Southern Lebanon is sometimes described as Israel's Vietnam. Given the intractable conflict involved between its occupying army and Hizbullah guerrillas, which has once again escalated into a cycle of lethal bomb attacks on army patrols, missile bombardments of northern Israel and a round of Israeli military retaliation, the description seems apt. It is rendered more so by the complex diplomatic standoff between Lebanon, Syria and Israel and by the forthcoming Israeli elections, which could draw Mr Netanyahu's government into a fruitless retaliatory escalation. Mercifully, tension subsided late yesterday.
The history of Israel's involvement with, and occupation of, South Lebanon goes back deep into its wars and confrontations with neighbouring states and the Palestinians. It has been a catalogue of disaster and misfortune for all involved during the phases of active military conflict, peppered by prolonged periods of uneasy calm overseen by international peacekeepers in Unifil for the last 20 years.
Despite its sponsorship of the surrogate South Lebanon Army in the late 1970s after the Lebanese civil war, the creation of a formal buffer zone in 1985, successive devastating invasions and campaigns and a continuous low-level conflict, Israel has not been able to suppress the forces ranged against it. The Shia Muslim Hizbullah now boasts a strong political organisation and leadership, thousands of guerrilla fighters and more or less open support from Iran and Syria. Sunday's attack, in which a brigadier-general and three other Israelis were killed, demonstrates that Hizbullah has access to the most sensitive intelligence information and up-to-date weaponry. Given the impasse within the Lebanese government, it is able to call on popular support for actions such as the relief of Arnoun, a village just north of the occupation zone, which the Israelis annexed in recent weeks.
Confronted with these realities and with a steadily increasing death toll among its soldiers and civilians, Israel last year offered to withdraw back to the international frontier, but only if the Lebanese government gave undertakings about security arrangements and control of Hizbullah forces to prevent them launching further attacks. The offer was rejected by Lebanon on the grounds that United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 calls for a full and unconditional withdrawal to allow restoration of its territorial sovereignty, integrity and political independence. Syria, which has 35,000 troops in Lebanon and a determining say in its political affairs, in turn seeks to link Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon with an end to its continuing occupation of the Golan Heights.
The issues involved have thoroughly penetrated Israeli politics as its citizens prepare to vote in general elections on May 17th. There is a lively cross-party campaign for a unilateral withdrawal, based on a generalised desire for peace with neighbouring states as well as on the costs of a clearly unwinnable war. The conflict puts Mr Netanyahu's government between a rock and a hard place. Whatever it does will be criticised, at home and abroad. There are few real military options available, despite the urgings of its securocrats and right-wing politicians to escalate the conflict with Hizbullah in a possible rerun of the disastrous campaign three years ago which probably lost Mr Shimon Peres the election then. Lebanon has a similar potential for war or peace in 1999.