By Robert Inlakesh

Israel’s violations of the Lebanon ceasefire and its push to remain in south Lebanon threaten to reignite conflict with Hezbollah.

Tel Aviv is proposing that its troops remain inside south Lebanese territory following the conclusion of the 60-day ceasefire deal it agreed upon with Beirut. Hezbollah’s official response has been to call upon the Lebanese army to take full responsibility for defending the country in the event that Israel attempts to impose an illegal occupation, declaring that it is following the developments closely.

Israel is seeking to remain inside south Lebanon, effectively breaking the 60-day ceasefire agreement they accepted, amidst a steady stream of calls from Israeli politicians and settler groups to re-occupy the south of the country; which have come throughout the two-month period.

Since the first day of the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, Israel has continuously violated it. 

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Not a day has gone by where Israeli forces have refrained from committing acts, such as: Blowing up civilian homes, shooting towards unarmed people, firing upon Lebanese army and UNIFIL positions, killing civilians in drone or artillery attacks, wounding and kidnapping farmers, burning agricultural lands or launching airstrikes even to the north of the Litani River, to name a few. 

Hundreds upon hundreds of ceasefire violations have been committed by the Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon, while on a single occasion, Hezbollah fired a single munition next to an Israeli military site in the occupied Shebaa Farms area as a warning to Tel Aviv. 

Hezbollah has been fully cooperative with the Lebanese Armed Forces, being careful to respect the ceasefire themselves, despite constant round-the-clock provocations.

Yet, Reuters ran with the headline this Thursday, reading “Israel sees more to do on Lebanon ceasefire as deadline nears”, further proving that corporate media coverage is insufficient at educating the public about anything to do with Israel. In fact, the headline and coverage is so sanitized that it may as well have been submitted for publication on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s official website, rather than a news outlet. 

Unfortunately, despite some more accurate coverage rearing its head when it comes to the issue of Gaza, on the topic of the Lebanon-Israel war, the corporate media is not producing news coverage, but instead working to manufacture consent for future conflict.

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Prior to Israel’s explosive-laden pager attacks that wounded thousands of Lebanese citizens, followed by a string of assassinations that murdered most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, the perceptions of regional power dramatically shifted in the West Asia region. 

Prior to this series of earth-shattering actions in September, which resulted in a war between Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah was viewed as somewhat undefeatable.

The Lebanese group had been playing a support role in favor of Gaza since October 8, which first began with strikes against monitoring and spyware equipment in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, later spreading to Israeli settlements located in what is considered today as “Israel proper” after the murder of Lebanese civilians. 

Up until the pager attacks, dubbed as “terrorism” by former CIA chief Leon Panetta, Hezbollah was embarrassing the Israelis and helped to foster a dynamic that propped up the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance as the dominant alliance regionally. 

Over 100,000 Israelis were internally displaced due to Hezbollah’s retaliatory strikes, which were careful to inflict minimal loss of human life initially, even as Israel indiscriminately bombed south Lebanon and even assassinated journalists.

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Hezbollah’s record spoke for itself, it had managed to force the Israeli military to abandon its occupation of almost all of south Lebanon in 2000, before fighting a war in 2006 that forced Israel to retreat. During the early to mid-2000s, Hezbollah’s fighting force was estimated to have been somewhere around 14,000 to 25,000 men strong, possessing rocket capabilities similar to what Hamas displayed during the past 15 months in Gaza. 

Yet, since 2006 Hezbollah had not engaged in warfare, beyond occasional trading of blows along the Lebanon border, while it built an extensive arsenal of precision missiles and drones. Additionally, the former Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, boasted a fighting force consisting of more than 100,000 fighters, not including allied militias and specialized units. 

Hezbollah fought a limited war against Israel until November 27. It did so, standing on one leg. Fighting under the worst possible circumstances, they managed to prevent the Israelis from making it very far during their ground invasion of south Lebanon and knew that the inevitable result was going to be a stalemate. 

Israel, on the other hand, had scored a series of tactical victories in September but appeared to have run out of options soon after the beginning of the war. Yet, the achievements they made were significant enough for them to come off looking like the victors. 

However, Tel Aviv was not ready to stop exploiting the historic opportunity that they had gained, to inflict embarrassment and an even more crushing blow against Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon. So, from day one of the ceasefire, the Israelis have made a point of committing the most blatant violations.

Meanwhile, as Hezbollah licked its wounds and sought time to recover from the serious blows it suffered, it knew that a stale-mate ceasefire was going to be the only option out of their predicament. 

If they didn’t agree to the ceasefire, the Israelis were going to expand the scope of the war and begin destroying Lebanese civilian infrastructure belonging to the State. 

In the event that this would occur, Hezbollah’s only real option would be to use its best munitions to inflict significant damage on cities like Tel Aviv, although it would have been clear that Israel’s munitions would do far more damage.

The propaganda surrounding who is truly the regional powerhouse is largely redundant when it comes to actual warfare. Although on paper Israel should easily defeat Hamas, it couldn’t in over 15 months of committing genocide and destroying almost all of the Gaza Strip. On paper, Iran could also batter Israel with its missile power, but that hasn’t happened either, largely due to political constraints.

When it comes to Hezbollah, it is still a much more formidable fighting force than Hamas in Gaza, even after the blows it has sustained. It is an organization boasting over 100,000 fighters and producing its own weapons domestically, despite losing its supply line through Syria for the time being. 

Looking at the abundance of guided anti-tank weapons it was using in south Lebanon and the sheer volume of drones it launched, it was clear that these weapons were available in large quantities and still are.

If Israel chooses to stay in south Lebanon, it is not a matter of if but when Hezbollah will act. They will need to play a careful game that ensures they are aligned with the interests of the entire Lebanese population and are fighting on their behalf and such a scenario may take time to develop. 

This is crucial because any new round of fighting will likely have to be fought at a much higher intensity than the previous war, or Hezbollah risks being forced into another stalemate whereby Israel could just violate a future ceasefire.

If Hezbollah will fight any time soon, it will need to ensure it has the backing of the Lebanese people and that it completely changes the nature of the conflict between both sides. This means drawing new equations and an enormous amount of sacrifice, which will swing the perception of power in their favor once more.

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Another potential trigger for war could be an Israeli decision to scrap the ceasefire agreement with Gaza, which appears less likely at this point. In addition to this, it still isn’t clear what Iran’s intentions are for Israel as mixed messages are constantly being sent from different elements of its leadership.

Regardless, Hezbollah is not weak and the Israeli military themselves understand this, especially coming off the morale-killing ceasefire agreement with Gaza and having endured major material losses throughout the past 15 months. 

If the Israeli political leadership seeks to violate the 60-day ceasefire agreement, it does not appear as if a return to war will be immediate, but it is a risky strategy that could end up undoing all the tactical victories they scored last September.

(The Palestine Chronicle)