By Harold Meyerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/07/06):
In the Middle East, it is suddenly the European moment. Israel knows it cannot eliminate Hezbollah through force of arms, and it has realized that occupying hostile terrain is too much of a drain on its physical, political and moral resources. Reversing long-standing policy, it now is calling for an international force to secure its borders.
But which nations' troops should make up that force? The United States, even if it weren't bogged down in Iraq, is too closely identified with Israel. The Sunni Arab states that might conceivably step forward -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- would risk an eruption of rage in their streets, and their intervention could also move the entire region closer to a Sunni-Shiite conflagration.
All this puts the ball squarely in Europe's court. And if Europe wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, this is an opportunity it should welcome. The nations of Western Europe, after all, have long, and rightly, called for an end to Israel's occupation of Palestine. They have worked for a peaceful, bi-national settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They are trying to impress upon Iran that grave consequences will result if it flouts international norms and threatens regional Armageddon. And they are demanding an immediate cessation to the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Every one of these causes would be advanced if Germany, Britain, France, Italy and the other European nations agreed to deploy their forces in southern Lebanon.
First, it is hard to see how the current conflict will end -- or, at a minimum, not flare up again in a couple of months -- absent an international force on the Lebanese border. Second, any credible negotiations with Hezbollah's chief sponsor, Iran, over Iran's nuclear program must be premised on a threat of real retaliation if Iran sponsors or wages war. If Europe is unwilling to send a peacekeeping force to Lebanon to stop Hezbollah from firing missiles into Israel, it's hard to see why Tehran would take Europe seriously ever again. That, in turn, would reduce the West's options in dealing with Iran to an Israeli or U.S. military strike -- something that Europe is dead-set against.
When it comes to a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or any further withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank, the rise of Hamas and its kidnapping raids and rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza have made a genuine international force on the Israeli-Palestinian frontiers a requirement for any future progress. Israelis and Palestinians who support a land-for-peace deal leading to the establishment of two secure neighboring states have been confronted by the grotesque new reality of Arab forces attacking Israel from lands that Israel has left -- a strategy designed precisely to undermine the land-for-peace equation and the prospect of any ultimate settlement. Bolstering the two-state solutionists in both Israel and Palestine -- something the Europeans devoutly wish -- will probably require deploying some border force involving European participation.
As if all this weren't enough, there's one further reason why Europe should want to put itself forward to resolve the current conflict: To do so would be to offer an alternative to American unilateralism. Europeans, after all, complain both about a unipolar world run by and for the United States, and the unilateralism of the Bush administration. I happen to share their complaints. The European model of a more humane capitalism and a more multilateral approach to foreign affairs is a badly needed counterweight to America's laissez-faire economics and its my-way-or-the-highway foreign policy.
So, is Europe jumping at this opportunity to accomplish all these worthy goals? Not exactly. Germany, says Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, will participate in a peacekeeping force if Israel and Hezbollah both request it -- not a likely prospect given that Hezbollah's raison d'etre is to make war on Israel. France says the moment is not yet right for such an intervention. Britain is, in theory, for it, but its forces are bogged down in southern Iraq. One might think Tony Blair would welcome an excuse to pull his troops out of Iraq and deploy them where they could do some good, but one grows old awaiting Blair's declaration of independence from the United States.
To be sure, a European intervention in southern Lebanon would entail casualties and political risks. But a failure to intervene would undermine every policy goal that Western European nations have for the Middle East, and strengthen the hand of the Cheney-Rumsfeld hawks who believe that American military might is the only solution for the planet's distempers.
For Europe, it's put-up-or-shut-up time. With the Middle East descending into deeper and deeper cycles of violence, one thing we surely don't need is a Europe guided by the spirit of Neville Chamberlain.