Content uploaded by Karim Makdisi
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Karim Makdisi on Feb 01, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
This article was downloaded by: [American University of Beirut]
On: 05 September 2012, At: 04:52
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK
International Peacekeeping
Publication details, including instructions for authors
and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/finp20
Constructing Security Council
Resolution 1701 for Lebanon
in the Shadow of the ‘War on
Terror’
Karim Makdisi
Version of record first published: 26 Jan 2011
To cite this article: Karim Makdisi (2011): Constructing Security Council Resolution 1701
for Lebanon in the Shadow of the ‘War on Terror’, International Peacekeeping, 18:1,
4-20
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2011.527502
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-
licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any
representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to
date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be
independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable
for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection
with or arising out of the use of this material.
Constructing Security Council Resolution 1701 for
Lebanon in the Shadow of the ‘War on Terror’
KARIM MAKDISI
This article argues that the ‘war on terror’ gave global meaning to the 2006 Israel–
Lebanon war and to the construction of UN Security Council resolution 1701 that author-
ized the deployment of robust UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL). It uses a
critical, discursive approach to argue that UN resolutions have embedded in them a par-
ticular, powerful discourse, in this case the ‘war on terror’. This discourse grounded a
global struggle for and against US domination of the region in a local power dispute in
Lebanon between 2004 and 2008. It concludes that Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah mili-
tarily resulted in resolution 1701 comprising two contradictory narratives that represented
the battle for and against US domination, and that the subsequent battle for hegemonic
articulation of this resolution weakened, rather than strengthened the Lebanese state
during 2006–08, plunging Lebanon into internal strife until the signing of a national
peace accord in Doha in May 2008.
The July 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, and the truce contained in UN
Security Council resolution 1701 (henceforth: ‘1701’) that also authorized the
deployment of a robust contingent of UN peacekeepers, received extensive atten-
tion in Western media, policy circles and scholarly work. The bulk of this attention
has focused on drawing lessons from the military dimensions of non-conventional
warfare,
1
explaining the nature of the Hizbullah threat and its relationship to
Syria/Iran,
2
analysing the role of the UN in terms of lessons learned in peacekeep-
ing and peacebuilding in Lebanon,
3
or situating the 2006 war within general
trends of international law.
4
With some notable exceptions, however, most of
this work provides a static reading of both the conflict’s international – domestic
nexus – unsurprisingly, given the influence of the dominant neorealist tradition
that separates them into distinct spheres
5
– as well as of the complex social
dynamic that underpins construction of a weak Lebanese state.
6
Much of this
literature is framed within problem-solving analyses that assume a given received
problem (for example, Hizbullah as ‘spoiler’, Lebanon as ‘weak state’) and
prescribe solutions (such as strengthening Lebanon’s sovereignty) to preserve
the existing order.
7
It also largely writes away Lebanese agency and assumes the
Lebanese state to be a passive victim of either Hizbullah/Syrian cooption or
Israeli violence. As such, the literature generally underestimates the dynamic
effect produced by the 2006 war’s wider context, namely the US-led ‘war on
terror’, in which the 2006 war itself was only one, albeit dramatic, element.
This essay seeks to complicate the received view by contextualizing the battle
over Lebanon between 2004 and 2008 within the larger ‘war on terror’, which, in
International Peacekeeping, Vol.18, No.1, February 2011, pp.4–20
ISSN 1353-3312 print/1743-906X online
DOI:10.1080/13533312.2011.527502 #2011 Taylor & Francis
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
effect, grounded a global struggle for and against US domination of the region in a
bitter but essentially local Lebanese power dispute. The global battle over
Lebanon, in this sense, briefly condensed from a political/ideational struggle
into a military one during the 2006 war, and Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah
returned it once more to the political/ideational realm now centred on the
post-war interpretation of 1701 and the role of the Lebanese state and UN peace-
keepers in its implementation. This article further analyses how the UN itself,
through a series of resolutions on Lebanon, beginning with resolution 1559 in
2004 and culminating in 1701, was conscripted into this localization of a
global struggle. It shows how the UN mediated between the imperatives of the
‘war on terror’, with its violent, post-Westphalian implications for the Lebanese
state, and its own mission to preserve the Westphalian order in which it operates.
The article takes a critical discursive approach to understand how and where
meaning is produced. Like all texts, UN resolutions have embedded in them a
particular discourse, defined by Charlotte Epstein as a ‘cohesive ensemble of
ideas, concepts and categorizations about a specific object that frame that
object in a particular way and, therefore, delimit the possibilities for action in
relation to it’.
8
Of course, resolutions like 1701 are not, in and of themselves,
meaningful without other, related texts ‘upon which they draw in constructing
identities and policies, in which they appropriate as well as revise the past, and
in which they establish authority by reading and citing others’.
9
In this case,
the series of resolutions, statements and diplomatic activities during the 2004 –
06 period collectively sought to frame Hizbullah and Lebanon/Syria in a way
that would make an attack on them legitimate or normal.
As Fierke’s analysis of discourse helps explain, official foreign policy texts and
by extension UN resolutions ‘don’t stand alone from wider societal discourses but
are located within a larger textual web’.
10
The construction of such forms of
discourse, in turn, are bound up with notions of power and thus are invariably
contested.
11
Accordingly, competing texts vie for legitimation, such that UN
resolutions for instance are ultimately given meaning through what Epstein refers
to as a ‘powerful discourse’, that is, one that ‘makes a difference’ in interpreting
the text itself.
12
Indeed, given the historically contingent nature of discourse,
such constructs are notable for not only what they include but, perhaps more
importantly, what they exclude in terms of other sets of articulations or meanings.
13
This article explores the overlapping material and ideational contests to define
this ‘powerful discourse’ and thereby define what constitutes a legitimate Lebanese
state, the role of the UN within it, and the nature of resistance to American
hegemony and Israeli dominance over the region. The outcome of these contests
in the Lebanese case that this article tracks between 2004 and 2008 can help us
understand Epstein’s notion of a ‘hegemonic articulation’ that signals the victory
of a particular configuration of meanings and social relations. The ultimate
product of powerful discourse is ‘common sense’ – a ‘naturalized discourse ...
whose statements are experienced as “obvious”, “true”, and even “necessary”’.
14
Moreover, as Fierke asserts, while conventional approaches to security start
with an ‘objective threat’ independent of discourses and knowledge, critical dis-
cursive approaches emphasize the identification of a threat as a ‘product of a
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 5
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
politics of representation’.
15
In this sense, the elimination of Hizbullah, and thus
of the very idea of resistance, can be seen not just as a material objective but also
as an ideational one on which Israeli domination and US hegemonic stability in
the region depends. Moreover, while most conventional treatments of Hizbullah
in Western literature begin with the apparently objective observation that it is a
‘terrorist’ organization, this elides the lack of definition of the term ‘terrorism’
and the fact that there is a bitterly contested struggle in Lebanon and the
region focused on the idea of a legitimate resistance. That is to say, this literature,
by framing its approach with certain givens expressive of its own discourses,
produces an analysis that neatly confirms its own initial set of assumptions.
Indeed, it must be remembered that during the immediate post-civil war
period in Lebanon (1990–2004) Hizbullah was officially regarded as a legitimate
and protected ‘resistance’ group and therefore, unlike other armed groups,
entitled to carry arms as long as the state of war with Israel persisted. Syria’s hege-
monic position in Lebanon, accepted by the US and the international community
in this period, had prevented any global debate over this special status. Between
2004 and 2008, however, following the eviction of Syria from Lebanon and an
escalation in the US-led ‘war on terror’, Hizbullah’s standing in relation to the
state was sharply disputed within Lebanon and, globally, at the level of the UN
Security Council in both ideational and material terms. The ‘war on terror’ dis-
course, as we shall see, essentially tried to ‘de-naturalize’
16
this resistance, deny
it any agency of its own, and represent Hizbullah as merely a proxy of the
‘terror’ axis run by Syria/Iran, and re-interpret it as a ‘militia’ that undermined,
rather than protected, the Lebanese state. Hizbullah’s counter-narrative, which of
course depended on the organization’s material survival, projected itself as a
‘Lebanese’ subject working to protect Lebanon’s sovereignty.
The first section of this article provides an interpretative framework showing
how the ‘powerful discourse’ that emerged after 11 September 2001 connected
Hizbullah and its assumed patron, Syria, with global terrorism. Next, the
article analyses the construction of a UN-legitimated international regime,
centred around resolution 1559, that translated this ‘war on terror’ discourse
into domestic Lebanese terms, and describes the build-up towards war in 2006.
The article then examines the construction of 1701, arguing that this resolution
comprised two conflicting narratives about the meaning of the 2006 war and
the role of the UN which made further violence in Lebanon inevitable. In the
final section, the article shows how the discursive contest over interpretations
of the resolution transformed the conflict in Lebanon from an international to
a domestic one and how the production of a hegemonic national discourse
emerged following the signing of the 2008 Doha agreement that precipitated
the formation of a national unity government.
The Global Discourse of the ‘War on Terror’: Framing the 2006 Israel–Lebanon
War
The historical roots of the 2006 Israel–Lebanon war lie within the larger Arab–
Israeli conflict, but it is the US-led ‘war on terror’ that framed the breakdown of
6INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
order in Lebanon from 2004 to 2008 and gave the 2006 war its seminal status,
and, ultimately, its most significant meaning.
17
As has been well documented,
Western security interests were re-imagined in the post-Cold-War era.
18
The
new enemy was now embodied in non-state networks that could take advantage
of weak or collapsing states to undermine the existing order and, potentially,
acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Liberal interventionists and
neorealists in the US and Europe advocated proactive Western and UN interven-
tion in the third world within a global liberal paradigm and in post-Westphalian
terms that increasingly intertwined military and humanitarian/development
agendas.
19
Protected by great-power interest in regional stability, Arab states initially
remained largely immune to these changes. By the late 1990s, however, they
were clearly in an internal ‘state of crisis’: liberal reforms were exposed as failures
and oppositional Islamist groups gained in popularity, utilizing the discourse and
institutions of democracy to their advantage.
20
Arab states were no longer
reliable security partners and democracy was producing the wrong results. The
11 September attacks thus allowed what Michael Mann refers to as the ‘new
imperialists’ in the Bush administration to launch ‘global adventures’ and opera-
tionalize plans for a ‘new Middle East’.
21
As David Hirst notes, the US now
desired to ‘tackle the whole Arab/Muslim milieu from which the diabolical
deed had sprung: to invade, subdue, shape and utterly transform it’.
22
Between 2001 and 2003, the Bush administration issued a series of seminal
texts in order to consolidate and take advantage of US ‘traumatized identity’.
23
Targeting a ‘radical network of terrorists and every government that supports
them’, Bush made it clear that the defeat of ‘terrorists’ required that the US
‘pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in
every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us or you are
with the terrorists’.
24
The notion that there could be, for instance, liberation
struggles or resistance groups independent of global terrorism was now
removed conceptually from this discourse, as organizations as disparate as
Hizbullah and al-Qaeda were lumped together.
25
In 2002, Bush invoked an
‘axis of evil’ to rebuke states such as Iraq and Iran that were supported by a ‘ter-
rorist underworld’, including Hizbullah and Hamas.
26
One of Bush’s goals was
‘to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends
and allies with weapons of mass destruction’. Syria was soon added to a list of
‘rogue states’ that ‘sponsor terror’ and sought WMDs.
27
The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), which operationalized the US
‘war on terror’, legitimated the logic of militarism, proactive regime change
and the doctrine of pre-emptive attacks in the name of ‘self-defence’ against
those deemed part of the ‘terror’ network.
28
The NSS stated unequivocally that
the ‘war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain
duration’. Accordingly, ‘America will help nations that need our assistance in
combating terror. And America will hold to account nations that are compro-
mised by terror – because the allies of terror are the enemies of civilization’.
29
As such, these allies in the region would now include not just Israel and
pro-Western Arab states (which until then had been publicly criticized in the
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 7
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
US for being undemocratic), but, crucially, Arab domestic political parties and
alliances within ‘weak’ states such as Lebanon that could be represented as
‘democratic’. As shown below, Lebanon’s pro-US ‘March 14’ alliance formed
during this period, appealed to the US in these very terms, projecting itself as
the democratic alternative to Hizbullah (and thus Syria and Iran) in Lebanon.
The ‘powerful discourse’ produced by these speeches and texts was an essen-
tial prerequisite for the series of ideational battles and wars the Bush adminis-
tration embarked on in the Arab region. After the 2003 Iraq War, the US gaze
turned to Syria and Lebanon.
30
The testimonies of key figures in the US adminis-
tration to Congress in autumn 2003 typically sought to establish Syria as a global
‘security concern’, since it, like Iraq, was said to be developing WMDs and also
engaged in state-sponsored terrorism.
31
These testimonies uniformly represented
Lebanon simply as under Syrian ‘occupation’, with Hizbullah as a Syrian (and
Iranian) proxy, a ‘terrorist organization’ with ‘global reach’.
32
By December
2003, President Bush signed the ‘Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty
Restoration Act’.
33
This Act called on Syria to stop ‘undermining international
peace and security’, sponsoring ‘international terrorism’ and developing
WMDs. It also called for Syria to end its ‘occupation’ of Lebanon so that
Lebanon could achieve ‘full restoration of its sovereignty’, ‘deploy its army in
the South’ and evict all ‘terrorist and foreign forces, including Hizbullah and
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’.
34
In effect, this Act concretely linked the
long-standing efforts of the neoconservatives within the US administration to
isolate Syria and destroy Hizbullah to the ‘war on terror’ discourse.
35
Localizing the ‘War on Terror’ Discourse in Lebanon: The Resolution 1559
Regime
The next stage in the Bush administration’s Syria–Lebanon policy was to localize
its ‘war on terror’ discourse in Lebanese domestic terms, which it did via a series
of UN Security Council resolutions targeting Syria and its allies in Lebanon. These
interventionist UN resolutions became a pivot around which pro- and anti-
Western Lebanese politics mobilized. The most important text within this
discourse was the adoption of resolution 1559 on 2 September 2004. This resol-
ution – and the regime it set up comprising biannual implementation reports,
Security Council presidential statements, related resolutions and diplomatic
pressure – unequivocally set forth the basic US ‘war on terror’ narrative that
the UN, for the first time, appeared to legitimize in Lebanon. In essence, resol-
ution 1559 called for the withdrawal of Syrian army units (‘foreign forces’)
from Lebanon, on the one hand, and the disarming of Hizbullah, as well as
Palestinian groups (‘militias’) operating within Palestinian camps, on the other.
36
The resolution had been hastily arranged to pressure Syria and the Lebanese
parliament to halt the latter’s imminent, scheduled vote to amend the Consti-
tution in order to extend the term of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud by
three additional years (until 2008).
37
For the Lebanese representative at the
UN, this resolution’s unprecedented interference with Lebanon’s internal affairs
called into question the UN’s neutrality and was summarily rejected.
38
That
8INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
there was a split between Lebanon’s pro-Syrian alliance, which still had control of
the Foreign Ministry, and Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who had close ties to
Saudi Arabia and the West, was clear. The disagreement illustrated the deep
division in Lebanon’s policy-making process, which traditionally depends on
consensus among the sectarian elites on matters of high politics and security,
during the unfolding political and constitutional crisis. That the Security
Council proceeded with the vote despite these political tensions underlined its
unprecedented activist agenda in this case, and its intent to take sides with one
particular domestic group over another.
39
The most controversial and divisive element within resolution 1559 was its
stipulation that Hizbullah must disarm, thus internationalizing Hizbullah’s
status in Lebanon. The US Ambassador to the UN considered ‘the continued
presence of armed Hizbullah militia elements, as well as presence of Syrian and
Iranian forces in Lebanon’, the main obstacle in Lebanon, and his French counter-
part decried Lebanon’s ‘occupation and persistent presence of armed militias’.
40
The crucial implication of such statements, incorporated into resolution 1559,
was that Hizbullah was merely a proxy ‘militia’ and not a legitimate resistance
group. The Lebanese representative at the Council made this distinction a
central plank of Lebanon’s official dissent, stating,
There are no militias in Lebanon. The Lebanese national resistance
appeared following the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory and will
remain as long as the Israelis occupy parts of Lebanon ... The resistance
forces exist alongside the Lebanese national forces; our military authorities
determine their presence and their size according to our needs. The auth-
ority of the Lebanese State extends over all of Lebanese territory except
the Israeli occupied areas.
41
The resolution thus interposed a Security Council interpretation into a long-
standing, but inconclusive national Lebanese debate about the nature of the
state and its role in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Indeed, the Council’s overtly inter-
ventionist agenda meant that the US–French drafted resolution mustered only a
slim majority of nine in the Council, as China, Russia, Brazil and Algeria (repre-
senting Arab states) all denounced the resolution’s interference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign state.
42
Once passed, resolution 1559 embodied and deepened the civil conflict in
Lebanon. Lebanon’s parliament convened in defiance of the Security Council to
approve President Lahoud’s extension, prompting Hariri to resign but vowing
to return to power. Hariri’s assassination in a car bomb on 14 February 2005
paved the way for rival mass demonstrations and the formalization of two
deeply divided Lebanese coalitions, the ‘March 14’ and ‘Opposition’ blocs, who
were nonetheless still partners in a coalition government.
43
‘March 14’ represen-
tatives echoed US, EU and Israeli accusations that Syria and its Lebanese allies
within the Lebanese–Syrian security apparatus were behind Hariri’s murder
and called for the implementation of resolution 1559.
44
For its part, the Opposi-
tion blamed those powers behind resolution 1559 as the main beneficiaries of the
assassination. Indeed, for Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah the ‘option of the
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 9
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
resistance’ and ‘1559’ projects were mutually exclusive.
45
The Security Council
once again controversially intervened in domestic Lebanese matters, internationa-
lizing Hariri’s murder and its investigation in a manner that was then unprece-
dented in UN history.
46
Mobilized by the US and France, the Council
immediately dispatched a fact-finding mission to Beirut, which within one
month had issued a controversial report, based largely on circumstantial evidence,
blaming Syrian and Lebanese security agents for Hariri’s murder.
47
This, in turn,
led to the adoption in April 2005 of resolution 1595 setting up a UN investigating
commission with a mandate to help the Lebanese government find the ‘perpetra-
tors, sponsors, organizers and accomplices’ behind this ‘act of terrorism’.
48
The
UN appointed the controversial German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, whose name
was to become synonymous in opposition circles with US neoconservative and
Israeli agendas, as its first investigator.
49
In October a ministerial meeting of the
Security Council passed resolution 1636 under Chapter VII of the UN charter,
defining Hariri’s murder as a ‘terrorist’ act, calling for Syria’s ‘unconditional
cooperation’ with the investigation and insisting ‘that Syria not interfere in Leba-
nese domestic affairs’.
50
In effect, this internationalization of the Hariri assassina-
tion investigation, which now also included periodic reports and high-profile
diplomatic activity against Syria and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian allies, led to its overt
politicization and incorporation into resolution 1559’s regime.
Semi-annual Secretary-General reports, associated Security Council presiden-
tial statements, and actions by Western diplomats in 2005–06 further reinforced
the 1559 regime. Indeed, the UN Special Envoy appointed to follow up on resol-
ution 1559 was the controversial Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød Larsen, who,
like Mehlis, was viewed by the Lebanese opposition as a core member of the
US neoconservative team. In effect, Larsen’s reports enabled the Security
Council to actively interpret Lebanon’s constitutional provisions and pronounce
on convoluted domestic Lebanese matters at a time of deep and potentially
violent constitutional and political crisis in the country. In his very first implemen-
tation report, Larsen appeared to override Lebanon’s national decisions, as well
as its ongoing political process, by considering Hizbullah a ‘militia’ rather than a
legitimate ‘resistance’ group, and suggesting that the resolution to Lebanon’s
problems with Israel lay with disbanding Hizbullah rather than ending Israeli
aggression.
51
Further reports and related diplomatic action by Western states
effectively de-legitimized the extension of President Lahoud’s term as president,
insisted that Lebanon hold parliamentary elections on schedule and without
delay in 2005 despite warnings by many civil society groups that ‘free and fair’
elections could not be held without electoral reforms, and called for the ‘disband-
ing and disarming of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias and the extension of
government control over all Lebanese territory’. The Security Council also press-
ured Lebanon to establish full diplomatic relations with Syria, demarcate the
Lebanese–Syrian border and deploy its armed forces throughout southern
Lebanon.
52
Unsurprisingly, these provisions comprised the core of the ‘March
14’ political agenda in Lebanon.
On the eve of the 2006 war, Security Council pressure on Lebanon and Syria
to fully implement resolution 1559 was unrelenting.
53
In March, the Council
10 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
passed resolution 1664, establishing a tribunal of ‘international character’ to try
the Hariri assassins, still presumed to be Syrian and Lebanese security officials.
54
In May, resolution 1680 called on Syria to take measures ‘against movement of
arms’ into Lebanon, to delineate its common borders and to establish ‘full diplo-
matic relations and representation’ with Lebanon.
55
All in all, from the adoption
of resolution 1559 to the start of the 2006 war, the Security Council adopted ten
resolutions and seven presidential statements – and published ten highly visible
UN Secretary–General’s implementation reports dealing with Lebanon (and
Syria).
56
This discourse, framed within the larger discursive context of the ‘war
on terror’, substantively shifted the global context within which Hizbullah’s
actions would now be interpreted, something Hizbullah apparently failed to
grasp in the summer of 2006.
The 2006 Israel–Lebanon War: ‘Powerful Discourse’ Elevates South Lebanon
from Local to Global
During the 1990s, Israel maintained its two-decade occupation of southern
Lebanon, launched two minor invasions and engaged in a war of attrition
against the Lebanese resistance. Although these events were extremely important
on the domestic level in Lebanon and Israel, their impact remained contained, as
the great powers did not confer meaning to them. The Clinton presidency (1992 –
2000) was focused on Iraq and the ‘peace process’, and the international commu-
nity thus took little interest in Lebanon’s sovereignty.
57
Even Israel’s May 2000
withdrawal from Lebanon after 22 years of occupation, so significant in local
terms, did not elicit a global reaction beyond UN technical certification of the
withdrawal to the ‘Blue Line’ and rhetoric about the need for Lebanon to
deploy its army along the border.
58
With the regional order unchanged,
Lebanon firmly rejected the UN certification claim, pointing to Israel’s frequent
incursions into Lebanon’s territory, airspace and territorial waters. Lebanon’s
deployment of a ‘Joint Security Force’ to southern Lebanon in August 2000
remained deliberately outside the border area: ‘[t]he Government of Lebanon
has taken the position that, so long as there is no comprehensive peace with
Israel, the army would not act as a border guard for Israel and would not be
deployed to the border’.
59
Successive Lebanese governments, supported by
Syria, continued to unequivocally uphold Lebanon’s right to resist Israel’s occu-
pation and retrieve prisoners held in Israeli gaols.
Southern Lebanon remained generally calm during the period immediately
following Israel’s withdrawal, the UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) recording no
serious breaches of the ceasefire in populated areas between May 2000 and
November 2005.
60
The root causes of the Lebanon – Israeli conflict, however,
had not been resolved. Israel maintained its objective of pacifying Lebanon and
creating a demilitarized zone in the south, and Hizbullah openly declared its
intention to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli gaols. After
several botched operations in 2004 – 05 to capture Israeli soldiers to exchange
for Lebanese prisoners, Hizbullah declared 2006 the ‘year of the prisoners’.
61
On 12 July 2006, a Hizbullah unit crossed the Blue Line and attacked an
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 11
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
Israeli army patrol near the border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing three
others.
62
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Lebanon of an ‘act of war’,
while the Lebanese government officially requested that the UN broker a cease-
fire.
63
Hizbullah, however, only agreed to return the captured Israeli prisoners
through ‘indirect negotiations’, conducted via a third party mediator such as
the UN or Germany, that would lead to their ‘trade’ with Lebanese prisoners
detained in Israeli prisons.
64
For its part, the UN Secretary–General condemned
Hizbullah’s raid but called on all sides to ‘exercise maximum restraint’ to ‘avoid
any further escalation’.
65
The following day, the Secretary-General dispatched a
team of three senior UN diplomats to the region to reinforce his ‘call to exercise
restraint and to do whatever possible to help contain the conflict’.
66
Given the new ‘war on terror’ imperatives and discourse, however,
Hizbullah’s raid took on new meaning in global terms. The UN’s calls for
restraint were ignored by Israel and dismissed by the US. The apparent failure
of the resolution 1559 regime to produce results (namely, disarm Hizbullah
and weaken the Syrian regime) was blamed by US neoconservatives on the
more pragmatic, diplomatic side of a US administration hoping for a ‘slow-
motion’ toppling of the Syrian/Lebanese regime, or ‘regime change on the
cheap’.
67
They supported, instead, Israel’s use of force to ensure the implemen-
tation of resolution 1559.
68
In this sense, Hizbullah’s 12 July raid represented
an appropriate opportunity for the US administration, increasingly frustrated in
Iraq, to reinvigorate its plans for a ‘new Middle East’ with a quick victory
in Lebanon. The 2006 war thus became a defining battle, even a proxy war, in
the ‘war on terror’. By 14 July, Israel’s declared aims included the elimination
of Hizbullah and implementation of resolution 1559.
69
Israel now explicitly
framed its war in Lebanon within the ‘war on terror’ discourse. Accordingly,
senior Israeli foreign ministry spokespersons, such as Gideon Meir, repeated
that Israel ‘views Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as primary elements in the
axis of terror and hate, threatening not only Israel but the entire world’. For
Israel, Meir explained, Hizbullah’s actions proved it was part of ‘an international
effort to wage holy war against the infidel’.
70
During the first week of the war, the US insisted that no UN action should be
taken before Israel could accomplish its objectives.
71
Following the ‘war on
terror’ logic, it was imperative that Hizbullah be destroyed but, equally, that
the pro-US Lebanese government remain protected: Prime Minister Siniora was
‘on a list of “good guys” working against the axis of evil’.
72
Accordingly, the
US vetoed Israel’s initial plan to destroy Lebanon’s civilian power stations,
government buildings and affluent areas in the downtown district, which
would have immediately damaged Siniora’s standing in Lebanon.
73
The G-8
Summit communique
´of 16 July further supported Israel’s actions and blamed
the ‘extremist’ Hizbullah for the war, called for the implementation of resolution
1559 but warned Israel not to undermine Lebanon’s government by attacking
civilian infrastructure.
74
In his first briefing before the Security Council on 20 July, Kofi Annan legiti-
mized Israel’s war against Hizbullah, but drew the line at what the UN, along
with European and Arab states, saw as Israel’s unnecessarily ‘disproportionate’
12 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
violence that had caused a humanitarian disaster and, more importantly,
weakened the standing of the Lebanese government: ‘I have already condemned
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, and acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself
under Article 51 of the UN Charter ... I also condemn Hezbollah’s reckless dis-
regard for the wishes of the elected Government of Lebanon, and for the interests
of the Lebanese people and the wider region’.
75
Given that, at best, the debate
within the international legal community was divided over Israel’s claim of
self-defence and Lebanon’s right to resist, Annan’s unilateral and unreserved
support of the US–Israeli position can be seen as an important symbolic reinforce-
ment of the ‘powerful discourse’ of the ‘war on terror’. The debate was now about
the extent to which Israel’s violence and resulting civilian casualties undermined
the ability of Lebanon’s government to play its role as a ‘good’ actor within the
Westphalian order of sovereign states in the post-war phase. In other words,
for Annan the UN role was now limited to ensuring that the US administration’s
post-Westphalian intervention in Lebanon did not repeat the catastrophic break-
down of order and security vacuum in post-war Iraq. This, in turn, would support
rather than expose what David Chandler refers to as the post-Cold War practice
of an ‘empire in denial’ and its ‘invasive’ core project of state-building. This
project, reflecting a ‘new hierarchy of Western power’, creates what Chandler
calls the ‘phantom state whose governing institutions may have extensive resour-
cing but lack social and political legitimacy’.
76
On 26 July, Annan finally called for an ‘immediate cessation of hostilities
because we face a grave humanitarian crisis’, blaming Hizbullah’s ‘reckless’
actions for the war and accusing it of ‘deliberate targeting of Israeli population
centres’, but also requesting that Israel ‘end its bombardments, blockades and
ground operations’. Annan also called for the deployment of an ‘international
force’ that could play a ‘vital role’ and ‘assist’ the Lebanese government in imple-
menting resolutions 1559 and 1680, ‘in particular by helping the Government to
extend its authority – including a monopoly of the use of force – throughout the
country, strengthen the Lebanese Army and disarm all Lebanese and non-
Lebanese militias’.
77
At the end of his speech, Annan revealed the key role he
felt the UN could play in the region to keep US support: ‘we need a new push
for a comprehensive Middle East peace ... We need a peace track here [in
Lebanon], too – not least to help remove a pretext used by extremists throughout
the region, including in Lebanon’. In other words, the UN role would be to build
‘peace’ in Lebanon and the region to ‘remove’ pretexts used by ‘extremists’ and
thus preserve an order that fitted Western security interests. This formula,
behind which the UN, EU and some Arab governments rallied, was premised
on a growing realization that Hizbullah could not be defeated, and thus sought
above all else to preserve Lebanon’s government within the Westphalian order.
By the end of July, the tide of the war had shifted decisively against Israel, and
the US was losing faith in Israel’s capability to destroy Hizbullah. The US tried to
salvage its position by co-sponsoring a draft resolution on 5 August authorizing
the deployment of a NATO-style peace enforcement operation explicitly under
Chapter VII terms with a main objective to disarm Hizbullah.
78
The Lebanese
government, which was under huge domestic pressure given the civilian
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 13
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
casualties, could now no longer accept such terms without the explicit approval of
Hizbullah. On 11 August, after several days of negotiation and amidst increasing
Israeli military frustration, the Security Council unanimously passed 1701, which
came into effect three days later.
A Tale of Two Narratives: (De)Constructing Resolution 1701
The negotiation of 1701 reveals two deeply contested and apparently contradic-
tory narratives that are embodied in the resolution’s final text. This contradiction,
in turn, resulted in a heated post-war battle over 1701’s interpretation and
UNIFIL’s new role. The first narrative draws from the resolution 1559 regime
discourse and represents Lebanon as a weak state and Hizbullah as the principal
threat to both Israel’s security and Lebanon’s sovereignty. The resolution holds
Hizbullah fully responsible for the war and effectively recognizes Israel’s right
to self-defence in pursuing the war option.
79
Thus, according to Annan,
Hizbullah’s ‘unprovoked attack on Israel’ resulted in Israelis being ‘newly
awakened to a threat’ they thought they had ‘escaped’ with Israel’s unilateral
withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. In this UN account, Hizbullah, unlike
Israel, ‘launched its fire indiscriminately, to sow the widest possible terror,
making no effort to distinguish between military and civilian targets and also
endangering civilians on its own side by firing from the midst of heavily populated
areas’.
80
UN and US narratives on the causes of the war had fully converged, US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice adding that Hizbullah ‘and its sponsors’ have
‘brought devastation upon the people of Lebanon, dragging them into a war that
they did not choose and exploiting them as human shields’.
81
The crucial part of
this narrative was to reaffirm the constructed split between Hizbullah and Leba-
nese ‘citizens’ who, in Annan’s words, were trying to ‘consolidate their country as
a sovereign, independent, and democratic State’. Lebanon, as a result of this split,
‘has been a victim for too long’. To make the distinction even more explicit
between Hizbullah as ‘spoiler’ and Lebanon as ‘victim’ in need of ‘empowering’,
the resolution’s text and sponsors deliberately contrasted Hizbullah’s role with
the positive one played by the Siniora government in negotiating the terms and
extending its authority ‘such that there will be no weapons’ without its consent
and ‘no authority’ other than that of the government.
82
Operationally, 1701’s core objective according to this narrative, premised on
Lebanon’s assumed status as a ‘weak state’, is to strengthen Lebanon’s ‘sover-
eignty’, sealing (and delineating) its border with Syria, disarming Hizbullah and
replacing it with up to 15,000 members of Lebanon’s armed forces: in other
words, to implement resolutions 1680 and 1559. As Annan explained, ‘only
when there is one authority, and one gun will there be a chance of lasting stab-
ility’. To accomplish its task, 1701 called for the deployment of an ‘enhanced’
contingent of up to 15,000 UNIFIL troops, largely composed of and led by EU
and NATO members Italy, Spain, France and Germany.
83
UNIFIL’s new
‘robust’ mandate authorized it to ‘take all necessary action ... to ensure that its
area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind’.
84
As Rice
made clear, 1701 allows the ‘democratic Government of Lebanon to expand its
14 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
sovereign authority, as called for in resolution 1559. It will do so by creating a
new international force’ that ‘will not be the same force’ as the ‘current’
UNIFIL. This ‘new stabilization force’ was to deploy with Lebanon’s armed
forces to ‘protect the Lebanese people and to ensure that no armed groups like
Hizbullah can threaten stability’. Indeed, although UNSCR 1701 was a
Chapter VI resolution, its text includes Chapter VII language that clearly
recalls the earlier, defeated 5 August draft.
85
The second narrative that emerged during the negotiation of 1701 contested
the one-sided language and interventionist impulse of the resolution’s final text.
Resolution 1701, according to the Qatari Foreign Minister at the Security
Council, ‘lacks balance and overlooks the accumulated, complicated, historical,
social and geopolitical factors’ that contextualize the war, fails to condemn
‘Israeli aggression against innocent civilians in Lebanon and Lebanese infrastruc-
ture’ and ‘does not clearly spell out Israel’s legal and humanitarian responsibility
for that destruction or address in a balanced manner the question of Lebanese
prisoners, detainees, and abducted persons in Israeli jails’.
86
In this narrative, it
is not Lebanon’s ‘weakness’ and Hizbullah’s ‘terrorism’ that are the main
source of the problem, but rather, in the words of Lebanon’s acting Foreign
Minister, Israel’s ‘perennial threat to Lebanon’s security’
87
and the failure to
achieve what 1701 refers to in its penultimate paragraph as a ‘comprehensive,
just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ based on long-standing UN
resolutions.
88
Operationally, this dissenting narrative rejects the post-Westphalian elements
borrowed from resolution 1559 and thus all international interference in
Lebanon’s domestic sphere. As a result all direct references to Chapter VII of
the UN charter were removed from the final text, and instead of an ‘international
force’ with an enforcement mandate to disarm Hizbullah and secure the
Lebanese–Syrian border, as the 5 August draft had demanded, the existing
UNIFIL was expanded in terms of scope and mandate but remained a traditional
operation. As French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy made clear, ‘the
mandate that the Security Council is giving UNIFIL is not one that imposes
peace. UNIFIL will help the Lebanese Government in several of its missions’.
89
Crucially, as the Qatari Foreign Minister stressed, the resolution ‘assigns sole
responsibility to the Lebanese Government for dealing with the armed phenom-
ena in the South’, an area ‘subject to the exclusive control of the Lebanese
Government’. Thus UNIFIL could only be authorized to ‘monitor the cessation
of hostilities’, ‘accompany and support the Lebanese army as they deploy
throughout the South’, and otherwise assist in humanitarian issues.
90
In this
narrative, then, UNIFIL could not ‘secure the border’ with Syria, or actively
seek to disarm Hizbullah without explicit instructions from the Lebanese govern-
ment, in which Hizbullah and its allies were still represented. Finally, in this
narrative, it is the Westphalian substantive elements incorporated vaguely into
1701 to which UNIFIL was expected to devote itself, namely, Israeli withdrawal
from remaining Lebanese territory including Sheba’a farms, the return of
Lebanese prisoners and the halting of all air, land and marine violations of
Lebanese territory.
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 15
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
Conclusion: The Battle for Hegemonic Articulation of 1701 in Lebanon
Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah militarily and thus allow the US to impose the
1559 regime on Lebanon, and Hizbullah’s inability to challenge the ‘war on
terror’ discourse on the global level, produced a resolution with no apparent hege-
monic narrative at its adoption. Resolution 1701 had effectively evolved over the
course of its negotiation from one whose interpretive fate would have been deter-
mined by an activist Security Council operating under the shadow of the ‘war on
terror’ to one in which the main interpretive responsibility lay on the Lebanese
government, which Hizbullah continued to participate in and have some leverage
over. Israel, Hizbullah and the Lebanese government all understood that, shorn of
explicit Chapter VII and peace enforcement references that earlier drafts had
flirted with, the text of 1701 contained mere words on paper. The devil would
be in the resolution’s official interpretation by the Lebanese state, which could
now be transformed into a violently contested site for representation. Indeed,
the often violent political and ideational battle for ‘hegemonic articulation’ of
the two conflicting narratives embedded in 1701 dominated Lebanon for nearly
two years until the conclusion of the Doha Accords in 2008.
In Lebanese discourse, 1701, and with it the role of UNIFIL peacekeepers, was
contested from the start. The pro-US ‘March 14’ coalition warmly welcomed
1701 as a key political instrument with which to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty,
leverage international support against Hizbullah domestically and extricate
Lebanon, once and for all, from both the Arab–Israeli conflict and Iranian/
Syrian sphere of influence.
91
The Hizbullah-led Opposition coalition, for its
part, considered the US–Israeli project to crush the resistance and create a
pliant Lebanese state as the main threat to Lebanon’s sovereignty, and only reluc-
tantly accepted 1701. The months after the passage of 1701 were very tense in
Lebanon, focusing, on the one hand, on UNIFIL’s new mandate and, on the
other, on the nature and role of the resistance in Lebanon. Unlike the original
UNIFIL, the post-2006 UNIFIL with its new, much publicized ‘robust’ rules of
engagement was viewed with deep suspicion by residents of southern Lebanon
and by Hizbullah.
92
Spanish and French contingents, in particular, faced local
protests as they attempted to impose their own proactive interpretation on the
UNIFIL mandate by searching homes aggressively for illegal weapons.
However, following a roadside car bomb in June 2007 which killed four
Spanish peacekeepers, UNIFIL troops as a whole retreated to their bases and
they have largely adopted a much less aggressive posture in southern Lebanon
since then. Indeed, the UN’s rapidly expanding political office increasingly
turned to state-building exercises as it effectively accepted the Westphalian
limits to the 1701 mandate.
Hizbullah’s victory on the battlefield during 2006, however, did not immedi-
ately translate into domestic political gains, as the ‘March 14’ coalition, neocon-
servatives within the US administration and UN envoy Larsen continued to
promote the 1559 regime and its campaign to force Hizbullah’s disarmament
and isolate Syria. Effectively, the conflict that had taken on an international
military dimension during 2006 had now shifted to Lebanon’s constitutional
16 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
institutions and their authority to legitimate, or deny the claims of, an armed
resistance and its relationship with the national armed forces. This bitter internal
conflict resulted in sectarian clashes, the collapse of the national unity govern-
ment in November 2007 and the creation of an unprecedented constitutional
vacuum in which the Siniora government continued to be recognized by the
West and yet denied legitimacy by the domestic opposition.
93
In May 2008, after the Siniora government unilaterally passed a controversial
decree to dismantle Hizbullah’s communication network, a move Hizbullah
claimed threatened its very survival, opposition militias took to the streets of
Beirut and within hours had routed the ‘March 14’ militias, while the Lebanese
army remained neutral. The US protested but did not interfere and, with the
Bush administration’s second term coming to an end, Lebanese politicians
signed an agreement in Doha under Qatari and Arab League patronage and
endorsed by the UN Security Council.
94
This agreement set out the terms of a
new national unity government, the election of a compromise president and the
dates for new parliamentary elections. The result of the Doha agreement was
thus the re-incorporation of Hizbullah into the Lebanese government and the
reaffirmation of the resistance as a national project that could coexist with the
Lebanese armed forces. As the Hizbullah MP Ali Fayyad made clear, the deploy-
ment of the Lebanese army to southern Lebanon did not represent the strategic
shift in army or government doctrine which ‘March 14’ leaders, and the US,
had wanted.
95
Moreover, a new government of national unity was formed in
November 2009 with a clear mandate to implement the non-controversial
elements of 1701, that is, shorn of the remnants of resolution 1559, and asserting
Lebanon’s right to resist Israel’s occupation and threats.
The Doha agreement, and Barack Obama’s election as US president and the
rapprochement of Syria with Saudi Arabia and Europe, represented the end, for
now, of Lebanon’s meaning in global terms and its return, in discursive terms,
to its local framing. Hizbullah had decisively won the battle for ‘hegemonic
articulation’ of 1701 in Doha, but the threat of renewed war continued to
loom as tension over Iran’s WMD programme grew, and with it the possibility
of Lebanon once more becoming ‘meaningful’ in global terms.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.
NOTES
1. Anthony H. Cordesman, Lessons of the 2006 Israeli – Hezbollah War, Washington, DC: Center
for Strategic and International Studies, 2007; Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Freidman, The 2006
Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy,
Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2008.
2. Patrick Devenny, ‘Hezbollah’s Strategic Threat to Israel’, Middle East Quarterly, Vol.13, No.1,
2006, pp.31–8; Mehdi Khalaji, Iran’s Shadow Government in Lebanon, Washington, DC:
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2006.
3. William K. Mooney, ‘Stabilizing Lebanon: Peacekeeping or Nation-Building’, Parameters,
Vol.37, Autumn 2007, pp.28– 41; Hitoshi Nasu, ‘The Responsibility to React? Lessons from
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 17
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
the Security Council’s Response to the Southern Lebanon Crisis of 2006’, International Peace-
keeping, Vol.14, No.3, 2007, pp.339–52; Karim Makdisi, Timur Goksel, Hans Bastian Hauk
and Stuart Reigeluth, ‘UNIFIL II: Emerging and Evolving European Engagement in Lebanon
and the Middle East’, Paper No.76, EuroMeSCo, 2009, pp.1 –39.
4. Karim Makdisi, ‘Israel’s 2006 War on Lebanon: Reflections on the International Law of Force’,
MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.6, Summer 2006, pp.9 –26; Richard Falk and
Asli Bali, ‘International Law at the Vanishing Point’, in Nubar Hovsepian (ed.), The War on
Lebanon: A Reader, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2008, pp.208–24.
5. John M. Hobson, The State and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000, p.197.
6. Much of the literature mistakenly assumes the existence of a unitary Lebanese state that makes
policy or security decisions. See Fawwaz Traboulsi, A Modern History of Lebanon, London:
Pluto, 2009, which clarifies the complexity of Lebanese politics and the contested nature of the
state.
7. On the difference between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ approaches, see Michael Pugh, ‘Peace-
keeping and Critical Theory’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.11, No.1, 2004, p.40.
8. Charlotte Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-whaling
Discourse, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, p.2.
9. Karin M. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007,
p.93.
10. Ibid.
11. David Howarth, Discourse, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000, p.9.
12. Epstein (see n.8 above), p.10.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Fierke (see n.9 above), p.101.
16. Ibid., p.163.
17. Israel’s 1978 and 1982 invasions were denounced by the Security Council in numerous resol-
utions, as was its subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon. See, for instance, Paul Salem,
‘Reflections on Lebanon’s Foreign Policy’, in Dierdre Collings (ed.), Peace for Lebanon? From
War to Reconstruction, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994, p.79.
18. Barry Buzan, ‘Rethinking Security after the Cold War’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol.32, No.1,
pp.5– 28.
19. See Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: the Merging of Development and
Security, London: Zed Books, 2001.
20. Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?,
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp.15–16.
21. Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire, London: Verso, 2003, p.5. See also David Hirst, Beware of
Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, New York: Nation Books, 2010, p.280.
22. Hirst (see n.21 above), p.276.
23. Fierke (see n.9 above), pp.134 – 5.
24. CNN, ‘Transcript of President Bush’s address,’ 21 Sept. 2001, at: www.archives.cnn.com/2001/
US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript.
25. In the memorable words of a senior Bush administration official, ‘Hezbollah may be the A-team
of terrorists and maybe al-Qaida is actually the B-team’. See Richard L. Armitage, ‘America’s
Challenges in a Changed World’, remarks at US Institute of Peace Conference, Washington, 5
Sept. 2002.
26. George W. Bush, 2002 State of the Union Address.
27. John Bolton, ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil’, speech to the Heritage Foundation, 6 May 2002.
28. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Sept. 2002 (at www.
georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/index.html).
29. Ibid.
30. See, e.g., Charles Glass, ‘Is Syria Next?’, London Review of Book, Vol.25, No.14, 2003, pp.3 –6.
31. John R. Bolton, ‘Syria’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missile Development Programs’, tes-
timony before House International Relations Committee, Washington, 16 Sept. 2003; Cofer
Black, ‘Syria and Terrorism’, testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington,
30 Oct. 2003; William J. Burns, ‘US– Syrian Relations’, statement before US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Washington, 30 Oct. 2003.
32. William Burns testimony (see n.31 above).
33. US Congress, ‘Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act’, Public Law
108–175, 12 Dec. 2003.
18 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
34. Ibid. See also Hirst (n.21 above), pp.299 –300.
35. See Robert Dreyfuss, ‘Syria in their Sights: The Neocons Plan their Next “Cakewalk”’,
American Conservative,16 Jan. 2006 (at: http://amconmag.com/article/2006/jan/16/00010/).
36. UN Security Council resolution 1559, S/RES/1559, 2 Sept. 2004.
37. Lebanon’s constitution allows for a one-term presidency lasting six years.
38. UN Security Council, S/PV.5028, 2 Sept. 2004.
39. Resolutions passed in the 1986 –2004 period dealt exclusively with routine matters related to the
extension of UNIFIL’s mandate.
40. UN Security Council (see n.38 above).
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid. It should be noted that France under President Jacques Chirac went along with the US for
two main reasons: to aid in rebuilding the Franco– American relationship following the tense
stand-off during the US war on Iraq, which France opposed; and Chirac’s close personal and
business relationship with Rafiq Hariri, who, by 2004, needed Syria out of Lebanon to consoli-
date his power. In Lebanon resolution 1559 is referred to as comprising two parts: a ‘French’ part
(calling on Syria to withdraw) and a ‘US’ part (calling on the disarming of Hizbullah).
43. Nicholas Blanford’s Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and its Impact on
the Middle East, London: I.B. Taurus, 2008. The ‘March 14’ movement was named after the
anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut on 14 March 2005.
44. Ibid.
45. Hasan Nasrallah, ‘You Will Today Decide the Fate of your Nation and Country’, public speech,
8 March 2005, in Nicholas Noe (ed.), Voice of Hezbollah: Statements of Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah, London: Verso, 2007, p.324.
46. All previous UN tribunals dealt with genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. See Samar
El-Masri, ‘The Hariri Tribunal: Politics and International Law’, Middle East Policy, Vol.14,
No.3, 2008, p.83.
47. Omar Nashabe, ‘Al-Mahkama al-Khassa bi Lubnan: Ayna Takhfuq al-“‘Adala?”’ [The special
tribunal for Lebanon: where does ‘justice’ fail?], Al-Adab Magazine (Beirut), April–May 2010
(at: www.adabmag.com/node/298).
48. UN (see n.36 above).
49. Nashabe (see n.47 above).
50. See UN Security Council, UN doc., SC/8543, 31 Oct. 2005.
51. ‘Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1559 (2004)’, UN doc.,
S/2004/777, 1 Oct. 2004, pp.7– 8.
52. See, e.g., UN doc., S/PRST/2006/3, 23 Jan. 2006.
53. Ibid.
54. UN Security Council, UN doc., S/RES/1664, 2006.
55. UN Security Council, UN doc., S/RES/1680, 2006; UN doc., SC/8723,17 May 2006.
56. Permanent Mission of Lebanon to the UN, ‘Lebanese Matters’ (at: www.un.int/wcm/content/
lang/en/pid/1716).
57. The Middle East focus of the Clinton presidency (1992 –2000) was on Iraq and the Palestinian–
Israeli ‘peace process’.
58. UN doc., S/2000/731, 24 July 2000. The ‘Blue Line’ is the UN designation for the temporary
border between Lebanon and Israel.
59. UN doc., S/2000/1049, 31 Oct. 2000.
60. UN doc., S/2006/26, 18 Jan. 2006.
61. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, ‘Hizbullah’s Outlook in the Current Conflict: Motives, Strategies and
Objectives’, Policy Outlook 27, Policy Brief, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Aug. 2006, p.1.
62. UN doc., S/2006/560, 21 July 2006, p.1. See also Makdisi (n.4 above).
63. UN doc., S/2006/560, 21 July 2006.
64. Chris McGreal, ‘Capture of Soldiers Was “Act of War” Says Israel’, The Guardian, 13 July 2006.
65. UN, ‘Statement attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General on the Situation Along
the Blue Line’, 12 July 2006 (at: www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2136).
66. ‘Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General on the Middle East’, 13 July
2006 (at: www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2139).
67. Flynt Leverette quoted in Dreyfuss (see n.35 above).
68. See John Bolton, Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations,
New York: Threshold, 2007, p.395.
CONSTRUCTING SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1701 FOR LEBANON 19
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
69. Significantly, Israel’s Foreign Ministry drew up an exit strategy on 14 July premised on the UN
ending the war by implementing resolution 1559. See Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34
Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008, p.94.
70. Quoted in ‘Israel Blames Iran and Syria for Violence’, Agence France Press, 14 July 2006.
71. Bolton (see n.68 above).
72. Harel and Issacharoff (see n.68 above), p.81.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid., p.106.
75. ‘Secretary-General’s Briefing to the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East’, 20 July
2006 (at: www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2142).
76. David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building, London: Pluto, 2006, pp.8 –9.
77. ‘Secretary-General’s Remarks to the International Conference on Lebanon’, 26 July 2006 (at
www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2150).
78. See BBC News, ‘Text: Draft UN Lebanon resolution’, 5 Aug. 2006 (at: www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/
hi/middle_east/5249488.stm).
79. Resolution 1701 (2006), 11 Aug. 2006.
80. UN doc., S/PV.5511, 11 Aug. 2006, p.3.
81. Ibid., p.6.
82. Resolution 1701.
83. Ibid., para.11. For more on European involvement in UNIFIL, see Makdisi et al. (n.3 above).
84. Resolution 1701, para.12.
85. See Karim Makdisi, ‘The Flaws in the UN Resolution’, CounterPunch, 14 Aug. 2006.
86. Sheikh al-Thani, UN doc., S/PV.5511, pp.8 – 9.
87. UN doc. S/PV.5511, p.19.
88. Resolution 1701, para.18.
89. UN doc., S/PV.5511, p.8.
90. Resolution 1701, para.11.
91. See Michel Nehme, ‘Security Council Resolution 1701 and its Implications’, in UN Resolution
1701: Horizons and Challenges (proceedings of a conference, 13 Jan. 2007, Antelias,
Lebanon), Beirut: Cultural Movement and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2007, pp.36– 44.
92. See Makdisi et al. (n.3 above).
93. All opposition cabinet members resigned following what they claimed was an unconstitutional
move by the ‘March 14’ majority government authorizing an international tribunal to try
Hariri’s assassins.
94. UN doc., S/PRST/2008/17, 22 May 2008.
95. Ali Fayyad, ‘Address of the Director of Consultation Center for Studies and Documentation and
Member of Political Bureau of Hizbullah [in Arabic]’, in UN Resolution 1701 (see n.91 above),
p.63.
20 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
Downloaded by [American University of Beirut] at 04:52 05 September 2012
