Last week Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi spoke of growing Muslim contempt for the UN because of its failure to condemn Israel for the attack on Qana or the killing of UN observers at Khiam. At that time, little did he or anyone else realize how fast that contempt would spread. The way the UN draft resolution on Lebanon has been handled has all but finished the UN in the eyes of Arabs, Muslims and many other fair-minded individuals who belong to neither of those two groups. There should have been — could have been — a UN cease-fire resolution at least a week ago. There still isn’t one. Hundreds of Lebanese have died, victims as much of UN dithering as of Israeli bombs or Hezbollah missiles.
Even worse than the delay is what is in the resolution. It gives the Israelis everything they want — the immediate and unconditional release of the two abducted Israeli soldiers (but no immediate release of Israeli-held Lebanese prisoners but merely the hope that they will be released), the immediate cessation of all Hezbollah attacks, the demilitarization of the area between the Lebanese border and the Litani River, an international arms embargo on Lebanon other than arms to the government, the deployment of an international force to southern Lebanon to ensure no more rockets are fired into Israel and in the meantime, no Israeli withdrawal and — the biggest boon of all for the Israelis — a permanent peace between them and Lebanon. In effect the UN handed Israelis their demands on a plate and was willing to enforce everything with a multinational force.
The dismantlement of Hezbollah as a private army beyond the control of the Lebanese government is a must for Lebanon, but where is the balance in the resolution? Why no insistence on the immediate release of Lebanese prisoners? Why no withdrawal of Israeli forces? Why should Lebanon be forced to accept a permanent and final peace with Israel when the wider issue of Palestine has not been settled? This is of course Washington’s doing — and the fact that Paris colluded in so pro-Israeli a resolution is to its great and everlasting discredit.
The draft UN resolution must include a demand for Israel’s withdrawal. That would at least put a little balance into it even if it were still overwhelmingly pro-Israeli. It still opens the way to what the Israelis crave: permanent peace with Lebanon. The only reservation about amending it at this late hour is that it continues to delay a cease-fire. More people will die. A ceasefire is the all-important immediate objective.
The UN’s political impotence has tainted it in Arab eyes. For 58 years it has been unable to protect the Palestinians; it failed the Iraqis and now it has failed the Lebanese. US vetoes to protect Israel along with the Jewish state’s unpunished refusals to comply with resolutions as well as Washington’s unpunished illegal invasion of Iraq have robbed the Arabs of any enthusiasm for, or faith in, the world body. This belated and crafty resolution — good only in that it may stop the killing — changes nothing.
