AMERICAN LEBANESE COORDINATION COUNCIL

The Daily Star   Tuesday, August 07, 2007

So, Michel Aoun’s candidate won. If the general knew any better, he would realize that Camille Khoury’s victory doomed any chance he had of becoming president of Lebanon . That’s because Aoun went into the election seeking to fulfill three aims, all of which have fallen through. Aoun’s first objective was to score a victory that would compel Hizbullah to endorse him as president, something the party had carefully avoided doing. His second was to show that he remained the most powerful Maronite politician around. And Aoun’s third goal was to come across as the unavoidable president by proving himself a figure of national import. Yet so narrow was Khoury’s triumph that Hizbullah can continue to waffle on Aoun. So severe was Aoun’s rejection by Maronites that the general can no longer really claim to speak for his own community. And so polarizing was his decision to enter the by-election, so sour his rhetoric against his Christian rivals, but also the Sunni and Druze communities, that no one can seriously describe Aoun as a unifier, which is what the Lebanese are looking for in any new leader. The Syrian leadership is pleased with the results. Aoun neither won nor lost; Gemayel didn’t win; the Christians are more divided than ever; Hizbullah’s margin of maneuver on the presidency is as wide as before; the balance in Parliament is unchanged; the option of holding by-elections as a weapon against political assassination was proven to be as profitable for the opposition as for the majority; and we may all be heading in the direction of a Syrian gambit on the presidency, where we will either have to embrace Syria’s candidate or accept a political void. As the Syrians watch the United States and Iran negotiating, as they survey the progress in the Hariri tribunal (despite recent efforts by some states, under the stewardship of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, to delay its formation), they are caught in a race for time. The Syrians threaten Lebanon with a vacuum, but a vacuum might be to Damascus ‘ disadvantage. It won’t stop the tribunal and the American-Iranian dialogue from going forward. What the Syrian regime needs above all is not so much a vacuum in Beirut , but a president and government it can manipulate in order to shape events in the coming months, before the tribunal is formed and before the regional situation possibly shifts to Syria ’s disadvantage. That’s why there are some March 14 figures who prefer to hold off on a presidential election for the time being. Aoun failed to grasp that the Metn by-election was always intended to undermine his presidential bid. The general was not going to come out of the battle looking better than he did in 2005. Now he looks much worse. He took the seat of a murdered man in the name of declaring the by-election illegitimate; he branded his campaign a fight against the traditional political families, when far better men than Aoun have failed to eliminate such families, let alone one like the Gemayels that is popular among Christians; and Aoun won on the basis of an Armenian vote which, though thoroughly legitimate, was the result of the parochial calculations of the Tashnag party rather than any yearning to make Aoun president. Tashnag committed what could become a historic mistake. The party may have partly been playing hardball with Saad Hariri, in order to get the Armenians two seats back in Beirut in the 2009 elections. But what their support for Khoury effectively did was trash two principles the Armenians always adhered to in the past: siding with the Lebanese state, whatever the cost; and maintaining good relations with a majority of Christians. Now Tashnag finds itself on the side of the Syrian-backed opposition, propping up a man who will surely never be president, and doing so against the current of Christian public opinion in the Metn. On top of that, the party has turned Amin Gemayel into an angry enemy. All for what? To get the unknown Camille Khoury into Parliament, in an election process whose legitimacy Aoun didn’t even recognize?   And what of Aoun himself? The general’s aura is now bright only to those still part of his obtuse cult. Take away the calculating Armenians, the naturalized Lebanese bussed in from Syria to vote for Hassan Nasrallah (before realizing that he wasn’t a candidate), and the pro-Syrian parties in the Metn- - A victory on the path to oblivion

8/6/2007

A puzzling run for president in Lebanon - Los Angeles Times

جنرالهم هم في الرابية، جنرالنا نحن لا يزال في باريس

http://www.alshiraa.com/alshiraa/details.asp?iss=1254&cat=2&art=1&id=10136

By CTB Special Correspondent

During the war with Hezbollah, worldwide networks were showing live the Katiyusha rockets blasting houses and apartments in Haifa and beyond. Commentators were stunned to see the only nuclear power in the region and the winner over five Arab armies receiving wave after wave of rockets from a “mere Terrorist” organization, named Hezbollah. Analysts are scratching their heads wondering about the reasons why Hezbollah has been able to create a state in the state in Lebanon and transform southern Lebanon into a fortress threatening northern Israel into Haifa and “beyond Haifa” as Hassan Nasrallah enjoys repeating in his video-taped speeches. Surely, these images of destruction in Israel and Lebanon are troubling, particularly to those who lived similar days in both countries during the last two decades if not more. But the question today deserves an answer: Why were Israelis being bombarded and obviously why were Lebanese being submitted to air raids?

The question is not about the motives of Hezbollah, but about the fact that Israel, whose power is supposed to balance that of Iran and Syrian combined – in addition to Hamas- is now being cornered in a narrow balance of power with an organization across its northern borders? Well the short answer is simple: ask Former Prime Minister General Ehud Barak. As he engineered the post Security Zone policies of Lebanon and was the supreme commander in the withdrawal from that area in 2000, he is the one to question. Most Israelis and many Lebanese have forgotten the dilemma in the late 1990s when Israel was considering the surrendering of an area comprising about 15% of Lebanon, defended then by the South Lebanon Army, which was supported and supplied by Israel. The demonizing of the SLA during the last decade by Hezbollah, Syria and Iranian propaganda made it into a horrible “pro-Israeli militia,” accused of all misdeeds. This was not different from the accusations driven against the northern alliance in Afghanistan at the time when the Taliban where in control. International Jihadi propaganda raped the image of the SLA putting pressure on Israel’s political establishment and its media elite to do the same.

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While the SLA was composed of Shiia, Druze, Sunni and Christians, it was the only force in Lebanon other than the inefficient Lebanese army at the time, to be multiethnic and multi-religious. Besides, and against all the self serving reports written by Israeli politicians to legitimize the demise of the group, the SLA had withstood all Hezbollah attacks since 1984 with the same courage that its predecessor the Free Lebanon Army FLA of Major Saad Haddad had practiced. The FLA and the SLA later were not “created” by Israel. They were formed at the request of the local populations, which resisted fiercely the onslaught of the PLO then of Hezbollah with their backs on to Israel. The areas defended by the SLA with Israeli support were stretching from Mount Hermon to the East to the south of Tyre on the coast. Its most northern tip was covering the top of the Jezzine Mountains overlooking the Bekaa and the south and cutting off Hezbollah in two. The so-called “security zone” with its 120,000 people and 3,000 soldiers was a free area of Lebanon, fighting the War on Terror with its villages and youth, and faithful to its ally Israel. Twenty three years of alliance stopped the Terrorists from the north to achieve full control of Lebanon, reach the depth of Israel and eventually blast their bombs inside the West and the US.

But as of 1999, Israeli bureaucrats decided to play with history and the fate of nations. So-called researchers and academics proposed to the Israeli Government of Mr. Netanyahu then to pull out from the Jezzine summits, only to allow Hezbollah to join forces from the Bekaa to the south, all the way up to Southern suburb of Beirut. In one day, the “bright elites” of paper analysis opened a path between the Mediterranean and Tehran overlooking Israel. Haifa’s fate was already sealed that day. I remember meeting with representatives from the Ehud Barak government months after and suggesting to leave the Lebanese resistance in south Lebanon to withstand Hezbollah. The SLA knows their language and sociology. Hezbollah, in all of its frontal attacks against the southern villages failed at the footsteps of the enclave. All what Israel had to do was to withdraw and keep the border open for logistical support for its northern neighbors. Barak’s coordinator for Lebanon railed the proposal and said: “we are leaving, the SLA will be dismantled and good luck for your people.” A southern Lebanese delegation told the Knesset, the Defense Ministry and many pro-Lebanon politicians that if Israel would dismantle the security zone, nothing or anyone will stop Hezbollah from reaching the borders and “in time” paralyzes northern Israel with rockets. Not to avail, for politicians, talking heads and other academics were full of themselves and their intelligence. Only a few brave Israeli men and women and a couple professors warned their Government and the elite that the “wrath” of abandoning the SLA will be huge. “Blood will spill in Haifa and beyond,” warned a southern Lebanese merchant as he left in exodus into Israel. The prophecy materialized in July 2006.

In May 2000, Ehud Barak, proud to dismantle the SLA and cut off the borders from the allied villages in the south of Lebanon, said he was faithful to an electoral promise made under international pressure. In a myriad of interviews he said he was keeping the Peace of Israel by evacuating the south of Lebanon. Ignoring history, geopolitics, and playing arrogance, he triggered the process to bring fire and death into the Galilee and way beyond in the early 21st century. By playing with the fate of the two peoples then, he was responsible for the drama today. By bending over to Hezbollah and abandoning his allies he was to Israel what US politicians were to America in the 1990s: No vision. Many so-called intellectuals in Israel railed the SLA, despite the brave attitude by good experts on Lebanon. They too bare responsibility in this bloodshed. I am sure they will deliver long speeches about how right they were and how inefficient was the SLA. Yes, they can do that, but we’re not in the pre-9/11 era anymore. Americans, Europeans, Indians, Russians, moderate Arabs and now Israelis have learned what we are all up against: Lethal Jihadists. And with the latter you don’t play politics. Today’s international policies and the US in particular want to support civil societies to resist terrorism. M Barak and his elites failed south Lebanon society and Israelis as well. Today, the IDF has hard time moving few inches in the once friendly security zone, why? Today the people of Nahariya and Haifa are tasting what the people of Marjeyun and Rmeish have felt and were accepting to live under: why? Because no one like the indigenous people can get rid of the Terrorists among them. The Cedars Revolution showed what the Lebanese people really want. Unfortunately it was failed, as one commentator wrote, by its own politicians and by the international community.

But as Israel and Hezbollah are at war again, we take the opportunity to alert decision makers in the campaign against Terrorism to the deep reality of the Middle East and Lebanon. Yes the Israeli army can eventually push Hezbollah away from its borders, and yes Hezbollah will rearm and strike back despite UNSCR 1701. But Terrorism can only be eradicated from Lebanon when its people would be enabled to take the control of its destinies. When the new generation of Israelis would realize, what were the consequences of General Barak’s condescending decisions towards Israel’s closer allies and admit it publicly, then Israel will have partners in Peace and maybe even allies in the future.

WorldPress: Post-conflict Perspectives on Lebanon

By Manuela Parapain

Full Story

By AMIR TAHERI
August 29, 2006 — WELL, what do you know: What was presented as a “Great Strategic Divine Victory” only a week ago is now beginning to look more like a costly blunder. And the man who is making the revisionist move is the same who made the original victory claim: Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
In a TV interview in Beirut Sunday, Nasrallah admitted second thoughts about the wisdom of capturing the two Israeli soldiers, an incident that triggered the war: “The party leadership never expected a response on such an unprecedented scale and volume [by Israel],” he said. “Had we known that what we did would lead to this, we would certainly not have embarked upon it.”
For a roundabout way of eating humble pie, this was not bad for a man whom Western media have portrayed as the latest Arab folk hero or even (as one U.S. weekly put it) a new Saladin.
Why did Nasrallah decide to change his unqualified claim of victory into an indirect admission of defeat? Two reasons.
The first consists of facts on the ground: Hezbollah lost some 500 of its fighters, almost a quarter of its elite fighting force. Their families are now hounding Nasrallah to provide an explanation for “miscalculations” that led to their death.
Throughout southern Lebanon, once a stronghold of Hezbollah, pictures of the “martyrs” adorn many homes and shops, revealing the fact that many more Hezbollah fighters died than the 110 claimed by Nasrallah. What angers the families of the “martyrs” is that Hezbollah fighters had not been told that the sheik was starting a war to please his masters in Tehran, and that they should prepare for it.
The fighters found out there was a war only after the Israelis started raining fire on southern Lebanon. In fact, no one - apart from the sheik’s Iranian contacts and a handful of Hezbollah security officials linked to Tehran and Damascus - knew that Nasrallah was provoking a war. Even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Lebanese government weren’t consulted, nor the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese National Assembly. The party’s chief policymaking organ, the Shura (consultative assembly), hasn’t held a full session since 2001.
The “new Saladin” has also lost most of his medium-range missiles without inflicting any serious damage on Israel. Almost all of Hezbollah’s missile launching pads (often placed in mosques, schools and residential buildings) south of the Litani River have been dismantled.
Worse still, the Israelis captured an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters and political officers, including several local leaders in the Bekaa Valley, Khyam and Tyre.
The second reason why Nasrallah has had to backtrack on his victory claims is the failure of his propaganda machine to hoodwink the Lebanese. He is coming under growing criticism from every part of the political spectrum, including the Hezbollah itself.
Last week he hurriedly cancelled a series of victory marches planned for Beirut’s Shiite suburbs after leading Shiite figures attacked the move as “unmerited and indecent.” Instead, every village and every town is holding typical Shiite mourning ceremonies, known as tarhym (seeking mercy), for the dead.
Nasrallah has tried to rally his base by distributing vast sums of Iranian money through his network - by the end of last week, an estimated $12 million in crisp U.S. banknotes. But if Nasrallah had hoped to buy silence, if not acquiescence, he is being proved wrong. Some Lebanese Shiites are scandalized that they are treated by Iranian mullahs as mercenaries, and see Nasrallah’s cash handouts as diyah (blood money) for their dead. And a dead man whose family receives a diyah cannot claim the status of “martyr” and enjoy its prerogatives in paradise.
As the scale of the destruction in the Shiite south becomes more clear, the pro-Hezbollah euphoria (much of it created by Western media and beamed back to Lebanon through satellite TV) is evaporating. Reality is beginning to reassert its rights.
And that could be good news for Lebanon as a nation. It is unlikely that Hezbollah will ever regain the position it has lost. The Lebanese from all sides of the political spectrum are united in their determination not to allow any armed group to continue acting as a state within the state.
The decent thing to do for Nasrallah would be to resign and allow his party to pick a new leader, distance itself from Iran and Syria, merge its militia into the Lebanese army and become part of the nation’s political mainstream.
In last year’s elections, Hezbollah ended up with 12 seats in the 128-seat National Assembly, thanks to a series of alliances with other Shiite groups as well as Christian and Druze parties. As the scale of Nasrallah’s blunder becomes clearer, it is unlikely that Hezbollah would be able to forge such alliances in the future.
To be sure, Nasrallah remains a powerful man. He has hundreds of gunmen at his disposal plus a source of endless supplies of money and arms in Iran. He can still have his political opponents murdered inside and outside Lebanon either by his goons or by hit men from Damascus and Tehran. But his chances of seizing power through a coup de force or provoking a civil war are diminishing by the day.
Arab leaders never resign, even when they admit having made tragic mistakes. And Nasrallah is no exception. In reality, however, Lebanon has already moved into the post-Nasrallah era. And that is the only good news to come out of the mini-war he provoked.
Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs’ claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical “Arab Street.”

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran’s “Supreme Guide,” Ali Khamenei, also believes in “a divine victory.” Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his “wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon.”

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

Let us start with Lebanon.

Immediately after the U.N.-ordained ceasefire started, Hezbollah organized a series of firework shows, accompanied by the distribution of fruits and sweets, to celebrate its victory. Most Lebanese, however, finding the exercise indecent, stayed away. The largest “victory march” in south Beirut, Hezbollah’s stronghold, attracted just a few hundred people.

Initially Hezbollah had hesitated between declaring victory and going into mourning for its “martyrs.” The latter course would have been more in harmony with Shiite traditions centered on the cult of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom in 680 A.D. Some members of Hezbollah wished to play the martyrdom card so that they could accuse Israel, and through it the U.S., of war crimes. They knew that it was easier for Shiites, brought up in a culture of eternal victimhood, to cry over an imagined calamity than laugh in the joy of a claimed victory.

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah’s shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people. Mr. Nasrallah alluded to this in television appearances, calling on those who criticized him for having triggered the war to shut up because “a great strategic victory” had been won.

The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese Parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

Mr. Nasrallah followed his claim of victory with what is known as the “Green Flood”(Al-sayl al-akhdhar). This refers to the massive amounts of crisp U.S. dollar notes that Hezbollah is distributing among Shiites in Beirut and the south. The dollars from Iran are ferried to Beirut via Syria and distributed through networks of militants. Anyone who can prove that his home was damaged in the war receives $12,000, a tidy sum in wartorn Lebanon.

The Green Flood has been unleashed to silence criticism of Mr. Nasrallah and his masters in Tehran. But the trick does not seem to be working. “If Hezbollah won a victory, it was a Pyrrhic one,” says Walid Abi-Mershed, a leading Lebanese columnist. “They made Lebanon pay too high a price–for which they must be held accountable.”

Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. “I don’t believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war,” Mr. al-Amin said. “The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name.”

There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as “one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time.” He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon’s existence in the service of Iran’s regional ambitions.

Before he provoked the war, Mr. Nasrallah faced growing criticism not only from the Shiite community, but also from within Hezbollah. Some in the political wing expressed dissatisfaction with his overreliance on the movement’s military and security apparatus. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described Mr. Nasrallah’s style as “Stalinist” and pointed to the fact that the party’s leadership council (shura) has not held a full session in five years. Mr. Nasrallah took all the major decisions after clearing them with his Iranian and Syrian contacts, and made sure that, on official visits to Tehran, he alone would meet Iran’s “Supreme Guide,” Ali Khamenei.

Mr. Nasrallah justified his style by claiming that involving too many people in decision-making could allow “the Zionist enemy” to infiltrate the movement. Once he had received the Iranian green light to provoke the war, Mr. Nasrallah acted without informing even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Siniora cabinet or the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Parliament.

Mr. Nasrallah was also criticized for his acknowledgement of Ali Khamenei as Marjaa al-Taqlid (Source of Emulation), the highest theological authority in Shiism. Highlighting his bay’aah (allegiance), Mr. Nasrallah kisses the man’s hand each time they meet. Many Lebanese Shiites resent this because Mr. Khamenei, a powerful politician but a lightweight in theological terms, is not recognized as Marjaa al-Taqlid in Iran itself. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Iraq, or Ayatollah Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, in Beirut, as their “Source of Emulation.”

Some Lebanese Shiites also question Mr. Nasrallah’s strategy of opposing Prime Minister Siniora’s “Project for Peace,” and instead advancing an Iranian-backed “Project of Defiance.” The coalition led by Mr. Siniora wants to build Lebanon into a haven of peace in the heart of a turbulent region. His critics dismiss this as a plan “to create a larger Monaco.” Mr. Nasrallah’s “Project of Defiance,” however, is aimed at turning Lebanon into the frontline of Iranian defenses in a war of civilizations between Islam (led by Tehran) and the “infidel,” under American leadership. “The choice is between the beach and the bunker,” says Lebanese scholar Nadim Shehadeh. There is evidence that a majority of Lebanese Shiites would prefer the beach.

There was a time when Shiites represented an underclass of dirt-poor peasants in the south and lumpen elements in Beirut. Over the past 30 years, however, that picture has changed. Money sent from Shiite immigrants in West Africa (where they dominate the diamond trade), and in the U.S. (especially Michigan), has helped create a prosperous middle class of Shiites more interested in the good life than martyrdom à la Imam Hussain. This new Shiite bourgeoisie dreams of a place in the mainstream of Lebanese politics and hopes to use the community’s demographic advantage as a springboard for national leadership. Hezbollah, unless it ceases to be an instrument of Iranian policies, cannot realize that dream.

The list of names of those who never endorsed Hezbollah, or who broke with it after its Iranian connections became too apparent, reads like a Who’s Who of Lebanese Shiism. It includes, apart from the al-Amins, families such as the al-As’ad, the Osseiran, the al-Khalil, the Hamadah, the Murtadha, the Sharafeddin, the Fadhlallah, the Mussawis, the Hussainis, the Shamsuddin and the Ata’allahs.

Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, “Hezbollah is ‘Iran in Lebanon.’ ” In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year’s general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly–despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes.

Hezbollah’s position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is–a Khomeinist Trojan horse–would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.

Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. “Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States,” says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. “But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory.”

Mr. Taheri is author of “L’Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes” (Editions Complexe, 2002).

Stratfor Special Report: A New Phase of the War
August 8, 2006

We have not written publicly available alerts on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict for several days, simply because there has been nothing to report. This is not to say that nothing was happening; brutal fighting was going on, rockets were being fired and airstrikes were being carried out. However, the basic pattern of the war appeared to be fixed, with Israeli troops fighting well-entrenched Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, and with the results of those battles uncertain. The diplomatic process was lurching along without any clear direction.

We are now beginning to detect some changes on the Israeli side. At its meeting Aug. 7, the Israeli Cabinet appeared to have given up on a diplomatic solution — if it ever actually believed diplomacy would work — and made it clear that Israeli forces were going to be given a much freer hand in Lebanon. Today, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz announced that Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky was to become Halutz’s representative at Northern Command — which owns the Lebanese operation — for the duration of the war.

There are political ramifications for this in Israel Defense Forces, but what is essentially being done is that Kaplinsky, an army officer who commanded the elite Golani Brigade, has been put in charge of the Lebanese operation. Halutz, an air force officer who had been criticized for waging an extended air campaign that did not shut down rocket attacks, is ceding authority over the war. Obviously, this is also a criticism of Northern Command’s performance over the past weeks — but the important message, following recent Israeli Cabinet decisions, is that the Israelis are going to unleash their ground forces.

What this means is unclear. It might mean that one or more additional divisions will be thrown into the southern Lebanese campaign, trying to force a decision. It might mean that the attack into the Bekaa Valley that we have discussed is in the works. It could also mean that Israel might move toward Beirut. What seems to be happening, however, is that the Israelis are moving beyond the current phase of the war.

As we have said, Hezbollah has relatively few options. In the south, the militants are committed to a static defense that they seem to be executing well. In the Bekaa Valley, they might opt to resist or to draw the Israelis in and then try to impose an insurgency on them. The same in the southern Beirut area. They might also decide to try and launch some of the longer-range rockets they claim to have, assuming the Israeli air force hasn’t taken them out.

Much is unclear. However, this is intended to alert you that the Israelis are vigorously signaling a shift in their war fighting strategy. This may be intended to induce a new round of diplomacy, but we rather doubt it. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has run out of room on the strategy he was following. A new one is likely.