The Arab League and the proposed UN Resolution on Lebanon.

The Arab League is sending a delegation to the United Nations to press for changes to the proposed resolution, in particular that a condition of an immediate cease-fire be that the Israeli troops should straightaway leave Southern Lebanon, even before an international force could be raised to police the Israel-Lebanon border. The Lebanese government makes the same demand, and has started to call up Lebanese Army to take over the South instead of Hezbollah. But the Lebanese Army has for years been too weak to disarm Hezbollah, and it is unlikely to manage it by itself now, so that an Israeli withdrawal would leave the Hezbollah triumphantly in control of the area - something that Israel cannot accept..

It is well known that all Arab governments except Syria would be delighted to see Hezbollah, which, with their Iranian sponsors, is a threat to all of them, crushed and disarmed, and that they are making their present stand mainly out of fear of their own public opinion. So the thought occurs to me: why does not the Arab League offer to send its own troops to police the border and help the Lebanese Army in a task which it is unlikely to be able to fulfil on its own? It would be more acceptable to the Lebanese government and to Arab public opinion than an army sent by non-Arab countries; I think the Americans and Europeans would also prefer it: they, too, want Hezbollah disarmed, but have good reason to fear that a western force would be seen as a foreign intrusion; and I think that even Israel, which has tolerable relations with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and the Gulf states, might accept such a force, provided of course that the Syrians were not a part of it. (The Lebanese, having only recently got rid of the Syrians, would also hardly be keen to have them back in the country.)