Lebanon is once again on the brink of a new conflict once Tel Aviv, unilaterally and with the support of Washington, has extended its extension since last November 27. Precisely, on Sunday, the end of the 60-day cessation of hostilities, 22 Lebanese, including a soldier, and 124 were injured. Civilians were trying to return to their villages in the South; Lebanese soldiers, guarantee their safety. In total, nearly 40 people have lost their lives in the last two months, always under Israeli bullets, which have prevented return to more than 60 locations. According to the Lebanese authorities, who appear as a kind of intermediary between the Israeli army and the Hezbollah militia, the two protagonists of the war conflict last October-November, the occupation forces have committed more than 500 infractions. In addition to the fact that “they had gotten too close” to the occupying detachments, they refer to the demolition of buildings, the blowing up of bridges and roads, the destruction of orchards and crop areas (the fertile plain of the Wazzani River) and the occupation of places which they had not been able to access during the raid last fall.
These violations have occurred under the helpless gaze of the Unifil forces, commanded by the Lebanese army itself. The UN detachments and the Lebanese Armed Forces make up the commission for compliance and supervision of the ceasefire in Lebanon together with the United States, which chairs it, Israel and France. Paris called for the complete withdrawal of troops from Tel Aviv, but President Emmanuel Macron’s opinion does not count for much, it seems.
The justification of the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu for preventing all the displaced people, around one million, from returning to their homes, as established in the agreed document, is that the Lebanese army has not fulfilled its mission, which, according to its particular interpretation of the truce, included the total destruction of Hezbollah’s arsenals and infrastructure and the arrest of its members south of the Litani River. The text, with ambiguous statements in certain paragraphs, did not say that, but, in any case, it would have been very difficult to execute: Israeli soldiers have remained in numerous locations and have not stopped controlling the main land accesses, even shooting at Lebanese military who carried out their own inspection work.
American General Jasper Jeffers, president of the commission, highlighted in early January the efforts of the local army to “consolidate peace.” The fact that weeks later he endorsed the Israeli decision, until February 18 “at least”, reflects the harmony of President Donald Trump’s Administration, like that of Joe Biden before, with the Tel Aviv theses and the abandonment of his obligations as an impartial mediator.
And it is a mistake. The United States has never understood the Lebanese “hornet’s nest,” mediated by its close relationship with the State of Israel and today the vision of neo-Zionism that has permeated its foreign policy in the Middle East. Allowing Israeli soldiers to remain in occupied territory, despite flagrantly contravening the terms of an international agreement, serves to reinforce Hezbollah, which has maintained a discreet profile during the period. Worse, it undermines the legitimacy of the Lebanese state and its army. Washington’s big bet to corner Hezbollah, taking advantage of the animosity of a significant segment of the Lebanese population, has been the jurist Nawaf Salam as head of the Government, both in charge of disarming the militias.
The United States continues to be the main sponsor of the army and has committed to training and training it, despite the suspicions of the so-called Islamic Resistance; However, the Israeli occupation has treated the Beirut detachments with a rudeness that has not gone unnoticed by a good number of Lebanese, whether they support Hezbollah or not. The fact that Israeli troops have taken possession of hills, peaks and hills that, curiously, dominate the northern provinces of Israel, together with the proclamations of settler associations and political circles to “repopulate” the Lebanese south or to exploit it again (as among 1978 and 2000) its notable water resources, reinforces the idea that Israel continues to represent a vital threat to a solid national project in the Cedar Country. or the expansion of settlements in the West Bank do not help to conjure the image of a neighbor If this truce was intended, from the American perspective, to achieve in peace what Netanyahu did not obtain in the war—finally neutralizing Hezbollah—the result may be other: convince more and more Lebanese that only groups like the Party of God will know how to contain the impulses of an expansionist project.
