It's up to us to avoid war

After his groundbreaking two-day visit to Syria, Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri will be visiting Iran soon, while Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah will be landing in Riyadh, less than three months after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia went to Damascus. In addition, Speaker of the Iranian Majlis Ali Larijani will visit Cairo. Never since the 1990s has the mood in the Arab world been so positive, but the question on everybody's mind is: will the honeymoon last, and for how long?

There are still warning signs from Israel, threatening a new war with Lebanon, a year after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) waged a savage war on the Gaza Strip. Anybody familiar with how the military leaders in Israel think understands that nobody in the IDF has digested or accepted the results of the 2006 confrontation with Hezbollah. In 1973, Golda Meir took blame for "not winning" the war against Egypt and Syria, and eventually resigned not for losing, but simply for not winning.

No pretext

Today in Israel, Meir's 12th successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, is longing for another war with Hezbollah, to right the ‘wrongs' of 2006. Back then, after all, Israel promised to free captured Israeli soldiers, then weaken, and eventually break, Hezbollah. None of that happened and today, more than three years down the road, Hezbollah is stronger than ever before, according to both its own claims and those of the IDF.

A new war may seem difficult given the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon on the Lebanese-Israeli border and the lack of any pretext for war. But Netanyahu can easily create a pretext, citing the case of the Francop cargo ship that the IDF allege was found to be carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian arms bound for Hezbollah. After all, Israel invented a reason to invade Beirut in 1982.

A Hezbollah represented by two ministers in the Hariri Cabinet is a major problem for Israel. A Lebanese government, regardless how pro-West, that promises to respect the right of Hezbollah to bear arms is a nightmare for the IDF. Israel's threats to Hezbollah are not new what is new is the pragmatism of Hezbollah. In as much as Hezbollah says it is ready for war, it does not want it, realising that this would prove catastrophic for Lebanon. It would also be a nightmare for Hariri, whose promising tenure as prime minister would be ruined if another summer war were to break out between Hezbollah and Israel in 2010. Saudi Arabia, additionally, would be displeased as it wants Hariri to succeed as premier.

In an effort to avert another war, Hezbollah has taken major steps in recent months. One is joining the Hariri Cabinet, which is recognised and supported by world capitals from Washington to Tokyo. Another is issuing its recent manifesto, which tries to calm fears of heavyweights in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, saying that it has no plans to seize control of the state of Lebanon and establish an Iran-like theocracy. For years, this fear has gripped the Gulf, given Hezbollah's very public association with Iran. "People evolve," Nasrallah has said. "The whole world has changed over the past 24 years. Lebanon has changed. The world order has changed." Nasrallah has sought to reassure the region before. In May 2008, he said, "Had we wanted to capture the state, [Lebanese leaders] would have woken up to find themselves in prisons. But that is not what we want."

The next step for Hezbollah is to mend fences with Saudi Arabia. Had Saudi Arabia been on Hezbollah's side three years ago, then perhaps the war of 2006 would not have happened and, if it did, it might not have been so grotesque and destructive. Nasrallah will tell Riyadh that Hezbollah will not seek to export the Islamic Revolution to the rest of the Arab world certainly not to Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah has a local agenda inside Lebanon, which is to liberate occupied land. Its agenda stops there. And, given the prevailing spirit of reconciliation, the Saudis are in the mood to trust Nasrallah. Perhaps Larijani's visit to Cairo will help to spread the lighter mood to Egypt.

Hands-off approach

The US, despite the strong words spoken by Barack Obama in June, is maintaining a distance from the affairs of Lebanon. It prefers to deal with Lebanon on a macro level, rather than immerse itself in details, as George W. Bush had done. Instead, it is concentrating on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. That puts the onus on the regional players — Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon and Israel — to avoid another war. No salvation is going to be forthcoming from the US. Obama has enough trouble standing up to a belligerent US Congress, never mind the hard-line Israeli Cabinet. The US president could not even get Netanyahu to change course on colony expansion — let alone another war with Hezbollah.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine.