The Real Test Begins

Finally, Israel and Hezbollah have (mostly) stopped fighting each other in southern Lebanon. This in itself is a breakthrough, but the hardest part is just beginning. It will take the international community's continual involvement and evenhandedness to make this work. Evenhandedness includes not openly declaring that this was a major victory for Israel (it wasn't, if anything, Hezbollah proved once again that it has what it takes to survive in a slug-fest with Israel). Yes, George Bush, I'm talking to you. Israel and the various terrorist organizations it is continually trying to crush are like little boys fighting on the playground: if you want them to stop, you don't tell them that one was right and that he won the fight, that will just make the "wrong" "loser" keep going until he's victorious and in the right. It should be remembered here that Hezbollah thinks they are doing God's work too (and many Lebanese who've just seen their neighborhoods flattened feel that Hezbollah is the only thing standing between them and the armies of the West).

O.K., now that we've established that George Bush is an idiot, we'll continue on to the substance of this here piece. As history has so clearly shown, when left to their own devices, Muslims and Israelis have a tendency to kill each other. The obvious solution here is to not leave them to their own devices. Enter the U.N. international peacekeeping force. There were already observers in southern Lebanon before and during this whole fiasco, but they were unarmed (what were they thinking!?). When you're trying to keep two armed groups from shooting at each other, you need to have more guns than both of groups combined in between them. The one language everybody understands in the middle east is guns. They don't care so much for rules in our sense of the word, the only rule that seems to be constant throughout the region is that the man with the bigger gun has the right of way.

This peacekeeping force has to be armed, and it has to be international. Americans are equivalent to Israelis as far as Hezbollah and the Lebanese are concerned (and they're not too far off the mark). Americans should probably be a part of it, but in a diluted manner. Arabs aren't as angry at Italians, French, or Indians as they are at America. I think it would a very good idea to include some Egyptians and/or Jordanians too, just to keep up the charade of neutrality. These non-Americans are also a lot less likely to look the other way when Israelis push the line, but shoot any armed Arab they see. Stupid and inhuman as Bush has implied they are, Arabs can tell when they're getting the short end of the stick, seeing as that's what they've gotten since the rise of western Europe.

Maybe just as important as the peacekeepers, international public awareness and pressure is going to be needed to keep this whole thing rolling. Politicians are just dogs that do whatever they think the majority of people want them to do, after a bit, they'll just stop trying to do anything in southern Lebanon. We must keep asking "Is the ceasefire still being enforced?" "Are the peacekeepers being fair or are they just continuing Israel's war for them?" "Is a more permanent solution being negotiated?" Politicians don't like questions like this, because then they have to work, and keep going with their project. And the more time you stay with something, the more chance you'll do something that will cost you votes. That's the risk one takes when he/she put his/her name on the ballot. Live with it, and do some good while you're at it.

So, keep interested in Lebanon. Don't just move on when something else steals the spotlight, that's what you're expected to do, and you don't want to be some kind of pawn. Who knows, maybe this will be the start of a more stable middle east.