An Arab Altalena Moment?

Even as the Israeli and Lebanese governments are negotiating peace at Rome this week, Hezbollah insists on waging battle. The terrorists are controlled by the mullahs at Tehran, rather than the government at Beirut. Several other Mideast countries are plagued by a malady identified a century ago by the sociologist Max Weber. A state, he said, can only be successful once it “claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” In June 1948, one month after Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence, a ship carrying arms for the state second largest militia, the Irgun, unloaded its cargo — and hundreds of refugees from the Holocaust also onboard — at Kfar Vitkin. Ben-Gurion insisted Irgun leaders hand over the weapon to the newly formed Israel Defense Force. The standoff peaked when the Altalena sailed to Tel Aviv, where it was shelled and sunk from shore by troops led by a young commander, Yitzhak Rabin. A civil war was in the air but the Irgun leader, Menachem Begin, ordered his ranks to hand over the weapons to the government led by Ben-Gurion, his political rival. Begin refused to wage a Jew-on-Jew war, and the Altalena affair arguably was the moment young Israel became a legitimate state, at least according to Weber’s definition. Regrettably, the same cannot be said of most of the Jewish state’s neighbors and enemies. These days armed groups that act independently of recognized governments plague Mideast countries. The Houthis overwhelm the globally-recognized Yemeni government. President Ahmad a-Sharaa of Syria is struggling with armed groups in his country. Hamas has more firepower than the Palestinian Authority. As our Benny Avni reports, at least eight Iraqi militias are giving headaches to our forces in the region, and to our Mideast allies. Several American administrations have struggled with the inability of would-be allied governments to control armed factions within their borders. Far be it from us to commend strongmen like Saddam Hussein or the Assad clan, dictators who quashed all opposition. Once gone, though, their opponents take arms, and overwhelm weak central governments. The mullahs at Tehran are backing these militias to further their quest for dominance. Which brings us back to Lebanon, where today the IDF punched back at Hezbollah after weeks of a fragile lull in the war. In an interview with Al Arabiya, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that Hezbollah is aiding Israel. He slammed “those who unilaterally take the decision of war” because of “foreign calculations.” Anger is growing at Hezbollah, which many Lebanese consider is acting to protect the Iranian regime while it claims to defend Lebanon. In two years of war, though, Israel diminished Tehran-backed Hezbollah. Hamas is a shadow of itself, too, and Iran-ally Bashar Assad is gone. President Trump, in negotiations with Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese leaders, is pressuring them to disarm militias that commit terror acts on Tehran’s behalf. The president seems to recognize that the losses by the proxies of the mullahs are, more broadly, America’s gain. Baghdad, meanwhile, is caught “between America’s hammer and Iran’s anvil,” an Iraq watcher tells Mr. Avni. Some 2,500 American troops stationed in Iraq are scheduled to leave by September 30. Washington is offering financial incentives to the cash-strapped prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, to disarm the Iranian-backed militias. Will he? Can he? Until Iraq and other Arab countries experience an Altalena moment, the Mideast will be hard to pacify.

An Arab Altalena Moment?

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