South Lebanon Will Be Liberated from Hezb'allah

Charbel Barakat
American Thinker
30 May '10

Last Sunday was the tenth anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from what was used to be known as the "security zone." That day, following the instructions of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack, all Israeli units operating north of the borders inside Lebanese territories were pulled back inside Israeli territories. According to Barack, it was in implementation of the UNSCR 425, issued in 1978 after an Israeli incursion into Lebanon in response to PLO attacks across the borders then. So in the year 2000, 23 years after it entered the country to fight its enemies, Israel's government decided to pull its troops back from Lebanon abruptly. Barack at the time said he was complying with U.N. resolutions and that he expected that no threat will come from Lebanon anymore. That was the Israeli version of the Labor Government then.

But as IDF forces were pulling back, Iranian-backed Hezb'allah militias were entering every single village and town evacuated by the Israelis. According to Hassan Nasrallah, the commander of Hezb'allah, Israel withdrew because of the strikes by the so-called "resistance," which in fact was the Iranian-backed militia. The Hezb'allah story is that southern Lebanon was occupied by the Israelis, who had a proxy militia known as South Lebanon Army. And that Hezb'allah struggled to liberate the land from its Zionist occupiers.

However, there is a third version. It rejects the first two, and it claims it represents the struggle of the people of southern Lebanon, who struggled against Terror and were removed from their ancestral lands -- because of Ehud Barack's policies on the one hand and the abandonment of the West of Lebanon last resisting free people against the hordes of Hezb'allah and their Iranian and Syrian backers on the other. Unfortunately, the third story has no tellers these days. Barack has Israel's media at his service so that he can boast about his betrayal of southern Lebanon and his own Israeli people, and Nasrallah has his Iranian-funded media to claim his victories against the populations who resisted him in southern Lebanon.

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Ten Years ago, Hezbollah takes over South Lebanon

Walid Phares
Counter-terrorism Blog
24 May '10

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, from what was known then as a "security zone." That geographically limited event has had significant strategic consequences since 2000. A decade after Counter Terrorism and Middle East experts are looking again at the circumstances and effect of that move on today's Hezbollah's expansion and widening arsenal.

During that winter-spring of 2000, discussions were underway at the UN by Lebanese NGOs to enable southern Lebanon to maintain its own local force under international auspices to replace the Israeli forces, which were potentially to withdraw from the area. The idea was to provide protection to the populations of the borders areas from an advance by Hezbollah all the way to the international demarcation lines. Such takeover by the Jihadist militia was expected to provoke an exodus by thousands of civilians who would have been subjected to Hezbollah's persecution. However suddenly on May 23, the Israeli Government then under Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered a quick pull out from the security zone without waiting for the local force, at the time known as 'South Lebanon Army' (SLA) to be transferred under the United Nations or to operate as a local force to stop Hezbollah until the UN would decide what to do.

The population of the "security zone" was about 150,000 counting the district of Jezzine; and its local forces were about 3,000 strong. the make up of the population was Christian, Shia and Druse with some Sunni villages to the East. To their north Hezbollah had massed its forces backed by Iranian Pasdaran advisors. Between 1984 and 2000 Hezbollah launched several offensives against the SLA positions but was unable to overrun them permanently.

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Hizbullah's media champions

Caroline Glick
Carolineglick.com
11 May '10

A few weeks shy of the tenth anniversary of Israel's May 24, 2000 unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, last Friday mass-circulation daily Yediot Ahronot chose to devote its weekend news supplement to a retrospective on the event. The retrospective included a fawning five-page interview with Defense Minister Ehud Barak who ordered the withdrawal during his tenure as prime minister and defense minister. It also included a two-page spread featuring interviews with the IDF commanders who carried out the withdrawal recalling their adrenalin rushes as they retreated their forces across the border.

Nearly hidden between the two puff pieces was a little article titled "We told you so."

It featured an interview with retired far-left Knesset member Yossi Sarid who opposed the withdrawal. Sarid told Yediot that in hindsight, he's glad the withdrawal went through even though it led directly to the wars that followed. Following Sarid's self-congratulatory modesty, Yediot gave former defense minister Moshe Arens and Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau a sound bite apiece to lash out at the withdrawal. That base covered, the paper dismissed them both as "right-wingers."

ALTHOUGH UPSETTING, Yediot's treatment of the Lebanon withdrawal was not surprising. The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon -- which was a failure on every rational level -- was a strategy concocted and championed for the better part of a decade by Yediot and its media colleagues at Israel Radio. The paper's decision to publish a ten-year anniversary retrospective two weeks early was undoubtedly an attempt to preempt and prevent any further discussion of the withdrawal.

Yediot praised the retreat as a work of operational genius because no one was wounded, kidnapped or killed during the 48-hour operation. Of course, by presenting force protection as the IDF's highest goal, the paper ignored basic strategic realities.

The fact is that the withdrawal was an operational fiasco. In its rush to the border, the IDF left behind huge quantities of sensitive equipment that Hizbullah commandeered. Israel abandoned thousands of loyal allies from the South Lebanon Army and their families to the tender mercies of Hizbullah. These were men who had fought shoulder to shoulder with the IDF since 1982. Those that managed to escape to Israel before the gates were locked were treated as unwanted dead-weight by Barak and his media flacks who couldn't be bothered with the treachery at the heart of the operation.

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In Israel: Liquor, Not War

Nomi Abeliovich
The Atlantic
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

In a region so complicated that anything is possible, local gastronomy seems to be extracting the better side of a messy situation. This is how a group of former Lebanese militiamen has found themselves producing the "milk of lions"—arak, an aniseed-flavored liquor made from grapes or other fruits—in Israel.

It all started in the late 1970s. As a result of the Lebanese civil war, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) was set up to combat various groups, and it was no longer under the direct control of the main Lebanese army. The SLA was closely allied with Israel, and after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it turned over an occupied ''security zone'' in the south of Lebanon to the SLA, which mainly fought the Lebanese guerrilla forces led by Hezbollah. In return, Israel supported the organization with arms, uniforms, and equipment.

When the Israeli Defense Forces withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah guerrillas took control of the areas previously controlled by the SLA, the SLA collapsed, and its members were declared traitors and collaborators by the Lebanese government. Some surrendered and stood trial in military court while others sought emergency refuge, along with their families, in Israel.

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