WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- The fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon is just one front in a battle against the establishment of a Shiite hegemony and Arab control of the Middle East, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres believes.
As the war raged in Lebanon, Peres identified the objectives that Israel seeks to achieve before it would agree to a permanent resolution to the conflict. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this week, Peres stressed that the fate of Lebanon will be a deciding factor in the broader course of Middle East relations.
The fighting will end, he said, when Hezbollah ceases its fire against Israel, disarms, cedes control to the Lebanese government and releases the two captured Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping sparked the conflict July 12. Urging the international community to unite against Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, which Peres said are acting under the auspices of Iran, the veteran Israeli politician warned of dire consequences if the Islamists won.
"If they will win, it will be catastrophic all over the world," Peres said. "It means going back almost to the Dark Age, losing whatever they achieved in terms of modernity, in terms of freedom, in terms of change."
Experts disagree over the degree to which Iran is acting through Hezbollah, the appropriate strength of the international response, and what measures Israel must take to ensure a permanent peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to the region last weekend that attacks against Hezbollah could continue 10 days to two weeks.
Ambassador David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute and former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, said that a cease-fire and the arrival of international forces to southern Lebanon will not be enough to ensure a transition to a stable Lebanese government.
"Neither the United States nor the rest of the international community has given Lebanon all the support it needed with regard to the southern border," Mack said. "There has been precious little attention paid to the need to get Lebanese forces down to that border."
Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute, is concerned that Israel is being unrealistic about its short-term goals and in the process is not focusing enough on what is needed to achieve long-term stability.
"Even if (a cease-fire is) achieved, it will only take Hezbollah a few months to get rearmed again, because they're getting everything from Syria and Iran," Wurmser said.
For Wurmser, Syria stands at the root of the conflict as weapons supplier to Hezbollah. A comprehensive attack against Hezbollah, she said, requires Israel to extend military conflict to Syria.
Peres stated Monday that Israel has no intention of invading Syria, calling instead on the international community to pressure the country to get rid of the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus and to stop supplying weapons to Hezbollah.
Haim Malka, a fellow at the Middle East Program at CSIS, agreed that Hezbollah would likely re-emerge after any cease-fire reached in the near future.
"A cease-fire at this point will also allow Hezbollah to lick its wounds and regroup, and that's why Israel is asking for an international force, which will prevent them in theory from launching future attacks on Israel," Malka said. "But the Israelis know that even a small cell of Hezbollah fighters is capable of launching attacks."
Some insist that more needs to be done on the diplomatic front. Nathan Brown, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the planned deployment of 10,000 international troops to southern Lebanon will only be effective if accompanied by political force.
"If (the forces) are supposed to disarm Hezbollah, then they're supposed to do something that Israel can't do, and that is a really tall order," Brown said. "An alternative is to have them maintain an agreement that has already been negotiated, and that really requires bringing Hezbollah into the diplomatic process. I think it's impossible to move forward until there is resolution to that that question."
Israel and the United States have so far excluded Hezbollah from direct negotiations, preferring instead to deal through third parties.
Wurmser said the nature of the fight denies this diplomatic alternative.
"This is a militia. Why would we give them the status of a state partner? Hezbollah is not an independent force and cannot be recognized as such."
Mack said that Hezbollah's status as a party to the conflict requires that it participate in direct negotiations. He suggested that Germany, the United Nations or Arab governments -- in conjunction with Syria -- could be effective liaisons to Hezbollah.
The pending arrival of international forces has not only raised concerns about their effectiveness in resolving the conflict, but also about the provision that Israel withdraw from Shebaa Farms at this time.
"The U.N. recognizes Israel as having withdrawn from 100 percent of Lebanese territory," Wurmser said, referring to the U.N. certification of Israeli pullout from the region in 2000.
"Condoleezza Rice introduced a very dangerous precedent of asking Israel to withdraw from Shebaa Farms. No matter whether Israel withdraws, this has set a precedent that even though the U.N. has recognized a full withdrawal, it can still ask for more." Mack said the demand that Israel cede the land is valid because the U.N. only recognized that it had completed pullout of Lebanese territory, and ownership of Shebaa Farms has been disputed between the Syrians and the Lebanese.
Whether Iran is using Hezbollah as a proxy to exert influence on the Middle East, as Peres suggested, is in dispute. Opinions range from the belief that Tehran literally ordered Hezbollah to initiate the conflict, as Wurmser has said, to the recognition of a relationship between Iran and Hezbollah without labeling the conflict a proxy war.
"Certainly Iran has influence over Hezbollah, but Hezbollah is a force in Lebanese politics," Mack said. "I don't believe that it is acting as a proxy on the behalf of anybody. Certainly the Hezbollah missile buildup was something the Iranians wanted to see, but for their own reasons."
Brown said that the implications of a Hezbollah victory would overshadow the difference between the militia and Iran's objectives.
"They've clearly got their own agenda and that may match with Iran's agenda," Brown said. "Hezbollah does present itself as part of the region, and they will definitely say this is not just a victory for Hezbollah, but Islam in general, and perhaps a victory in Iraq."
Monday's U.N. Security Council resolution pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program is one indication that the Israeli-Lebanese fighting has affected diplomacy throughout the region.
"I think this conflict complicates international efforts to convince Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program, and Iran will certainly use this conflict and manipulate it in negotiations over the nuclear issue," Malka said.
According to Brown, Iraqi powers are also watching the conflict closely.
"Hezbollah is a Shiite movement and you have a Shiite movement in Iraq. Even among the Sunnis their movement is increasingly Islamist and they support Hezbollah, so what this has done is heighten tensions between major Iraqi political actors and the United States."
