THE SEEDS of a new and brutal war in southern Lebanon are being sown this week as a virtually powerless ceasefire committee prepares to starts work amid threats from Israel of "uncontrollable escalation" and a warning from Syria of a "war option" if the conflict between the two countries is not resolved.
The menacing exchange between the two nations has effectively changed the equation upon which the Arabs and Israelis were to make peace hitherto it was "land for peace". Now, it seems, the chilling formula has become "peace or war". And nobody is in any doubt where a new round of violence will start southern Lebanon.
A report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz yesterday that the new Israeli prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has met secretly with a Syrian "envoy in Jerusalem to discuss a withdrawal from Lebanon has only added fuel to the fire. The Israelis have publicly (and the Syrians privately) denied that any such meeting took place and, given Syrian President Assad's refusal to conduct any secret talks with Israel, little credence was attached to the report. But the Syrians can identify a consistent tactic on the part of the Israelis to offer a peace unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, which would isolate Syria which is unacceptable, and then blame Syria as the "obstacle to peace" when it refuses to deviate from the original terms of a comprehensive solution to the Middle East conflict.
President Hrawi of Lebanon, whose government is controlled by Syria, has already refused to accept a unilateral Israeli withdrawal, not least because Israel is demanding the withdrawal of 22,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon as part of the deal. Since Israel knows that Syria will not pull its forces out of Lebanon on these terms, so the Arab suspicion goes, the whole Lebanon initiative is an excuse to heap further blame on Damascus, and make way for a possible conflict with Syria or its allies on Lebanese soil.
It is, incidentally, the third time that Israeli sources have reported "secret" talks with the Syrians on both previous occasions, the reports proved untrue.
In five days' time, ceasefire officials from the United States, Israel, Syria, France and Lebanon are to pay their first visit to the south of Lebanon, three months after the Israeli Hizbullah truce that brought their committee into being. The UN, which was not party to the ceasefire will host representatives of the five powers at its headquarters on the Israeli Lebanese frontier. But it is already clear that none of the officials have the slightest idea how the ceasefire which allows both sides to kill each other's forces but not civilians will be monitored.
More than 170 civilians were killed by the Israelis in April after the Syrian supported Hizbullah militia fired rockets into Israel in reaction to the killing of a Lebanese boy by a bomb in southern Lebanon. After the massacre by Israeli artillerymen of more than 100 Lebanese refugees under the UN's protection at the Qana camp, the five powers announced the setting up of the committee which was supposed to control, if not end, the fighting in southern Lebanon. At the UN base at Naqqoura, the old force commander's conference room, equipped with two telephones and a solitary map of southern Lebanon, has been set aside for the ceasefire committee members, although the Lebanese are themselves already deeply sceptical of its mission.
As the Lebanese know all too well, the conflict between Israel and the Syrians is fought out in Lebanon where the Hizbullah, funded by Iran but encouraged by Syria, continue to assault Israel's occupation troops in the south of the country. Under the terms of the April truce (in effect a "rules of war" agreement rather than a ceasefire) Israeli troops and Hizbullah guerrillas may continue to kill each other inside Lebanon provided they do not shoot into civilian locations and provided that Hizbullah does not fire Katyusha rockets over the border into Israel. Both sides also undertook not to launch military attacks from civilian areas or from industrial or electrical installations.
This may look good on paper, but the reality is proving to be very different. The Israelis want the agreement to bring about the disarmament of the Hizbullah which would make their occupation of southern Lebanon less bloody while the Syrians (and the Hizbullah themselves) see the committee as legitimising the Hizbullah "resistance" movement in southern Lebanon. Israelis and Arabs on the committee thus wish to work in precisely opposite fractions. The UN will make no official comment on the work of the ceasefire committee but is known to be concerned at the possibility of too close a cooperation with the five powers. If UN battalions are asked to give military information about Hizbullah movements to the committee information which will be made available to Israeli delegates hen the neutrality of UN troops will be seriously challenged.
Equally, UN information on Israeli military positions will have to be made available to the Syrians and Lebanese. Israel is unlikely to believe that this will not find its way to the Hizbullah.
All in all, a bleak prospect. "Everything," as one security source put it yesterday, "is going in the wrong direction."