The Israelis have, it seems, reluctantly [See: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trumps-lebanon-ceasefire-takes-israel-225605289.html] agreed to a 10-day ceasefire between them and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Just as Netanyahu and his ultra-religious radical Zionist terrorists convinced senile Donald Trump that the regime in Iran would collapse within 3 days, they believe that by maintaining an incessant bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, either Hezbollah would surrender, or the Lebanese government’s army would turn its own weapons against a weakened Hezbollah, or that the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese population (broadly Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians) would take up arms and fight a civil war against the pro-Iranian Shiite terror organization.
For months, the Americans and the Zionists were giving the Lebanese government and army two options:
- Fight Hezbollah to disarm it. In other words, start a civil war, or
- Israel would forcibly disarm Hezbollah. But having learned from their 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Israelis have replaced the more successful traditional land invasion involving tens of thousands of soldiers (albeit with massive casualties) with a persistent and indefinite bombing campaign that shields its soldiers from direct confrontation on the ground but whose historical record is one of failure. Dropping bombs from the skies won’t secure victory without boots on the ground.
For now, it looks like Lebanon will get the double whammy of both an Israeli war of attrition combined with a civil war. The thing that readers must understand is that the Lebanese government and its army are incapable of, and unwilling to, fight Hezbollah, and that for several reasons:
- The Lebanese army is denied the acquisition of sufficient firepower to overcome Hezbollah in any fighting scenario. For years, the Americans refused to arm the Lebanese army because their Zionist whisperers were telling them that a strong Lebanese army would be a threat to Israel. The same old pretext Israel used to hide behind ordering the United States not to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, though this has somewhat changed in recent years. In reality, the Israelis prefer an unstable Lebanon that gives them many pretexts to intervene. Moreover, peace in Lebanon is unacceptable to the Israelis because a strong and stable Lebanon would beat Israel in trade relations with the Arab world and thus disadvantage the Israelis who seek a preferential, if not exclusive, position in such relations. For decades, the dumb Americans on the Zionist leash obliged, sending the Lebanese army military scrap and forbidding it from acquiring weapons in non-American markets.
- In 1976, when it was the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon who mounted a sedition against the Lebanese government (using the Palestinian PLO as their militia and backed by an implicit joint Saudi-Israeli-American-Syrian entente), the Sunni soldiers of the army deserted to join the Syrian-manufactured Arab Army of Lebanon (AAL) led by deserter Lieutenant Ahmed Khatib. This traitor managed with Syrian help to isolate the Lebanese south (territory south of the Litani River) from the central government and the rest of the country. As regular Lebanese army units were attacked by Khatib’s AAL in their barracks across much of Muslim areas of the country, the separation and isolation of the south forced those army contingents posted there to organize themselves into a loyalist resistance movement that ultimately opened the border with Israel to receive all manner of aid (weapons, food, medical services, schools, etc.) That cooperation between these isolated Lebanese army units and the Israelis eventually grew into an alliance in the wake of the 1978 Israeli invasion and subsequent withdrawal. The South Lebanon Army (SLA) was thus formally established to stand up to the Arab Army of Lebanon of Lt. Khatib. Meanwhile, the Sunni Muslim soldiers of the Lebanese army deserted to join the AAL pledging their loyalty only to Syria and not to their own government in Beirut. The Lebanese army eventually fractured along sectarian lines into loyalist Maronite brigades and rebel Muslim brigades.
The fear today is that something similar is about to happen, but this time with the Shiite units of the Lebanese army. All it takes is for Hezbollah’s leadership to call on all Shiite soldiers to desert their units and join Hezbollah. The Lebanese Army could break apart again. Even if those Shiite soldiers may individually be against Hezbollah, they cannot refuse because their families would be in grave danger of retaliation by Hezbollah which essentially holds the Shiite community hostage.
With the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, established and deployed in 1978) withdrawing for good from south Lebanon some time between 2026 and 2027, there will be no impediment against Israel’s increased occupation of Lebanese territory with a declared intention of creating a buffer zone that would be void of not only Lebanese army units and Hezbollah operatives, but also void of the totality of the Shiite population in that area. This is a prelude to Israel’s annexation of the Lebanese south: First, military occupation, then Zionist settlers move in and build settlements, followed by annexation, just as has been the standard land theft by Israel of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
- The Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah. When it negotiates with the Americans and the Zionists, everyone knows that its words, pledges and assurances are void and null. This has been the running charade for decades. The Lebanese government negotiates with Israel independently of whether or not Hezbollah agrees to the outcome of the negotiations. It’s always been the same masquerade: The UN and the parties involved (Israel, the US, Europeans, Lebanese government….) reach an agreement and a UN Security Council resolution is issued that everyone knows is non-enforceable because Hezbollah (and the PLO before it) was not involved in the negotiations. Very soon, skirmishes begin and the war resumes. Unless they have some ulterior motive, I do not understand why the Americans and the Israelis keep this masquerade going on. They know that whatever the Joseph Aoun government (now negotiating with Israel in Washington) does and says has no impact on, and is non-binding to, the pro-Iranian Shiites of Lebanon.
The bottom line is what I have always argued: Hezbollah will NEVER depose its weapons willingly, and regardless of whether or not Israel concedes to all its demands. Hezbollah is not motivated by restoring sovereignty or recovering occupied land. It is not be swayed by assurances or guarantees or any other real-world elements. Hezbollah is strictly motivated by a radical Islamist Shiite fundamentalist ideology based in Tehran; its entire existence, funding and arming come from Iran. Its 40+ years of existence has nothing to do with so-called Israeli-occupied land in the south. Liberation and resistance are just pretexts. Even if Israel withdraws tomorrow from all areas presumably under dispute in the south, Hezbollah will find another pretext to remain extant. Hezbollah and Iran are motivated by a real or perceived colonial rape of Palestine by Anglo-Saxon enemies, and is dedicated to avenging that rape. Hezbollah’s oft-declared objectives are to liberate Palestine and bring an end to the State of Israel. Everything else should be viewed from that perspective.
Which is why Lebanon has been ricocheting from one crisis to another, from one UN resolution to another, for close to 60 years. It seems that Israel will remain that itchy canker sore that will never heal, despite all the “normalization” talks and efforts that everyone hopelessly hopes for. All the “normalizations” that have occurred between Arab countries and Israel (Egypt 1979, Jordan 1994, and the string of Abraham Accords in recent years) have for the most part prevented wars but failed to provide any peace. Peace must not be just a cessation of hostilities (this is called a ceasefire); it must entail the free movement of people and goods.
Therefore, all the choreography on display in Washington about “firsts”, such as direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel and a hypothetical peace deal, are just propaganda destined to elevate Donald Trump as a peacemaker while in reality they are not expected to amount to much.
Lebanon and Israel went through the exact same diplomatic dance in the early 1980s. Like Hezbollah today, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) back then was “liberating” stuff in the south. After years of cross-border skirmishes, the Israelis invaded in 1982, pushed the PLO leadership out of the country, and made a deal with the government of then-president Amin Gemayel – a deal known as the May 1983 Accord that was supposed to end all conflict between the two countries. That accord was never implemented. There are many theories as to why it was never implemented. Some say Syria, which occupied half the country while Israel occupied the other half, and which had a tacit agreement with the Americans over control of Lebanon in exchange of peace on the Golan, rejected it. Other say that President Amin Gemayel was a coward who refused to sign, fearing for his life after his brother Bashir was assassinated by the Syrians. A very reliable source tells the writer that Gemayel confided to his close advisors that he refused to sign the May 1983 Accord because he did not wish “to open one door (with Israel) and close 20 doors (with hostile Arab countries)”. Yet others claim that the Americans (who sponsored the negotiations) decided to walk out of the May 1983 Accord at the end because the Israelis conveyed to them in retrospect that the Accord was globally more in favor of the Lebanese side and convinced the Americans to drop their support for it.
We are at a similar juncture, with Aoun replacing Gemayel, Hezbollah replacing the PLO, while radical Zionists remain in control of the Israeli government (Sharon in 1982 and Netanyahu in 2026), and a moronic Trump administration replacing the equally moronic Reagan administration. In 1983, the US Marines, French paratroopers, as well as Italian and British military contingents were in Beirut backing the Gemayel government. Israel was occupying half the country and the Syrian occupier of the other half. Syria did not fight the invading Israelis because of the 1974 understanding that Henry Kissinger sealed with Syria’s Assad: Do not bother Israel on the Golan and you can take Lebanon in exchange. The 1975 War in Lebanon began in earnest less than a year later.
The Lebanese population was overwhelmingly for the May 1983 agreement, and a pro-US president was in charge. All the stars were aligned for a successful completion and implementation of the May 1983 Accord. But everyone walked out at the last minute after a year of arduous negotiations. Today, a rather similar scenario is unfolding. Everyone says they want an agreement. But behind the curtains, the Americans and the Zionists are setting a trap for the Aoun government since they know that, without Hezbollah and Iran’s acquiescence, failure is the inevitable outcome of the negotiations. All they’ll have to do later is to blame the Aoun government for the failure, just as they did with Gemayel in 1983.
I do think that the Lebanese government is being bamboozled into negotiating an agreement that both the Israelis and the Americans plan on scuttling, while declaring that they exerted goodwill for peacemaking but that it was the Lebanese who failed to go through with it. Yes, the Lebanese government will NOT go through any deal they reach with the Zionists simply because 1- it does not have the military supremacy to eliminate Hezbollah, and 2- even if it could, it won’t confront Hezbollah because history will blame the Aoun government for starting a second civil war.
How can the Lebanese government negotiate an agreement as a sovereign state while it has no sovereignty, thanks to the Iranian occupation (i.e. Hezbollah) and the Israeli occupation in the south? Trump apparently forced Netanyahu’s hand into accepting the current ceasefire. In so doing, Trump plays the good cop and Netanyahu the bad cop to fool the Lebanese into accepting Israel’s terms. Alternatively, Trump may have announced the ceasefire to poke Netanyahu in the eye for having drawn him into an unwinnable war against Iran.
The current ceasefire of 10 days will not be extended. War will resume. Hezbollah, per Shiite mythology, is suicidal. Like Zionists, Shiites love the status of victims because it stirs pity and the sympathy of fools. Hezbollah will ONLY depose its arms by either:
- A direct invasion, like the 1982 invasion got rid of the PLO, which would take months and years and cause lots of casualties on both Lebanese and Israeli sides, or
- A very very long (measured in years) bombing campaign without a land invasion. It will cripple Lebanon, lead to civil war and conflict (Christian vs. Muslim), and cause many Lebanese casualties, while not ensuring a definitive end to the 50-year-long torment of tiny Lebanon by powerful Israel, Syria and Iran, and behind them the US and regional Arab powers.
As the dumb and blind Shiite supporters of Hezbollah are, once again, refugees from their villages in the south, they are settling in parts of the country that fear them. This displacement is not the first one, but this is looking more like a permanent one. All villages and houses in the south are being razed to the ground by Israel, making a return and rebuilding virtually unlikely any time soon. The longer these refugees remain away from their own lands, the more likely they will become permanent settlers among people who resent them. For example, as was the case with the 1948 Palestinian refugees whom everyone believed will “soon” return to their Palestinian villages out of which the Zionist terrorists forced them, there is no reason to doubt the same fate might be awaiting the displaced Lebanese Shiites since Israel is talking about creating an uninhabited buffer zone south of the Litani.
An example of things to come, a dispute has emerged over the establishment of a refugee camp for the displaced Shiites near Beirut Harbor, smack inside the Christian sector of Karantina. Fearing a repeat of the war in which the terrorized Christian population had to fight deadly battles in the 1970s to dislodge Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian fighters from so-called “refugee camps” in the heart of loyalist areas, many Sunni and Christian residents of Karantina are objecting to housing the displaced Shiites in or near their neighborhoods, and near such a vital economic lifeline that the Beirut harbor represents. The Shiites already control the only airport in the country. By and large, Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians prefer that the displaced Shiites settle in predominantly Shiite areas, like the Bekaa Valley and the Hermel regions where Hezbollah is firmly ensconced.
