An Awakening in Lebanon  

(Wall Street Journal Editorial - May 25, 2000)    

"Ehud Barak Got out, got trouble"

Critics of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon have long com- pared that policy to America's ill- fated involvement in Vietnam. The comparison is especially apt now that Israel's withdrawal has turned into a rout, leaving a betrayed ally, a critically endangered civilian popula- tion and a footloose horde of Hezbol- lah thugs who have good reason to believe that their terrorist acts have finally paid off.

        This news must come as a real head- scratcher for those who've spent the past 18 years calling on Israel to with- draw. The logic of the peace process gu- rus has been that unilateral territorial concessions by Israel would yield fabu- lous dividends in security,  prosperity and the fellowship of man. For them personally anyway, this  was  right. Former    Israeli  Prime Minister Shi- mon Peres has his Nobel Prize, and no- body's going to rescind it. President Bill Clinton has photographs  with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat and King Hussein and Hosni Mubardk -- en- uring that the legacy will say he went the extra mile for peace.

        But for Israelis themselves, the peace dividend has yet to material- ize. The West Bank is coming off one of its worst spates of violence in re- cent memory, and that's after Israel relinquished control of three Jerusa- lem suburbs to the Palestinian Au- thority. Syria grew more, not less, truculent following Prime Minister Barak's promise in March to get out of Lebanon.

        For the immediate future, the ques- tion is how best to guarantee the safety of those put at risk by this pullout. So far, the U.S. has offered only diplo- matic assistance, which is to say no as- sistance at all. Kofi Annan proposes to raise the number of U.N. peacekeepers stationed in the area to 7,900 from the current 4,500. Given the U.N. 's track record in places like Srebenica and Si- erra Leone, the southern Lebanese had best take up Israel's offer of asy- lum while they still can.

        Israel, too, faces a reckoning. Mr Barak, voted into office in part because of his tough guy image, is now responsi- ble for one of the greatest military hu- miliations in the country's history. How did this happen? The Prime Minis- ter seems to have calculated that the SLA would be able to hold out on its own-an error that calls into question his military judgment. Then, tpo, there were reports that Mr. Barak ex- pected U.S. help, perhaps in the form of pressure on Syria to restrain the Heabollab while Israel withdrew. That error calls Into question his political judgment.

        Then there is the matter of the nego- tiating partners the U.S. has stead- fastly foisted on Israel. For Syria's As- sad, as for Mr. Arafat, Israel's sin has nothing to do with its occupation of Leb- anon or the West Bank, or the status of Palestinian refugees, or the question of Israel's treatment of its minority Arab citizens. Israel's sin, in their eyes, is the sin of its existence. And there's only one way to erase that.

        Israel's presence in Lebanon ex- acted a toll in lives-some 1,500 over 15 years and a heavier toll in public morale. But perhaps its heaviest toll on Israel's memory, in particu- lar its memory of the constant at- tacks it sustained prior to its 1982 invasion. It had better prepare for a sharp awakening. Meanwhile, we're heartened that at least one would-be world leader, Republican  Presidential  candidate George W. Bush, seems to have got- ten wise to a peace process driven by politics. On Monday he accused the Clinton Administration of trying to make Israel conform to "plans and timetables" and of "tak- ing sides" in the last Israeli election. Vice President Gore blasted Mr. Bush's views as "reckless" and "irre- sponsible." Insofar as an Israeli pull- out from Lebanon has long had the support of the Clinton Administra- tion, we'd enjoin Mr. Gore to dwell on his own recklessness instead.             

*****