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What ‘End of the World’?

The expected apocalypse in the war against Hezbollah never materialised; what does that tell us about the Third Lebanon War?

By Stav Gerstel

Editor Tom Alfia

Translation by Avi Bram

Date of original publication: 02/12/2024

Original Hebrew text: https://www.rosamedia.org/episodes/articles/60

If the ceasefire this week holds, then 27/11/2024 will be remembered as the date that ended the Third Lebanon War – the ‘second front’ in Netanyahu’s government’s revival war. More than two months after the pagers operation [in which thousands electronic devices uses by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously, attributed to Israel] that started the escalation which resulted in the IDF’s invasion of Lebanon, Israel has achieved a certain tangible gain – it has broken Hezbollah’s policy of ‘unity of war fronts’ [Hezbollah’s stated policy that it would not stop fighting until there was a full ceasefire in Gaza – AB]. Israel will be able to continue its destructive, criminal war in Gaza without pressure on the Northern front. The ceasefire agreement, alongside separate understandings between Israel and the USA, is supposed to allow Israel the freedom to act in Lebanon if the agreement is broken [by Hezbollah] – it seems the two sides are already testing these limits.

The Third Lebanon War led to many casualties, hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Lebanese killed. A high proportion were civilians, and a million and a half displaced on either side of the border – it is still unclear when, if ever, they will be able to return home [and] to live in safety and security. Northern Israel and South Lebanon have become scorched earth. And life in Beirut, Haifa and the Gush Dan [the Tel Aviv metropolitan area] had been subject to ever-present fear of bombardment.

But the truth is, we thought it would be much worse. In June, Standing Together movement publicised an advert in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that echoed a warning made by the former head of the National Security Council, Eyal Hulata, and deputy chair of The Federation of Local Authorities in Israel, Roey Levi, regarding the price that Israel would pay if it entered a full-scale war with Hezbollah. The warnings in the article – 15,000 Israelis killed according to Hulata, 72 hours without power according to Levi, are just examples of the many estimates from established institutions regarding the destruction that a Third Lebanon War would wreak, given Hezbollah’s powerful capabilities and the lack of preparation by the Israeli home front.

It's now possible to say that, despite the death and destruction that was caused, these nightmare scenarios did not come to pass for most of the country. Hezbollah did not fire barrages of hundreds of rockets at Gush Dan, the civilian infrastructure didn’t collapse, and the capability of the Israeli Air Defence meant [only] dozens of [Israeli] civilians died, rather than thousands. So why was the apocalyptic vision so widely accepted among Israeli citizens, including by us at Standing Together?

Firstly, because of our well-earned mistrust in the government. After decades of privatisation, austerity and dilapidation of infrastructure, all the components of the Home Front seemed to be fragile and subject to collapse under the slightest pressure – as they did on the 7th October [Hamas attack]. Even the IDF had given up all claims of protecting our lives on that day, and in the months that followed it made clear that it is a band of militias set on collective revenge, mass killing and destruction, not on protecting civilian life.

Secondly, Hezbollah did have the material capability to strike deep into Israeli society – if we judge from the weaponry it had at its disposal, the geographic assets it had access to, the number of fighters under its command and the intelligence it had available. When Israeli decision makers imagined what would happen if Hezbollah applied the full force of these capabilities against the Israeli home front, the apocalyptic scenario is what emerged.

Our mistake was to think that these terrifying visions were the only possible outcome, because in the Israeli consciousness the outlook that has taken hold is that every potential threat is an actual threat – which has led to the conclusion that every potential threat must be eliminated from the geo-political map. This outlook has led many Israelis to prioritise a hawkish policy on the Northern front [Lebanon] over the war of revenge in Gaza, which the longer it dragged on and intensified the harder it became to see it as [serving] rational [goals], even for the camp that [automatically] praises the IDF and all it does. This analysis, which highlights the considerable firepower that Hezbollah wielded and completely ignored the circumstances and motivations that might lead it to use that firepower, complements the analysis that ignores the Palestinians [and their plight – AB] in favour of geo-engineering a New Middle East. There are groups in Israel that think that if we can just ‘manage’ the conflict with the Palestinians, and prevent them from building up their own military forces, we can focus on neutralising potential threats in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere. This analysis misses out that not every potential threat will turn into an actual threat – the substantial military forces of Egypt and Jordan do not pose a threat to Israel exactly because of the peace agreements with those countries. The enduring reason that potential threats do turn to actual ones is the Israeli war against the Palestinians and [rejection of] the possibility of peace with an independent Palestinian state.

The [mis]conception of “managing the conflict” [repression of Palestinians, without any political process[1] ; see comment below – AB] is what laid the ground for the massacre of the 7th October [2023], but the massacre did not end the prevalence of the ‘[mis]conception’ in the Israeli mindset. A series of tactical victories by the IDF in September and October [2024] brought about this ceasefire without 15,000 Israeli causalities or a collapse of civilian infrastructure. But the pagers operation, assassination of Nasrallah, bombing of Dahieh [الضاحية الجنوبية, a Shia suburb of Beirut, considered to be a Hezbollah stronghold] lead us to exactly the same place as the previous wars with Lebanon: Israel poses an existential threat to the Lebanese public, and Hezbollah is legitimised as a force that can oppose Israel. Israel may have managed to ‘separate the fronts’ [between Lebanon and Gaza] on a tactical level, but it’s hard to believe that this separation will hold for the long term. So, just as at the conclusion of previous wars, Israel is treating Lebanon not as a neighbouring country where there are ways to persuade its people, institutions and hegemonic powers to respect their neighbour’s sovereignty, but rather as an additional sphere for waging its war against Palestinian independence. So long as Israel preserves its ‘freedom to act’ in Lebanon, it means that the two fronts are not truly separated – and there’s no reason for the Lebanese to think otherwise. However, even the ‘unity of the fronts’ hints [to another truth] that despite all the [unmaterialised] wrong predictions [we in Standing Together made] it is wise to listen to the message behind our advert in Yedioth [Ahronoth] – peace between Israel and Palestine would help bring about peace between Israel and Lebanon.      

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