Preventing a ruinous war between Israel and Lebanon

Richard Ghazal on July 31, 2024

We cannot know where the war will end that started last October between Israel and Iran’s terror proxy, Hamas. But the next theater is certain to be southern Lebanon, the stronghold of Iran’s older and more lethal ally, Hezbollah. 

Israel has responded to the killing of 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights, but not with a major military escalation. Tensions could yet spark a broader, bloodier regional war.

Lebanon’s part in this tragedy did not begin with the terror attack on Saturday, nor even last fall, when Hezbollah began firing missiles into northern Israel, displacing over 100,000 Israelis — many of whom, like the Druze, are non-Jewish.

Perhaps the tragedy began in 1948, when Lebanon welcomed Palestinian refugees, after five Arab governments refused to recognize Israel and instead attacked it. Or perhaps in 1970, after the Palestinian Liberation Organization attempted to overthrow the government of Jordan, failed, was expelled, and went to Lebanon. The PLO were soon firing rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon, where local Shiites formed militias to fight the newly arrived Palestinian terrorists. In 1975, Lebanon was plunged into a civil war that lasted 15 years and from which the nation has never recovered.

While historians still debate the causes of Lebanon’s civil war, militant Palestinian groups were bound up with that war’s seminal violence. The role of Palestinians in Lebanon’s civil war remains sensitive to this day, the subject of the 2017 Oscar-nominated film “The Insult,” which reminded viewers how precarious peace is.

There were several terrible slaughters during Lebanon’s civil war. The Damour Massacre in January 1976, just months into the war, is one that has been largely forgotten. There, hundreds of unarmed Christians, including women and children, were murdered by Palestinians. The U.S. and other Western countries refused to supply arms to the Christians. Only Israelhelped Lebanon’s Christians against their common threat; this too has been forgotten.

In 1982, the Israelis launched an ill-advised invasion of Lebanon to defeat the PLO, allied with Lebanon’s Christian-majority government, led by Bachir Gemayel. Gemayel was assassinated later that year, the alliance fell apart, Christians fought each other, and Israel withdrew. Iran partnered with Syria and Hezbollah to occupy and control Lebanon.

In 2005, after 15 years of ruthless occupation by Syria’s Baathist regime, the people of Lebanon took to the streets in the Cedar Revolution, peaceful protests that ended with Syria withdrawing from Lebanon — a model that Lebanese who today hope for peace should ponder well.

Continue reading at The Hill here.

Andrew Doran is a senior fellow with the Philos Project and previously served on the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. Robert Nicholson founded the Philos Project, where he previously served as president and is an expert on Israel and the Near East. Richard Ghazal is executive director at In Defense of Christians and a retired Air Force judge advocate and intelligence officer.

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