Water: Lebanon v Israel

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Oct. 18, 2002 EDITORIAL: What is Lebanon?

If anyone still doubted what really motivated Lebanon to tap into the Wazzani River's water, its political elite clarified it Wednesday. By making a point of organizing a surrealistically festive ceremony inaugurating an upstream pump that deprives downstream Israelis, Lebanon's leaders have all but challenged us to a duel.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has made it plain, in an address to the Knesset that day, that Jerusalem views Beirut's action as an illegal threat to our water resources, one which she cannot ignore.

Indeed, so clear to Israelis of all political stripes are these two aspects of what began as farce and might end as tragedy that neither the provocation nor the response to it have become a matter of public debate. There clearly is a consensus that we must respond, and if need be as unilaterally as we were provoked, even if the timing might depend on well-known geopolitical circumstances.

What should be debated is our, and the rest of the West's, attitude toward Lebanon.

Though historically distinctive as central to various polities and civilizations, most notably the Phoenician empire, an integral Lebanon was only made independent in the wake of 20th-century European colonialism. Lebanon was given an opportunity for self-rule as early as 1923, though still within a French mandate, and became fully independent in 1943.

For more than two decades, it seemed one of the post-colonial era's rare success stories, with Beirut flourishing as a banking center for the entire Middle East and the picturesque countryside thriving as a local breadbasket, enhanced by modest light industry and a thriving tourism industry. Politically stabilized by a covenant that split power between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims, Lebanon was also by far the Arab world's most open and tolerant country.

Yet the country's two historic diseases communal hatred and foreign vulnerability were never cured. Thus what began with the 1841 and 1860 French interventions following Christian-Druse bloodbaths, continued in earnest in the 20th century, as the pool of combatant minorities and meddling foreigners rapidly expanded.

Syria, which has always refused to recognize Lebanon's independence, incessantly meddled in its affairs, and in 1958 concocted a Muslim rebellion aimed at Christian and American interests, a provocation that resulted in a brief invasion by US marines. In the late 1960s, the PLO attacked Israel from Lebanon, until we ended up invading it. And in the mid-1970s, Christian-Muslim skirmishing resulted in Syria and Israel locking horns on Lebanese soil, while American and French troops were also made to pay in blood for Beirut's ongoing failure to restore its lost era of political stability, economic prosperity, and diplomatic responsibility.

Last decade, however, with its civil war finally over, Lebanon for a while seemed headed in the direction of pragmatism and rehabilitation. Beirut saw a massive reconstruction drive, the national stock exchange was reopened, and foreign capital began returning, as did thousands of Christian expatriates.

In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, hopes grew that a newly mercantilist Lebanon would not only help, but even become a financial leader in building a New Middle East. Yet that spirit has long given way to economic disappointment and diplomatic war games. Lebanon's leaders have displayed none of the courage indispensable for standing up to the Syrian generalissimos and Shi'ite clerics who had hijacked their country's destiny. Foreign investors have learned that Lebanon's emerging market is essentially a Syrian outlet and, as such, plagued with corruption and bullying.

Diplomatically, Lebanon is proving every bit as short-sighted as its leaders were in 1940, when they followed the lead of Vichy France. Now as then, Lebanon's leaders are going against history's grain by throwing their lot in with despots who provoke democracies they might successfully sting in the short term, but cannot possibly defeat in the long term.

Leading Lebanon has never been simple, pleasant, or risk-free. However, to justify the right to existence that even some of its fellow Arabs challenge, Lebanon had better make a very clear choice in favor of international harmony. Dancing with wolves like Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is hardly a step in that direction.

-- Anonymous, October 18, 2002


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