Date: July 16th 2008

The Israel-Hizballah prisoner deal
By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Electronic Lebanon, 16 July 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9697.shtml

The Israeli cabinet's decision to strike a
prisoner-exchange deal with the Hizballah movement in
Lebanon -- on the eve of the anniversary of the war
between the two sides of 12 July-14 August 2006 -- will
not be remembered as one of Israel's most glorious
moments. Even its chief architect, Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert, has referred to the deal in terms of "sadness" and
"humiliation" while it has been staunchly opposed by the
heads of Israel's internal-security agency (Shin Bet) and
foreign-intelligence agency (Mossad), as well as by a
number of Israeli politicians across the political
spectrum. Indeed, the exchange of captives itself (or in
the case of two Israeli soldiers whose seizure
precipitated the 2006 war, their remains), which is
planned to occur by 16-17 July 2008 at latest, can be
described as a replay of what Israel's own investigative
commission into that war regarded as a historic defeat.

True, Israel has made similar deals in the past -- some
involving the release of much larger numbers of prisoners
than the five Lebanese to be freed this time. But the very
nature of the current exchange, as well as its strategic
implications, renders it a zero-sum game in which Israel
loses and Hizballah again emerges triumphant. In
implementing it, Israel will effectively fulfill Hizballah
leader Hassan Nasrallah's "truthful promise" to secure the
release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel (the original
aim of the operation Hizballah carried out on 12 July 2006
when it abducted two Israeli soldiers on the
Israel-Lebanon border) and reconfirm his oft-repeated
slogan: "just as I always used to promise you victory, now
I promise you victory once again." The overall impact will
be to give these popular catchphrases the appearance of
strategic foresights.

The balance of advantage

In substance, the deal is both quantitatively and
qualitatively lopsided to Hizballah's advantage. For in
addition to the release of four Lebanese fighters captured
during the 2006 war, Hizballah has wrung from Israel the
emancipation of Lebanon's longest-serving Israeli
prisoner, Samir Kuntar, who has been in jail since 1979
for his role in killing an Israeli man, his four-year-old
daughter and a policeman. The symbolic value of Kuntar's
release for Hizballah -- which has described him as "chief
of the Arab and Lebanese prisoners" -- cannot be
overstated; his status as cause celebre among many
Lebanese was secured in 2004 when Israel described him as
a human "bargaining-chip" who could be released in return
for information about the fate of Israel's missing airman,
Ron Arad.

In the event, the detailed report Hizballah submitted on
13 July 2008 about what happened to Arad is confined to
its own investigations into his disappearance -- and
reportedly has declared him dead without locating the
whereabouts of his remains (see Amos Harel and Yossi
Melman, "Israel transfers report on Arad," Haaretz, 13
July 2008). Moreover, the way the Israeli media has been
depicting the issue suggests that the quid pro quo for the
Arad report is an Israeli report on the fate of the four
Iranian diplomats who were kidnapped (and presumably
murdered) during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The real trade-off regarding Samir Kuntar seems now to be
with the two Israeli soldiers abducted on 12 July 2006,
Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev -- thus granting the two a
clear precedence over the once iconic Arad. The widespread
assumption that the two soldiers are dead would mean that
Israel will soon be receiving "dead soldiers" in exchange
for "live terrorists" -- a severe blow to Israel's
national pride. But whether its soldiers prove to be dead
or alive on 16-17 July, the release of Samir Kuntar will
mean that Israel will have broken with its longstanding
policy of refusing to free prisoners with "Israeli blood
on their hands."

This policy reversal has emboldened Hamas, whose former
foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar calls on the movement to
exploit the Kuntar decision in negotiations with Israel
over the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier
seized by Hamas on 25 June 2006. Shin Bet's decision in
June 2008 to approve the release of Palestinian prisoners
in exchange for Shalit -- provided they are no longer seen
as posing a security risk -- reveals Israel's growing
vulnerability in the face of movements like Hizballah and
Hamas.

Another indication of Israel's decreased bargaining power
vis-a-vis the two groups is its reluctant approval to the
freeing of an as yet unspecified number of Palestinian
prisoners as part of the Hizballah deal. If this will
contravene the Kadima party minister Yaakov Edri's vow
that "there is no way we will release Palestinians," there
is no reason to doubt Nasrallah's description of this
aspect of the negotiations as being "the most difficult."

The precise number of Palestinian prisoners to be released
may still be in doubt (though if either Goldwasser or
Regev is alive, it can safely be assumed that Hizballah
will exact an even higher price in this respect); but in
any event this concession is especially damaging to
Israel. Such a capitulation serves both to consecrate
Hizballah's image in the Arab world as the standard-bearer
of Palestinian rights, and to raise Hamas's price for
Shalit's release from 450 to 1,450 Palestinian prisoners
-- especially given that the IDF soldier is certifiably
alive.

The ingredients of failure

If the deal's substance is hard enough for Israel, its
strategic implications are also a major cause of concern,
on four grounds. First, the prisoner-exchange constitutes
a tacit admission of Israel's responsibility for the
July-August 2006 war, which wreaked mass destruction on
Lebanon and resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200
(mainly civilian) Lebanese. Israel had rationalized its
war as a response to Hizballah's abductions, while
Nasrallah had insisted all along that his movement sought
nothing more than a prisoner-exchange with Israel.

Israel's agreement to such a swap now, after resolutely
refusing it for so long, has exposed its use of the
abductions as a pretext to launch a premeditated war
against Hizballah in an attempt to dismantle its military
infrastructure. Second, the exchange deal -- as well as
establishing Israel's responsibility for the 2006 war --
confirms the Winograd commission's assessment of Israel's
defeat in it. Its formidable military machine failed then
both to eliminate Hizballah's military capacity and to win
the unconditional release of its two prisoners. Nasrallah
had accurately predicted as much on the very day of the
abductions, when he famously told a press conference:
"These prisoners that we hold will never go home except in
one way: indirect negotiations and exchange," not even if
"the entire world" attempted to rescue them. At the time,
Olmert dismissed Nasrallah's warning and scoffed at his
exchange proposal, declaring that Israel "will not be
blackmailed and will not negotiate the lives of our
soldiers with terrorist organizations."

That same week, Olmert reinforced the point with a
similarly forceful and seemingly irrevocable pledge
regarding Gilad Shalit: "I don't negotiate with Hamas, I
did not negotiate with Hamas and I will not negotiate with
Hamas." Nasrallah who prides himself in understanding the
Israeli politico-military psyche, anticipated such bombast
on 12 July 2006: "At first [the Israelis] say no, but then
they accept. This may take place after a week, a month or
a year, but finally the will let us negotiate."

Third, in agreeing to the deal Israel cannot seek solace
in the fact that it is submitting to the will of the
international community or the diktat of international
law. The prisoner-exchange will be conducted under the
auspices of the United Nations; but it bears recalling
that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (which ended the
war on 14 August 2006) -- while appealing for an "urgent
settling" of the issue of the Lebanese prisoners --
adopted Israel's idiom by stipulating the "unconditional
release of the abducted Israeli soldiers" (rather than
calling for a swap). In this manner, Hizballah appears to
have succeeded in defying not only Israel, but the will of
the international community as well.

Fourth, by recognizing Hizbollah rather than the Lebanese
government as its negotiating partner, Israel has
inadvertently undermined the latter and thus further
exacerbated its own position. Hizballah's own response to
criticism within Lebanon of its priority in this respect
(such as from the politician Amin Gemayel) has always been
that no Lebanese government has ever sought the release of
Lebanese prisoners through diplomatic means; a case in
point is the current government of Fouad Siniora, which
has not used the diplomatic leverage it enjoys with the US
and Europe to resolve the prisoner issue. The result is
that Hizballah emerges as the force in Lebanon that can
deliver, thereby perpetuating an important political
dynamic -- of the non-state actor which functions as the
de facto state versus the state non-actor which merely
enjoys the status of de jure state.

This distinction in part answers the question raised by a
leading member of Lebanon's governing March 14 faction,
the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt: "How is it that some of
us [in Lebanon] have the right to conduct negotiations for
the return of prisoners, to conduct negotiations with
Israel," while the state -- if it engages in similar
negotiations -- is "accused of collaborating with the
enemy"? The key point is that the Lebanese de jure state,
without a defensive strategy or policy, lacks the power
(vis-a-vis its enemies) and the moral authority (over a
significant segment of Lebanon's population) to negotiate
deals of this kind, least of all with a foe as militarily
superior and popularly anathematized as Israel. If the
Lebanese state, in its current capacity, were to negotiate
directly or indirectly with Israel, it would be the result
of US-Israeli pressure to do so; whereas groups like
Hizballah and Hamas are engaged in such negotiations
because they have forced Israel to submit to them.

The logic of force

Indeed, a wider outcome of the current prisoner exchanges
with Hizballah and Hamas is confirmation of the truism
that Israel "only understands the logic of force."
Hizballah has repeatedly made this argument in attributing
the liberation of Lebanese and Palestinian territory to
resistance activity, while decrying the futility of
diplomacy with Israel in retrieving prisoners or land. A
senior official of the Palestinian Authority echoed it
recently in reproaching Israel for "showing that force is
the only language you understand every time. Hizballah
fights you, kidnaps soldiers [sic] and then has all its
demands met. Nasrallah brings Israel to its knees every
time, and how do you respond? You bring [Palestinian
Authority president] Abu Mazen to his knees."

Israel's surrender to this logic is fraught with risk. By
establishing anew the links between abductions and
prisoner-exchange, between armed struggle and liberation
of occupied territory, Israel sets itself up for renewed
confrontation with its enemies. Against continued
predictions that the closure of Hizballah's "liberation
file" (after prisoner releases, and the recovery by
Lebanon of the disputed Shebaa farms territory) will strip
Hizballah of any pretext to retain its arms, the
prisoner-exchange serves rather to vindicate the group's
rationale for its armed status.

Hizballah clearly sees itself as continuing to play an
indispensable role in what Hassan Nasrallah calls an
effective "national defense strategy." The party's former
energy minister Mohammad Fneish echoes the point with
reference to the group's achievement in securing the
current deal: "when assessing future dangers we must agree
that the resistance fulfills a necessity in its readiness,
the experience of its fighters and commanders."

Hizballah has sought to make the prisoner deal serve as a
politically unifying factor by hailing it as a victory for
the entire Lebanese nation. Nasrallah reached out to the
party's erstwhile political rivals to this effect in a
speech on 2 July 2008. At the time of writing, the leading
figures of the March 14 pro-government camp have pledged
to attend the welcoming ceremony of the Lebanese
prisoners; prime minister Fouad Siniora has vowed to make
the day a national holiday.

Moreover, Nasrallah's presentation of the deal as making
Lebanon "the first Arab country involved in the
Arab-Israeli dispute" to resolve issues of prisoners,
fighters' remains and the missing-in-action also
reverberates in the wider Arab world. This also enables
Hizballah to engage in some much needed damage-control
after its involvement in the inter-sectarian clashes of
May 2008. The fact that Kuntar is not a member of
Hizballah but belongs to the Druze community, which is
commonly identified with the March 14 camp, will if
anything facilitate this process.

The cost of weakness

A significant aspect of the upcoming prisoner-swap is
Hizballah's ability to appropriate for itself the moral
standard (which Israel has long proclaimed when making
asymmetrical prisoner exchanges with Arab resistance
groups) of acting in accordance with "human value and
dignity." Nasrallah alluded to this in his 2 July speech
when he defended the movement's image as "civilized and
humanitarian" owing to its "respect for man and for man's
value and dignity," and scorned the British government's
portrayal of the resistance a "terrorist" organization. As
professed by Fneish: "We have returned respect for the
value of humanity -- a respect stripped away by the formal
Arab order."

The party's memorialization of its dead fighters, the
longstanding campaigns it has waged to retrieve its
prisoners and the military actions and diplomatic
initiatives it has taken to retrieve them, have
underscored how valuable its living and dead fighters are
to it -- and begun to pay real political dividends. In
this too, Hizballah has seized the initiative from Israel,
whose last military operation to retrieve its prisoners
was as long ago as 1994, when it abducted Mustafa Dirani
in exchange for information on Ron Arad. Nasrallah's
allegation that Israel did not even raise the issue of the
remains of its ten soldiers killed in the 2006 war until
Hizbollah offered to hand them over only reinforces this
view. In the past, Israel's readiness to engage in
lopsided prisoner-exchanges was once perceived as stemming
from a religious-moral commitment that both rendered it
vulnerable yet earned it the image of cultural and moral
superiority vis-a-vis Arabs whose "price" was far lower;
today, however, that same willingness is now construed as
strategic weakness.

The most likely reason for Israel's decision to sign on to
a prisoner-deal with such dire strategic implications is
that it is eager to avoid another confrontation with
Hizballah and to prevent future abductions of its troops.
Israel's defeat in the war of July-August 2006, and its
admission that Hizballah has grown even stronger than it
was in the past, reflects a diminishing deterrence
capability and its reduction of military status (one that
casts doubt on its capacity to launch military offensives
at this time, including against Iran). The biggest flaw of
all is in the area of strategic planning: if Israel had
agreed to a prisoner-exchange on or soon after 12 July
2006, it would have avoided further Hizballah provocations
and spared itself the humiliation of losing a war, thus
exposing its weakness to the world and forcing it to make
one painful concession after another.

--
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese political scientist,
scholar and analyst, and author of book Hizbullah:
Politics and Religion. This essay was originally published
by Open Democracy and is republished with the author's
permission.

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