JERUSALEM — No Israeli soldier moved an inch but this may have been the week the Israel Defense Force’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon began.
The first move came not from Israel but from its ally in the region, the South Lebanon Army. The SLA is a 2,500-member Christian militia that has been fighting Shi’ite Hezbollah gunmen for years with arms and money supplied by Israel.
Tuesday, the SLA began to withdraw from its one-time stronghold of Jezzine, a predominantly Christian enclave at the northern tip of the security zone.
Optimists in Israel hope the withdrawal will create a precedent for more redeployments of the SLA, and of Israel, from the security zone. Pessimists, however, worry the vacuum created by the withdrawal will be filled not by the Lebanon’s regular army but by Hezbollah militants who will turn the town into another base for attacks against the SLA and the IDF.
The SLA withdrawal highlights the debate within Israel over how and when to get out of Lebanon, where seven Israelis have already been killed this year.
Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak has vowed to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon within a year after his election.
Statements such as Barak’s have so decreased morale among SLA soldiers that Gen. Antoine Lahad, the 70-year-old commander of the SLA, could no longer keep his soldiers in place.
The SLA took control of Jezzine in 1985 — the year that Israel carved out the 9-mile-deep buffer zone at the conclusion of its war in Lebanon. The SLA hoped to protect the Christians in Jezzine from the rival Shi’ite Muslims.
Fourteen years later, with morale down and many of its commanders deserting the field, the SLA is all but admitting defeat.
Jezzine had about 40,000 residents in 1985. When Lahad announced the two-week withdrawal starting this week, barely 4,000 residents remained.
After more than a decade of fighting, the SLA found that rather than defending civilians, it was mostly busy defending itself. When he announced the withdrawal Monday, Lahad said the town had become too dangerous for his militia.
Some 154 SLA militia members have been killed, with another 443 wounded since 1982 when Israel launched an invasion into Lebanon aimed at rooting out Palestinian terrorists.
During the past several weeks alone, the SLA suffered 18 casualties in the Jezzine region.
The first day of the withdrawal took place under heavy fire from Hezbollah gunmen; two SLA soldiers were killed Tuesday by Hezbollah-planted roadside bombs.
This week, some observers questioned whether the SLA withdrawal was handled correctly.
Reserve Gen. Yossi Peled, a former commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon, said Israel should have used the opportunity for a major diplomatic initiative.
According to Peled, Israeli officials should have announced they endorsed Lahad’s announcement — a move that could have been interpreted as a goodwill gesture toward Lebanon.
Instead, Israeli officials said this week they had not been consulted in advance about Lahad’s decision to withdraw from Jezzine.
During a recent meeting with outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Lahad presented his decision as a fait accompli and told Arens he had no choice but to order the withdrawal.
Arens downplayed the hope of some in Israel that the withdrawal will create a precedent for an Israeli redeployment.
“The SLA withdrawal is not the first step of a general Israeli pullout from Lebanon,” Arens said. “The purpose of our presence in the security zone is to protect” Israel’s northern communities.
“We do not intend to quit” the region, he added.
But with the tenure of outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government set to expire within a month, many Israelis are focused on Barak’s promise of a redeployment.
That promise still depends on Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, however.
One way to tell whether the SLA move will be followed by any Israeli withdrawals will be to watch the IDF positions in the Lebanese villages of Ayishiya and Reihan, which are located within the security zone.
In both villages, IDF soldiers were protecting the corridor to Jezzine. But with that corridor no longer of importance, Israel may pull its forces from sites that may be subject to continued Hezbollah attacks.
Lahad warned this week that if Hezbollah used Jezzine as a base for more attacks, the IDF would retaliate with shelling and air raids that would flatten the town.
Under such a scenario, the SLA withdrawal, far from being a prelude to an Israeli redeployment, could lead to yet another escalation of fighting.
Arens refused this week to predict what would result from the SLA withdrawal.
“Everything depends on Syria,” he said. “Only Damascus decides what happens in Lebanon.”
For Lahad, the withdrawal from Jezzine is also a personal tragedy.
The former Lebanon Army officer had linked his fate to Israel because he believed that with Israeli backing he could control the southern portion of the country.
But Lahad, who was sentenced to death in absentia by a Lebanese military court in 1996, never saw the fruits of victory. This week, he denied rumors he would soon join his family in exile in France.
There may be an even larger tragedy looming for ordinary SLA soldiers who will not be able to seek haven abroad.
Indeed, there were reports this week some SLA members have begun seeking amnesty from the Lebanese government.
“Our commanders have deserted us,” a 32-year-old SLA soldier from Jezzine said this week.
“I joined the SLA when I was 18 because I wanted to protect my town. But now our commanders have left us to our destiny.”