‘Alarming’: Israel’s proposed Lebanon seizure could take country back to 1980s; experts

Israel has announced it will seize southern Lebanon, in its first confirmation of plans to seize a territory amounting to one-tenth of the country, which experts say will have severe humanitarian consequences.

Overnight, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said Israeli forces would move to control a security zone in Lebanon up to the Litani, a river 30km north of the Lebanon-Israel border.

More than a million people have been displaced across Lebanon in recent weeks, according to Lebanese authorities, after the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel earlier this month.

The initial six Hezbollah rockets were filed in response to joint United States and Israeli strikes on Hezbollah ally Iran on 28 February that killed its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel has since launched strikes across Lebanon, killing at least 1,072 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. It has also sent ground troops into the country’s south and ordered Lebanese residents from the Zahrani river down to evacuate north.

“Hundreds of thousands of residents” of southern Lebanon who evacuated would not return south of the Litani river until “security is guaranteed for residents of the north”, Katz said.

Hezbollah has said it would fight to prevent Israeli troops from occupying southern Lebanon, calling it an “existential threat”.

Experts say the move is an “alarming” development in Israel’s decades-long struggle for control of southern Lebanon, which carries the potential for a severe humanitarian cost.

Mariam Farida, a lecturer in terrorism studies at Macquarie University, said Israel’s move was “unsurprising”.

“This comes in a sequence of events in which the Israeli army and the Israeli government have been exploring scenarios for how they can manifest this ground operation,” she told SBS News.

Farida said, given Israel’s stated objective to wipe out Hezbollah in Lebanon, “we’re more likely looking at a reoccupation of the whole of south Lebanon”.

“That 30km buffer zone evidently shows the Israeli army will be staying there as an occupying force, similar to what had happened back in the 80s. We’re just seeing it under a different pretext and under different circumstances now.”

Jessica Genauer, associate professor of international relations at the University of NSW, said Israel’s objective to create a so-called “security buffer” in Lebanon dates back decades, “punctuated with moments of outright war” between the two countries.

Israeli troops occupied part of southern Lebanon for 18 years, from 1982 until 2000.

“The aim there from the Israeli side was to try to permanently occupy a security buffer zone, where they could guarantee that they would not see offensive action take place towards Israel from the southern part of Lebanon,” Genauer told SBS News.

“What happened in practice was Hezbollah, which formed in the early 80s with the backing of Iran, primarily to resist the existence of Israel in the region. From the very formation of Hezbollah, there has been ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, and that drags in the Lebanese state and the people of Lebanon as well.”

The ‘failure’ of Israel’s 18-year occupation

Genauer said Israel’s 18-year occupation of Lebanon officially ended in 2000 as domestic pressure within Israel grew.

“As we often see when there’s a foreign force occupying another country and facing an insurgency, their own domestic populations start to become very unhappy with the mounting costs and the lack of a clear victory,” she said.

“What we saw in those 18 years, from 1982 to 2000, when Israel was occupying a portion of southern Lebanon, was that there was an ongoing insurgency from Hezbollah. And eventually, Israel had to withdraw. “

Genauer compared the situation with the US occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan.

“It seems as though Israel is reaching back into a playbook from the 1980s and 1990s, but it’s very unlikely that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be able to achieve his objectives, vis-a-vis Hezbollah.”

She said there needs to be a focus on “a parallel track of political discussions and negotiations” because a military approach is not going to be able to achieve what the Israeli state hopes it will.

“Even though Israel has far greater military capability than Hezbollah, which is essentially a quasi-state group, Israel has never managed to fully eliminate Hezbollah’s ability to engage in attacks, and never managed to fully degrade and decimate Hezbollah as a fighting force,” she said.

Farida said Hezbollah was quick to claim Israel’s 2000 retreat as a major victory, “not just for Lebanon, but the whole of the Arab world”.

“It was then considered as the first non-military, non-state organisation that was able to deter an Israeli invasion from its lands, something that it was seen that states were not able to achieve.

“So it just gave [Hezbollah] a whole range of pan-Arab credibility and legitimacy back then.”

But in the years since, Hezbollah has continued to engage in militant activity towards Israel.

Genauer said the ongoing activity was “unsurprising”, attributed to the “very formation and identity” of Hezbollah, which was formed with the core identity of fighting against Israel.

“Within Israel, there is a consistent objective to try to eliminate the threat coming from the north. So on both sides, there’s been a very consistent objective on the Hezbollah side to attack and antagonise Israel, and on the Israeli side, trying to eliminate and degrade the military capability of Hezbollah.”

“Looking at the way that asymmetric conflict tends to work, I don’t think that the Israeli government will be successful in (eliminating Hezbollah), but that’s certainly what’s driving the way that they’re now focusing on an additional boots-on-the-ground military occupation of Lebanon.”

Fears for Lebanese civilians

Evacuation orders and strikes in southern Lebanon have already led to a humanitarian crisis in the country, with Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International calling for the protection of medical workers, civilians seeking medical attention, and displaced communities.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia supports Lebanon’s sovereignty and called on Hezbollah to disarm.

“Australia is gravely concerned at the expansion of the conflict in Lebanon, the loss of life and displacement of more than one million civilians,” Wong said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Australia supports Lebanon’s sovereignty — so we do not want to see occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel.”

Wong called for adherence to international humanitarian law and for the protection of civilians and aid workers, reiterating a call for Australians in Lebanon to come home.

Genauer said it was likely that a large proportion of southern Lebanon would become “essentially unlivable”.

“There’s no doubt that the human cost for the Lebanese people will be quite severe.”

She said the humanitarian situation is “very alarming” and the Lebanese government, “is already weak and corrupt and fragile to be able to contain” the number of displaced people.

“You already have a society that is charged with sectarian differences, and unfortunately, this can be easily used to stir up some clashes between different factions, political factions or between just local communities.”

Farida said there had already been “sparks” of discrimination against displaced people and refugees from the Shia community.

“People are afraid of sheltering them or letting them rent in their properties because they think that there could be a price on their head, or they will be assassinated.”

‘Alarming’ consequences

The Lebanese government officially banned Hezbollah’s military activities earlier this month, with some ministers arguing its strikes against Israeli targets had given Israel a pretext to attack Lebanon.

Genauer said it was unlikely that any remaining Hezbollah fighters would give up, and said it was unlikely Israel would “succeed”.

“It’s really the core of their identity to fight against Israel,” she said.

“I think we’re likely to see an insurgency-type resistance to any Israeli boots on the ground in Lebanon. And I think that that would be ongoing as long as there are Israeli forces in Lebanon.”

Farida said, against a background of distrust in institutions and a collapse in government power from the 2019 Lebanese financial crisis, the occupation in the south and the armed conflict could provoke a civil war.

“If we look historically at how this unfolded in the Lebanese society and Lebanon as a whole, this eventually turned into a civil war.

“Because you already have a society that was charged with differences, be it religious, sectarian or ideological. And this eventually translated into an armed conflict. This might be repeated. I think this is the biggest fear nowadays,” she said.

“It’s an alarming situation.”

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