Birth pangs over, what does the birth look like?
The birth pangs in the Middle East are now over but the newborn is definitely not to America’s liking. Tough luck. What has it resulted in? The exposure of incapability and incapacity of the “forces of good” to overcome the “forces of evil”, as the America and Company would observe. Thus, it has remained a hard birth both for the Israelis and Americans as well as the Lebanese.
The adoption of Resolution 1701 by the Security Council has led to relative calm and has presumably kindled hopes for a long – lasting solution. However, such hopes are misconcieved and misplaced. The Resolution is infact merely a tool of the Israelis and the Americans to appease the International community which was getting increasingly unnerved by the miseries being caused by the war to the large number of civilian victims. One can view Resolution 1701 as being a mildly watered down version of the earlier draft proposed by the French and the Americans and which was duly rejected by Hizbullah. Resolution 1701 ultimately remains weak and ambiguous and one that does not take into account the ground realities. The Resolution, by virtue of its draft, remains vulnerable to manipulations and is certainly biased in favour of Israel. Therefore, it also goes agianst the principle of natural justice and equity as well as the mandate of the UN.
For this outcome, the brokers (United States) have cunningly moulded the text in a manner that would clearly provide Israel with ample room for action in contravention of international law.
Resolution 1701 certainly does not stop the war, but as with the earlier rejected draft, only persuades Israel to cease all “offensive military action” while tells Hizbullah to stop all attacks. The ramifications are clear. This leaves Israel with ample space for manipulation and strike anywhere, even civilians, in the future in the name of self – defence.
The blame for the recent round of hostilities has squarely been put on the shoulders of Hizbullah. Resolution 1701 further fails to doubt the legality of Israeli action by not condemning the disproportionate response that was displayed by the Israeli forces not against Hizbullah, but against innocent Labenese civilians. The response was no doubt made so to pressurize the Lebanese government and to cause the public sentiment to rise against Hizbullah. What happened was a frustration to the Israeli – American plans. Nevertheless, in failing to taking Israeli actions to account, the UN has set a dangerous precedent as this amounts to endorsing the act of targeting innocent civilians in the name of self – defence.
One of the major bones of contention that was there in the earlier draft too is that the Resolution does not tell Israel to pull back its forces from Lebanon immediately, and still leaves no timeframe when these forces will eventually return to Israel. Ths act has been solely left upon the option of Israel that as and when a beefed up United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is deployed in south Lebanon, Israel will withdraw its forces gradually. Again, a basic Hizbullah demand has been ignored for an immediate and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. Still, Hizbullah has braced to be bound by the rules but has made it clear that it reserves the right to resist and that it will target Israeli forces inside Lebanon, Israel being the occupying force, till they withdraw completely. Now this is a major loophole in the Resolution is it can very well lead to a conflict that involves, apart from Israel and Hizbullah, the Lebanese army and the UNIFIL forces. Looking from the other side of the mirror, Resolution 1701 legitimizes the temporary occupation of Lebanon by Israel till the complete deployment of the proposed international force.
The main thrust of Resolution 1701 for a long – lasting settelement is the complete disarmament of Hizbullah. This is a rather uphill task given the history of Israeli belligerence in the region and the continuation of Israeli action to corner the Palestinians. The Resolution further proposes an arms embargo as well as a forbiddance of any training or any other help that is not authorized by the Lebanese government. This is indeed a plan to neutralize Hizbullah and sever its links with Syria and Iran. However, there’s no restriction placed on the Israelis. The disarmament of Hizbullah would be done simultaneously with the formation of a buffer zone that is free of anything military except for assets and personnel belonging to the government. The UNIFIL is being mandated to aid the Lebanese government to effectively implement the proposed buffer zone and in securing entry points to prevent arms or related material from entering Lebanon. Here, the UNIFIL is being authorized to act in all manners possible to take all necessary action to prevent the area under its control to be used for any “hostile activities”. This point certainly creates a chance for UNIFIL for being faced with a catch – 22 situation by creating a possibility of its confrontation with Hizbullah.
The authors of Resolution 1701 may well have led the world to believe that the Resolution will lead to alleviation of miseries of innocent civilians. But the way the Resolution has been drafted and it’s ignorance of a number of critical issues and its not being partial may only lead to an opposite scenario.
The United Nations should realise that post 9/11, it has been turned into a sort of a wholly owned subsidiary of the US administration. The United States gets away with the UN with whatever it wants; Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon are prime examples of this state of affairs. It has continued to fail the citizens of this world in all these instances. The result has been that as an organization that has the mandate to ensure international security and protection of human rights, common people have now started having a hard time in placing their trust in it. This leads to the erosion of legitimacy of actions carried out by the United Nations.
This time, it was the steadfastness of the Hizbullah forces on the ground and support for the resistance amongst the masses that led Lebanon not to really bow down completely in front of the powers and that enabled Lebanon to stand up in front of Israeli threats to its sovreignty. There is significant doubt whether the United Nations has been useful for the Lebanese. Rather, as is clear from Resolution 1701, the UN has sided with Israel – a clear evidence of American hegemony at the international body. However, now that the Resolution has been adopted by all parties, let’s hope for the best for the victims. But there will always remain fears that another round of fighting might break out and which may well be worse than what the world saw during the last month.
