Auguries Of Failure: Israel Invades Lebanon, Yet Again – OpEd

When will Israel realise that invading Lebanon with paralytic compulsion can never be the solution to its security ills?  Having destroyed Gaza with existential, illegal fury, the Israeli Defense Forces have commenced operations in Lebanon with a similar, devastating imprint.  Doltishly assuming that the Lebanon front would stay quiet as it went about its business committing the crime of aggression against Iran, Israel again faced rocket attacks against Hezbollah on March 2.  The November 2024 ceasefire agreement, rarely observed as it was, had been effectively entombed.

Since then, the front has reopened in fury, with Israel targeting Hezbollah positions, frightening the civilian population of south Lebanon into fleeing in anticipation of a military offensive, and targeting bridges across the Litani River.  As of March 22, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health had documented 1,029 deaths, including 118 children and 40 medical workers.  The initial phases of the invasion have commenced, with a promise of indefinite occupation of southern Lebanon.  

On March 22, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that both he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered, not only the destruction of the all bridges over the Litani River “to prevent passage of Hezbollah terrorists and weapons southward” but the accelerated “destruction of Lebanese homes in the border villages in order to thwart threats of the Israeli settlements”.  Ominously, these models of annihilation would emulate the examples used in Beit Hanoun and Rafah in Gaza, a prodding of any war crimes prosecutor if there ever was one.  International law would again be defiled and breached, the horrors of previous wars reiterated.

In addition to inflicting these anticipated war crimes, Katz imperiously, and brutally declared on March 16 that “hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of southern Lebanon […] will not return to their homes south of the Litani until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is guaranteed.”  (Note the singling out of Shiite residents in this regard.)  

This was presumptuously proprietary, cruel and illegal but confirmed the status quo ushered in by displacement orders issued on March 4 and 5 by the IDF.  As is the form, these orders were issued with the false impression of care and consideration.  The IDF had no intention of harming civilians, though would do so if they remained.  “Any home used by Hezbollah for military purposes may be subject to targeting.”  Residents in southern Lebanon were to “head immediately north of the Litani River.”  From March 12, the area of exclusion was expanded, with the displacement pushing residents of southern Lebanon further to north of the Zahrani River, some 15 kilometres north of the Litani River.

The order of the day is historical repetition, with hard lessons ignored and vengeance favoured.  The hateful heart can hunger and prove insatiable.  In 1982, Israel commenced a war in Lebanon with goals that seemed clear enough.  Katyusha fire from Lebanon was to be halted by attacking the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and expelling it north of the Litani River.  Doing so would foster the conditions from which peace with Lebanon might be brokered.  

While the PLO was expelled, with its rattled leadership finding troubled sanctuary in Tunisia, the Iranian-backed and inspired Hezbollah took its place.  It’s kindling for resentment: Israeli occupation of the country’s south.  While the IDF maintained a presence that only encouraged Hezbollah, the political hope of securing peace was foiled by the assassination of President-elect Bachir Gemayel, right-wing Phalangist leader of the Maronite Christian militia known as the Lebanese forces.  His killing, believed to have been executed under orders from Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, precipitated the massacre of 2,000 to 3,500 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila, and the adjacent neighbourhood of Sabra, over the course of 43 hours.  While the Phalange were the main agents in butchery, the IDF had given its implicit blessing by permitting the militia to enter Sabra and Shatila.

With Israel committed to the gory, fractious mess, a stay lasting till 2000 commenced.  In the aftermath of the IDF’s withdrawal, Hezbollah grew in prominence, managing to frame its 2006 war with Israel as an achievement of some note.  The constant theme of the conflict, one promoted by its late leader Hassan Nasrallah: defensive resistance to Israel.

The auguries on this occasion are not good.  Katz has insisted Israel “control the remaining bridges and the security zone up to the Litani”.  On March 23, the waspish Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s nationalist far-right finance minister, went further, telling a meeting of his Religious Zionism faction at the Knesset that the Litani had to “be our new border with the state of Lebanon, just like the ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza and like the buffer zone and peak of the Hermon in Syria.”  He envisaged the creation of “a sterile security cordon that will separate the enemy from our citizens.”

If this form of de facto annexation and territorial theft is formalised, the narrative of resisting occupation will again be enlivened.  As Jack Khoury, writing in Haaretz, remarks, “History suggests that as long as an occupation exists, an organization will emerge to fill the vacuum and carry that banner.”  If not a revivified Hezbollah, then some other power will assume the mantle.  Politically, such a decision will also be foolish, weakening Lebanon’s president, Joseph Anoun, and its Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and made more so given the Lebanese government’s willingness to conduct direct negotiations with Israel, through the offices of Washington, to reach a peace agreement.  But these are heady days for the war makers, and those unfashionable types wishing for peace have long been put out to pasture.