Peace Between Lebanon and Israel?

Last week Israeli officials offered to begin peace talks with the Lebanese government. Coming on the back of news that Syria and Israel are holding indirect peace talks (through mediation by Turkey) and a truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, it seems as if yet another piece of the tricky Middle East peace puzzle is falling into place.

So will there be peace between Israel and Lebanon?

Short answer: Not anytime soon.

Long answer: A state of war between Lebanon and Israel has existed for so long -- since 1948 -- and has become so entangled in the region's problems, that only a regional solution will bring peace between the two countries. That solution will have to contain at least three elements beyond just an agreement between the Israeli government and the Lebanese government.

1) There has to be a solution to the Palestinian problem. Some 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon -- ten percent of this country -- and they're not happy. The sectarian Lebanese political system has been unable to absorb the mostly Sunni Muslim Palestinian population, and so for 60 years, the original refugees and their descendants have been living without citizenship and basic civil rights. The camps where many of them live are bristling with anger, fear and firearms.

Unfortunately, the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace still seem pretty slim. Even the dreamy Bush administration scenario calls for an agreement of principles that would be immediately shelved until such time when the two sides have leaders willing and able to carry out the peace plan: i.e. when Mother Teresa becomes Prime Minister of Israel and Mahatma Gandhi the President of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, almost everyone else thinks that the window of opportunity to find of two-state solution is rapidly closing, if not already shut. And without a Palestinian state, it's hard to see how the Palestinian refugee problem will be solved.

2) There has to be peace between Israel and Syria. There's a saying here that Lebanon will be the last country to make peace with Israel, but will do so five minutes after Syria does. The reason is that other Arab nations -- especially Syria -- like using Lebanon as a proxy battlefield for their fight with Israel, rather than seeing their own countries reduced to rubble by the Israeli air force. Why Lebanon? Because it borders Israel, because there are so many angry Palestinians here, because there's a vacuum created by the barely functioning Lebanese state, and because Lebanon's rival sectarian groups keep inviting regional powers (including the US) to intervene in their never-ending domestic squabbles. Whatever the reason, as long as there is unfinished business between the Arab world and Israel, Lebanon will be stuck in the middle of it.

So could Israel and Syria let bygones be bygones? Perhaps. The Israeli-Syrian dispute would seem to be one of the easiest Middle Eastern conflicts to solve. Israel would have return the occupied Golan Heights, Syrian territory that Israel captured in 1967, and Syria would have to agree to stop supporting militant groups fighting Israel, such as Hamas and Hizballah. The strategic importance of the Heights has dwindled with advances in Israeli defense systems. But the Israeli public has gotten pretty used to holding on to the lush Golan, and the country's weak leadership is probably incapable of carrying out a withdrawal without public support. Moreover, the Syrian government is in its own way attached to the belligerent status quo. Israeli occupation -- and America's disastrous foreign policy -- has helped keep the Assad regime in power all these years. Why give up on a good thing?

3) Peace talks with Lebanon and Israel have to include Hizballah. It should go without saying that for a peace agreement to last, the guys with thousands of fighters, Iranian missiles, and a social and military infrastructure that rivals the Lebanese state have to be on board. One makes peace with one's enemies, right?

Unfortunately, it seems as if Israel and the US still hasn't figured this out. When announcing the effort, an Israeli government spokesman said the peace talk proposal was designed in part to help support the pro-American government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which has been fighting a losing battle with the Hizballah-led opposition for almost two years now. But help from Israel is the last thing Siniora needs. The opposition accuses him of being complicit in an America's plan to secure Israeli dominance over the Arab countries of the Middle East, and his credibility has eroded so much that he clings to power only with American support. There is perhaps no one in Lebanon less capable of carrying off a peace treaty with Israel than Fouad Siniora.

The last time Israel and the U.S. tried to engineer a peace treaty by mucking around in Lebanese politics ended badly. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon -- with American approval -- and tried to install a pro-Israeli militia leader, Bashir Gemayel, as president. One of Gemayel's first acts as presidents would have been making a peace deal, but he was assassinated -- probably by Syrian agents -- just nine days before he was due to take office, and the Lebanese civil war entered one of its most violent stages.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut