The level of anxiety is rising among the Lebanese in general, and southerners in particular, with fear of what is coming, which is no longer unknown. The Israeli plan has become clear in the statements of Israeli officials, while Lebanon lives a bitter reality torn by the imbalance of political balances and internal division, from the "Tampa" military negotiations to the "Dahr al-Baidar explosives."
At this moment Walid Jumblatt broke his silence and told Hezbollah what many have not said plainly: "Enough of the south's ruin." He warned of the possibility of an expansion of Israeli operations, saying that Hezbollah's secretary-general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has no right to embroil Lebanon once again in wars that have nothing to do with it.
Jumblatt does not hesitate to say things plainly. Agree with him or disagree, he brings you to the point of convergence at the moment of disagreement, and may go to disagreement at the moment of convergence. He takes care of his community in difficult moments, even when he departs from some of its positions or takes positions that may make him less influential. He refuses to let the Druze go where populism and present circumstances push them, and holds to his positions even when they summon the nostalgia of history.
Jumblatt's boldness needs a matching boldness among the representatives of the Shiite community. It needs Speaker Nabih Berri, his companion on the road, to come closer to this position.
War does not threaten Lebanon with destruction alone. It opens the door to the possibility of losing parts of its geography and turning Greater Lebanon into a lesser Lebanon. The Shiite community could lose its geography, and with it its demography, and become another diaspora, like the Palestinians of 1948, though the historical circumstances differ. Then the world was divided and governed by bipolarity, and the Palestinians obtained a UN resolution on the right of return. Today, it seems, the imbalance of global power and unipolarity give Israel full capacity to impose what it wants on the Lebanese.
What is happening in south Lebanon cannot be separated from what is happening in south Syria. The Israeli advance south of Quneitra and the movements along the "Sufa 53" line raise fears of a project that goes beyond securing borders to reshaping regional geography. The hypothesis emerges that the Israeli political mind seeks to cut the corridors linking the Gulf and Türkiye to Europe through Syria and on to the Mediterranean.
From here, the war, if it extends from south Syria to south Lebanon, from the "Sufa 53" line to the "Zahrani refinery," could become part of the plans for an "expanded Israel," which it is feared would annex parts of south Lebanon and south Syria to its geographic and security sphere.
Tel Aviv's efforts to impose an "expanded Israel" bring back the memory of 1920, when the birth of the state of "Greater Lebanon" was proclaimed. At that time, according to the southern historian Mundhir Jaber, Britain tried to sever south Lebanon from Greater Lebanon and attach it to northern Palestine, in the context of its contest with the French mandate over the geographic divisions that followed the breakup of the Ottoman state, as well as the Balfour Declaration project. It armed Shiite groups that rejected the proclamation of Greater Lebanon and demanded to remain in Greater Syria, against Christian groups that supported the Lebanese entity, and the former fell into the trap of what London was then concealing. What is worrying is that this position could repeat itself now, in different contexts, but with the same aim.
And so, "advice is worth a camel": that is what Walid Jumblatt is saying. It means the matter requires a clear, frank public position from the Shiite community refusing to give the Israeli enemy a pretext to launch a new war. That war, if it comes, will bring great losses, and may alter history and geography together. Avoiding it is a national and historic responsibility, because the survival of Lebanon and of the south matters more than any partisan or doctrinal calculation.
