Readying for Revenge

For a long time when I travelled in the Middle East, I'd often pack my flak jacket, even when not going to a conflict area, as a kind of Murphy's law guarantee that a war wouldn't break out while my pants were down. But my bags started to get a little heavy, and I got a little lazy, and the airlines started charging for extra weight, so here I am covering the Jerusalem bureau while Tim's on vacation with nothing more protective than a summer sweater, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking it'll be just my luck if all hell breaks loose.

Because in the Middle East, anything is possible. Case in point: someone just assassinated a Syrian general thought to be Syrian President Bashar al Assad's liaison to Hizballah, according to reports (which should be talken with a grain of salt) in the Arab press. I say "someone", but if the assassination did in fact take place, the conclusion that nearly everyone will rush to is that it was the work of the Mossad. Earlier this year, "someone" also killed Imad Mugniyah, Hizballah's operations chief (whom Western espionage experts called "a terrorist mastermind") and afterwards Israeli officials gave a non-denial denial and a Cheshire Cat-like smile. Anyone capable of killing the shadowiest of shadow warriors in the middle of Damascus, could probably also have taken care of a Syrian general.

But could and should are two different things. Israel is at war with Syria and a general is a military target, so if Israeli intelligence did kill him, it's all perfectly kosher according to international law. But still, the timing is awkward. Syria and Israel have been engaged in indirect peace talks, which is one of the most positive recent developments in the region. One man's death probably won't derail that process, but it's not as if there aren't enough obstacles to peace already.

Of greater concern is that Israel -- by commission or by reputation -- is building up a set of scores that sooner or later are going to be settled. Last fall, Israeli jets bombed a site in eastern Syria that American officials claim was a nascent nuclear weapons development facility. Naturally Syria denied this, and has claimed the right to retaliate against Israel at a time and in a manner of its choosing. Adding to the tension, Hizballah is still seething at the loss of Mugniyah, who is also said to have been Hizballah's liaison to the Iranian military. A poster I saw in Beirut earlier this summer spelled out the feeling pretty clearly: a portrait of Mugniyah, and a missile firing (presumably towards Israel) with the caption "the account is still open and has not been settled." Another assassination would make a revenge operation that much more likely.

The danger now is that there is nothing in place between Israel and its enemies to prevent tit-for-tat retributions from turning into large scale regional conflicts. After the Israeli withdrawal from most of Lebanon in 2000, the two sides had a kind of unspoken agreement to skirmish just in a particular confined space -- Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms. That de facto arrangement held with a few exceptions until 2006, when Hizballah captured two Israeli soldiers and Israel retaliated by bombing and invading large parts of Lebanon. A UN Security Council cease fire resolution brought an end to the fighting; but that resolution is now on its last legs. Both sides violate its terms -- the disarmament of Hizballah and the end to Israeli military overflights of Lebanon -- with impunity. Hizballah has rearmed in spades since the war, and the Israeli military violates Lebanese airspace almost daily.

The death knell for the UN cease fire resolution came on Friday with a statement by the Lebanese government that gives Hizballah the right to reclaim Lebanese land occupied by Israel -- meaning Shebaa farms -- by force. This agreement is a victory for Hizballah, which has been wrangling with Lebanon's American-supported government for almost two years over its status as an armed state-within-the-state, a struggle that culminated in May with the brief Hizballah take-over of West Beirut. With this new agreement, Hizballah is technically no longer a state-within-the-Lebanese-state, but a sanctified arm of Lebanese defense policy.

This could backfire against Lebanon, and not just because the country is probably now violating international law. Despite all the destruction wreaked upon Lebanon by Israel in the 2006 war (around 1,200 dead, over a million displaced persons and untold billions of dollars worth of damage ) the Jewish state was relatively restrained in the sense that it mostly targeted Hizballah strongholds in south Lebanon and south Beirut. In the event of another war, all bets could be off.

But even a total war in Lebanon could just be a sideshow. Israel's main security concern isn't Hizballah's rockets, but Iran's nuclear development program. After Barak Obama returned to the US from his visit to Israel last month, he reportedly told members of Congress that he had the feeling that if negotiations with Iran don't solve the nuclear problem, the Israeli military would take matters into its own hands. So is Israeli security preparing for just such an operation by protecting its flank from a possible Hizballah retaliation by killing off the agents that coordinated between Hizballah and Syria and Iran? At this point, it's a pretty wild-eyed guess. But just contemplating an Israeli air strike against Iran, and Iran's far reaching retaliation, is enough to make me think about my travel plans -- with or without flak jacket -- more carefully. Switzerland anyone?

---Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem