Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Israel’s act of courage

Tuesday, June 6, 2000 | 9:40 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

The reports coming out of the Middle East would have many newspaper readers and television viewers believing that all the people of Lebanon are happy the Israelis have abandoned the safety zone in the southern part of their country. Lebanese throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and cursing them from behind the safety of a barbed wire fence put up by the soldiers dominate the news.

Lebanese Premier Salim Hoss was driven into the vacated area to reassure Christians that everything will be OK. Thousands of Christians have to be sweating as they hear his voice because they have lived with lies and death for almost two decades. Their numbers have slowly been disappearing as Syrian soldiers and Hezbollah guerrillas have taken control. Some of the older residents can recall when their Christian leaders asked for intervention from Israel to protect them.

Once the Lebanese Christians, called Maronites, were the ruling majority in that country. Today Christians make up about 30 percent of the population. Shiite Muslims make up 40 percent with Sunni Muslims and Druze making up the remainder of Lebanon's population. With modern weapons from Iran and the help of Syria the Hezbollah have terrorized and run the south of Lebanon. Even as Hoss was trying to calm the Christians there were very few national flags flying, but hundreds of Hezbollah flags whipping in the wind. These symbols of guerrilla activity and terrorism don't give much confidence to thinking members of Lebanon's Christian community.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak told his constituents during his election campaign last year that Israel would leave the security zone no later than July 1, 2000. The Israelis I talked with during the campaign hoped he would keep this promise. More than a month before the given date, Barak complied with United Nations Resolution 425 and withdrew from southern Lebanon. This has silenced critics of Israel that fill the halls of the United Nations.

What Barak should now expect are additional demands which they hope he won't fulfill. This will give them new causes to keep harping about until Israel, they hope, disappears from the map. The only democracy in the Middle East won't go away easily.

Equally important is who eventually fills the vacuum created by Israel's withdrawal. The United States and the United Nations had better put the pressure on Syria to start acting like a responsible nation and reverse its support of terrorists' actions against Israel. If Syria's Hafez Assad continues to support guerrillas sending rockets into the Israeli farms and towns along the border the next conflict will make past wars seem like school dances. Barak and those Israeli leaders who follow him into office will find it necessary to hit Damascus and no longer play losing games with the Syrian cat's-paw, Hezbollah. This will inflame that entire part of the world.

Israel is most willing to find a way to please Syria, but finds it difficult to allow its neighbor to control the nation's water supply. It was Syria's uncalled for attacks that led to the Israeli seizure of the Golan Heights. Today Israelis are willing to give back almost all of that area, but they refuse to let Syria have its way with their water supply.

The Israel Policy Forum puts the situation succinctly when evaluating the withdrawal from Lebanon:

"Barak's decision to withdraw does not imply that he is giving up on the possibility of achieving a peace agreement with Syria. Barak has not altered the terms of the deal he is offering President Assad. If Assad decides that peace (along with nearly all of the Golan Heights) are more valuable than a beach along the Sea of Galilee, a deal can be wrapped up quickly. The ball is in his court."

What world diplomats must recognize is the danger of misinterpreting Israel's withdrawal as a sign of weakness. Only a strong nation with a strong leader could have taken this action. For Israel's neighbors to make unreasonable demands on them could be a mistake resulting in painful consequences.

As the Palestinian Authority and Israel continue to work out their differences, the United States and the United Nations should demand that Syria, like Israel, remove its troops from Lebanon. Anything less shouldn't be tolerated by the Security Council and other nations with influence in the Middle East.