Lebanon reacts to flotilla deaths

Lebanese leaders and citizens are expressing their outrage over last Sunday’s botched Israeli raid in international waters off the coast of Gaza that resulted in at least 9 deaths.

Since the Hamas-led government took over control of Gaza in 2007, Israel has had the territory under siege. In 2009, Israel launched an assault on Gaza militants that claimed hundreds of lives, mostly civilian.

The five ships in the flotilla attempted to break the sea blockade of Gaza that has prohibited relief efforts in the beleaguered territory. In addition to medical supplies, the ships were also carrying construction materials that would have been used to rebuild Gaza, much of which was reduced to rubble during the Israeli assault.

Lebanon’s Palestinians represents ten percent of the country’s population. As a result, Lebanon frequently finds itself the middle of Palestinian affairs.

Representatives from every party, who seldom find anything to agree on, have condemned the Israeli raid on the flotilla. The President, Prime Minister, and Speaker, as well as Hizballah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Druze Chief Walid Jumblatt have all proclaimed their dissatisfaction with the Israel’s actions.

The behavior of the Jewish State is baffling. On the surface, it seems like they made an effort avoid such a fiasco. They delivered verbal warnings before boarding the ships, and the soldiers’ main weapon-in-hand was (as alleged by the Israeli government) a paintball gun. The bullets fired at the activists were reportedly not from Uzis, the traditional favorite of the IDF, but from side-arms.

But why did they send commandos? Why did they decide to act at night? Why not just disable the rudders and stop them in their tracks? And why did they opt for the most confrontational approach to the problem?

Perhaps the IDF wanted a violent confrontation to discourage future attempts to break the blockade (this past attempt was only one of a handful of such operations that had been attempted since the siege of Gaza began in 2007). And perhaps they did it at night to avoid exposure. This way, Israel could exercise some control over the initial spin. As it is right now, most of the footage of the raid that has been show so far is a brief clip released by Israeli officials that show the activists acting violently, beating soldiers with sticks and throwing them overboard.

The full fallout from the event remains to be seen. Already, many nations and NGOs have issued statements condemning Israel’s handling of the situation. For now, it appears Israel’s downward spiral of international isolation will continue, with only the United States remaining true.

However, although relations with some key allies are strained, they have not gone beyond the point of no return. But it remains to be seen whether Israel can right its ship or if it even cares to.

The situation comes at a time where tensions between Hizballah and Israel appeared to be heating up as Lebanon heads into to summer. However, some analysts argue that Israel’s actions actually make another war with Hizballah less likely, at least in the near-term. At this point Israel cannot risk further alienating itself from the region and the international community as a whole.

The flotilla raid has also added further strain to Israel’s relationship with the United States, perhaps the closest relationship between two states in the entire world. Since Obama took office, he has been trying to build international support for a sanctions package against Iran.

This latest fiasco puts the whole effort at risk. Obama is now forced to take Israel’s side on the matter, which makes his historic “Muslim Embrace” speech in Cairo sound even more like wishful thinking. As a result, America is further distanced from the Muslim world by extension.

Perhaps Israel’s greatest loss from last weekend’s disaster was the blow it landed on Turkish-Israeli relations. For a while, Turkey was one of Israel’s closest allies in the Muslim world. But recently, as the ruling AKP party has started engaging the East to assert its own place in the world, the two nations have grown apart. The flotilla fiasco was not the root cause in the breakdown of the relationship- it probably has more to do with Turkish public opinion growing more upset with Israeli’s behavior over the last five years or so- but it might well end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Back in Lebanon, in addition to perhaps lessening the likelihood of an Israeli assault this summer, the situation also takes the issue of Hizballah’s arms off the table, at least for now.In addition to changing, at least momentarily, the dynamic between Hizballah and Israel, the situation also impedes efforts to disarm Hizballah or fold it into the LAF.

According to former Lebanese General Elias Hanna, from the Daily Star:

For now, though, Hizballah stands to gain from Monday’s tragedy; with Israel looking like a pariah, Hizballah’s declared status as stalwart of the regional anti-Israel resistance puts it on the right side of the issue, Hanna said.

The right of the Shiite group to its formidable arsenal has long divided Lebanese, and many in the March 14 political camp stepped up their calls for the National Dialogue to address the matter after Hizballah gunmen and their allies seized large swaths of western Beirut in March 2008 after the group felt the former Cabinet had encroached on its privileges. However, Hizballah’s foes will not be able to call into question Hizballah’s weapons for some time after the Israelis put on such a display of wanton aggression, Hanna added.

“It will strengthen their hand in Lebanon,” he said. “Nobody dares now to say something about Hizballah. This high rhetoric [about Hizballah’s weapons] is history. It is gone.”

This is bad news for Lebanon, Israel, and the United States. The latter two would love to see the threat of Hizballah (to Israel) reduced, and the former is negatively impacted by having such a heavily armed sub-state actor, especially one so heavily influenced by Iran and Syria, operating within its borders. It’s inherently destabilizing. The clear winner of this is Hizballah, whose weapons will not be up for discussion at least until this situation cools down.