Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Saturday (28) that killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a step towards changing ‘the balance of power in the region for years to come’. Israel’s leader sees an opportunity opening for a fundamental reconfiguration of power in the Middle East and can assume that Hezbollah is mortally wounded. However, total victory is elusive, and those who get what they want often live to regret it.
Since September 17, Israel has dealt one blow after another against the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon — first the pager and walkie-talkie explosions, then a massive airstrike in south Beirut that killed senior commander Ibrahim Aqil ( along with at least two dozen civilians), followed three days later by the start of a brutal bombing campaign. By Friday night – when Nasrallah was killed in a bombing that destroyed several buildings – Hezbollah’s senior leadership had been almost completely eliminated.
However, recent history offers only bitter lessons for Israeli leaders — and others — who harbor grand ambitions for tectonic shifts in Lebanon and the Middle East at large. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the aim of crushing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Furthermore, he hoped to establish a malleable Christian-dominated government in Beirut and expel Syrian forces from the country. Failed on all three.
Yes, Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon were forced to leave the country under an American-brokered deal that sent them into exile in Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere. But the aim of crushing Palestinian national aspirations together with the PLO failed. Five years later, the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, broke out in Gaza and spread to the West Bank. Today, Palestinians are as adamantine and restless as they have ever been in their rejection of Israeli occupation.
Israel’s main ally in Lebanon at the time of the invasion was Bashir Al-Gemayel, a Maronite Christian militia leader who was elected by parliament but before taking office was assassinated in a massive explosion in east Beirut. His brother, Amin, replaced him, and under his leadership and with active American involvement and encouragement, in May 1983, Lebanon and Israel signed an agreement to establish normal bilateral relations. Faced with intense opposition, the government fell the following February and the agreement was soon revoked.
The US, which had sent troops to Beirut following the Sabra-Shatila massacres in September 1982, withdrew after its embassy was bombed twice, along with US Marine and French army barracks in October 1983. Syrians, who had entered Lebanon in 1976 as a ‘deterrent force’ under an Arab League mandate, did not leave until 2005, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri.
Perhaps the most significant result of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah, which went on to wage a relentless guerrilla war that forced Israel to unilaterally withdraw from southern Lebanon – significantly the first and only time that an Arab military force had succeeded in successfully push Israel to retreat from Arab lands. This new group, with the help of Iran, proved to be far more lethal and effective than the Palestinian militants that Israel had successfully expelled. Hezbollah continued to fight Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 war, and in the years since has only grown stronger, with significant Iranian aid.
Today, Hezbollah is weakened and in disarray, and clearly infiltrated by Israeli intelligence – but even so, it would be premature to write its epitaph.
In addition to Lebanon and Israel, there is the example of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, a lesson in the wages of unbridled hubris. As the Iraqi army crumbled and American troops rushed to Baghdad, the George W. Bush administration entertained fantasies that the fall of Saddam Hussein would lead to the overthrow of regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and spark a flowering of liberal democracies throughout the region.
Instead, the American occupation of Iraq descended into a bloodbath of sectarian violence, in which the US paid dearly in blood and treasure, and the people of Iraq even more so. Saddam Hussein’s death allowed Iran to spread its influence into the heart of the political establishment in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda, destroyed by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, was reborn in Iraq’s Sunni triangle and eventually morphed into the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
As I write this, I see smoke rising from the devastated southern suburbs of Beirut and I am reminded of the words of then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, said that all the bloodshed and destruction that we were witnessing then were ‘the birth pangs of the new Middle East’. Beware of those who promise a new dawn, the birth of a new Middle East, a new balance of power in the region. Lebanon is a microcosm of everything that can go wrong. It is the land of unintended consequences.
This content was originally published in Analysis: Israel seeks to change the balance of power in the Middle East, but the story raises a warning on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
