How can Lebanon tackle its tangled, dysfunctional relationship with Hezbollah without returning to domestic sectarian conflict? Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who has been accused by the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court of war crimes in Gaza, claims to have the answer: the Lebanese must “free” Lebanon from Hezbollah. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon,” he said in a video address, “before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
Netanyahu, who dismisses the accusations of the ICC, is openly threatening to inflict the same devastating military tactics used in Gaza upon the Lebanese population. If he really wanted to help the Lebanese deal with Hezbollah, he wouldn’t order his military to invade southern Lebanon and as a result breathe new life into the organisation. Netanyahu knows his history, yet he chooses to ignore it: Hezbollah was born in part to resist Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which began in 1982 and ended only in 2000. Give it that excuse again, and it will find a way to regroup by recruiting among a Shia community who won’t accept another Israeli occupation.
