Israeli gamble comes off in Lebanon: Bombing Hizbollah has not upset the peace talks, writes Charles Richards

ONE OF the legacies of the moral puritanism of Israel's Zionist founding fathers is the prohibition on gaming houses. Israelis wishing to bet within the law are obliged to do so outside the confines of the state.

Last week, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, gambled in that riskiest of all locations, south Lebanon. The odds were stacked against him - or so the pundits were saying. He was risking the entire future of the Middle East peace process, they postulated. But it was a gamble that appears already to have paid dividends.

Mr Rabin is used to taking calculated risks. But he saw that this was a bet he could not lose. For him the peace process had reached an impasse. Nothing he did could jeopardise it. On the contrary: he might actually gain something. The operation might actually serve as a catalyst to get the peace process started.

The operation did force the postponement by a couple of days of the long-scheduled trip to the region by the US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. It had seemed that Mr Christopher would spend his time not as he had intended, rekindling the embers of the dying peace process, but rather dampening the fires of the conflagration in Lebanon. In the event, Israel ceased its operation on the eve of the visit. At the start, Mr Christopher cited the violence of Lebanon to illustrate the price of failure to make progress in the Middle East peace talks. He warned that 'decision time is rapidly approaching'.

As Mr Christopher left the region, it appeared that the parties concerned had hoisted that message on board and were not going to be derailed by the Israeli action. True, there was an upsurge of violence in south Lebanon and in the Israeli occupied West Bank. But the political process remained intact.

Most significant of all were the comments of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouk al-Sharaa. He declared the Syrians 'feel somewhat optimistic' that Mr Christopher's trip would get the peace process going again. 'We believe,' Mr Sharaa said, 'that talks that Secretary Christopher had may salvage the peace process.'

The Israeli operation had as its declared aim the removal of the threat from Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel did not try to do this physically. Rather, it sought to show to the Lebanese and Syrians that they would be held to account for any further hostile actions by Hizbollah.

The Syrians were the key. They have 40,000 troops in Lebanon. The government in Lebanon cannot move without Syrian approval. Syria used Hizbollah as a cat's paw, permitting it to operate from bases within its area of influence and allowing the transshipment of arms from Iran to Hizbollah fighters.

But despite all the talk of a secret deal between Israel and Syria (or even a more-or-less formal arrangement on curtailing Hizbollah activities) Syrian leaders had let it be known at least a couple of years ago that, once the Lebanese army had helped to disarm the militias in Beirut, it would deploy to the south and start to exercise its authority in an area so long beyond the writ of the central government. The Syrians therefore were keen to see the gradual emasculation of the Hizbollah militia that they had helped nurture.

It is on this point that the Israeli operation is likely to have had least success. The operation will have created more recruits for the Lebanese resistance, opposed to Israel's continued occupation of Lebanese territory. And the widespread destruction of great parts of southern Lebanon undermines the very policy of the Lebanese government to challenge the influence of Hizbollah in the area. For the Beirut government saw economic development and provision of improved services as the best way to counter support for Hizbollah, with its schools, clinics and social services.

Yet for all the violence of Israel's seven-day bombardment, the Israelis appeared to get away with it. The UN Security Council never met to discuss it. The US effectively blamed Hizbollah and Iran for starting the cycle of violence (they are after all Shia, and extreme, so have few friends). Even Arab foreign ministers failed to come up with any threatening statements. When Mr Rabin placed his bet, he knew he could not lose.