Israell’s Aggression Spreads to Lebanon
Israel’s war on Gaza is metastasizing like a cancer into a broader regional war that will result in more civilian deaths and the further empowerment of ethnic and theocratic nationalists in Israel and across the Middle East.
As we approach a year of fighting in Gaza and the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, a year that has left more than 41,000 Palestinians dead and nearly 100,000 wounded, Israel has expanded its assault and is now targeting Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks that have driven 60,000 Israelis from their homes.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet have apparently dismissed cease-fire negotiations with Hezbollah, describing the “U.S.-French proposal” as a nonstarter.
"The news about a so-called directive to moderate the fighting in the north is also the opposite of the truth,” a statement said, adding that “The prime minister instructed the IDF to continue fighting with full force, and according to the plans that were presented to him.”
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Israel says troops are preparing for a possible ground incursion in Lebanon
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The BBC reports that “a third of Lebanon’s population come from families that have already fled their homes at least once, either in Syria or many years ago on land that now forms part of Israel, Gaza or the occupied West Bank.” And Israel’s bombing campaign — and impending ground invasion — are forcing more people to flee their homes, putting “Lebanon on the brink.”
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“There is no real option but to end this enormous aerial campaign against Lebanon, and of course Hezbollah to stop with these indiscriminate rockets going into Israel,” Eglund said.
That is not enough, though. What we are witnessing is not new. Israel invaded and occupied southern Lebanon through much of the 1980s and 1990s. It has occupied the West Bank and Gaza for much longer. Its earliest arguments for doing so were strategic, part of a plan to create a buffer between the new nation and hostile neighbors. That history is contested, of course, and Israel’s actions from its inception have helped create the tensions that continue to exist, and that have been exacerbated by a shift from secular leaders to a hard-right coalition of proto-fascists and theocrats who are bent on establishing a “Greater Israel” that includes the Occupied Territories and parts of other Middle Eastern states.
Israel’s actions — and the rationale of its governing elite — closely parallel those of Vladimir Putin and Russia in Ukraine. Putin argues that Ukraine is part of a greater Russia, that it was never independent.
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The comparison might seem a stretch, but I think it is supported by an honest retelling of the history that takes into account not just Israeli voices but Palestinian voices, as well, and allow us to address the largely moral questions at the center of a conflict that goes back more than a century and that has roots that go back even farther…
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