Israel succeeded in destroying the military infrastructure of the PLO in Lebanon, but she unleashed an even more formidable threat on its northern border, the Shiite militias of the Hezbollah. In fact, the war brought Iran through its proxies, the Hezbollah militias, to Israel's doorstep. This dynamic was not dissimilar to that created by Israel in the Gaza Strip at about the same time. Her obsession with the PLO there would end up enthroning the Hamas and other fundamentalist groups as the hegemonic power in the Strip.
In the annals of policies that turned out to be marches of folly in modern history, Israel's Lebanese adventure will undoubtedly receive the standing it deserves. One of the absurdities of her presence in that torn land was that she invaded it in the first place to 'solve' the Palestinian question and destroy the PLO's infrastructure, yet long years after the invasion Israel continued to be mired down in the mud and to bleed when no connection existed any longer between her presence in Lebanon and the Palestinian question. In 1993 Israel reached an agreement with the PLO - the Oslo accords - but in Lebanon she remained bogged down in a struggle with the local Shiite militias determined 'to expel the foreign invader'. And if that were not enough, Lebanon held Israel in the clamps of Syrian blackmail: no way out in Lebanon was allowed without payment in Syrian currency, namely, withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
The war in Lebanon would last for eighteen years; it ended in June 2000 when the last Israeli soldier left Lebanese territory under the instructions of a government in which the present author had the privilege serving. Lebanon taught us that wars that cannot be ended are sometimes worse than those that are lost.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy", Oxford University Press, página 183, 2006.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário