Address refugees issue, Lebanon tells U.N.

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN) APRIL 8. Lebanon's President, Mr. Emile Lahoud, has asked the United Nations to clarify how it will deal with the Palestinian refugees living in his country if they try to exercise their right to return to Israel and resort to violence in the process.

His raising of an issue that had been overshadowed for a long time might be characterised as an attempt to derail Israel's plan to pull its troops out of Lebanon even without a formal agreement between the two Governments. However, the question raised by Mr. Lahoud is very pertinent and Israel and the United States might not be able to just turn away from it as they are currently inclined to do.

Israel has declared that it will withdraw troops from a zone they occupy in southern Lebanon by July 7 this year irrespective of whether or not they have reached agreement on this and other issues with the Government in Beirut. Since the Syria-Israel track of the West Asian negotiations are currently stalled and since any talks between Israel and Lebanon will only start when the Syria-Israel deadlock is broken, it is more likely that Israel will withdraw without an agreement rather than with one.

Since Israel believes that the Lebanese military will be unable or unwilling to police the border, and stop militants from striking into Israeli territory, they have approached the U.N. with the request that the multi-national force already located in Lebanon be augmented and moved up to the borders to patrol it. This is the context in which Mr. Lahoud set out on Wednesday a ``Presidential Memorandum'' addressed to the U.N. Secretary- General, Mr. Kofi Annan.

Among the issues raided in the three-page document, the most important was of how the peace-keeping force UNIFIL (U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon) would deal with Palestinian militants. The various Palestinian parties owe the allegiance of armed militants among the 350,000 of their people who live in Lebanon in or outside the 12 refugee camps. ``If certain Palestinian groups tried to carry out operations across the border in the context of their right of return and in the absence of any solution for their future, do you think the international force will be able to carry out daily small-scale military operations at the border?'', Mr. Lahoud asked in his memorandum. He pointed out that Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1978 in response to ``provocation'' by Palestinian militants and wondered whether Mr. Annan should not, in Lebanon's interest, direct UNIFIL to disarm the militants.

It is very unlikely that the countries that have contributed troops to UNIFIL, including India, will agree that their troops should enter into the potentially hazardous task of entering crowded refugee camps to disarm the militants. These militant groups have been relatively quiescent for years now. It had generally been assumed that the only security concern arising out of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied zone was about the future behaviour of the militias, Hizbollah and Shia Amal, which have been fighting the Israeli occupation force all this time.

Hizbollah, which has carried out most of the attacks, have refused to give any guarantee that they will refrain from attacking Israel once all of Lebanon is liberated. But the gut assessment of most analysts is that Hizbollah will most probably refrain. In any case, an augmented UNIFIL closer to the border was expected to at least partially tackle this problem if it did arise. In alluding to the possibility that the Palestinian groups might resort to cross-border military activity, Mr. Lahoud did have the relevant point that security assessments must be broader in scope. But, Israel's argument is that Mr. Lahoud is merely raising a bogey since the Palestinian groups within his country have not resorted to such activity for a long time now.

The Israelis believe that Syria, which has great influence over Lebanon, does not want Israel to go through with a unilateral pull-out. By being constantly engaged by the Hizbollah, which Syria can contain, Israel is under pressure to make concessions to Syria.

The Israeli argument is a persuasive one. But that does not negate Mr. Lahoud's reminder that there will be in Lebanon, even after an Israeli withdrawal, people with legitimate grievances against Israel.

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Section  : International
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