To the Point (The Hidden Kristof)

Nicholas Kristof responds to those who criticise the calls for a ceasefire to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in his Sunday column, Let's Start Talking (fully available to Times Select subscribers); note that the bolding below replicates that of the article.

It’s a tragedy that Lebanese children are dying, but it would be crazy to accept a cease-fire now. That would hand Hezbollah a huge victory and return the Middle East to the impossible situation of the last few years, with rockets still raining down on northern Israel. So the U.S. has to give Israel space to get this job done.

Look at the results so far with the job half done: some 600 dead Lebanese, and scores of dead Israelis; Hezbollah’s rise to heroic status; the strengthening of Syria’s hard-line regime; the weakening of moderates like King Abdullah of Jordan; a boost for Shiite militants in Iraq and around the region; the marginalization of Lebanon’s democracy movement; and the further trashing of America’s reputation around the world.

Lebanese, instead of turning on Hezbollah, are rallying around it. A poll by the Beirut Center for Research and Information found that 87 percent of those surveyed supported Hezbollah’s battles with Israel. That included 80 percent of Lebanese Christians surveyed.

So with those results after more than three weeks, why will it be any different in another couple of weeks?

[...]

There may be a diplomatic solution, but first we have to clear out Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Then an international force can go in as a buffer, and Israel will be delighted to pull out.

It’s fine to talk about an international force, but no country will send troops if Hezbollah objects. Otherwise, those troops will be targets, as they were in 1983. And Hezbollah and Syria won’t approve unless there is some larger agreement between Israel and Lebanon — and some benefit to Syria as well.

How can one negotiate with those who would destroy you? Israel tried restraint and Hezbollah used the time to build up its arsenal.

President Bush is right about one thing: We need to do more than restore the prewar situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border. There is also an opportunity here — to achieve a landmark Lebanon-Israel peace deal.

Edward Walker, former ambassador to Israel and former assistant secretary of state for the region, told me he thought a long-term settlement was plausible (although he acknowledged that he was also the optimistic boy who expected a pony every Christmas). France is showing leadership in pressing for such a lasting deal, and Mr. Bush should push that diplomatic effort with every administration sinew.

Terms of a genuine settlement might involve an exchange of prisoners, Israel giving up the Shebaa Farms area (if not to Lebanon, then to an international force), and an Israeli promise not to breach Lebanese territory or airspace unless attacked. Hezbollah would commit to becoming a purely political force and to dismantling its militia, with its weaponry going to the Lebanese armed forces. Israel would resume talks with Syria on the Golan Heights, the U.S. would resume contact with Syria, and Syria would agree to stop supplying weaponry to Hezbollah (or allowing it in from Iran). Syria and Hezbollah would then pledge cooperation with a robust international buffer force along the border. Some of this may have to come in stages: for example, with Hezbollah first leaving the border area and then giving up its weaponry.

Ethan Heitner over at TomPaine.com has a lengthy overview of two opinions from two Israeli critics of the current continued conflict--Tom Segev (journalist and historian; Wikipedia) and Daniel Levy (noted by Heitner as a negotiator in the heady days of diplomatic successes; Wikipedia):

Despite claims that the Israeli anti-occupation left has curled up and died since the start of the war, the longer it goes on the greater opposition grows. More are heeding the call of groups like Gush Shalom, whose first protests in Tel Aviv at the start of the current conflict drew a bare hundred men and women of conscience, whose second drew 500, and who's most recent drew 5,000. "There is no military solution," say the ads they run every week in Ha'aretz. "Only a political settlement."

Segev's full article is behind a registration wall, but worth reading. Here's the money paragraphs:

Israel's elites, in all fields, are made up of people who spent a number of years in the United States and returned with not only professional skills but also an appreciation for the value of the individual and basic freedoms. For the most part, this was a useful process, even though it did contribute to a fading of social compassion. This process of Americanization has led Israel in recent years to covet a role in what Bush has described as a war on the "axis of evil."

As such, Israel has adopted the moral values of Hezbollah: Whatever they are doing to the residents of northern Israel, we can also do to the citizens of Lebanon, and even more. Many Israelis tended to look at the Qana incident primarily as a media disaster and not as something that imposed on them any ethical responsibility. After all, the restrictions of humanitarian warfare are not applicable to the "axis of evil." Just like in Iraq, the lessons of Vietnam have been forgotten. It is hard to avoid the impression that the routine brutality of oppression in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is also reflected in the unbearable ease with which Israel has forced out of their homes hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and bombed civilians. No less than three weeks have passed, and only now is Rice beginning to make noises suggesting that enough is enough.

If Europe had some say in the region, Israel may have started negotiations with Hezbollah on the release of the soldiers it abducted - and hopefully, it still will do so - instead of getting mixed up in war. For some years now, more Middle East-related wisdom emanates from Europe than from the United States. It wasn't Europe but the United States that invented the diplomatic fable called the road map; it wasn't Europe but the United States that encouraged unilateral disengagement and is allowing Israel to continue oppressing the population in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The United States is not engaged with Syria; Europe is. Syria is relevant not only for settling the situation in Lebanon, but also in managing relations with the Palestinians. This is the real problem. Because, even if the United States conquers Tehran, we will still have to live with the Palestinians. In Europe, they already understand this.

And here are Levy's comments from Ha'aretz:

Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neocon "creative destruction" in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers. An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.

Afghanistan is yet to be secured, Iraq is an exporter of instability and perhaps terror, too, Iranian hard-liners have been strengthened and encouraged, while the public throughout the region is ever-more radicalized, and in the yet-to-be "transformed" regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, is certainly more hostile to Israel and America than its leaders. Neither listening nor talking to important, if problematic, actors in the region has only impoverished policy-making capacity.

Israel does have enemies, interests and security imperatives, but there is no logic in the country volunteering itself for the frontline of an ideologically misguided and avoidable war of civilizations.