Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s famous statement “Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it” has been an adage and a truism often repeated in benign academic environments to stress the need to study history. Israel’s right-wing government is going down a path that has led previous Israeli governments to prolonged war. Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were infants when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, reached Beirut and were instrumental in the elevation of one of their allies to the Lebanese presidency. Bachir Gemayel was assassinated before taking office, by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), founded in the 1930s by a Christian named Antun Sa’adah who was vehemently opposed to sectarian politics in Lebanon. Hezbollah officially formed in 1984 to resist Israeli forces, who occupied south Lebanon for 18 years in alliance with right-wing Lebanese forces. After suffering daily attacks and losses, Israel decided the occupation was unsustainable and withdrew their forces from Lebanon in 2000.
The cost of an all out war with Lebanon
The ceasefire recently agreed to by both Hezbollah and Israel may be a sign that at least some political forces within Israel realize the futility and danger of trying once again to change Lebanon’s political balance and to perhaps acquire and keep parts of south Lebanon. Both sides have suffered civilian, military and economic losses, most significantly in Lebanon with close to 4000 deaths, 16,000 injuries and a large number of villages in the south have been totally devastated. Israel lost over 70 military deaths in Lebanon and over 40 civilian deaths mostly in northern Israel. Both sides, however, have failed in their maximal objectives: Israel hurt but did not cripple its enemy. Hezbollah on the other hand succeeded in blocking Israeli forces from significant advances on the ground and kept up a barrage of rockets that seriously disrupted day-to-day life in many parts of Israel, but especially in the north of the country. Nevertheless, Hezbollah failed at its original goal as a support front for Gaza and has now accepted a ceasefire that is not preconditioned on a similar deal in Gaza.
The Trump administration currently being put together by the President-elect is ideologically primed to support Israel if it chooses to go down that dangerous path again. Israel’s so-called incursions into Lebanese territory go back to the 1948 war and the flight of Palestinian refugees from into Lebanon. The concept that Israel has the right to defend itself has meant over the past decades that it could pursue Palestinian resistance groups into Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, the sovereignty of those neighboring countries notwithstanding. The incoming Trump administration will have the opportunity to encourage restraint and pragmatism between Israel and its neighbors, but it also could pursue the opposite path and support the extremist designs of Israel’s right-wing forces.
In this latest iteration of the conflict, Netanyahu’s government has been trying to destroy both Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups, or at least degrade their military abilities to a level whereby they would no longer pose a threat to Israel. In May 2024, Ben Gvir insisted that Israeli forces needed to go well beyond south Lebanon (as Smotrich had suggested) in order to totally destroy the organization. He also called for Yoav Gallant to be fired as Minister of Defense because he did not pursue the war in the north to its full extent. Gallant, now facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, for his execution of the war in Gaza, was one of the few Israeli leaders who advocated a ceasefire. After Gallant’s sacking on November 5, Israel then relentlessly bombed targets as far north as the Akkar region and well beyond the southern suburbs of Beirut in pursuit of any Hezbollah military sites and personnel, including Mohamed Afif, the media spokesperson of the party.
The chances for peace
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, is again the basis of the new ceasefire deal whose guarantors will be the U.S. and France. The Resolution contained clauses demanding the disarmament of all forces inside Lebanon other than the official Lebanese armed forces and the United Nations observer force, UNIFIL. It also called for all foreign forces to leave Lebanon and for Lebanon’s sovereignty to be respected. Hezbollah, which did not give up its arms after that war, has maintained that Israel’s continued violations of Lebanese air space meant that Israel has itself failed to abide by the resolution. Resolution 1701 is currently being renegotiated – Lebanon, i.e. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, have accepted the resolution, provided Israel also abides by it, i.e. to stay on its side of the borders and not violate Lebanon’s airspace. While a full version of the new agreement has yet to be made public, it seems that it vaguely gives Israel the right to militarily pursue Hezbollah for any violations and rearmament. There does not appear to be a similar sanction on Israel for any violations it might undertake. A monitoring mechanism is not the same as detailing the repercussions of violations, which will inevitably recur.
The United States envoy Amos Hochstein who facilitated the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in what can best be described as shuttle diplomacy has in fact amended UNSCR 1701, by first asserting Israel’s right to act militarily in Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah is abiding by the agreement. Lebanon has insisted on its own right to retaliate for any Israeli acts of aggression – the problem however is that Hezbollah cannot both disarm and retaliate for violations at the same time, and the Lebanese army in its current configuration is not in a condition to carry out the retaliation itself – because of a lack of equipment and training certainly, but more importantly because there is no national consensus in Lebanon to use its official army as a true border defense force.
In sum, even if the new agreement is signed and put on an implementation track, the conflict is back to where it started in 2006. More fundamentally, albeit this is currently outside Hochstein’s mandate, the Palestine conflict which has been at the root of all Arab-Israeli conflicts since 1947, remains far from a resolution. The spillovers of the conflict in the region in the past are inevitable in the future. Palestinians, denied the right to live in peace, let alone resist in the occupied territories, will likely continue to challenge Israel from neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were purportedly a response to Palestinian resistance, led at the time by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). There is no reason to expect Palestinian resistance to stop, regardless of the fate of Hamas as a fighting organization.
The political configuration inside Israel, and the carte-blanche support expected from the Trump administration do not bode well for a lasting ceasefire in Lebanon, let alone a durable peace in the region. All indications are that Trump will focus on extending the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries that may be willing to take part. Those accords have nothing to offer either the Lebanese or the Palestinians who are unlikely to accept them. If the US or Israel attempts to alter the political balance inside Lebanon, to include the country within these accords, the conflict between Israel and Lebanon and within Lebanon itself will likely be a long and bloody one.
Dr. Nabeel A. Khoury is currently a non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC and the author of Bunker Diplomacy: An Arab-American in the U.S. Foreign Service. He served in the US foreign service for 25 years, holding roles such as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Yemen and spokesperson at US Central Command in Doha and in Baghdad during the Iraq war in 2003. He served as director of the office of Near East and South Asia at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).
