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Israel, Lebanon and the mirage of the new Middle East

Israel, Lebanon and the mirage of the new Middle East
UN peacekeeper looks over the Lebanese village of Jarin (photo: Diego Ibarra Sanchez/New York Times/Redux/eyevine, July 2024)

By: Ghassan Salamé / The Financial Times
Translation: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

Throughout history, leaders have sought to reshape the Middle East. From the heights of my village on Mount Lebanon, I can contemplate the passing of successive empires: the beautiful remains of a Roman temple, a Byzantine church, or a (less attractive) French military bunker, which are there to remind me of the magnetic pull of the region and the transitory nature of power.

The area stretching from the Taurus Mountains to the Arabian Desert and from Shat al-Arabi to the Mediterranean is strategic, highly symbolic, socially diverse and, therefore, politically volatile. Imposing some kind of order on its fragile states and vague and unstable identities has been a temptation for conquerors and politicians alike. Cyrus of Persia and Alexander of Macedonia tried; so did, more recently, George W. Bush.


With the fall of the colonial empires of the 20th century and the flourishing of the era of independence, a political map was created, largely arbitrary, dividing between the new (non-national) states mountains and plains, plateaus and deserts that lie around the rivers Jordan, Oront and Euphrates. These modern creatures proved fragile, always threatened by ethnic clashes and political mismanagement.

State building is an extremely difficult endeavor in pluralistic societies, never finished, always reversible and often considered a cover used by one group or another (Alawites, Tikrits, Maronites) to impose its will. This becomes even more difficult when rising regional hegemons try to turn these fragile units into obedient satellites.

Recently, the Middle East has experienced many such episodes. Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt harnessed a fiery wave of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 60s in an attempt to assert its supremacy, but its ambition was brutally thwarted by Israel's superior weapons, the machinations of conservative Arab regimes, and the hostility western assets. Khomeinist Iran, promoting Shiite emancipation and political Islam, engaged in a similar project from the early days of the revolution, leading, among other things, to a horrific eight-year war with Iraq and sponsoring non-state armed groups such as Hizbullah. in Lebanon, Hashd al-Shabi in Iraq and Hamas in Palestine. Tehran tried to organize this network into an "Axis of Resistance", which seemed to be on the rise until recently. Not to be outdone, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tried to reassert Ankara's influence through subtler but sometimes harsher means over an area that had lived under Ottoman rule for nearly four centuries.

The latest to be tempted is Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. He talks about his ambitions and demonstrates, with successive tactical victories, that he is serious about what he says. After the brutal explosion of Hamas on October 7, 2023, by its own will it turned Gaza into a vast wasteland, displacing, bombing, starving and dehumanizing its population. Then, he moved north to end the low-intensity war Hezbollah had waged against Israel in support of Gaza, and he did so spectacularly.

He bombed the port of Hudaydah in Yemen to punish the Houthi movement, which had taken it upon itself to help Gaza by blocking international navigation and firing rockets at Israel. It continued to hit weapons depots and Iranian and pro-Iranian militants in a fragmented and weakened Syria. At the time of this writing, it is preparing to bomb Iran in response to the October 1 missile attacks, which will not only involve flying over several neighboring countries, but will also draw the US into providing support. .

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has not let anyone forget that his main goal remains the annexation of the occupied West Bank (and therefore extinguishing any possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state), where the killing of militants, the total destruction of villages and the expropriation of lands, if they have not doubled, have continued with intensity. His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is busy changing the Judea and Samaria legal system in anticipation of what many fear will be the outright annexation and possibly transfer of some three million Palestinians east of the Jordan River. . Recently, he has publicly reflected on a Jewish state that could stretch from Iraq to Egypt.

Militarily, Israel's behavior in Gaza has seemed instinctive and chaotic, more like revenge than a planned war (Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, has accused all residents of the Strip of being collaborators with Hamas and, therefore, targets of legally). During the year that followed October 7, Israel continued to bomb hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, villages and camps, without declaring, perhaps without knowing, what it would do "the next day."

In contrast, in Lebanon his war has been planned in detail. The last confrontation with Hezbollah in 2006 remained unfinished, and Israeli insiders have since believed that a new confrontation with Hassan Nasrallah's fighters was inevitable. Therefore, a war plan refined to the smallest detail and regularly updated over the past 18 years has been implemented. The result is a campaign that combines near-science fiction intelligence with relentless bombing by a dominant air force and modern drones – an area where Israel has clear superiority, if not dominance. By the end of last month, after Nasrallah's assassination, Netanyahu was halfway to declaring victory, crediting Israel's success in "changing the balance of power in the region for years."

Israel's flurry of tactical successes on both fronts is indisputable - especially after the news that its troops had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. Military experts are eagerly awaiting Israel's next innovations. Many pro-Israel observers are in a state of bewilderment, if not euphoria, and this has inevitably prompted Netanyahu to start thinking about a new Middle East, reshaped by Israeli weapons and reflecting the will of the new hegemon. Israeli cartographers are regularly asked to supply their prime minister with maps, to show from the UN pulpit a flourishing and prosperous Middle East, ready to replace a dark and barbaric one.

In fact, there is no doubt that Israel has shifted the balance of power, significantly undermining Hamas and Hezbollah and putting itself in a position where its government feels it can dictate the new regional configuration – aided by its victorious military, Arab passivity, American largesse (in weapons, dollars, and diplomatic support), and a broken international system. How to remain rational, let alone modest, under such a constellation of stars?

The question is not whether this significant change is real, but whether it is sustainable. Every past attempt to reshape the Middle East has generally ended in failure: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin went into a deep depression when he analyzed the results of his effort in 1982, and Bush may still be reflecting on the initiative he led by the US, announced in 2003, to export democracy throughout the region through regime change.

Beginning the reshaping of the region, with the incursion into Lebanon, has been anathema to Israeli politicians: Begin and his Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, were forced to resign after their large-scale invasion of the neighboring north in 1982, that was justified in terms very similar to those of Netanyahu today. Shimon Peres was defeated in the elections that followed his "anger" campaign in 1996, and Ehud Olmert's misadventure in 2006, combined with corruption cases, brought about his downfall. The repeated promise of a "new Middle East" after each of these conquests, of course, never saw the light of day.

Can the current Israeli prime minister do better? There are some good reasons for skepticism. First, those who aspire to become hegemons must be willing to redesign borders and promote regime change. Some use of force is necessary and, therefore, only countries with significant military resources (Saddam Hussein had the illusion that he possessed them) engage in such efforts.

Regardless of how they are pursued, these goals usually exact a heavy toll in human lives and material resources. Netanyahu has gone so far as to predict regime change in Iran, "sooner than people think." But it is not easy to get more lands by imposing obedient leaders in some neighboring countries; Israel can hardly do both at the same time, since each objective (and sometimes two) will be strongly opposed by other actors.

The second reason for skepticism is that the passivity of Arab regimes over the past year is closely related to the identity of Israel's main targets – the two pro-Iranian champions of political Islam. By destroying them, Israel is also striking at what most Arab regimes consider their greatest adversary. When Israeli activity exceeds this casual alignment of interests, Arab passivity can suddenly disappear. Efforts to relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries, in particular, would be opposed as a major source of political instability. Israel's efforts to impose some form of political hegemony in the Levant would not be acceptable to Egypt or Saudi Arabia and other regional hegemons.

The third reason is that excessive use of force will keep Israel's opponents in a constant state of anger. Israel can accumulate tactical victories, but it cannot convert them into lasting hegemony. With fundamental issues remaining unresolved, Hamas (or a successor group) and Hezbollah could re-emerge at any time in the coming years, with their recent humiliation more of an incentive than a deterrent (there is reason to believe that, while being bombarded horribly, both groups have attracted new recruits).

Fragile states in the region, when not collaborating with anti-Israel movements, can hardly prevent the re-emergence of groups with deep cultural roots and in a cause they consider legitimate. It seems likely that the Palestinian issue will continue to play the role of a burning bush, like in the Bible, that goes out only to be rekindled soon after.

Fourth, an Israeli hegemony would be built on a bare and arrogant power. All of Israel's neighbors are currently on the defensive: Syria is effectively occupied; Iraq has not regained its national unity since its "liberation" and is not organized with strong and transparent institutions; Jordan fears the annexation of the West Bank and the possibility of its transformation into an alternative Palestinian state (something that has been part of the agenda of Netanyahu's Likud party for decades and has recently risen to the agenda in Tel Aviv and maybe even at Mar-a-Lago).

As for my country, Lebanon, it is financially bankrupt, politically paralyzed (without a president, with a government with limited powers and a sleepy Parliament) and threatened by the return of civil war. Israel's hegemony, if established, would be an easy victory, but in a volatile, frustrated and angry environment that is unlikely to calm down. Even if the war stopped today, Lebanon will take years to recover. Israel could find informants in such an environment, but would be desperate for allies and surrogates.

This is all the more true because the kind of regional hegemony that Israel is trying to build is entirely un-Gramscian: it does not seek to integrate the defeated, but rather continues to exclude them. His expansionist messianism is unpalatable even to the region's most peaceful populations, simply because they can have no part in it. They consider themselves distanced from the European-imposed Holocaust on the Jews and, therefore, are unwilling to pay, once again, for Europe's crimes. The integration of the weak into the domain of the powerful, as analyzed by Antonio Gramsci or long before him by the great Ibn Khaldun (who wrote of a process in which the weak accept a lower status as long as they are part of the ruler's network, perhaps as a prerequisite for sustainable hegemony), is impossible under these circumstances.

In this respect, Israel's internal evolution is a clear reflection. Since its victory in the 1967 war, Israel has changed significantly. This can be seen in the Druze community, traditionally an important source of recruits for the Israeli military, where there is growing concern about an overhaul of Israel that consolidates their status as second-class citizens. This was also made clear in the spring and summer protests of 2023, when liberal Israelis took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, demonstrating against the Netanyahu government's "reforms" of the judiciary, which were aimed at limiting its autonomy.

In other words, the reconfiguration of Israel as an increasingly religious entity (as exemplified by the growing influence of settlers in politics and the large growth of religious militants in the officer ranks) makes it even more exclusivist: liberal Jews and— obviously – Arab citizens of the state are not welcome. This transformation of Israeli politics (not simply a "slide to the right," as is often reported) has gone hand in hand with efforts for regional hegemony, a combination that can hardly appease large parts of the Israeli population or its neighbors in the region.

Those whom the gods smite with arrogance often free themselves from reason. UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced persona non grata just because he reminded Israel that international humanitarian laws apply to them too. Emmanuel Macron was threatened with a harsh response for suggesting a ban on arms shipments to Israel. The International Criminal Court was demonized when it spoke of the war crimes being committed; it is not yet known whether she will issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. Even countries that have normalized their relations with Israel are disoriented by Israel's loose definition of its own security and its disregard for the concerns of others.

Similarly, the idea of ​​Israel as a citadel of civilization against barbarism is a claim that resonates in the West (certainly in the US Congress), but that barely describes the ancient civilizations of the region and does not adequately reflect the behavior of the Israeli military in Gaza. Closer to reality is Israel's attempt to be an advanced military fortress for the West, and many in the West are content with this role. But an advanced military fortress cannot be a regional hegemon, much less a beacon of civilization.

In this tortured, troubled and broken region, there is still an opportunity to avoid the worst. This can be achieved by returning the spotlight to the core issue, the one that has been at the heart of the conflict for a century and a half: the fundamental political rights of the Palestinians. Israel's regional adventures often seem like an escape from this permanent and painful fact. Unless the Palestinians' right to a state of their own alongside Israel is recognized and materially implemented, they will not cease to be a source of (entirely legitimate) concern, making their lives and those of their neighbors impossible.

Aspiring hegemons often conclude that if force does not appease the Palestinians and those who support their cause, the solution is greater use of force. If history has any lessons, it is that the use of force to resolve complex political issues is always sterile and often counterproductive. In any case, the ruins left by Israel's current bombing of Lebanon have none of the charms that the Romans and Byzantines left in my village; on the contrary, they are signs of an unrestrained and unbearable arrogance. /Telegraph/