Ceasefire deal 'far from perfect'

The UN ceasefire deal announced today will buy temporary calm, but make the next war between Israel and Tehran’s proxy army inevitable, former Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom and some military analysts warned.

“It begs the question, ‘What was it all for?”’ Shalom said, reflecting a growing chorus of criticism.

Some believe that Israel had little choice but to go along with the US-backed compromise, after its army failed to subdue Hezbollah in a month of fighting. The guerrillas took heavy blows and suffered scores of casualties, but kept raining rockets on northern Israel throughout the war and clung to positions near Israel’s border.

In a race against a looming ceasefire deadline, Israel troops moved deeper into Lebanon on Saturday, to try to capture all territory south of the Litani River, the area that is to be free of Hezbollah under the ceasefire deal. Helicopters ferried hundreds of soldiers into the war zone, in the biggest military airlift in 33 years.

Israeli officials explained that the troops were trying to pave the way for the deployment of 15,000 UN peacekeepers and 15,000 Lebanese forces between the border and the Litani. However, some said the last-minute push was of questionable military value and unnecessarily endangered soldiers. At least seven soldiers were killed on Saturday, the first day of the wider ground war.

On paper, a combined force of 30,000 patrolling south Lebanon appeared an impressive achievement for Israel, which has long demanded that the Lebanese government take control of that area.

However, the Lebanese army – comprised of up to 50% of Shiite Muslims, the same faith as Hezbollah’s fighters – will at best have a symbolic role, and at worst be sympathetic to the guerrillas, said Shlomo Brom, a former chief of planning in the Israeli military.

If challenged by Hezbollah gunmen, the army would likely fold, said Brom. ”That’s why a multinational force is needed,” he said.

However, international observers in south Lebanon have proven ineffective in the past. The 2,000 UN peacekeepers, known as UNIFIL, who’ve patrolled south Lebanon since 1978, are no match for Hezbollah, which built its state-within-a-state and acquired sophisticated weapons from Iran under the noses of the UN troops.

The new beefed-up UN force was given a wider mandate, including permission to use “forceful means” if challenged by the guerrillas.

That wording is still vague, said Ehud Yaari, commentator on Channel Two TV. “When you take into account the past record of UN forces … it’s hard to be hopeful,” he said.

Alvaro de Soto, a UN special envoy to the Middle East, said much of the criticism of Unifil was unfair, since its mandate had been limited. Even so, he said Unifil had repeatedly defused minor confrontations between the Israelis and Lebanese.

The UN resolution’s language on a weapons embargo is also problematic, analysts said. The truce deal bars the ”sales or supply of arms and related material to Lebanon, except as authorised by its government” – of which Hezbollah is a member. An embargo would also be difficult to enforce on the ground, Yaari said.

Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said his guerrillas would abide by the ceasefire once Israeli forces leave. But he has his own reservations about the deal. Hezbollah wants a release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel and a return of Chebaa Farms, a border region held by Israel that Lebanon claims. If progress is not made on those provisions, the guerrillas may be less willing to cooperate with the forces in the south.

The ceasefire agreement can buy a period of calm, but will likely set the stage for more fighting, said Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert. Iran can easily reactivate Hezbollah for its own political needs, particularly if it were to be attacked by the west over its nuclear weapons ambitions, he said.

Shalom, of the right-wing Likud Party, said the next war is inevitable. “This was just the preview for the main movie,” he said of the month-long fighting. “They (Hezbollah) will now rebuild themselves. We could then see long-range missiles, perhaps with non-conventional warheads.”

Israeli leaders defended the deal against growing scepticism – and got a little help from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The deal, she told Israel TV in a telephone interview, “really does enhance Israel’s security”.

Defence minister Amir Peretz acknowledged that Israel would have preferred a Nato-led force, rather than UN troops, but emphasised the expanded size and mandate of the peacekeepers.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Israel couldn’t expect to get everything it wanted. “If we opposed the UN resolution, the world would have turned against us,” he cautioned.

Israel could have gotten a better deal if the army had delivered more punishing blows to Hezbollah, said Ganor. The guerrillas have proven surprisingly resilient, operating from well-stocked underground bunkers and forcing troops to raid Hezbollah strongholds over and over again.

“This (ceasefire) resolution is an outcome of Israel’s failure to achieve its goal in the right amount of time,” Ganor said.