The history of Israel’s past decades in Lebanon is one of many battles won that gave way to strategic defeats, the kind that lead to losing wars. In 1982, Israeli troops managed to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the Arab country, but that invasion led to the birth of Hezbollah, whose guerrilla war partly forced the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 and its new withdrawal after the brief 2006 war.
The blows dealt in the last two weeks by Israel to that organization, which culminated on Friday with the assassination of its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, and with the new ground invasion of Lebanon now open an unpredictable scenario, after the launch by Iran this Tuesday of some 200 missiles on Israeli territory. If the announced Israeli retaliation triggers an open regional war, that conflict would not only sentence the collapse of the post-World War II world order in the eyes of many inhabitants of the planet. It would also definitively bury the utopia of equity and the rule of international law in relations between States, of which until now the West presented itself as the champion.
Since Israel’s war in Gaza began, which has already caused more than 41,000 deaths, “no actor,” especially in the West, “has been able to stop an extremist and warmongering government like the Israeli one, which is dedicated to attacking its neighbors,” says expert analyst in Middle East international relations Haizam Amirah Fernández. This situation underlines the difference between the “just cry in the sky” that the international community raised after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the “thunderous silence” after the Israeli announcement of a similar aggression against Lebanon, something that, in the global south, “It is seen and observed” as a flagrant “double standard” that deepens Western discredit.
Neither a United States that has given “total support” to Israel nor a European Union paralyzed by the equally strong support for that country from Germany and “from regimes like that of [Viktor] Orbán,” the specialist emphasizes, nor have the supranational organization that emerged from the world order now in question, the United Nations, managed to contain Israel. This despite the fact that this country “has crossed all the red lines” pursuing the objective, the expert emphasizes, of “avoiding a just peace” in the Middle East that respects the right to free self-determination of the Palestinians, recognized by the UN. .
The paralysis of the executive body of that organization, the Security Council — to which Spain requested an urgent meeting on Lebanon this Tuesday — is the result of this distribution of power now in decline, in which the five winners of World War II — The United States, France, Russia, China and the United Kingdom—block any condemnation that goes against their interests or those of their allies by exercising their veto privilege. In the case of the United States to protect Israel, something it has done repeatedly since the start of the war in Gaza. This blockade has left the United Nations powerless to stop that conflict. The right to veto, says Amirah Fernández, “prevents the United Nations from fulfilling its main mandate, which is to preserve international peace and security.”
The “global cry” for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is reflected, however, in the majority support expressed in the votes of the United Nations General Assembly. In that forum, “the majority of the planet’s inhabitants” have supported this cessation of hostilities that Washington later vetoed in the Security Council. Even in the United States “there is a majority of Democratic voters calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, according to polls.” If a war breaks out in the Middle East, “that will be the legacy of [Joe]Biden”, an inheritance that can “contribute to a victory for Donald Trump [en las elecciones] on November 5,” predicts the specialist.
Meanwhile, the powers that aspire to counteract Washington’s hegemonic power, especially Russia and China, “are making their plans to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them,” says Amirah Fernández. On one level they have already obtained a great victory: the speech. The Western narrative on human rights is now considered a mere manifestation of “hypocrisy” by many in the global south.
On September 5, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim offered an example. In the presence of the pleased Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Vladivostok, he alluded to how Westerners “were no longer authorized” to teach “human rights” lessons to southern countries while condoning “genocide” in Gaza. What Middle East expert historian Jorge Ramos Tolosa, author of several books on Palestine, defines as the “cynicism” of a North that protects the “impunity of a State capable of attacking five countries simultaneously—Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen , Syria and Iraq—without there being a response,” demonstrates in his opinion “the weakness of the United States and the EU,” impotent in the face of what is considered the most far-right government in the history of Israel, that of Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and now in Lebanon,” analyzes the historian, are “further destroying the reputation of [los países] of the North Atlantic, based largely on its political-military power.” Faced with this, “gradually, the power of the global south, especially [del grupo de países emergentes] of the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [a la que pertenecen Rusia y China]it is getting stronger.” Moscow on Tuesday “firmly condemned the attack on Lebanon” and urged Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanese territory, going much further than any Western country. Even a pariah state like North Korea, which is seeking closer ties with Iran, has condemned what it described as “Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon.”
I hate future
Even if the Iranian attack does not trigger the Israeli retaliation that Netanyahu has threatened and the extension of the conflict is avoided, the invasion of its neighbor may not have the expected result for Israel. That country “has a history of military incursions into Lebanon that have only served to make its opponents stronger in the long term,” highlights an analysis by political scientists Vanessa Newby and Chiara Ruffa, published in The Conversation. These experts recall that, in its successive invasions, “Israel has shown itself incapable of successfully occupying the slightest portion of Lebanese territory.”
With Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah assassinated; With the group’s communications infiltrated, and hundreds of its militants and civilians mutilated by the explosion of electronic devices, the party-militia has suffered one of the most serious blows in its history. This is not the same as assuming that this organization, deeply rooted in Lebanese institutions, economy and society, has been eradicated. It was not in 2006, in the 34-day incursion by Israeli troops, despite Israel’s overwhelming military superiority. And now, Amirah Fernández points out, the militia is better armed.
On Tuesday morning, the Israeli army’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, acknowledged on the social network The outcome of the Israeli ground invasion is unclear. From it we cannot expect, the expert emphasizes, a new Middle East “where Israel does and undoes as it pleases.”
This Israeli incursion into Lebanon and, if it breaks out, an open war with Iran involving the United States may also sow the seeds of more future hatred. CNN analyst Nick Paton Walsh recalled on September 23 that the West should “take into account the lesson that NATO gradually learned in Afghanistan”: that killing enemies leaves many “angry and radicalized children” with whom Afterwards it is impossible to negotiate. Israel, Walsh stressed, “flaunts its magic in war and is able to impose ruthless costs while turning a blind eye to civilian casualties.” However, “it is not clear what path he sees ahead.” The historian Ramos Tolosa describes that country as a “lost Goliath” that, by maintaining its “genocide in Gaza” and attacking its neighbors, “threatens its own survival.”
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