The Arab Levant presents three models for addressing Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
There is the Lebanese model, which has entailed direct engagement since the day after the war began and rejecting any political solution to end it. However, this engagement has not had a tangible impact on Israel’s behavior in this war; indeed, Israel has escalated its assault and expanded the scope of the fighting, moving operations from Gaza to the West Bank.
As we know, this war poses risks for Lebanon that threaten the country’s existence at a time when, according to officials and army figures, the focus of Israel’s war is shifting north. That is happening amid broad communal divisions that make Lebanon fertile ground for potential total destruction that could complement the potential conflict, and amid an extraordinary economic crisis that is grinding the population. Meanwhile, the memory of those with a passion for war has run dry, as they refuse to remember that the war which began in 1975, and went on for 15 years, was caused by this very issue.
There is the Jordanian model. It is trying, in parallel with its consistent political and diplomatic defense of Gaza and the rights of Palestinians, to avoid getting involved in the war, which would annul the Wadi Araba peace treaty. However, as soon as something happens in Jordan, be it major or minor, those with a passion for war share their discovery of the "Jordanian masses’ appetite for a fight." We saw that following Maher Al-Jazi's operation, which, along with the anger that led to it, was understandable. It was also evident in interpretations of the (Brotherhood affiliated) Islamic Action Front’s strong electoral showing.
The Jordanian collective memory does not seem any better than that of the Lebanese, as silence shrouds the 1967 war that cost Jordan control of the West Bank and was followed, three years later, by a civil war that broke out for the same reason as the Lebanese war. That is not to mention how little concern we see for Jordan's economic, political, and demographic stability and its capacity to withstand the war it is being called on to wage.
As for the third model, it is the Syrian model. The regime acts as though there was no war in Gaza at all. This is despite the fact that Israel has escalated its strikes on Syria itself, which have become a chronic occurrence and have significantly escalated with the current war. Just a few days ago, the Masyaf strike set a new record in the war tally.
Here too, memory is similarly stunted, but it has the inverse effect: the warriors have remained as silent as locked cupboards about Syria's "central role" in the conflict with Israel, and the epic tales of Hafez al-Assad and his regime’s "steadfastness and confrontation," as well as the calamities that these epics brought upon Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. As long as Assad "stands with us," he is allowed privileges others are denied, and he was granted an exemption by Hezbollah's leader a few weeks ago.
Remarkably, however, one of the theories associated with this passion for war revolves around change and reform. According to all the war lovers, and per a long-standing tradition that had been established by leftists and was revived by Islamists, the Lebanese and Jordanian regimes are neither just nor patriotic; they are traditional allies of the (imperialist/crusader) West. That makes dragging them into an open conflict with Israel part of a broader and more comprehensive liberation program.
In this same implicit lexicon, however, the regime in Syria is patriotic and anti-imperialist, having inherited a robust and consistent military and security tradition of warding off Western influence and pushing social change “that benefits the broad masses.” Since this regime has achieved national liberation, it is better to avoid squandering its achievements in an open conflict. That is laughable enough, though the real joke is that, time and again, change and reform lead only to various forms of annihilation.
There are certainly many real reasons to express serious reservations regarding the Lebanese and Jordanian regimes, but the war enthusiasts have no other approach for addressing these shortcomings than to get rid of these two countries altogether by plunging them into lethal wars. As for Syria, where the regime has taken on the task of getting rid of Syria after having hollowed it out from within over a long period, the mission there has been accomplished, and there is no longer any need to drag the country into a conflict.
Such an experience leads to justified caution of these change advocates and what may seem, for a moment, like a sound critique they are making. However, it also leads us to be more understanding of what a conservative position in our political context might mean. Before being reactionary or non-reactionary, this conservatism is governed, above all else, by the preservation of life. In those with a passion for war, we are facing a bloc that cares neither for people, the country, nor life itself. In Palestine and its cause, they have found a pretext for implementing their program of annihilation and its incitement of auto-genocide after auto-genocide.
This behavior builds, perhaps, on a sort of modernized nomadism: shedding worldly concerns and ignoring human and social conditions, and eagerly and gleefully welcoming slaughter and suicide. In this extreme nihilism, we are only born when we die, and when we are born, we are born pure after a pure death.
