It's been a long time since Israelis had anything good to say about the United Nations, but last week something positive finally emerged from Turtle Bay, as the Security Council effectively attacked Syria's occupation of Lebanon.
Syria's entry into Lebanon in 1975, unlike Israel's into the West Bank and Gaza Strip the previous decade, came at the expense of a universally recognized sovereign.
Damascus's subsequent subjugation of the land that had previously been known as the Switzerland of the Middle East may have been more subtle than Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, but hardly less potent.
The perpetual presence of tens of thousands of Syrian troops has seen Lebanon deteriorate from a world-renowned financial center into the regional hub for narcotic, gambling, and protection rackets.
That alone is a crying shame, not only because it so glaringly involves the trampling of Lebanon's independence and the daily humiliation of its inhabitants, but because Lebanon begs to be restored as the free-spirited economic success story it once was.
A free Lebanon can also be expected to offer the broader Middle East a glimpse of what liberty would offer any part of this region once it unseats its unelected rulers.
Evidently, that is exactly what Lebanon's Syrian puppeteers feared most and last week set out to avoid in typically brutal fashion, when they forced Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri to amend the constitution so that their lackey Emil Lahoud's presidency could be extended. It is one thing for Syria to maintain a notorious dictatorship at home; it is an entirely different thing for Damascus to export that vision to other countries. This amounts to is a frontal attack on the US, whose stated aim is to promote democracy in this part of the world.
Fortunately, and intriguingly, the UN Security Council's resolution was cosponsored by long-time adversaries US and France. France is highly relevant in this situation not only because of the special role it plays in Lebanon as its former ruler, but also because of its previous disenchantment with America's promotion of freedom and democracy abroad.
Evidently, the more it meets Arab fanaticism the more the West undergoes the transformation average Israelis underwent since embracing Oslo. In other words, the free world is gradually waking up to the realization that the end of the Cold War has not bred the age of peace so many had initially celebrated, and that in many respects the new enemy the West faces is even more vicious than its predecessor.
While much less dramatic than the downing of civilian airplanes and the massacring of children that Russia has just experienced, or the shattering of skyscrapers that America has seen, France's current rendezvous with Islamist hijackers' demand that it annul its ban on religious garb in public schools has made an impact on Paris, too, though apparently not the one the hijackers had in mind.
Evidently, from Canberra and Moscow to Washington and Paris there is an emerging recognition that the free world's soul and body are coming under an increasingly brazen and efficient attack. On the face of it, the Security Council's resolution last week is not directly about this, since it deals with an ostensibly intra-Arab situation, rather than the broader issue of Muslim-Western relations. In reality, however, the Lebanese situation is a microcosm of the broader issue. With Western resolve, Lebanon can be turned into a test case for the introduction of new rules of the game in a region contaminated by the kind of terror activity that Syria habitually condones, encourages, and harbors.
Under Syrian supervision and Iranian inspiration, Lebanon has become a hotbed of Islamist fanaticism and terror. Hizbullah, a major engine for the glorification and manufacture of hostage takers and suicide bombers, has been made the effective ruler of the country's entire south. Worse yet, from a UN viewpoint, the places currently ruled by Hizbullah are the very ones the UN abandoned in 2000 while insisting they would be subsequently seized by the Lebanese army.
Last week's diplomatic slap on the wrist should be followed by more aggressive Franco-American diplomacy that will not relent until Lebanon's freedom is fully restored and the Lebanese army has control of its own borders.
