In the dangerous situation that is escalating on the Israel-Lebanon border, there is a grave risk that further attacks by either side – whether deliberate or because of miscalculation – could descend into a wider war. For civilians living on either side of the frontier, this oppressive situation has been going on for much too long. Wael Mugrabi, the mayor of Ein Qiniyye, a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, did not mince his words when he told The National this week that “we have been in the war since three days after October 7”.
It is a conflict in which more than 400 people have lost their lives since October 8, in addition to the thousands of civilians on either side who have been displaced by air strikes, drone attacks and other cross-border fire. Even more worryingly, as large sections of the international community appear to have run out of answers to the continuing Gaza conflict, similar indecision has greeted the Israeli military build-up in the north. Despite the presence of an American-led, UN Security Council-backed ceasefire plan for Gaza, Israel’s political and military establishment remains on a war footing, with some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government openly calling for a war against Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Hezbollah seems to have almost entirely hijacked the decision-making over war in Lebanon.
Those who regard the Lebanese militia as source of “resistance” to Israel’s impunity in Gaza would be mistaken. Hezbollah’s main priority remains its own survival as well as maintaining its powerful position in Lebanon as a state within a state. Hezbollah seems not to have deterred Israeli forces from devastating Gaza and killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Instead, its actions have displaced thousands of Israeli non-combatants.
As with Hamas, the effects on civilians of crossing swords with the Israeli army – displacement, fear and trauma – is part of a cold military calculation. The people on whose behalf the radicals purport to fight are treated as a rhetorical abstraction, not individuals with families who did not ask to be dragged into another violent conflict. Hezbollah’s leaders and backers risk taking a fragile country with a caretaker government to war. Even if the group does not want to escalate beyond the current exchanges, persisting with attacks risks events spiralling out of control.
The consequences for Lebanon’s people, beyond those who have already lost their homes and livelihoods, would be severe. Many Lebanese do not need to be reminded about wars with Israel: the 15-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon came complete with massacres and sharpened existing sectarian divisions.
Into this precarious situation steps US mediator Amos Hochstein. On Monday, the American envoy arrived in Israel to discuss the situation at the border before travelling for meetings in Beirut. Mr Hochstein has valuable experience in this arena, having helped to broker a 2022 agreement between Israel and Lebanon – two states that are still technically at war and without diplomatic ties. That agreement demarcated the maritime boundary between the countries for the first time, enabling both to develop offshore gas fields and other natural resources.
Speaking in Lebanon after a meeting with political and military figures on Tuesday, Mr Hochstein said the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah “has gone on for long enough” adding that it was “in everyone’s interests to resolve it quickly and diplomatically”. He’s right, but the US can and should be doing more to restrain its ally before another front in this war opens up. Indeed, to avoid an additional conflict will require just as much political and diplomatic focus as that which has gone into Gaza, which remains unresolved.
There is nothing for anyone to gain by exchanging one war for another. Both Israel and Lebanon have much to lose from a full-blown war and nothing to gain in the long term. It’s time for both protagonists to take a step back.
