U.S. shuttle diplomacy in Lebanon is not designed to resolve the situation there, or get Israel to stop the bombing, which Lebanon so urgently needs. Instead, the U.S. goal is to use Israel’s massive carpet bombing of Lebanon’s civilian areas as leverage to bring about regime change there.
Washington is trying to force presidential elections under the Israeli gun and install a U.S. client as Lebanon’s president. It and its proxy force, Israel, seek to reduce the power of Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance, which is strong in the government as well as on the ground, to destroy it if all possible, and if that doesn’t work, to foment civil war in Lebanon.
On Oct. 22 State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel explained that “The U.S. goal is to get the government and country of Lebanon to a place where it is out of the stranglehold of Hezbollah.”
Lebanese government officials have explained to U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein that to have elections they would have to reconvene Parliament. They asked Hochstein to guarantee that Israel wouldn’t bomb a convened Parliament, as Hezbollah, with its Shia and Christian allies, has 68 of the 128 seats in Parliament. The U.S. envoy would not offer this guarantee.
Lebanese Army never defended Lebanese sovereignty
The U.S. wants to install as President its man, the head of the Lebanese Army, Joseph Aoun. This is because the U.S. controls the Lebanese Army. It sponsors, arms it, and has trained more than 32,000 Lebanese troops. For years the U.S. has even operated a proxy commando unit connected with the Army run by U.S. Special Operations forces and codename Lion Hunter.
Washington supplies the Lebanese Army with weapons that are three generations behind with many being obsolete. This is to make sure it could never mount a significant confrontation against Israel, which the Pentagon gives the latest and best spyware and armament. The Lebanese army is not even permitted by the U.S. to fight back when fired upon by Israel.
The Lebanese Army is set up as a force to counter domestic rebellion, not to defend Lebanon. In fact, it has never defended Lebanese sovereignty from external threats. Currently the Lebanese Army has evacuated from the south, where the fighting is, and retreated to Lebanon’s north. It is standing back and leaving it to Hezbollah fighters to confront the Israeli bombings and ground invasion.
Mass targeting of civilians
The most immediate need in Lebanon is not new elections, but for Israel to stop the bombing. Since Sept. 23, Israel’s has indiscriminately bombed and flattened whole villages in the south, and repeatedly pounded southern Beirut and the Bekka Valley. It has killed and wounded thousands and made more than a million people, a fifth of the country’s population, refugees with nowhere to go.
It flattened six apartment buildings in a densely populated Beirut neighborhood to assassinate one man, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and continues to bomb homes there. It deliberately targets journalists and health care personnel, coming back for second bombings to hit rescuers. It bombs hospitals, claiming they are military targets.
Its pager and walkie-talkie explosions terrorized the civilian population as hundreds of administrators, medical personnel, children in their homes, bystanders in markets and others lost eyes and hands.
It didn’t start in October
The western powers and their corporate media heap the blame on Hezbollah for starting the aggression because on Oct 8, 2023, it began firing rockets at military targets in Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in Gaza. They conveniently forget that the west has been assaulting Lebanon since 1916, when it carved Western Asia into colonies. Each time the people of Lebanon have risen to assert their right to independence and self-determination foreign powers sent in troops or armed proxies to stop them.
The U.S direct interference began in 1958 when it sent in the Marines to stop the overthrow of a pro-West government it installed there.
Israel, the Pentagon’s proxy, has bombed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in Lebanon at will for decades, especially those towns, villages and Palestinian refugee camps in the south. Israel has outright invaded six times. Its 1982 invasion killed 20,000, besieged Beirut for two months, and then occupied south Lebanon for 18 years.
Between 1968 and 1973 alone Israel staged 2,000 commando raids into Lebanon, entering at will, assassinating people it disapproved of, setting off car bombs and letter bombs, and destroying property. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was part of such a terror squad that in 1968 that set fire to the entire fleet of the civilian aircraft in the Beirut airport.
All this occurred before Hezbollah or Hamas even existed. In fact, Hezbollah was formed to counter the Israeli bombings and occupation of south Lebanon. It has since twice liberated Lebanon from Israel, in 2000 and 2006. It’s deterrence kept south Lebanon free of Israeli bombing from 2006 to last year. This was a first for Lebanon. The group is viewed in the Arab world as “the most important and effective Arab resistance movement in the history of the Arab resistance to Israel,” according to As’ad Abukhalil, Lebanese political analyst.
Israel conditions, Hezbollah conditions for a ceasefire
Though weakened from Israeli attacks, Hezbollah continues to hit military targets in Israel, as it holds off an Israeli onslaught on the ground. It says it will stop when Israel ends its war on Gaza. Israel’s conditions for cease fire in Lebanon are allowing Israel to operate inside Lebanese territory at will and freedom of movement for Israel’s air force in Lebanon’s airspace. This is exactly what Israel did in the decades before there was a Hezbollah.
Fomenting civil war
Meanwhile, On Oct. 9 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin issued Lebanon an ultimatum. “The country can have peace but only if the people rise up against Hezbollah.” This is an attempt to foment a civil war. It follows a warning by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in June that Israel could inflict “massive damage” on Lebanon and sent it “back to the Stone Age.” Underscore these threats, Israel bombed Aitou, a small Christian village in the north because it had accepted and housed Shia refugees fleeing the bombings in the south.
There are outright fascists in Lebanon who would certainly like to see a pro-Israel government there. There is also a corrupt elite in the payroll of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. who are constantly badmouthing Hezbollah and trying to instigate sectarian divisions among Lebanon’s 18 religious groups. But will Israel be able to instigate a civil war?
Many factors mitigate against this.
This is not the 1980s. People know that Israel played a huge negative role in the civil war of 1975-90, and is openly trying to instigate another one. No Lebanese family was untouched by that war, which dragged on for 15 years, resulted in 150, 000 Lebanese deaths and huge suffering.
In Lebanon right now there is a lot of solidarity on the ground. The sheer savagery and depravity of the Israeli assault on Gaza has united the people of Lebanon as Arabs, and caused them to support Hezbollah’s solidarity action. The solidarity is not just based in the Shia communities, where Hezbollah is based, and which are about 30% of the population, it is also among Christian, Sunis and Druze– all religious secs. They have opened their hearts and their homes to the refugees streaming north from Israeli carpet bombing. They see the whole country as under attack from Israel, and respect the men who are defending it.
Hezbollah is sanctions by the U.S. and its fighters sneeringly labeled in the media here as “Iran proxies.” This media doesn’t mention that the fighters are defending their home towns, where their ancestors have lived for millennia, and where some have had to rebuild their homes as many as ten times over the years due to Israeli attacks.
Today these fighters have the support of many in all Lebanon’s communities who know that in all of Lebanon’s history resistance fighters are the only ones who have pushed back Israeli attacks and defended the country. The people of Lebanon are rooting for them to push Israel back once again, and cheering them on for best success.
Source of Map: Freepik.
