Beirut War Diary
Rasha Salti’s Beirut War Diary.
Syria is threatening to close its borders with Lebanon if UN troops are stationed along the borders of the two countries. Lebanon is extremely vulnerable to this threat, since Syria is key to its hinterland trade routes, to Jordan, Iraq, and the Gulf. Currently its sea trade has been embargoed by the Israelis.
It has emerged that Israel is insisting that the UN police the main Lebanon-Syria border crossings to prevent further weapons shipments from Iran and Syria to Hizbullah.
In my view it would not be possible for UN checkpoints to effectively stop such smuggling, given the long and rugged border between the two countries. I suppose the theory is that you couldn’t get a big truck with a big missile across on dirt roads and would have to take that through a border checkpoint with a good paved road. But couldn’t you just smuggle the components on the back roads and just assemble them in Lebanon?
And, wouldn’t it be easier for the Israelis to give back the land they stole in 1967 to Lebanon and Syria and make peace, and let the Palestinians have their little state, and pay reparations for 1948, so then they wouldn’t have to try to police all their neighbors all the time? They are getting worse at the policing over time, anyway.