Don Flynn says the depths of Lebanese enmity are an obstacle to Israel remaking the Middle East
At the time of writing speculation is rife about the developments that might come from the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a gun battle with Israeli forces in southern Gaza.
Western politicians are proclaiming this as a reset moment, when Benyamin Netanyahu might be persuaded to “take the win” and begin to scale down on the war it is currently waging on battlefronts that extend from Gaza and the occupied territories and across Lebanon and other regions of the Middle East.
The objectives of this war have been much discussed by commentators, with avenging the atrocities inflicted by Hamas on Israeli settlements on October 7th, securing the release of hostages, and ending the rule of the militant Islamist entity over the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip being the most frequently cited. From the perspective of US President Biden, pushing for morsels of positive legacy from his single term in office, all of these ends seem within clear reach if only the Israeli government could be persuaded to show more cooperation. His success in this endeavour depends on getting Netanyahu to shift from the currently dominant Israeli ambition to remake the Middle East region completely in its own interests.
The involvement of Lebanon in the conflict has placed issues at stake beyond the pacification of Gaza which has supposedly been made simpler by defeats inflicted on Hamas. Military action by Hezbollah forces across the border of northern Israel after October 7th is seen by Western governments as instigated by the regional rival power, Iran, making use of its local “proxies”. This ignores the reality of popular support for the militia among the Shi’ite communities in the southern parts of the country.
Throughout its history, even the theoretical possibility of the social and political integrity of the Lebanese state has depended of deals and alliances which have allowed a diverse population of Maronite Christians, Druze, and Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims to live alongside each other. Though there have been lengthy periods of peaceful co-existence, enduring stability has always been affected by the volatilities of the immediate region, with the frequent interventions of the global imperial powers also a factor.
Lebanon assumed the fate of providing refuge for Palestinians from the time of the 1948 Nakba when 110,000 arrived after fleeing Zionist takeovers in Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Galilee. According to UNWRA this has now grown to a resident Palestinian population of around 250,000. The country provided a base for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) from the 1960s to its forced exile in 1982 after an invasion by Israeli forces which occupied the south of the country and laid siege to West Beirut.
Though it succeeded in forcing the PLO out, the Israeli forces remained in the country supporting right wing proxies which were responsible for atrocities against other Lebanese and Palestinian residents, most notoriously the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps which saw the deaths of between 2,000 and 3,500 people across a period of two days. This provided the context for the emergence of the resistance which eventually emerged as Hezbollah. By 1985 its armed fight forced Israel’s withdrawal to south of the Litani river where it attempted to maintain a presence in alliance with the right wing Christian militia, the South Lebanon Army. This lasted until 2000 when Israel was forced to withdraw from the country.
Enmity between the segment of the Lebanese population which supports Hezbollah and Israel has its deep roots in the devasting experiences of these years. The phase of the war which began on 7th October and which, at the time of writing, has caused the deaths of 2,400 people, is being pursued through a strategy which has been laying waste to all towns and villages within 2 kilometres from the border with Israel.
Bombardment from the air has struck northern parts of Lebanon, with the southern districts of Beirut being hit on repeated occasions. For reasons not yet explained, the Israeli air force struck the mainly Christian town of Aitou, killing 20 people. Long established UN peacekeeping forces have also come under attack, with demands from the Israeli government that they abandon their mission to give their forces a clear range.
US hopes for an end to the phase of the war that began with the Hamas attack on October 7th seem to run counter to moods in the Israeli capital which are demanding a complete remaking of the Middle East. It will be ironic if the only thing that allows President Biden the opportunity to salvage his political reputation is a level of defiance from Hezbollah which forces even Netanyahu to give up on his plans for regional change, and take the win over the population of Gaza which the killing of Sinwar seems to be offering. Meanwhile the UN continues it legitimate calls for an end to the Israeli air and land assaults on Lebanon and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.