1559 OR FIGHT
NEW YORK POST
Editorials
July 18, 2006
The mullahs in Tehran must be smiling today.
Their headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons - meant to be the major issue at last weekend's G8 summit - has been all but forgotten as the Middle East conflict continues to escalate. Yes, Hezbollah, their terrorist proxy in Lebanon, is being hit hard by Israeli air power - but Iran and its other proxy, Syria, remain unscathed.
Meanwhile, much of the international community has directed its rhetoric at Israel, which yesterday appeared to soften slightly its conditions for a ceasefire.
European leaders talked about sending an international "stabilization force" to patrol the Lebanese border - with no intention, apparently, of implementing U.N. Resolution 1559, which requires the disarming of Hezbollah.
The Iranians, meanwhile, are offering to broker a truce in return for a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah.
If Tehran's intention was to demonstrate that it remains capable of fomenting unrest in the Middle East, it has succeeded dramatically. Because the international community - while paying lip service to the notion that Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza are being manipulated by outside forces - is trying to defuse this crisis without confronting its animating force.
The real issue is the rapidly accelerating role of two terror-sponsoring allies: Iran and Syria - provocateurs of mayhem against the West. And, in particular, against both the United States and Israel.
President Bush noted as much yesterday, in a private conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair that was picked up by an open microphone.
Criticizing a call by both Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a peacekeeping force, Bush said:
"I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically
ceasefire and [then] everything else happens."
Added the president:
"I feel like telling Kofi to get on the phone with [Syrian
strongman Bashar] Assad and make something happen."
Last year, it appeared that a popular uprising in Lebanon would force Syria to end its 29-year occupation of that nation. The "Cedar Revolution" led to international pressure on Damascus, which presently withdrew its troops.
More importantly, the United Nations adopted Resolution 1559 to demand, for the first time, the abolition of all Lebanese militias - especially Hezbollah.
But there was no follow-up.
The politically weak Beirut government instead allowed the terrorists to occupy south Lebanon, along the Israeli border, where they prepared for war - using missiles provided by Iran.
Over the years, Israel has shown a willingness to confront enemies, only to allow itself to be pulled up short by the international community - which, then as now, demands "restraint."
That may have been unavoidable during the Cold War, when U.S.-Soviet tensions often ebbed and flowed with events in the Middle East - and the danger of nuclear war was ever-present.
Today, the principal threat to the West resides in radical Islam.
Israel is on the firing line, to be sure, but the enemies of civilization won't be satisfied with the destruction of the only real democracy in the Middle East.
True, Israel needs to take care not to destroy Lebanon's ability to govern itself - even as it quite correctly pursues the terrorists who started the current fight.
In the end, though, its enemy isn't just Hezbollah,
It is, of course, Islamic fundamentalism in general.
And it is Iran in particular.
Absent Iran, there is no aborning nuclear threat to Mideast stability; no nascent Shiite uprising in southern Iraq - and a substantially weakened insurgency in Iraq's Anbar province.
A stopgap solution to the current crisis may allow for some breathing room, but it would be no solution at all - not even in the short run.
Not for Israel.
Not for America.
Enforcement of Resolution 1559 is imperative, but make no mistake - that will be just the beginning.
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