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“Lebanon Hopes to
Join Syrian-Israeli Peace Talks,”
Summary: Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss have indicated that they will await the outcome of preliminary Israeli-Syrian peace talks before deciding whether Lebanon should join in. The talks will begin in Washington, DC on December 15 between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa. On December 9, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright invited “Lebanon to resume talks on its track soon.” Lebanon’s information minister announced satisfaction with the resumption of the Israel-Syria talks after a break of nearly four years. The Beirut government wants the swift resumption of dialogue with Israel to remove Israeli troops occupying Lebanese territory and to end the cycles of violence raging between the two states during and between the Arab-Israeli wars that began with Israel’s creation in 1948. Lebanon, with its roughly four million citizens and 400,000 Palestinians, is bound to play a central role in the negotiating process. Syrian and Lebanese policies are inextricably linked: Syria has some 25,000 troops and major strategic and economic interests in Lebanon. The Origins of the Lebanese-Israeli Conflict: Lebanon briefly joined Egypt, Jordan and Syria in their 1948-49 war against Israel. Like them, it signed an armistice agreement with the Jewish state in 1949. During this period, an estimated 100,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon. The Arab-Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, and the “Black September” expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan in 1970-71, further swelled their numbers to the 367,610 refugees in Lebanon registered in 1998 with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, UN Security Council Resolution 425 called for its total withdrawal and established the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a buffer force that has lost 222 peacekeepers since then. In 1996, Israel shelled the UNIFIL base at Qana where 800 civilians were sheltering, killing 103. A UN investigative report concluded the attack was “unlikely … [to be] the result of gross technical and/or procedural error.” Issues for Negotiation: The border specified in the 1949 armistice agreement had been Lebanon’s boundary with the Palestine Mandate. Lebanese governments until now have vainly demanded formal Israeli recognition of this line as the legal Israel-Lebanon international border. Such recognition would be a Lebanese goal in Israeli-Lebanese or Israeli-Syrian-Lebanese peace negotiations. Israel and the Palestinian Authority are expected to discuss the question of the estimated 4.9 million Palestinian refugees, including those in Lebanon. Israel repeatedly rejects their return home. Except for an estimated 50,000 Christian Palestinians who acquired Lebanese nationality in the early 1950s, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been denied permanent residence, basic political rights and social and economic benefits, including work permits. Lebanese governments have believed that permanent settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon would further disrupt the volatile mix of religions and ethnicities that exploded into the 1975-90 civil war and nearly destroyed Lebanese society. “Lebanon,” said former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in June 1998, “will never, ever be able to integrate the Palestinians … for internal reasons. This is the responsibility of Israel.” Lebanon will demand an unconditional Israeli withdrawal and compensation for the Israeli occupation—reportedly $3.3 billion for infrastructural damage and $4.7 billion in reparations for civilian victims. The Israeli occupation zone in south Lebanon is the last active conventional Israel-Arab war front. Syria, which remains at war with Israel, has scrupulously observed the ceasefire in the Israeli-occupied Golan. Israel presently occupies about 2,000 sq. km. of south Lebanon. In its “security zone” Israel maintains Khiam prison where, as of December 1999, over 150 Lebanese detainees were kept in conditions condemned by humanitarian agencies. The South Lebanon Army (SLA), consisting of some 1,500 Lebanese mercenaries, polices the zone for Israel, along with 1,200 Israel Defense Force (IDF) troops. Armed Resistence in South Lebanon: Both the IDF and the SLA are attacked daily and suffer mounting casualties—close to 50 Israeli soldiers killed in 1999 alone—in attacks by the Lebanese resistance movement. Israel constantly retaliates with air and artillery strikes, kidnappings and commando raids. Some air strikes, such as those in the spring and summer of 1999, have targeted Lebanese power and water facilities. Scores of Lebanese civilians have lost their lives or property or have been severely wounded. Indeed, in the period from 1982 to 1996 alone, an estimated 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians died, with several thousand more since then. During the same period, ten Israeli civilians in northern Israel lost their lives in the conflict. The main resistance comes from Hezbollah, the Party of God, a well-armed, Iranian-financed Shi’ite militia. Since the early 1990s, Hezbollah’s political wing has enjoyed the status of being a legal Lebanese political entity. Its deputies are elected to the Lebanese parliament, and it organizes an array of charitable and social activities. The SLA, which is organized and supported by Israel, would have to be regulated and provided for in any final agreement. Unilateral Israeli Withdrawal? Since 1982, 904 IDF soldiers have been killed in Lebanon. Domestic pressure to withdraw from Lebanon has provided Barak with useful leverage to support his own conviction that withdrawal is inevitable. After his electoral victory in June 1999, Barak renewed a campaign promise to pull Israeli troops out of Lebanon by July 2000, hopefully as part of a peace deal with Syria but unilaterally if necessary. Syrian Interests: President Assad may feel that a unilateral Israeli pullout from Lebanon would seriously weaken his leverage in negotiating with Israel. Syrians hope the talks will restore Golan to them and make it possible for about 300,000 Syrian refugees—176,000 originally displaced in the 1967 and 1973 wars, now nearly double in number—to return to their homes. In seeking to end Israeli occupation, Lebanon has one big advantage over Syria: there are no Jewish settlers in south Lebanon. In Golan, there are some 17,000 Jewish settlers linked to powerful lobbies in the U.S. The Water Situation: While water is a major consideration for Syria in a peace agreement with Israel, it is less so for Lebanon. Israel draws about one-third of its water from the Golan area. In Lebanon, the original Zionist projects for Israel, dating back at least to 1919, called for diversion of Lebanon’s Litani river into the planned Israeli water system. During Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israeli troops, as verified by Norwegian UN observers and acknowledged in 1983 by Israeli Science Minister Yuval Ne’eman in a candid TV interview, did tests to determine the suitability of a pipe to channel Litani water into the Israeli water system. Ne’eman said Israel abandoned the idea because of political risks and the “low yield of water.” Small amounts of Litani water may have been pumped into tank trucks and delivered to Israeli or SLA installations. Often overlooked is a further intertwining of Lebanese and Syrian water systems. The Orontes (or Asi) river arises in Syria and flows through Lebanon’s Beqa’a before returning to Syria. After Israel’s 1982 invasion, Lebanon and Syria signed a secret accord permitting Syrian troops to station in the Beqa’a to protect the Orontes. This probably remains in force and will have to be taken into account by Israeli negotiators seeking to end or reduce the size of Syrian forces in Lebanon.
John K. Cooley is a correspondent for ABC based in Greece. The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Palestine Center. This brief does not necessarily reflect the views of Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund. This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 15, 14 December 1999. |
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