As it had threatened in recent weeks, the Israeli army has begun its ground invasion in southern Lebanon as part of what it announces as “a limited, localized and selective operation”. This is the same formula used in the past to justify the intervention in the Gaza Strip and its complete destruction, which has left nearly 42,000 dead and more than 96,000 injured to date.
Given the precedents, it can be affirmed that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will be neither limited nor localized, much less selective and, once again, it will be the civilian population that will have to pay the highest price for adventurism Israeli military. Currently, more than a million Lebanese (nearly 25% of the population) have been forced to abandon their homes and flee indiscriminate attacks which, like in Gaza, do not distinguish between targets. civil and military.
In these times of collective amnesia, it is worth remembering that when the government of Menachem Begin decided to invade Lebanon in 1982, it also used the same expression: a limited operation to destroy the PLO and put an end to its operations against the north. Israel. Eventually, Israeli troops arrived in Beirut, the first Arab capital to be besieged by the Hebrew army, and maintained their occupation of the territories south of the Litani River for almost two decades – their withdrawal only taking place in 2000. C It is precisely his presence that served as a trigger for the emergence of the Shiite group Hezbollah.
As expected, Joe Biden’s administration rushed to support the Israeli invasion and emphasized the right to self-defense of its main ally in the Middle East, to which it provides economic and military support unwavering, as well as considerable political and diplomatic support. despite the repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over the past twelve months in the Gaza Strip.
Not only that, but Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense, came out in favor of “dismantling attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that Hezbollah cannot carry out attacks similar to those of October 7 ” and warned of “the serious consequences that Iran could have.” which he will face if he opts for a direct attack on Israel. » This Monday, Iran launched nearly 200 missiles against Israel without causing any deaths.
In recent days, the United States approved $8.5 billion in new aid to allow Israel to continue fueling its war machine, as well as sending thousands of troops to the region to prevent Iran to open a new war front.
The Netanyahu government interprets that the balance of power is fully in favor of Israel, which has demonstrated its ability to fight on several fronts at the same time, in an attempt to decapitate the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, a coalition informal forces. composed of the Palestinian group Hamas, Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis and various mostly Iraqi Shiite militias.
It seems obvious that the silence and complicity of the Western community in the face of the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip and the extermination of its population was interpreted by the Israeli leaders as a blank check to extend the war to the entire country. Middle East.
The stated objective of the operation is to prevent the launch of rockets towards the north of the Jewish state to allow the return of more than 60,000 evacuees, as well as to expel the Shiite militia north of the Litani River, as Council resolution 1701 calls for this. Security Council (which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah).
However, Israel is trying to take advantage of Hezbollah’s obvious weakness, decimated by a series of unprecedented coups that decapitated its military apparatus and eliminated its top leader, Hasan Nasrallah, to impose a new reality on the ground.
As an important part of the equation, Israel does not intend to limit itself to neutralizing Hezbollah’s military capabilities, but also aspires to influence the Lebanese political scene by establishing a like-minded government in which the Shiite militia does not enjoy not a minority veto, but only as has happened so far. To do this, it needs collaborators ready to respect the roadmap set by Tel Aviv, which does not seem easy.
Israel’s imposition of Christian leader Bashir Gemayel as President of the Republic after the 1982 invasion ended with his assassination and subsequent massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. In this context, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a Lebanese leader, whatever his faith, to want to collaborate with the Israeli government and become a transmission belt for Netanyahu’s regional destabilization plans.
What cannot be ruled out is that, in this new context, some political leaders could be tempted to take advantage of Hezbollah’s fragility to settle outstanding scores with the movement and impose changes in the country’s power structure. . Many voices accuse this group of intimidating other political actors and of being behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, as well as the Beirut port explosion in 2019 – which left hundreds dead.
In this sense, it is relevant to recall that the divide between the pro-Western and pro-Syrian Lebanese blocs is still fully present, as evidenced by the fact that they failed to reach an agreement on the election of a head of government. State after the end of the mandate of Michel Aoun, a close ally of Syria and Hezbollah, two years ago.
In these dystopian times in which we have had to live, some voices close to Israel try to justify the Israeli invasion of a sovereign country by alluding to the fact that “Israel is not invading Lebanon, but liberating it” from power of Hezbollah. as the French writer Bernard-Henry Lévy pointed out.
For his part, Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to present himself, to the height of cynicism, as the liberator of the Iranian people from the oppression of the ayatollahs: “When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come much sooner than people don’t think so. , everything will be different. Our two ancestral peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace. “Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. »
This is not the first time that the discourse of liberation and democratization has been used to justify military interventions in sovereign countries, but it is surprising that after the resounding failure of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq , the same arguments are used again to try to justify the unjustifiable; But we already know that man is the only animal who trips over the same stone twice.
