by Isabel Kershner, The New York Times
For Israel, the prospect of a government in Lebanon backed by Hezbollah, one of Israel’s worst enemies, seemed to be the realization of a nightmare. Yet some analysts here said it was not necessarily an immediate cause for alarm.
The previous Beirut government, led by Saad Hariri, “never did anything against Hezbollah,” said Prof. Eyal Zisser, an expert on Syria and Lebanon at Tel Aviv University. “So from Israel’s perspective, it is a semantic change.”
Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said the situation proved that “the Hezbollization of Lebanon” was continuing, and worrying. “But it is not like they will start shooting at us tomorrow,” he added. “They are busy now with internal affairs.”
Israeli officials said they were closely following the developments across the northern border, which they said attested to Hezbollah’s growing strength.
“We are concerned about Iranian domination of Lebanon through its proxy, Hezbollah,” said an Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the situation in Beirut was not yet clear. The idea of a Hezbollah-backed government raised all sorts of questions, he added, including that of Lebanon’s commitment to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah and underpins the four-year-old cease-fire.
That resolution calls for the government to extend its control over all Lebanese territory, and for all armed groups, including Hezbollah, to be disarmed.
A deadly cross-border raid by Hezbollah — a Shiite movement that is backed by Iran — precipitated the monthlong war with Israel that killed more than 1,200 people. Israeli military officials say Hezbollah has since rearmed, building a stockpile of more than 40,000 rockets, including many that can reach far into Israel.
The Israeli official said Israel was interested in maintaining quiet. “We are not going to give the other side any excuse whatsoever to initiate an escalation along the border,” he said.
Some Israelis even see a potential benefit in having a government in Lebanon led by Najib Miqati, a Sunni businessman who is Hezbollah’s candidate.
Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli Army general and a former national security adviser, has long argued that to win the next war, Israel has to fight not only against Hezbollah, but also against the infrastructure of its host, the State of Lebanon.
“If Hezbollah is behind the government,” said Mr. Eiland, now a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, “it will be much easier to explain to the international community why we must fight against the State of Lebanon.”
