House of War

In an emotionally sensible yet nevertheless strategically foolish decision, Israel has handed over Samir Kuntar, four other Lebanese militants captured in the 2006 war, and the bodies of 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters. In exchange it receives the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the soldiers captured by Hezbollah on the eve of the war, and a report on the status of the missing navigator, Ron Arad.

I won’t link to many articles covering the details of this lop-sided deal. However, there were a couple of things that stood out in amongst the flurry of newspaper ink. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb wrote a very perceptive piece in openDemocracy:

[T]he very nature of the current exchange, as well as its strategic implications, renders it a zero-sum game in which Israel loses and Hizbollah again emerges triumphant. In implementing it, Israel will effectively fulfil the Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s “truthful promise” to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel (the original aim of the operation Hizbollah carried out on 12 July 2006 when it abducted two Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanon border) and reconfirm his oft-repeated slogan: “just as I always used to promise you victory, now I promise you victory once again”. The overall impact will be to give these popular catchphrases the appearance of strategic foresights….

If the deal’s substance is hard enough for Israel, its strategic implications are also a major cause of concern, on four grounds.

First, the prisoner-exchange constitutes a tacit admission of Israel’s responsibility for the July-August 2006 war, which wreaked mass destruction on Lebanon and resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 (mainly civilian) Lebanese….

Second, the exchange-deal – as well as establishing Israel’s responsibility for the 2006 war – confirms the Winograd commission’s assessment of Israel’s defeat in it. Its formidable military machine failed then both to eliminate Hizbollah’s military capacity and to win the unconditional release of its two prisoners….

Third, in agreeing to the deal Israel cannot seek solace in the fact that it is submitting to the will of the international community or the diktat of international law. The prisoner-exchange will be conducted under the auspices of the United Nations; but it bears recalling that United States Security Council Resolution 1701 (which ended the war on 14 August 2006) – while appealing for an “urgent settling” of the issue of the Lebanese prisoners – adopted Israel’s idiom by stipulating the “unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers” (rather than calling for a swap). In this manner, Hizbollah appears to have succeeded in defying not only Israel, but the will of the international community as well.

Fourth, by recognising Hizbollah rather than the Lebanese government as its negotiating partner, Israel has inadvertently undermined the latter and thus further exacerbated its own position. Hizbollah’s own response to criticism within Lebanon of its priority in this respect (such as from the politician Amin Gemayel) has always been that no Lebanese government has ever sought the release of Lebanese prisoners through diplomatic means; a case in point is the current government of Fouad Siniora, which has not used the diplomatic leverage it enjoys with the United States and Europe to resolve the prisoner issue. The result is that Hizbollah emerges as the force in Lebanon that can deliver, thereby perpetuating an important political dynamic - of the non-state actor which functions as the de facto state versus the state non-actor which merely enjoys the status of de jure state.

This distinction in part answers the question raised by a leading member of Lebanon’s governing 14 March faction, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt,: “how is it that some of us [in Lebanon] have the right to conduct negotiations for the return of prisoners, to conduct negotiations with Israel”, while the state – if it engages in similar negotiations – is “accused of collaborating with the enemy”? The key point is that the Lebanese de jure state, without a defensive strategy or policy, lacks the power (vis-à-vis its enemies) and the moral authority (over a significant segment of Lebanon’s population) to negotiate deals of this kind, least of all with a foe as militarily superior and popularly anathematised as Israel. If the Lebanese state, in its current capacity, were to negotiate directly or indirectly with Israel, it would be the result of US-Israeli pressure to do so; whereas groups like Hizbollah and Hamas are engaged in such negotiations because they have forced Israel to submit to them.

The Guardian (H/T The Angry Arab — great to see him refer to The Guardian as “white supremecist”!) carried an interview with Samir Kuntar where he disputes the Israeli narrative. Predictably, the PFLP fighters were trying only to take Danny Haran hostage, and even told him (in Arabic) to leave his daughter behind. Equally predictably, returning fire from Israeli police probably killed Danny and his four year old daughter. Except,

Samir Qantar’s version of the events of April 22, which have been articulated here in his voice for the first time, is different from that of the security service personnel and Israeli civilians who were present.

And,

During his trial Qantar denied responsibility for the murder of the Haran family, despite the evidence of the pathologist, which proved that Einat Haran was killed by the force of a blunt instrument – most likely a rifle butt. The pathologist’s report also showed that Einat’s brain tissue was found on Qantar’s rifle.