A fragile ceasefire

Ceasefires in the Middle East are like candles flickering in a wind, liable to be snuffed out at any moment. So the world can only watch and hope as Israel and the Hezbollah militia group gingerly step back from their month of violence to allow a peacekeeping force—15,000 UN troops and 15,000 Lebanese Army soldiers—to move into southern Lebanon.

Getting to this point has cost nearly 1,000 Lebanese and Israeli lives, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and the destruction of much of Lebanon. What the future holds can only be guessed at.

The war bolstered Hezbollah’s standing in the Arab world, but it also did considerable damage to the group’s military capability. A big question now is whether the UN/Lebanese force will be sufficient—and have a sufficiently empowering official mandate—to keep Hezbollah from rearming and returning to southern Lebanon.

Another, equally significant question is whether Lebanon’s fledgling democracy, so hopeful a year ago during the Cedar Revolution that forced Syria to give up control, can survive and recover from the war’s devastation. The forces of moderation and modernization in Lebanon—its Christian Maronite, Sunni Muslim and Druze Muslim factions—constitute a majority of the population, but they lack the power to control the powerful Shiite Hezbollah nation-within-a-nation.

Throughout the Middle East, the real battle is between radical and moderate Islamism, between those who wish to embrace modernism and those who despise it and long to return to theocratic feudalism. In this context, the occupation of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the ongoing fires the radicals use to inflame moderate Muslims and convert them to the cause in their battle for religious and cultural supremacy in the Muslim world. Now Lebanon can be added to the list.