Last week, my esteemed colleague Hiba Nasr and Asharq News correspondent in Washington, wrote a post that reflected palpable anguish, on her account on "X,” about the receding shadow of the Lebanese state in her village in southern Lebanon after the army's withdrawal in the face of a new Israeli assault.
Hiba wrote about her tranquil village, nestled in the Wadi al-Taym valley and sheltered by the majesty of Mount Hermon, despairing at how the state, after having given residents the impression that they could have hope and dream again, was abandoning them again.
“It weighs heavily on us to be abandoned for decades, only to appear in the news as part of a conflict we never chose...
May we return...
May it be a nightmare that ends soon...”
Beyond the suffering and pain of the population native to this land, the Lebanese oscillate between a blame game and fears for the future. One segment finds comfort in addressing a world it had known for decades, decrying the constant marginalization of the state and in favor of Hezbollah, Iran's "Trojan horse."
This segment of the Lebanese population has always condemned reckless adventurism on the part of an armed force that is ideologically and structurally beholden to outside powers, and that has consistently failed to acknowledge the severe imbalance of power between its camp and its rivals. Accordingly, this segment believes that this force, Hezbollah, has offered the Israeli fundamentalist hardliners to implement their messianic ambitions by portraying their assault as legitimate "self-defense"... and eventually pursued "scorched earth" operations in preparation for seizing and settling the land.
This is precisely what has happened and continues to happen in what remains of Palestine. It is currently unfolding in Lebanon, and it is what the rest of the Arab Levant can expect.
On the other hand, another segment of the Lebanese population believes that Hezbollah should be understood as a Lebanese political condition, and in their view, while the party may have facilitated the task of the Israeli "propaganda machine" and helped justify its aggression, occupation, and expansionism, was not the cause of these actions.
From there, this segment argues that "pinning" all of Lebanon's suffering on Hezbollah's actions reflects a denial of reality and an ignorance of history. They point out that Hezbollah, as a "political-military" organization, did not exist before the Israeli occupation of 1982. The "Zionist project," for its part, came to light in the Swiss city of Basel in 1897, and it began to be practically implemented with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Its execution on the ground (through funding, sponsorship, complicity, and militarization) proceeded over the following decades until the establishment of the "State of Israel" in the spring of 1948.
And while many believe that Arab "naivety" in 1948, then in 1956, then in 1967, was directly responsible for Israel's growing and expanding footprint, they deny crucial historical developments staring us in the face, chief among them that this entity was never, at any point, alone or isolated. Israel, even before it became a powerful state that the nations of the world raced to recognize, was an integral actor among the powers controlling the world. Each of these powers, in turn, provided it with all the foundations for survival and prosperity: financial assistance, armament, unconditional political support, and, today, the greatest technological arsenal humanity has ever known.
It is perhaps this reality that led Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon his customary claim of "victimhood". After having mastered this narrative better than any of his predecessors, he is now boasting, with a remarkable arrogance, that Israel has become a major regional power, and is on its way to becoming a major global power that will set its sights on Turkiye once it is done with Iran...
This is discourse that none of us had ever heard from an Israeli leader before, but it is understandable, for a number of reasons, most notably:
Netanyahu's confidence in the success of Israeli "lobbies" across the world. They have managed to exert immense influence on political decision-making. While the role of American lobbies such as AIPAC has been well known for a long time, similar lobbies have had no less success in Europe. Even in Canada and Australia, which are not governed by the right, we find leaders submissively returning to court Netanyahu's favor right after every crisis of conscience.
He is reassured that the expansionist far right has truly come to represent the majority of the Israelis. The Israeli public supports expansion, massacres, and occupations wherever its army can reach. The evidence is now clear in both the West Bank and Lebanon, after the world witnessed the horrors of Gaza.
Moreover, the Israeli prime minister is now certain that there are no international or regional obstacles to the fulfillment of his ambitions. The moral compass has been lost, and the once "central" Palestinian cause has evaporated.
Finally, the Israeli occupation and annexation "machine" monopolizes the most advanced artificial intelligence technologies, and all the informational and combat capabilities that follow (surveillance, scanning, storage, and cyber analysis), to say nothing about the potential to apply such tools on medicine, genetics, epidemiology, and microbiology.
In light of all this, it is no longer surprising that Netanyahu feels invincible and behaves with unprecedented hubris. How could he not when we now even hear those who had once claimed to be his opponents and adversaries, such as Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, voice positions no less extreme and abrasive than his own.
