At first glance, history seems to repeat itself in Lebanon.
But the unreserved significance of the ongoing conflict has more to do with Israel’s military ambitions — not necessarily colonial, but rather strategic — than with Hezbollah’s ability to strike deep into Israel.
Let’s examine the bigger picture, starting well before Hezbollah’s daring capture of two Israeli soldiers in cross-border fighting, which unfortunately, at least as far the media is concerned, is the solitary provocation that sparked the current conflict. (A San Francisco Chronicle investigative report by Matthew Kalman — Israel Set War Plan More Than a Year Ago, July 21, 2006 — sheds more light on Israel’s intent to carry a three-week bombardment of Lebanon as early as 2000.) For years, Israel’s strategic objective has been to break up the Syria-Lebanon front — to isolate Syria and meddle as always in Lebanon’s affairs — while diminishing whatever leverage Iran has in Lebanon through its support of Hezbollah.
The fact is that Israel’s military defeat in Lebanon and its army’s abrupt exit in May 2000 has created a “spirit of resistance” among Palestinians and Lebanese alike. Israel has proved once and for all to have serious military shortcomings, and Hezbollah — an organization comprised mostly of the relatives of Israel’s victims in the invasion of 1982 and subsequent years — was the single most factor that exposed those limitations.
Thus, Israel upgraded its use of violence to unprecedented degrees during the Palestinian uprising of September 2000 — months after its Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon — to send a clear message that their military travesty in Lebanon will not be repeated elsewhere. Moreover, despite its insistence that it left Lebanon for good, Israel never departed from its original military goal of destroying Hezbollah or meddling in Lebanese affairs.
Then there was the American attack on Iraq in March 2003 — clearly a highly dangerous military adventure — which was lauded by Israeli and pro-Israeli neoconservative ideologues in Tel Aviv and Washington as something that further cement Israel’s security and the US strategic objectives in the Middle East.
The Iraq war was anticipated to be a cakewalk, which would be followed — according to various neocon documents available on the web — by regime changes in Syria and Iran. Though both countries have proved unequally vital in the so-called “war on terror”, Israel views both as imminent and ominous threats, for only these countries, after the collapse of the Iraqi military front, still possess real armies and potential military threats. Of course, such a claim, at least in the Syrian case, is highly questionable.
Bogged down in Iraq in an impossible war, it became clear that the US military is simply incapable of taking on more of Israel’s foes. According to Israel’s friends in the US Congress and media — and they are plentiful — the mission was not accomplished. This explains the growing neocon insurgency against the administration, accusing it of “mishandling” the Iraq conflict and failing to appreciate the gravity of the Iran threat. While President Bush is relentless in his anti-Iran and Syria rhetoric, it’s becoming more transparent that a full invasion of Iran, or even Syria is now in the realm of wishful thinking.
With American military ambitions slowly dying out in the dust of Baghdad and Ramadi, Israel is growing utterly frustrated. Why? On the one hand, despite the intense pressure on Syria to abandon Lebanon — as it did — Hezbollah’s military and political influence has hardly faded, frustrating Israeli plans for an immediate overhaul of the political map of Lebanon. Even worse, a movement that is parallel to Hezbollah in many ways in Palestinian and Arab psyche, Hamas, was on the rise, this time — ironically — as part of the US-advocated democratic reforms campaign in the Middle East. Hamas’ advent to power in January 2006 was followed by a less decisive Israeli election that elected a questionable coalition, with a prime minister and defense minister lacking in military prowess, a major diversion from Israel’s traditional politics. In other words, the new Israeli government had a great deal to prove on the battlefield to receive much needed validation at home.
Similar to its political pressure on Lebanon and Syria — using Washington as a conduit — Tel Aviv took on Hamas: A suffocating economic siege, an international smear campaign and a diplomatic blockade. Corrupt ex-Palestinian officials were also utilized to achieve its goals. That too has failed terribly, which prompted military strikes against Gaza, killing scores and wounding hundreds, mostly civilians. In a rare diversion from its political leadership, the Hamas militant wing responded by capturing an Israeli solider at the border, vowing to release him only if all Palestinian women and children in Israeli jails were set free.
As far as Israel and the US administration — and much of the Western media — are concerned, Hamas provoked the Israeli military wrath that followed. While Arab governments carried on with business as usual, Hezbollah, who must’ve know that an Israeli military campaign against Lebanon was inevitable any way, decided to take the initiative by opening a war front on Israel’s northern border. Whether it miscalculated or not is another story. Neither Syria nor Iran asked Hezbollah to start a new war on Israel, though I can imagine that both will likely attempt to reap benefits in case Hezbollah manages to survive the Israeli onslaught, which is, according to US analyst, William Lind, a victory in itself. Israel doesn’t want to occupy Lebanon, but is keenly interested in destroying Hezbollah, thus sending a clear message to Iran that it is next. It also wants to broaden the Middle East conflict to force the US into an uninvited showdown with Iran and Syria. Expectedly, the US is providing full backing to Israel, but will it go further?
Hezbollah cannot lose if it wishes to survive as a formidable political force in Lebanon. If Hezbollah is disarmed, it is feared that Israel will go back to its full-scale meddling in Lebanese affairs, isolating Syria even further, and gaining a strategic battle in its looming showdown with Tehran.
Tragically, Israel’s military adventurism and the US’ reprehensible backing of Israel’s endless quest for regional domination has so far led to the death and wounding of thousands of innocent Lebanese civilians, and the destruction of a nation that has barely recovered from past Israeli wars.
