Israel focuses on uprooting Hezbollah

After a huge assault on Lebanon, Israel began a land invasion of its northern neighbor. Troops entered southern Lebanon to drive Hezbollah back outside the Litani River, 29 kilometers from the Israeli border. The aim was to enable the coming back of some 60,000 displaced Israelis to their homes in northern Israel. By eliminating Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and several of his commanders, Israel has already dealt a serious shock to the group. This has improved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s profile, notwithstanding most Israelis wanting to see him depart. Israel is now going to replicate its Gaza operations in Lebanon, to reorganize the Middle East to its benefit. However, it has bitten off more than it can chew. Israel has had a failed record of success here before. In 1982, it invaded Lebanon as far as the capital Beirut in an endeavor to eradicate the PLO. It was trying to suffocate the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem that had existed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Hezbollah came into being in 1982 with the assistance of the Islamic government in Iran. Israel enabled its Lebanese Christian allies to finish hundreds of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. It also forced the PLO to shift its headquarters from Beirut to Tunisia. Israel then carved out a security zone to the north of its border but confronted stiff resistance from Hezbollah. As Israeli fatalities mounted, the then-prime minister Ehud Barak made a one-sided withdrawal in 2000. The pullout improved Hezbollah’s reputation and strength as a daunting political and paramilitary force against Israel and its allies. Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 in a bid to exterminate Hezbollah. It failed to achieve its goal. After 34 days of bloody fighting and considerable costs for both sides, it accepted a United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution, with Hezbollah emerging as victorious. Netanyahu is confident of victory this time. He also has the support of his extremist ministers, especially those of national security, finance, and defense. He depends on their backing for his national political survival. Israel has more weapons than ever before. It displayed it in the Gaza war revenging Hamas for killing more than 1,000 Israelis and abducting some 240 Israeli and foreign nationals. In scorched-earth operations, the Israel Defense Forces have flattened rows of the Gaza Strip and killed more than forty thousand of its civilians, 35% of them were children, with two million more displaced. In this, the Netanyahu leadership has overlooked the standards of fighting, international humanitarian law, resolution for a ceasefire of the UN Security Council, and the warning of the International Court of Justice ruling. Behind strengthening Israel’s insolent stand has been the United States’ ironclad military, financial, and economic support of Israel. The United States gave a further US$8.7 billion aid package in support of Israel’s Lebanon crusade. Netanyahu has had no convincing reason even to be agreeable to Washington’s calls for control or ceasefire. Will this time be different? Israel’s nuclear capability fortifies Netanyahu’s self-assurance still further. Even though undeclared, Israel supposedly keeps nuclear weapons in a large number for regional deterrence and military hegemony in the region. Netanyahu and his supporters have claimed their use of top-heavy force to be valid in self-defense against what it calls the terrorist tentacles (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah). With the US and several of its Western and regional Arab allies having shared her bearing, Israel is these days dedicated once more to the incomplete business of uprooting Hezbollah. Hezbollah forms a key element of Iran’s axis of resistance. Netanyahu knows destroying the group would mean destroying Iran’s regional security system.