‘If Hezbollah loses in south Lebanon, then you’re going to have this ‘Greater Israel’ project kind of moving forward,’ warns Karim Makdisi  

ATHENS 

Israel’s escalating war on Lebanon, particularly the intensified attacks and ground invasion in its southern region, are all part of the historical Zionist objective of controlling south Lebanon and parts of the wider region, according to a prominent Lebanese analyst.

Even before there was the state of Israel, the Zionists were pushing for the British “to put the borders between Lebanon and Palestine at the time at the Litani River” as they saw it as part of their “Jewish homeland,” Karim Makdisi, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, told Anadolu.

“They’ve always had this interest to try to have some form of control over south Lebanon, whether it’s through occupation, annexation or through, in more recent times, a kind of demilitarization in the way of like the Sinai or these kinds of areas,” he said.

There is even the possibility of taking over southern Lebanon through illegal Israeli settlements, as in the occupied West Bank, as that has been on the agenda of extremists who are now in power in Israel, he added.

“So the Israeli intentions in Lebanon and south Lebanon have always been similar. Tactically it’s changed and even strategically it’s changed, but in terms of the overall objective, it’s the same,” said Makdisi.  

Trying to exploit sectarian fault lines

One strategic ploy of the Israelis would be to repeat their attempts at fanning sectarian divisions in Lebanon, according to Makdisi, by forcing the mass displacement of the Shia community.

“These attempts failed each time … and inter-sectarian solidarity remains strong during times of Israeli invasions,” he said.

“In general, people on the ground, there’s a lot more solidarity among all the different sects, among all the different Lebanese, because there’s a lot of anger towards the Israelis.”

Makdisi pointed out that conditions on the ground are also much different than past escalations, such as during the 1970s when Palestinian armed groups based in southern Lebanon fought the Israelis.

Today, the fight is being led by Hezbollah and other factions that emerged after 1981 as indigenous resistance groups, he said.

“So it’s a very local indigenous population that’s resisting against the Israelis, first against the Israeli occupation, and then against all the kind of existential threats that the Israelis pose to Lebanon,” he added.  

Assassination of Hezbollah leadership

According to Makdisi, Hezbollah’s controversial expansion and involvement in the Syrian civil war most likely exposed it to Israeli infiltration, which eventually led to the assassination of many senior figures, including Hassan Nasrallah.

The most important thing about the attacks on Hezbollah leaders is the timing of Israel’s assassination campaign, he said.

“We now know that Israel has been tracking Nasrallah for a long time. So they could’ve killed him five years ago, three years ago, two years ago, last year, two months ago, but they chose to kill him at the moment where there seems to have been an agreement for a 20-day truce that Nasrallah had … (and) Hezbollah had agreed to,” he said.

This, he asserted, is yet more proof that Israel is not interested in any kind of peaceful resolution in Lebanon, as is the case in Gaza.

On how the assassinations have impacted Hezbollah, Makdisi said they were massive blows “psychologically” and in terms of command and control, but “it’s important to to point out that the operations in South Lebanon are kind of independent of the commanders in Beirut.” 

Netanyahu ‘understood there was no US opposition’

While the official US position remained against an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Makdisi believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a kind of green light when he visited Washington in July.

“When Netanyahu came back from America in July, there was a big change. He obviously went to America in July, got that standing ovation in Congress, met people, realized that Biden was basically not only fully committed Zionist, but … his head is gone, and those around him, like Blinken, are totally committed Zionists. Harris is weak and Trump is sitting in the background waiting,” he said.

“He clearly … understood that there was not going to be any opposition to him, at least between now and the American elections.”

Now the US thinks that weakening Hezbollah would mean diminishing Iran’s regional power, said Makdisi.

He warned that Israel’s belligerent policies pose a threat to all countries in the Middle East, particularly with top officials like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich explicitly expressing expansionist ambitions to create what is known as ‘Greater Israel,’ which includes parts of several regional nations.

“That’s why South Lebanon, as a battleground, is so important. If Hezbollah loses in south Lebanon, then you’re going to have this ‘Greater Israel’ project kind of moving forward, and this is very dangerous for the whole area,” he said.

If Hezbollah wins, at the very least, there will be leverage to get Israelis to pull back and push for negotiations, while Lebanon can start its own internal negotiations for a better political system and balance moving forward, he added.

Regional actors, he said, do recognize that what the “Israelis are doing is overreaching, as they always do.”

“They push, they push, they push, they push, and they never stop … They don’t know ever when to stop, the Israelis,” he said.

“All countries, including Türkiye, should feel very threatened by the way Israel acts. It’s not that the Israelis are going to attack Türkiye. It’s more that the idea of a kind of destabilized region … is not in anybody’s interest. The only interest is the Israelis. It’s what they want. It’s what they like.”

Makdisi emphasized the need for Muslim and Arab countries to move “beyond just rhetoric,” calling for tangible steps and concerted pressure to force Israel into a cease-fire in both Gaza and Lebanon.