Wider, uglier war inevitable?

My heart goes out to my Lebanese friends and their families as they get in line to become cannon fodder for the next bloody war in the Levant. But they have straddled the enchanted crossroads from Baghdad, Damascus, even Persia, to Jerusalem since the dawn of time, and know only too well that the history of the holy land, especially its pivot points, is always written in blood and horror.

It’s no coincidence that the Houthis started using advanced sea-borne drones in the Red Sea – finally sinking ships – just when Hezbollah unveiled its own upgraded drone and rocket outreach in the Galilee; uninterrupted surveillance all the way to Haifa causing outrage in Tel Aviv, short range missiles deceiving the Iron Dome and hitting military targets. It means Iran’s ayatollahs have sensed weakness in Israel’s war machine and pushed their pieces forward on the Middle East chessboard.

A bigger, wider, uglier war is now inevitable.

It’s rightly said that in the merciless, zero-sum game of Middle East politics, “you’re either at the table, doing the carving, or on it, getting carved” – Winston Churchill’s words, most probably. The British mandate that gave the Jews a homeland and America’s carte blanche since the occupation ensured that Israel could employ this rule with merciless conviction as it carved out more and more settlements out of stolen Palestinian land.

But now, given how the war is going, the shoe is suddenly on the other foot, and it will not be too hard to goad Netanyahu into opening the Lebanese front. The cold calculus of tactical wartime thinking would show the Iranians that although Israel’s cruel war strategy has cost the Palestinians about 40,000 lives so far, the Jewish state has also badly isolated itself internationally and fractured internally for the first time in its existence.

There are violent protests every week across Israel, calling for Netanyahu to resign. There is a split with the IDF, with the military’s official spokesperson publicly rubbishing Netanyahu’s war aim of destroying Hamas, and the army is already over stretched in Gaza and taking losses. Hezbollah’s near-daily attacks have not only forced a complete evacuation of northern Israel but its advanced weaponry has also exposed IDF’s weaknesses by dodging the Iron Dome, even hitting its rockets, and striking deep inside the country.

Everybody in and out of Israel knows that Netanyahu’s political survival is locked to the war. More fighting – “crushing” Israel’s “audacious enemies” – gives him just the political ammunition he needs. Plus, there’s not just the compulsion of “neutralising” Hezbollah, there’s also the political desperation of repopulating the north whose residents – mostly dual nationals “living the dream” in the “promised land” – have been stuffed in hotels and are now openly questioning if “living like this for the long term, because this does seem like a long term thing”, is really worth it.

So he’s forced to take the gambit that he’d be only too happy to accept in the first place. Hasan Nasrallah remembers the 2006 aerial blitzkrieg that pulverized the southern villages all the way to Beirut – even regretted at the time that his decision to abduct two IDF soldiers brought so much death and misery to the Lebanese people. Now he’s thundering that airstrikes will trigger retaliatory precision rocket attacks on Israeli cities and military installations “in a war with no rules”, and also guaranteeing that the “fighting will take place in Israel, not just Lebanon”.

It’s only natural, therefore, for war clouds to gather over the Lebanese border once again, especially Hezbollah strongholds around Beirut and the majestic Bekaa Valley. They say Lebanon is cursed because of the sheer, breath-taking beauty of its people and the land.

Itself cut out of the carcass of the Ottoman Empire, from Greater Syria – the fabled Bilad al Sham – after the first world war, it is forever soaked in blood spilling from a war inside it or somewhere near it. How far Rafik Hariri’s dream of rebuilding the Switzerland of the Eastern Mediterranean out of the ashes of the Lebanese civil war, with Saudi petrodollars of course, seems now? I have the sinking feeling that the Gaza war is poised to spasm into Lebanon.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024