A war for nothing
By Olivier Guitta
I just wrote an article for FrontPage Magazine on the aftermath of the July war. I am making the point that another war is looming because nothing at all has been solved and the powerless UNIFIL is going to leave sooner than later. You can read the whole piece here.
Here's an excerpt:
In the wake of this summer’s bloody, 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel, most analysts predicted that the region would never be the same. In fact, they asserted that with UN Resolution 1701, Hezbollah would be disarmed and expelled from its redoubt in southern Lebanon. This in turn would give effective control of the region to the Lebanese Army, while a UNIFIL force 15,000-men strong would secure the cease-fire and put an end to the armed conflict.
But the present reality is far from this rosy picture. Indeed, one can make the case that this summer’s hostilities have achieved little and that another war will resume in the near future.
A few prescient facts confirm this grim assessment. First, there is the anti-Israel composition of the Lebanese army. Forty percent of the 60,000-strong Lebanese army is composed of Shiite soldiers, many whom are extremely favorable to Hezbollah. There are also thousands of ex-Syrian troops, who joined the Lebanese Army when Syria “officially” left Lebanon last year, just before the Syrian withdrawal, when thousands of Syrian soldiers were naturalized and incorporated into the ranks of the army.