The Lebanese government and its backers are responsible for the war

The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah was ended with United Nations Security Council resolution 1701. It was a good plan in theory, but in practice, a plan is only as good as its implementation. The Lebanese government and its backers failed miserably in implementing that plan, and now Israel and the Lebanese people are paying the price.

The most critical part of UNSC resolution 1701 was that it called for the Lebanese government to “extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.”

But as we know, in the almost twenty years that followed this resolution, Hezbollah has been controlling South Lebanon and building up an enormous arsenal.

If Lebanon complied with the resolution, it means that Hezbollah’s actions were taken with the full consent of the government of Lebanon. If Hezbollah did not have that consent, then it means that the government of Lebanon was incapable of complying with the resolution.

So, either the Lebanese government is complicit for allowing Hezbollah to turn South Lebanon into a terrorist camp, or it was incapable of enforcing its authority. In the second case, however, one would expect the Lebanese government to ask for help from the UN and from its allies, but it did not do that. After all, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was stationed in South Lebanon for exactly that reason, yet they have been no better than an expensive decoration all these years.

Of course, Lebanese politicians were too scared of Hezbollah and the Iranian regime to call for help against Hezbollah, and everyone knew that. The UN knew it. France knew it. The US knew it. And so on. Yet all these entities today are desperately trying to stop the chain of events that resulted from the Lebanese government’s failure to enforce UNSC resolution 1701.

This utter failure of leadership on the part of the Lebanese government, the UN, and Lebanon’s backers would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic, if it hadn’t resulted in so many deaths, injuries, and people displaced among the Israeli and Lebanese populations.

The excuse for doing nothing to stop Hezbollah is always the same: they are too powerful, it’s too dangerous. But guess what? The problem called Hezbollah wasn’t going to go away by itself. Ignoring it wasn’t the answer, and yet that’s exactly what everyone did except Israel.

Israel has been warning for years that this war was inevitable if Hezbollah wasn’t stopped. Now the war is occurring as expected, and Israel is taking the risks and paying the costs to deal with a terrorist organization that no one else wanted to deal with, especially the party that is most responsible for Lebanon’s security, the Lebanese government.

So, instead of calling for a ceasefire to “negotiate”, the UN, world leaders, and especially the Lebanese government must demand that Hezbollah comply with UNSC resolution 1701. The way forward was already clarified in that resolution. There is nothing to negotiate.

It is for sure a big risk for Lebanese politicians to speak out against Hezbollah, but they shouldn’t have taken the job if they couldn’t do it. The Lebanese people need their leaders to do their jobs, and there has never been a more crucial time for that to happen than now.