Would you like to reprint this translation on your platform? Please make sure to read our How to Use and Distribute page first

Make no mistake, this is not the Third Lebanon War


The "Northern Arrows" operation is the continuation of the war in Gaza by other means. When [the government] fails to bring the residents of the north [of Israel] home, we are fed with pictures of the evacuees in Lebanon

By Yoav Hareven

Editor Maayan Galili

Translation by Yoav Hareven with minor edits by Lior Suchoy

Date of original publication: 25/9/2024

Original Hebrew text: https://www.rosamedia.org/episodes/articles/53

In the past week, Israel has expanded the war [with Lebanon – LS] in the North [of Israel – LS]. Loyal to its tradition, the IDF name generator hastened and named the series of military operations: Northern Arrows. It is tempting to call this operation the Third Lebanon War, but this would be an error in understanding the reality [on the ground – LS]. The Israeli government does not seek an Oranim 2.0 plan [see comment below – LS], nor an improved 1701 resolution [the UN resolution which ended the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006 – LS], but rather the continuation of the war in the Gaza Strip by other means. The false slogans about the results that military pressure will bring, the dehumanisation of innocent civilians, and the hubris that makes the decision-makers think that the region can be engineered to divide and rule according to their whims - were all transferred from the South [of Israel, i.e. from Gaza – LS] to the North [of Isreal, i.e. to Lebanon – LS].

Moreover, the escalation in the North [i.e. Lebanon – LS] is not only a direct continuation of the war in the South [i.e. Gaza – LS], it also complements it. In less than a week, it overshadowed the public outrage that erupted after the murder of the six [Israeli] hostages [held by Hamas in Gaza – LS] at the end of August, which only a few weeks ago led to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets, a general strike, and calls for an end to the war even from elements in the opposition from the extreme centre, such as Yair Lapid [leader of the opposition – LS]. [It is the – LS] same Lapid who hastened in recent days to back the government and the security forces. Benny Gantz [head of an opposition party – LS] voluntarily backed a ground invasion into Lebanon, and greater than all was Yair Golan [leader of the left-of-centre opposition party – LS], who called for the occupation of the mountain ranges on the other side of the northern border [of Israel – LS]. In the absence of any effective opposition, there is nothing that will prevent the government from continuing to deteriorate the situation and lead us to new abysses of destruction.

If there are no houses, let them eat pictures

In an interview given by Itamar Ben-Gvir [far-right leader and the national security minister – LS] a few weeks before the October 7th attack, the minister complained that the media did not present the "positive things" he does. The interviewer pointed out to him that "every two days there are terrorist attacks and murders" and [that on the public agenda are – LS] "a judicial revolution and a wave of terrorism". In response, Ben-Gvir said, "We [already – LS] killed more terrorists than the previous government killed all of last year. I think that if we double the number of terrorists killed, it will be a deterrent”. Needless to say, In Ben-Gvir’s eyes terrorists is a synonym for Arabs, but a year into the war - the concept that security is measured by the people the state killed and not by the people whose lives it saved is not only the view of this pyromaniac minister, but has become the quasi-official policy of the Israeli government, with the de facto backing of most of the opposition parties.

After the 'conflict management' policy [see comment below – LS] collapsed on all of us on October 7th, the Israeli right rushed to adopt the 'decisive resolution to the conflict [by force – LS]' policy, created by the ideologic settler right. Despite the fantasies of the right about population transfers and genocide of the entire Palestinian people, it is not really possible to "resolve" the conflict [by force – LS]. The transition from the concept of ' conflict management' to the concept of 'decisive resolution to the conflict [by force – LS]' manifests itself in the transition from maintaining the impression of a status quo, to maintaining the impression of ‘winning’. Ben-Gvir's quote above demonstrates that point: the impression of winning is maintained as long as 'we' lead and 'the other side' suffers more. The pictures of the convoys of citizens fleeing from southern Lebanon last week elicited the same exclamations of enthusiasm from the government’s non-official spokespeople as the pictures of Gazans fleeing to the south [of Gaza] and to the displaced camps. On Monday, Shlomo Filber, known to be close to Netanyahu, tweeted a short tweet expressing the Ben-Gvir-ish impression of 'victory', and wrote: "The balance is starting to change - it seems that right now there are already more Lebanese evacuees in southern Lebanon than Israelis evacuated from the north [of Israel – LS]." In the distorted view of the government’s spokespeople, the residents of the North, who have been evacuated from their homes for almost a year, are supposed to draw confidence from pictures of evacuated citizens on the other side of the border. If you have no house - eat pictures [of refugees – LS].

How to stop a perpetual war

The point that is important to understand in relation to this dynamic, is that despite what might be the semantic intuition - perpetual war does not contradict the concept of ‘resolution by force', on the contrary. Not only is the only condition that the right has to meet in order to 'win' [in a perpetual war – LS] that on the other side of the fence, there will be more death, displacement and suffering but perpetual war, like the [type which results from a – LS] ‘conflict management' policy, leaves the boundaries of the political debate within the range of the use of military force and restraint. The government's complete failure to provide security for its citizens is continuously enabled by the opposition leaders who accept these boundaries and in fact almost all of the right's basic assumptions. This is due, among other things, to the fact that for historical and sociological reasons. The Jewish opposition parties identify themselves with the senior members of the security establishment and therefore rush to back every decision and action of this establishment. This automatic backup was morally and politically wrong for years, but today - when the senior officials of the security establishment are invested in the war up to their necks, in the hope of regaining the reputation that was lost on October 7th, for themselves and for the security establishment - this is a political reflex lacking any logic. The automatic backing [of the government’s actions – LS] leads to a situation where the only criticism of the war policy comes from the right, and as long as this is the case - ridiculous as it is - the conclusion will continue to be that [Israel – LS] just has to bang its heads harder against the wall.

In the South and the North [i.e. Gaza and Lebanon – LS], getting out of the abyss will only be possible by producing alternatives that go beyond the range of ideas ranging from using military force and restraint. The answer to the new policy of perpetual war cannot be a return to the policy of the annual rounds of war. The answer to the right-wing divide-and-rule policy cannot be fantasising about a rosy "day after" in the Gaza Strip while continuing the occupation and apartheid on the other side of the wall. The answer to military adventures throughout the Middle East in a quest to engineer the region a la Sykes-Picot cannot be "modest" excursions a la George Bush. The first step must be to end the war immediately. This land is already saturated with blood because millions of people are not going to disappear, and because after dispersing the smoke screen of slogans, propaganda and exploding pagers - it becomes clear, once again, that only the end of the war will lead to the return of all the hostages and evacuated residents of the north [of Israel – LS] to their homes. This is also the key, the only one, to an arrangement that will bring real security to the northern border. It will be possible to reach such an arrangement following months of bloody war, or years of occupation and maintaining "security zones" [see comment below – LS] of various kinds. But it is desirable to spare the bereaved parents, orphans and future widows, save those who can still be saved and rehabilitate what can still be rehabilitated. After that, we can and should start thinking about a different future for us and our children. One that doesn't include another October 7th and horrendous wars, and doesn’t settle for simply going back to the reality of October 6th.

Translation notes: