Is Lebanon now living its last chance?

Last week, my esteemed colleague Hiba Nasr, an Asharq News correspondent in Washington, wrote a post on X that reflected palpable anguish about the receding shadow of the Lebanese state in her village in southern Lebanon after the army’s withdrawal in the face of a new Israeli assault.

Hiba wrote about her tranquil village, nestled in the Wadi Al-Taym valley and sheltered by the majesty of Mount Hermon, despairing at how the state, after having given residents the impression that they could again have hope and dream, was abandoning them.

“It weighs heavily on us to be abandoned for decades, only to appear in the news as part of a conflict we never chose,” she wrote. May we return … May it be a nightmare that ends soon.”

Beyond the suffering and pain of the population native to this land, the Lebanese oscillate between a blame game and fears for the future. One segment finds comfort in addressing a world it had known for decades, decrying the constant marginalization of the state in favor of Hezbollah, Iran’s “Trojan horse.”

Beyond the suffering and pain of the population, the Lebanese oscillate between a blame game and fears for the future

Eyad Abu Shakra

This segment of the Lebanese population has always condemned reckless adventurism on the part of an armed force that is ideologically and structurally beholden to outside powers and that has consistently failed to acknowledge the severe imbalance of power between its camp and its rival’s. Accordingly, this segment believes that this force, Hezbollah, has allowed the Israeli fundamentalist hard-liners to implement their messianic ambitions by portraying their assault as legitimate “self-defense” … and eventually pursue scorched-earth operations in preparation for seizing and settling the land.

This is precisely what has happened and continues to happen in what remains of Palestine. It is currently also unfolding in Lebanon and it is what the rest of the Arab Levant can expect.

On the other hand, another segment of the Lebanese population believes that Hezbollah should be understood as a Lebanese political condition and, in their view, while the party may have facilitated the task of the Israeli propaganda machine and helped justify its aggression, occupation and expansionism, it was not the cause of these actions.

From there, this segment argues that pinning all of Lebanon’s suffering on Hezbollah’s actions reflects a denial of reality and an ignorance of history. They point out that Hezbollah, as a political-military organization, did not exist before the Israeli occupation of 1982. The Zionist project, for its part, came to light in the Swiss city of Basel in 1897 and it began to be practically implemented with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Its execution on the ground (through funding, sponsorship, complicity and militarization) proceeded over the following decades until the establishment of the state of Israel in the spring of 1948.

And while many believe that Arab naivety in 1948, then again in 1956 and in 1967, was directly responsible for Israel’s growing and expanding footprint, they deny crucial historical developments staring us in the face, chief among them being that this entity was never, at any point, alone or isolated. Israel, even before it became a powerful state that the nations of the world raced to recognize, was an integral actor among the powers controlling the world. Each of these powers, in turn, provided it with all the foundations for survival and prosperity: financial assistance, armament, unconditional political support and, today, the greatest technological arsenal humanity has ever known.

It is perhaps this reality that led Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon his customary claim of “victimhood.” After having mastered this narrative better than any of his predecessors, he is now boasting, with remarkable arrogance, that Israel has become a major regional power and is on its way to becoming a major global power that will likely set its sights on Turkiye once it is done with Iran.

Netanyahu is now certain that there are no international or regional obstacles to the fulfillment of his ambitions

Eyad Abu Shakra

This is discourse that none of us had ever heard from an Israeli leader before, but it is understandable for a number of reasons, most notably Netanyahu’s confidence in the success of the pro-Israel lobbies across the world. They have managed to exert immense influence over political decision-making. While the role of US lobbies such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been well known for a long time, similar lobbies have had no less success in Europe. Even in Canada and Australia, which are not governed by the right, we find leaders submissively returning to court Netanyahu’s favor right after every crisis of conscience.

He is reassured that the expansionist far right has truly come to represent a majority of Israelis. The Israeli public supports expansion, massacres and occupations wherever its army can reach. The evidence is now clear in both the West Bank and Lebanon, after the world witnessed the horrors of Gaza.

Moreover, the Israeli prime minister is now certain that there are no international or regional obstacles to the fulfillment of his ambitions. The moral compass has been lost and the once “central” Palestinian cause has evaporated.

Finally, the Israeli occupation and annexation machine monopolizes the most advanced artificial intelligence technologies and all the informational and combat capabilities that follow (surveillance, scanning, storage and cyber analysis), to say nothing about the potential to apply such tools to medicine, genetics, epidemiology and microbiology.

In light of all this, it is no longer surprising that Netanyahu feels invincible and behaves with unprecedented hubris. How could he not when we now even hear those who had once claimed to be his opponents and adversaries, such as Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, voice positions no less extreme and abrasive than his own?

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published. X: @eyad1949