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The writer is a professor of International Relations emeritus at Sciences Po (Paris) and a former senior adviser to the UN secretary-general

To a sceptic, the Lebanon ceasefire “arrangements” look like a dignified trick to stop an inconclusive war between Israel and Hizbollah. This is a conflict in which a high-tech military made a substantial number of tactical gains, but not to the point of declaring victory, and a determined armed group lost its leadership and most of its arsenal, but not to the point of conceding defeat.

A more emphatic reading would see these arrangements as laying the foundations for western trusteeship over Lebanon. Besides the usual commitment to implement a number of UN Security Council resolutions inherited from past confrontations that had been largely ignored, the new agreement adds a novelty: a “mechanism” to supervise that implementation by a western entity led by an American general of which France is a member.

A novelty? Yes, in the sense that these resolutions had left it to the Lebanese army and to the UN force deployed on the border to impose its implementation, the UNSC routinely taking note of their violations.

However, older Lebanese remember a multinational “mechanism” put in place after the Israeli invasion of 1982 that ended, one year later, in a huge attack against the American and French contingents that were part of it. The new “arrangements” do not mention any deployment of western troops along 1982 lines, though it is hard to imagine a monitoring mission without military personnel to carry it out.

The “arrangements” clearly delink the situation in southern Lebanon from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, but it necessarily links the southern Lebanese security issue to the acute crisis into which the country has slid during the past five years. Lebanon can hardly deliver its share of the “arrangements” without quickly rebuilding its institutions. The ceasefire was transmitted to a Lebanese state without a president, run by a cabinet that lacks the constitutional authority to make decisions (and which was informed of “the arrangements” just before they were made public) and by a parliament that cannot in principle meet but to elect a president.

This is compounded by the large number of vacant positions in the civil service, let alone the Ponzi scheme at the country’s central bank that deprived millions of Lebanese of their savings. Such a “state” is hardly able to be the interlocutor needed. 

To be efficient, the “mechanism” implied in the “arrangements” therefore needs to venture into an area not mentioned in its 13 paragraphs: helping the Lebanese rebuild their state. State-building is not fashionable these days but the very raison d’être of the agreement — security in southern Lebanon — presupposes a state that can deliver.

To succeed, the mechanism needs not only to be firm where Israel’s incessant violations are concerned (and Israel has unilaterally violated the arrangements multiple times during their first week), but also unyielding in the face of a largely corrupt Lebanese political class. An endeavour rendered more difficult by the basic inequality of the arrangements: while Israel is given the right to use force in order to defend itself, on the Lebanese side this right has been transferred from Hizbollah to the Lebanese army, which is far less well equipped than its Israeli counterpart.

This is all the more important as the Fragile (formerly Fertile) Crescent lurches from one convulsion to the next. The situation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank remains explosive. Here too, the objective cannot be to simply agree on the conditions of a ceasefire but rather to build a Palestinian entity that can help deliver it.

Also expected to play a part in the Lebanese arrangements is Syria — by preventing new transfers of weaponry to Lebanon through its territory. But three days after the plans were published, Syria fell into an acute crisis with rebels led by an Islamist group entering Aleppo and with many other towns in the north-west falling under their control. The rebels’ brand-new clothing and the drones they are using clearly indicate substantial help from Turkey, Syria’s neighbour to the north. The regime in Damascus is (again) primarily concerned with its own survival.

Delinking these conflicts is the rational way to resolve (at least some of) them, even though they are connected by deep roots in history, interstate sectarian solidarities and ideological alignments. Still, partial solutions, however unsatisfactory, are better than a protracted cycle of violence that could engulf the whole region. An effective ceasefire in southern Lebanon, despite the many defects of the “arrangements”, could end up being a good place to start.