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August 10, 2006: Editor of Time International, Michael Elliott, discusses Lebanon with Anchor, Daljit Dhaliwal.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: Michael Elliot, welcome to WIDE ANGLE.
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Thank you.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: Just as things were beginning to look up for Lebanon, why did Hezbollah mount this cross-border raid, abduct Israeli soldiers, and provoke this kind of destruction upon its country?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Well, Lebanon exists in a rough neighborhood. And I think that's one of the things that we've learned over the last 40 years, since civil war broke out in Lebanon in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Six Day War. So, although there was enormous optimism and goodwill generated by the Cedar Revolution a year ago, it behooves us all to remember that Lebanon is not a stable place. Hezbollah remained in the south of the country with enormous political support. With its own sense of what should happen in the future. With its own arguments with Israel. With its own agenda, if you like.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: And what is that agenda? What is Hezbollah's agenda in Lebanon?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: I think we need to separate out Hezbollah in the Lebanon context and Hezbollah in the broader Middle East context. In the Lebanese context, the question is whether Hezbollah really ever bought into the reforms and the political changes that took place in Lebanon a year ago. Those reforms were not led by the Shiite community. They were not led in the south of Lebanon. They were not, as it were, led by a constituency of which Hezbollah was a key part.
So, there's always been this question of what, exactly, Hezbollah wanted in terms of a new, political dispensation in Lebanon. And whether, to an extent, it felt that it was being squeezed out of a new political set up in Lebanon. So that's the Lebanese context.
Then, if you look at the wider context, you see Hezbollah -- initially founded by Iran with close alliances with Iran and Syria -- seeing itself, for good reasons or bad, as a key part of the 'resistance' in inverted commas, to Israel. So that's Hezbollah in the wider, regional context -- as kind of continuing the struggle against Israel in close alliance, certainly with Iran, and probably with Syria, too. Not withstanding the fact, one should remember, that there have been no Israeli forces in Lebanon for six years, up until this summer.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: Well, Hezbollah has mounted raids into Israel before.
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Surely.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: What do you make of the Israeli reaction? Was it a total overreaction?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Well, I think it's plain, without needing to state it, that Hezbollah completely underestimated what they thought Israel's response would be. As you say, there have been raids before. There have been rockets fired before. And no reaction on the part of the Israeli forces came anything close to what we've seen in the last month. So, plainly, Hezbollah over-reacted.
So why did Israel react in the way that it did? Well, I think there are a number of factors. First of all, the Hezbollah incursion in the north followed on, if you remember, the abduction of an Israeli soldier in the south, in Gaza, and a continuing violent situation on the border of Israel and Gaza, as Israel confronted Hamas and other groups in Gaza who had not given up the struggle in the south.
So the incursion in the north followed very quickly on from the incursion in the south. Then you have, just as another element, a relatively new Israeli government. Relatively untested in a security sense. Which I think felt that it had to make a statement that northern Israel had to be rendered safe from Hezbollah.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: And Hezbollah was also testing ...
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Absolutely. No, I think everyone was testing everyone else. Hezbollah was certainly testing the Israeli government. The new Israeli government was anxious to show its own mettle. And so you got what -- from the Hezbollah standpoint -- would have been a completely unexpected degree of Israeli military retaliation for their raid on the border post.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: Can the Lebanese government be held responsible for Hezbollah's actions on its territory?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Well, I think that's a key and a very interesting question. The standard argument would be that Lebanon is a sovereign state. That it has a sovereign government. That the sovereign government should have a monopoly of the use of force within its territory. And hence, that it is legitimate to hold a sovereign government of a sovereign state responsible for those who use that government's territory to attack others. That's, as it were, the theory of international law.
In practice, as we know, the Lebanese government does not actually have formal control over the whole of the territory in the way in which the United States government has formal control over everywhere from Maine to California. And in effect, you have a little state within a state in southern Lebanon.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: What do you mean by that?
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Well, I mean in southern Lebanon you have an area in which, in effect, Hezbollah runs a state within a state with its own social services, with its own political structure. And as we now know, with its own military structure and with its own army, effectively. So, you could argue from that set of facts that it is unfair, if you like, to expect the Lebanese government to take responsibility for everything that Hezbollah does, because to all intents and purposes, Hezbollah runs a little 'state-let' all of its own.
DALJIT DHALIWAL: But it's the Lebanese people that ended up dying. And there were huge civilian casualties.
MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Sure.
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Editor of Time International, Michael Elliott
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