Our analysts concluded that one of the principal risks of safety of the current crisis is to see Hezbollah reviving its policy of taking Western hostages such as this organization practised it twenty years ago, at the height of the civil war.
It is clearly indeed that one should assist in the days to come - perhaps within the next 48 hours - to a massive offensive from the Israeli Army to south-Lebanon and, undoubtedly, in the plain of Bekaa with an aim if not of eradicate purely and simply Hezbollah, at least to deprive it of its operational capacities for several years.
To counter this offensive, Hezbollah could (or would have to) react in three manners:
- By developing an insurrectionary war in the south so as to bring Israel to account;
- By using all the weapons of which it lays out, including missiles able to reach Tel-Aviv (the reasoning will be: "let us use them before they are destroyed")
- By taking Western hostages
From the Civil war of the Eighties as from the crisis in progress in Iraq, Hezbollah has remembered that the businesses of hostages use to paralyse the Western nations. The hostage-taking would be thus, in Lebanon, a mean of ensuring that the United States keep neutral and of pushing other nations (of which France) to more openly commit itself "to defend the integrity of Lebanon" by the diplomatic way and ensuring the survival of Hezbollah by obliging the Occident to make pressure on Israel.
Moreover, perhaps, this solution would have a collateral advantage which would be to allow Damas and Teheran to be in a position of "honest brokers" in further possible negotiations. Syria would thus find an official role in Lebanon and Iran could even hope to lower the tensions around its nuclear program.
The Operation would be all the more easy as very many Westerners (25 000 Americans, 20 000 French, thousands of other Europeans reside at Lebanon or are there on mission of long duration or like tourists). The most exposed countries seem to us to be the Member States of the Security Council and especially the United States and France. The most exposed city is obviously Beirut where the density of foreigners is strong and where the Israeli troops will not enter. |