Once again, Itamar Ben-Gvir staged his extremism at the Al-Aqsa compound, surrounded by a crowd of his fascist supporters, repeating his claim of Israel’s “exclusive ownership” over the site.
At the very same moment, while some sought to convince the Lebanese public that their leadership was engaged in “serious negotiations” with Israel aimed at defusing the crisis, Israel’s war machine continued its geopolitical assault, replicating in southern Lebanon the same lethal displacement strategy it has pursued in Gaza.
As I fear, this strategy may soon extend to other parts of the Levant, beginning with Lebanon and the occupied West Bank, and potentially reaching the openly declared ambitions embedded in some extremist Israeli interpretations of the “Greater Israel” map stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile.
With the gap now narrowing between the positions of the US administration and those of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly regarding Lebanon and the future of the eastern Mediterranean, it is difficult for any sober observer to take comfort in the reassurances offered by Lebanese officials about the current negotiating track and its eventual outcome.
Several factors, I would argue, have made the idea of negotiations with Israel easier to accept, at least for now.
First, the massive imbalance of power between Lebanon and Israel, and Israel’s virtually unlimited capacity to devastate Lebanon and tear the country apart.
Second, the existence of Sunni Muslim political cover for direct negotiations with Israel, unlike the May 1983 agreement that followed the 1982 invasion, which lacked such backing despite a few exceptions among traditional political leaders. The conduct of the Syrian regime, followed by Hezbollah’s dominance and the circumstances surrounding Rafik Hariri’s assassination, played a decisive role in pushing large segments of Lebanon’s Sunni community, along with a significant number of Druze, to reject what they came to view as Iranian hegemony and to demand the restoration of the Lebanese state, its army and its security institutions.
Third, the economic and financial collapse, which accelerated emigration, weakened institutions and productive sectors, and eroded the Lebanese people’s capacity to endure.
Fourth, an international order, financially, technologically and geopolitically, that has thus far strengthened forces aligned with the West, foremost among them Israel, at the expense of their adversaries.
Taken together, these factors have fueled optimism about the supposed benefits of direct negotiations with the most extremist government in Israel’s history under the sponsorship of one of the most right-wing US administrations. The ready-made response to critics has been: “What alternative do you propose?”
That argument is not without merit.
Yet, at the very least, the political history of Israel’s chief negotiator, Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, offers little reason for optimism about any genuine commitment to peace or coexistence. Netanyahu’s envoy to Washington is, in many ways, the mirror image of his biblical-ideologue counterpart Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel.
For those unfamiliar with him, Leiter is a US-born rabbi from Pennsylvania, a religious historian, a right-wing biblical commentator, and a settlement activist associated with the late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the anti-peace Kach movement. He lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron before moving to Alon Shvut in the southern West Bank.
Politically, he rose through several positions during Likud governments and at one stage served as an adviser to Ariel Sharon, the general who led Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. He later became part of Netanyahu’s inner circle.
This record is deeply revealing, especially when viewed through two fundamental realities: first, the special strategic relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv; and second, the close alignment between the Trump administration and its advisers, including Huckabee, on one side, and Netanyahu’s government and its network of American allies on the other.
These realities suggest that neither the Israeli negotiator nor the American sponsor truly believes in a lasting peace outside the framework of Israel’s expansionist vision, one perpetually justified, as always, under the banner of “self-defense.”
Of course, Israel will continue to argue that as long as non-state actors backed by foreign powers, particularly Iran, retain weapons, it cannot feel secure about the safety of its settlers, especially in border settlements. This argument resonates across much of the Western political establishment.
Combined with Tehran’s regional conduct over recent decades and its consequences across the Middle East, that narrative greatly facilitated the conditions for the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran.
And perhaps it has also given new momentum to plans aimed at fragmenting and partitioning the region itself!
