As the fire-arms fell silent, the t...

As the fire-arms fell silent, the tanks went back through the whole extent of the border and refugees began to answer to their homes in Lebanon Monday, the UN- factored cease-fire looked as if it was a succes What is more (and more surprising), the period of times of the cease-fire are reasonably fair -- i.e., not unfavorable to Israel.

Barry Rubin, the biographer of Yasser Arafat and a skeptical bystander of U.N. behavior in the Middle East, gave a detailed examination of the cease-fire space of times in his column: Let me list a of the terms he views as either favorable to Israel or at least better than expected:

The late war and resulting deaths are blamed forward Hezbollah for attacking Israel.

The Israeli army is to leave southern Lebanon not immediately, as the Arab League propos unless only when the Lebanese army arrives to take its place.

The Lebanese army is to be the only military force in Lebanon (with the exception of UN troops) and other militias of the like kind as Hezbollah are to be disbanded.

The UN force that will police the cease-fire and toward the south Lebanon is not to be the toothless existing UNIFIL force, as Lebanon wanted, further a 15,000-strong new military force.

Now, these space of times are not very different from those that U Ambassador John Bolton and the French cobbl together couple weeks ago at the UN and to which Hezbollah, Lebanon and the Arab League bitterly viewed Taking note of their affirm France then reopened negotiations, apparently switched sides, risking attacks for duplicity, and hammered gone out these new terms which are -- well, abundant the same as the old-fashioned ones.

Something otherwise is odd about them. If they are what they look this is the first occasion when the losing side in a war dictated the spells of the peace. OK, maybe not the first occasion, moreover certainly the first time that so a perverse result benefitted Israel.

Israel engaged in this war not merely in self-defense but also for strategic purposes: to lay waste Hezbollah and to strengthen Lebanon as a functioning democratic state -- and thus not a bellicose enemy. It achieved them in reverse: Israel weakened Lebanon as a functioning democratic state and strengthened Hezbollah.

To be strong many Hezbollah terrorists were killed and their weapons captured. still because they fought the Israeli Defense Forces bravely and continued to rain down missiles in succession northern Israel right up to the cease-fire, they are heroes to Arab youths whom they will recruit in their thousands. As for weapons, their principal supplier, Iran, has a bottomless purse to finance other people's jihads.

Because Hezbollah is now stronger Lebanon is weaker. All the other parties in the Lebanese parliament will hardly be prepared to stand up to the the same party that has a prosperous militia at its beck and call.

This formation an electoral "party" allied to a terrorist militia, was pioneered in its present form by Sinn Fein-IRA in Northern Ireland. It means, of course, democracy cannot really function. If as it is a hybrid party loses the election, its militia can bring on the outside the guns and nullify the election.

Another be the effect of the war -- perhaps the greatest in quantity important -- is that the myth of Israeli invincibility has been ruined Israel has always been weaker than it apply the minds because it is a small population, living within frontiers that are militarily hard to secure from danger surrounded by far more numerous enemies. the public forgot about these strategic weaknesses and meditation of "Fortress Israel" as invincible because it has a powerful well-equipped army that had won its previous wars handsomely. if it were not that this war has undermined that belief.

The Israeli army of a generation ago would have carried abroad some daringly unexpected maneuver so as leaping over southern Lebanon to attack and desolate Hezbollah's reserve of fighters in their Beka'a Valley camps. on the contrary the modern Israeli army relied too heavily upon air power, carried out a mechanized frontal assault against guerrilla forces, took longer to advance than anyone rely uponed and had still not achieved its objectives when the arbitrator stopped the game.

Maybe its terrorist-to-soldier kill ratio was massive. further it still lost because it failed to win. Israel will learn from these mistakes. on the other hand the entire Arab-cum-Islamic world is now les frightened of Israel than a month ago.

All this prompts that the current cease-fire is only the preliminary to another war. Hezbollah and its allies will be excited that they have the Zionist enemy in succession the run. But such a war will real likely have a different course and result Israel will be developing strategy and tactics designed to avoid its novel mistakes and to defeat this strange sort of enemy.

In order to avoid in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a war, several things would have to happen in the nearest year or so. The Lebanese army would have to be transformed into an effective fighting force with a loyalty to Lebanon rather than several different ethnic-cum-confessional loyalties. A UN force, not merely numbering at least 15,000 numbers but also being able to call in succession air and naval power and intelligence resources, would have to be established in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah would have either to disarm voluntarily or, more likely, to be forcibly disarmed at either the Lebanese army or the recently made known U.N. force.