If Sharon were dead, he'd be turning in his grave

If former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were dead he would be turning in his grave. In the few short months since his incapacitation, the new strategic concept that he championed for the Gaza Strip, like its model on Israel's northern frontier with Lebanon, has been all but destroyed by an Israeli military establishment that was never reconciled to it and by a newly installed civilian leadership that chose not to confront the generals.

Putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again is still possible on Israel's Palestinian front, where the betrayal of Sharon's plan, for all the destruction wreaked on Gaza, can be remedied. But Israel's ill-conceived adventure in Lebanon represents sweet revenge for militants in Israel who continue to be seduced by the idea of a Lebanese protectorate first outlined in the abortive May 17, 1983, peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, a fantastic idea that can only be realized, if at all, in the aftermath of a terrible regional war that threatens to unfold.

Say what you want about Sharon, it is near certain that he would never have been bamboozled into the war that the generals, cheered on by Washington, sold his successor Ehud Olmert in the few short hours after Hizbullah forces attacked Israel and captured two soldiers. As the architect of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon saw his grand vision of domination over its northern neighbor, the destruction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a massive transfer of Palestinian refugees to Jordan collapse into an Israeli commission of inquiry that forced him from the Defense Ministry.

Sharon went into what was to be a short-lived political exile, but Israel's occupation of the southern rump of Lebanon continued for 18 long and bloody years. Prime Minister Ehud Barak's 1999 campaign for the premiership was going nowhere until he promised to withdraw Israeli forces from the country. The Israeli public, though not the generals, was sick of sending sons to a foreign land that reliably hemorrhaged Israeli casualties. Israel's retreat across the border in May 2000 was viewed at the time as the end of a sad chapter in Israel's history, never to be repeated.

Barak has been noticeably absent from the parade of Israeli generals and politicians who have filled Israel's airwaves these last weeks. The Lebanese model he fashioned was based upon the following logic: In the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement with Syria, Israel and Hizbullah, each through unilateral moves, established new "rules of the game" to contain their continuing rivalry within acceptable military limits. Aware of the terrible damage that each party could inflict upon the other - in civilian dislocation if not on the field of battle - an uneasy truce held for six years.

Unlike Hizbullah, which articulated limited goals, Israel, nominally lead by Olmert and the cheerleading of the Bush administration, expanded Washington's "war on terror" to include the ruination of an already fragile Lebanese political system - once championed in Washington - that is an inescapable part of the "collateral damage" accompanying the desired destruction of Hizbullah's military and political power. Within days, but not quickly enough for still-suffering civilians in both nations, attainment of these fantastic and radical objectives proved to be beyond Israel's military capacity. Even in the wake of this strategic failure, insistence upon "searing defeat into the consciousness" of Hizbullah and its regional patrons still risks widening the war to Syria, opening the gates of hell to a regional war.

Despite the failure of its overriding objective of employing force to destroy and not merely tame Hizbullah, the strategic concept that Israel is pursuing resembles nothing if not the objectives outlined in the ill-fated May 17, 1984 peace treaty initialed a generation ago. This document, which has yet to be mentioned in the cascade of commentary accompanying the war, represents the last time Israel, victorious on the battlefield, defined its vision for Lebanon. Israel demanded what was then described as a special "security region" including most of Lebanon south of the Litani River overseen by Israel and its local militia, the US, and troops of a pliant regime in Beirut.

The current demand for international supervision of the Lebanese-Syrian border, and the creation of a security zone monitored and enforced by the hapless Lebanese Army and foreign troops reflect ever greater hubris than Sharon showed as he surveyed his conquests from the palace at Baabda.

A more expeditious and less perilous return to sanity can be hoped for in Gaza, where ironically, the stakes are not as high. Here Sharon's strategic concept, retreat from Gaza and the maintenance of an uneasy standoff between Israeli and Palestinian forces of all stripes, can be resurrected, and perhaps even improved. The main ingredients of such a deal are an exchange including Israeli soldiers, Palestinian prisoners, and Palestinian politicians held hostage; a more explicit cease-fire entailing an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; an end to its operations there and in the West Bank; and an Israeli readiness to enable a more disciplined effort lead by the Palestinian Authority to "unify the security services" in support of a renewed truce.

These will not in and of themselves signal a stable accommodation between Israel and the ruling Hamas movement. Without them, however, the soldiers on both sides will command the battlefield.

Geoffrey Aronson is director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, DC. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.