Why Hizballah Can’t Be Disarmed

If peace in the Middle East is a Rubik’s Cube whose every piece has to align properly to arrive at a solution, the puzzle posed by Hizballah seems to have more than six colors for six sides. The Shi’ite militia has skillful fighters, powerful patrons in Iran and Syria and roots so deep in Lebanon that it has become a state within a state. Israel couldn’t beat it during 18 years of occupying Lebanon and last week had to withdraw its troops from the border village of Bint Jbeil, a Hizballah stronghold, after sustaining heavy losses. Yet unless Hizballah renounces its aim of destroying Israel, or at least stops acting on it, stability in the Middle East will be impossible. Diplomats last week were twisting the squares of the cube mightily for a negotiated, political solution. The Lebanese government, crucially including Hizballah Cabinet ministers, thought it might have found one and started pressing it upon U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She declared it had some “very good elements,” an intriguing glimmer that a fix for the region’s immediate agony might be taking shape, though she shied away from others. But even if this crisis abates soon, the knotty problem of defanging Hizballah will remain.

For the past three weeks, Israel, with its enormous edge in weaponry, has tried one approach: crushing Hizballah militarily. But the group’s estimated 1,000 to 4,000 active fighters have managed to inflict surprising casualties on Israeli forces in Lebanon and to keep firing hundreds of rockets on civilian targets as far as 30 miles into Israel. Along the Lebanese border, as Israeli intelligence drones the size of model airplanes whined overhead, an Israeli army major sent to reassess tactics was grimly impressed. “Nobody here looks down on Hizballah,” he says. “This is their home, they’re the defenders, and they’ve probably booby-trapped every house.”

But even with an implicit U.S. green light to keep fighting a while longer, a military-only strategy would be self-defeating for Israel. Carpet bombing Hizballah strongholds is impossible, says military spokesman Captain Mitch Pilcer, because “some of these Lebanese are our allies, and if they come back to a flattened town, they might turn around and join Hizballah.” Indeed, although Christian, Druze and some other factions in Lebanon were furious at Hizballah for instigating the war and hiding weapons in civilian neighborhoods that then suffer Israeli retaliation, polls show that the group’s overall popularity in Lebanon and the Arab world has risen.

If Israel can’t bring Hizballah down, could foreign forces help squeeze it into better behavior? Potential donors to a multinational force will be trying to hash out a plan this week. But its composition, mission and rules of engagement are acutely tricky. Rice declared that no U.S. troops would join; they’re already overstretched in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. French President Jacques Chirac said he might be willing to commit French forces, but not through NATO. Soldiers from Muslim countries like Turkey and Egypt would be a plus, but so far none have materialized.

The harder question is what the force would do after deployment. The U.S. view is that it should keep Hizballah fighters and weapons out of a strip near the Israeli border and help Lebanon’s army take a greater role there. According to Lebanese officials, Rice has suggested rules of engagement allowing its soldiers, who may number up to 20,000, to shoot back but not to go door to door looking for Hizballah. That reflects a realistic appreciation that foreign soldiers could not possibly disarm the group throughout the country and could become enmeshed in a nasty war if they tried. British Prime Minister Tony Blair signaled that Hizballah would hardly be a straightforward enemy when he said the deployment “can only work if Hizballah is prepared to allow it to work.” Even so, U.S. officials still hope the foreign presence could strengthen the political forces inside Lebanon–Christian, Druze, Sunni and others–that resent political domination by Hizballah’s private army, perhaps to the point that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government would finally move against it. But Aaron Miller, a former top U.S. Middle East negotiator, says Lebanon’s political fragility means that a serious try at bringing Hizballah under government control “can’t be done without triggering civil war.”

If no outside force can pacify Hizballah, what’s the chance it will choose to restrain itself? Fighting Israel is the core of its politics, key not only to its self-definition but also to the arms, money and backing it gets from Syria and Iran and the support it gets inside Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world. “There’s not enough money in the world for them to disarm, because it means giving up their major philosophy,” says Miller. As part of efforts to normalize Lebanon earlier this year, Hizballah was engaging in a national dialogue with other parties in which it listened sympathetically to entreaties to forget fighting and concentrate exclusively on politics for the good of the country–at the same time it was stockpiling missiles and preparing for a war it started without anyone’s consent. Few would now trust any promise it gave.

Indirect pressure is another tack to try, but in this case, neither Iran, which supplies Hizballah’s weapons, nor Syria, which transships them into Lebanon, is very susceptible to urging. Iran already faces the possibility of sanctions from the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program and may well be grateful to Hizballah for diverting the attention of world powers through this major conflagration. Syria is close to being Washington’s least favorite country: the U.S. has withdrawn its ambassador and permitted only low-level contacts since a U.N. report last year implicated top Syrian officials in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. According to TIME sources in the Middle East and Washington, Syria’s envoys have been desperately reaching out to re-establish a dialogue with the Bush Administration, even offering help in reining in Hizballah.

So if Hizballah can’t be forced or pressured to change its ways, what’s left? The answer is as old as diplomacy. In addition to sticks, it can be offered some carrots–and that’s what appears to be happening. The U.S., working with European and moderate Arab countries, is trying to assemble a package of proposals acceptable to the Lebanese and Israeli governments. It includes a cease-fire, the deployment of foreign troops to Hizballah’s traditional stomping grounds on the Israeli border with a mandate to let the Lebanese Army extend its jurisdiction there, an end to Israeli violations of Lebanese territory and possibly Israel’s agreement to turn over maps of the land mines it left during the occupation. Rice is also encouraging Lebanon and Israel to work out a deal on the so-called Shebaa Farms problem. This tiny patch of territory is occupied by Israel. Historically it belonged to Syria, but Lebanon and Syria now assert that it is Lebanese–providing a pretext for further resistance to the “occupier.” If Shebaa is resolved, possibly by Israel delivering it into the hands of the multinational force, Hizballah will be able to claim a proud if insubstantial victory but will have one less reason to keep fighting.

With the addition of a prisoner exchange, the Lebanese government–including its Hizballah ministers–backs these ideas. “There is total unity [in the Cabinet] about a cease-fire and a package deal,” Lebanon’s Interior Minister, Ahmad Fatfat, told TIME. That position was confirmed to TIME by sources speaking for Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who is in hiding to avoid Israeli assassination.

Not every party has signed up to the same package. In particular, Rice won’t push a prisoner exchange unless Israel agrees. In Israel the package deal might look like rewarding Hizballah for starting a war. Still, it could also extricate the Israelis from a quagmire, and they can spin their victory too. “Nasrallah will probably give the last speech–a victory speech,” says an aide to an Israeli Cabinet minister. “But we’ll have managed to chop off his hands. It will take years for him to make up the damage we’re causing his organization.”

For Hizballah, renouncing arms to become just another Lebanese political party would be a complete reversal. More militant factions could easily splinter off. Certainly Iran and Syria will want to keep proxies able to make mischief in Lebanon. Hizballah’s endorsement of the Lebanese government’s package deal could also be a ruse. After Hizballah ministers had signed up to it, Nasrallah appeared on TV, threatening more rockets on Israel. “I’m sure Hizballah is saying yes to buy time,” says a senior Lebanese source. “They don’t intend to disarm. They are smart.”

So the package deal may come with a lot of loose ends–and people who want to pull at them. Progress in the Middle East has always started with small steps, compromises with unsavory enemies, ambiguous words that might evaporate or, with luck and hard work, be made to stick. If Hizballah can’t be eliminated, whatever chains it can be made to wear must be slipped on slowly, using a lot of hands. That’s diplomacy. If the process looks ugly, the alternative can be viewed in the rubble and graveyards of Beirut and Haifa.