recipient per capita of US military aid.

US military support for Lebanon grows even as the Lebanese armed forces demonstrate at every turn that they collaborate with Hizbullah. It was supplemented after the Lebanese military, under Suleiman's command, refused to prevent Hizbullah's coup in May. Moreover, the day before Suleiman gave Kuntar the red carpet treatment at the Beirut airport, Maj.-Gen. Robert Allardice, the US Central Command's director of strategy, plans and policy, visited Beirut and announced an additional $32 million in military aid.

Since 2006, the US has given Lebanon some 285 Humvees, 200 cargo trucks, helicopter parts, assault rifles, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and urban warfare bunker weapons. Another 300 Humvees, mobile communications systems, several hundred anti-tank missiles and coastal patrol craft are on order.

Israel has recently begun openly expressing its alarm about these weapon transfers. Given Hizbullah's now inarguable control over Lebanon and its sway over its military forces, it is all but a foregone conclusion that these weapons will likely be used by Hizbullah and its allied forces in the Lebanese army in any future war with Israel. In recent weeks, senior Defense Ministry officials have been dispatched to the Pentagon in an attempt to convince the US to stop the weapons transfers. Yet while the Pentagon was only too happy to give Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Ashkenazi an unrequested medal, it has rebuffed all of Israel's entreaties.

ALL OF this is depressingly familiar. In many ways, the Saniora government is to Hizbullah in Lebanon what the Fatah terror group is to Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. As is the case in Lebanon, the US trains, finances and arms Fatah. It supports Fatah politically against Israel, claiming that Fatah has earned its support through its moderation relative to Hamas. But as events have shown repeatedly, Fatah is a terrorist organization and is only too happy to collude with Hamas in attacking Israel and to form governments with it so long as Hamas doesn't embarrass it too much.

Notably in the case of Fatah, the US cut off its assistance to the PA after it and Hamas formed their unity government last year and only reinstated it after Hamas ended the unity deal by seizing control of Gaza from its Fatah partner. In Lebanon's case, US support for the country has grown as Hizbullah's control it and its military have become more open. Indeed, today Rice is openly pressing Israel to surrender Mt. Dov and Ghajar village to Lebanon even though it has no legal claim to either. And this she does by claiming that an Israeli capitulation to Hizbullah's demands will strengthen Saniora who is controlled by Hizbullah - and believing that this will be a good thing.

With even the Olmert-Livni-Barak government calling openly for a revision of Resolution 1701 to curtail the Lebanese military's ability to facilitate Hizbullah's rearmament and assertion of control over southern Lebanon, and with even Britain finally classifying Hizbullah's militia as a terror group, the time has come to revisit US policy.

US JEWISH leaders and counterterror champions on Capitol Hill should begin a campaign to compel the State Department to place Lebanon on its list of state sponsors of terror. At a minimum, US military and financial assistance to the Hizbullah-controlled government should be abrogated immediately.

The current government of Lebanon is only expected to remain in power for another year. Hizbullah is expected to be the big winner in Lebanon's parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. As Lebanese parliamentarian Samir Franjieh from the March 14th movement explained in a media interview this week, "Weapons eliminate the principle of majority [rule]. In... 2005 the March 14 [movement] won a majority of parliamentary seats in the elections. The result was practically eliminated by the use of force. Having armed factions [running for elections in 2009] would limit the freedom of voters."

It is reasonable for the US to seek to support pro-Western democrats in the Arab world. It is unreasonable for the US to be bankrolling a terror-controlled regime populated by terrorists and democrats who support their aggression. This is particularly the case when the same terrorists are waging war not only against Israel, but against its own forces in Iraq.

Olmert's July 12, 2006 declaration is still apt. Lebanon, must be forced to suffer the consequences of its support for Hizbullah.

Alongside production of the Iron Dome interceptor, Rafael is also in the midst of developing a solid-based laser system that is believed to be the future in short-range missile interception. The Jerusalem Post has learned that a prototype of the model is already used by the IDF Southern Command to detonate explosive devices planted alongside the border fence.

Raytheon’s Laser Air Defense System (LADS).
Photo: Courtesy of Raytheon

Slideshow: Pictures of the week “With the laser, there is no need to send troops across the border to destroy the bomb,” one official explained.
The Defense Ministry is also closely following the development of a Star Wars-like laser beam system recently ordered by the United States government to help defend troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan under the threat of short-range rockets and mortar shells.

Called the Laser Air Defense System (LADS), the platform is under development by Raytheon in the US and was put on display earlier this month at the Farnborough defense expo in England.

Israeli defense officials said that the Defense Ministry’s Research and Development Directorate was closely tracking the development of the system and that if it was operational before the Iron Dome - currently under development by Rafael Defense Systems - it was possible that Israel would purchase it to help defend against mortars and Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

In June, Raytheon tested a prototype solid-state laser weapon which it said was designed to intercept rockets, mortars and missiles at significant ranges. LADS, according to the company, may be operational within the coming year and combines the capabilities of the 20-millimeter Phalanx rapid-fire cannon with the power and effectiveness of lasers to provide fast and precise direction of laser energy on target.

In static ground testing conducted with the US government, the LADS demonstration used a proven, off-the-shelf solid-state laser coupled with commercially available optics technology to detonate 60-millimeter mortars at a range greater than 550 yards within the required time limit.

“In just six short months, Raytheon and government engineers went from an idea to operational field-testing of a solid-state laser system that offers the potential of near-term protection for our troops,” said Mike Booen, Raytheon’s Missile Systems vice president of Advanced Missile Defense and Directed Energy Weapons.

“Our solid-state LADS proves you don’t have to wait another three to five years for solid-state lasers to have military utility on the battlefield. They are ready now, with no chemicals required.”

This is what Israel gets for willingly giving a foreign country so much control over it.

In any case, the reality is that Israel & the Lebanese Army are not willing &/or not capable of removing Hezbullah by military means. So, other means must be used. Hezbullah can be made insignificant by separating it from its Shi’a base. Shi’a must be provided with the things that currently only Hezbullah provides them with: social services, security from Israeli attacks, political enfranchisement in Lebanon. Strengthen Amal against Hezbullah. Not openly. Any association with Israel is the kiss of death in the Middle East. Have their manifestos printed abroad. Devote media attention to them & write articles about them to raise their profile & make them seem more important. Include them in all negotiations & discussions & make them look stronger. “Give in” to certain demands of theirs in a way that makes them look powerful & Hezbullah weaker. Also, give media attention to Musa Sadr, encourage the media & academics to view him as a big hero of Lebanon, & then help inflame rumors (they’ve already existed for a long time) that Iran had him killed in Libya. Musa Sadr founded Amal & is very special to Lebanese Shi’a. He also had many enemies in Iran. Hezbullah tries to usurp Sadr for themselves & close those old wounds between South Lebanese Shi’a & Iran, so don’t let them. Incite the Palestinians in the camps against the Shi’a, to remind the Shi’a why they once hated them.

& remember, Syria is the real power in Lebanon, not Iran.

If Israelis spent half the time concering themselves with Middle Eastern events as they do with Western events, we would be in a better position today & not so damn clueless.

Many Israelis have the mistaken impression that Christian Lebanese are their allies because of their former Kataeb allies. In South America, I saw several Israelis warm up to a Lebanese once they discovered he was Christian, only to get a cold stare in return & a lecture on how Israel is the hated enemy. Israel’s Maronite allies were actually a small extremist group among Christians that gained temporary leadership over them & then deafeated, faded back to the minority position that it is.

Israel has no real friends or allies in Arab countries & they need to be treated with a heavy hand until they soften. But we can’t use force alone against them all - there are just too many of them. So Israelis need to learn all about their neighbors: their various ideologies, their rivalries, their ancient hatreds, their histories, their ulema, how to make havoc & weaken them without firing a shot. Right now Israelis stumble around in Arab lands without a clue.

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