Israeli General’s Lebanon Stance Ignites Furor

JERUSALEM — In a statement that has sparked a furor in Israel and shattered long-held illusions of consensus within the army, a top Israeli general has said he favors a gradual troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon, with or without a peace agreement with Syria, Lebanon’s main power broker.

The revelation this week that the commander of Israel’s forces in Lebanon, Maj. Gen. Amiram Levine, supports a conditional troop withdrawal has changed the terms of the debate over Israel’s costly 15-year occupation, several political and military analysts said Friday.

“It means that the idea of a unilateral withdrawal is not a nonstarter anymore,” said Gerald Steinberg, political science professor at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University. “I think it’s conceivable now that Israel would actually initiate such a withdrawal.”

Levine, the chief of Israel’s northern command, went public with his views this week after they were leaked, in part erroneously, from a course he conducted for brigade commanders.

The furor continued, even after Levine explained that he did not mean an immediate or unconditional pullout.

In a news conference called to clarify his statements, Levine said he believes that Israel should first take more forceful action against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas who are fighting Israel’s occupation of a 9-mile-wide swath of land along the Lebanese border.

The aggressive strategy against Hezbollah would then “create a dynamic that will lead to a process where, in the end . . . it will be possible to bring the army to the international border” without a formal peace treaty, Levine said, choosing his words with care.

He said the alternative--delaying a pullout until Syria and Lebanon sign a peace accord with Israel--is unacceptable because it means that Israel will continue to suffer casualties at the hands of Hezbollah.

Analysts said the statements by the man in charge of Israel’s troops in Lebanon were certain to lend credibility to growing calls here for a withdrawal. They also effectively destroyed the united front Israel’s army has always maintained on the issue of the Lebanon occupation: no withdrawal without a peace agreement with Syria.

In an editorial Friday, the independent Haaretz daily said Levine’s comments have helped legitimize the swirling debate over Lebanon.

“He has not initiated the public debate but has provided it with the vital aspect that it has been lacking up to now: the military perspective,” the editors wrote.

Steinberg of Bar Ilan University agreed, saying Levine’s disclosure will embolden people in the military and elsewhere in Israel to go public with similar views.

“The debate is just starting now,” he said. “The subject for a while was considered taboo, or one that only the opposition would raise, but the fact that such a high-ranking officer is talking about it makes it legitimate.”

The government has insisted that Israel must continue to occupy the border strip to protect northern Israeli communities from attacks by Hezbollah and other Islamic militants. Until a peace agreement is signed with Lebanon and Syria, which keeps 35,000 troops in Lebanon, no solution is possible, officials have said.

But that prospect appears dim.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke off in early 1996, and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says it is not willing to pay Syria’s price for peace: the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War.

So far this year, Israel has launched more than 80 raids on Lebanese targets, the most recent on Friday, when two planes fired rockets at a Hezbollah stronghold north of the occupation zone. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Also this year, 39 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon, more than in any other year since Israel carved out the 440-square-mile self-declared “security zone” in 1985.

An additional 73 soldiers died in the crash of two Lebanon-bound helicopters in February.

The mounting casualties have prompted calls for an immediate withdrawal from opposition political leaders and from a group made up of mothers of Israeli soldiers.

Increasingly, commentators are comparing Israel’s role in Lebanon to that of the United States in Vietnam. And a poll taken in September, after the death of 12 members of a commando squad in a botched operation in Lebanon, showed that a majority of Israelis support such a pullout.

Government officials have called for an end to the public discussion, saying it will hurt the morale of troops serving in southern Lebanon and raise concerns among the Israeli-funded South Lebanon Army that Israel will desert them.

Levine told reporters Friday that the public debate on the issue is “over.” But political analysts and Israeli officials said that is unlikely, even as some decried the leaks that made the general’s remarks a matter of public interest.

“People will exploit what he said,” said Uri Lubrani, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s civilian expert on Lebanon. “Even though he said he did not mean a unilateral withdrawal without any conditions, people will use it for that purpose.”

Lubrani emphasized that the government’s policies on Lebanon are unchanged, with the current war of attrition seen as the only viable option.

“All of us say we’d like to get out of Lebanon, but there are two conditions that have to be met,” he said. “We have to be satisfied that, by leaving Lebanon, Hezbollah will not chase us into northern Israel and that the people in the security zone will be permitted to live normal lives.”

But Yossi Beilin, a Labor Party legislator who has launched a political movement to urge an immediate pullout, said Levine’s comments showed that the debate over Lebanon is growing, inside and outside the military.

“Until now, whenever we start this debate, someone would stand up and say that this is a security issue and we can’t discuss it,” he said. “Now that it is clear there is no consensus in the army, there can finally be a real debate between politicians.”