The natural but unspoken response of many of us to Israel’s “limited, localised and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, or, as others might put it, the invasion of a neighbouring country, will be to feel very sorry for the civilian casualties of the conflict but to thank God that it’s not us. The invasion plainly risks the escalation of the conflict, but poor, tortured Lebanon is usefully far away, no?
Well, actually, not that far. Just across the Mediterranean, in fact. And if the numbers of refugees fleeing Lebanon for Syria (in a curious reversal of the situation in 2015 during the Syrian civil war) escalate to a million people as a result of Israeli actions — the figure the Lebanese prime minister puts on the number of displaced people — then the situation will have a direct impact on us. Even the present estimate of 200,000 people displaced by the conflict is troubling.
