Friday, November 01, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
It includes:
- Full cessation of hostilities by both sides.- Both sides maintain the right to self-defense.- Only UNIFIL and the Lebanese army will deploy south of the Litani line.- Lebanon will be responsible for stopping the rearmament of Hezbollah. They are tasked with stopping arms from coming in and Hezbollah from reestablishing infrastructure.- During a 60 day period Israel will remain in Lebanon and during that time the removal of Hezbollah to above the Litani line will commence.- Only if the sides are happy with the progress of the disarmament will the conflict end permanently. That means after 60 days, Israel gets to evaluate progress.- If satisfied, Israel and Lebanon will proceed to talks on how to fully implement Resolution 1701 and resolve border disputes.There is also an outline for a verification mechanism:- A monitoring mechanism will be chaired by the United States. If there are violations, that mechanism will look into them within a reasonable timeframe.- There will be consequences for violations including sanctions.- Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas.- Israel has the right to recon overflights over Lebanon.
Times of Israel analyst Haviv Rettig Gur thinks this is "incredibly favorable to Israel."
The question is, compared to what?
There are some significant gaps in this plan that could, and would, be exploited by Hezbollah.
For starters, how do we know the Lebanese army will do what it has refused to do since 2006? Assuming it doesn't, all this accomplishes is buying Hezbollah time to regroup, re-arm, re-establish conduits for money and weapons from Iran (which Israel could not bomb,) and then in 60 days...the Biden administration will be lame ducks and nothing would happen.
The idea that Israel can just resume fighting in 60 days without paying a huge political price is fantasy. Hezbollah can stay and re-establish itself up to the border and as long as it isn't actively firing, Israel would have a hard time resuming airstrikes without even Western friends condemning them.
"Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas" - this is meaningless. Because probably 90% of Israel's actions are based on reliable but secret intelligence, so if Israel bombs a food convoy that is hiding weapons, that would not be a "recognized violation." It would take third parties weeks to sort out what happened, and Hezbollah would stop them from doing so.
In the end, the only party that can clear Lebanon south of the Litani is Israel. There is an outside possibility that the Lebanese Army would be emboldened to do what it hasn't done yet now that Hezbollah is weaker, but chances are slim. As soon as Shiite "civilians" who housed Hezbollah weapons in their houses return they would physically block the LAF from entering and the army would do everything to avoid a confrontation like that.
Israel can continue overflights - that's great (and no different than 2006-2024) - but is restricted in its actions. The monitoring mechanism will look at Israeli evidence, Hezbollah denials, and play it safe by ruling against Israeli action.
Practically, there are no teeth in the plan - the only consequence mentioned for violations is sanctions, and Hezbollah is already under sanctions.
Anything that seems to favor Israel in this plan is mostly window dressing. Israel does not want to occupy southern Lebanon, but it needs a far better deal to ensure that Hezbollah completely withdraws, and that is the basis for everything else.
