When fighting exploded across the Middle East at the end of February, Lebanon was dragged into the maelstrom by forces beyond its own control. Now that the guns have \u2014 temporarily, at least \u2014 fallen silent over Iran and the Persian Gulf, the Lebanese continue to be trapped by the war, even as the fighting threatens to rip their society apart.<\/p>\n
Confusion reigned following the announcement<\/a> of a ceasefire between Iran and the US this week, especially because none of the parties involved seemed to agree on what it actually entailed. This became abundantly clear when Israel unleashed<\/a> \u201cOperation Eternal Darkness\u201d on Wednesday, striking over 100 targets across Lebanon including in previously unscathed parts of central Beirut, and killing over 250 people in the process. Whether the ceasefire in Iran holds depends enormously on what happens in Lebanon.<\/p>\n Apparently under pressure<\/a> from Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he\u00a0had asked<\/a>\u00a0his government to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Yet the IDF has continued<\/a> issuing evacuation orders\u00a0for Beirut ahead of anticipated strikes. Nor has Israel made any indication that it would roll back its aims to establish yet another occupation of southern Lebanon, all while pressuring local Christian and Druze communities to stop harboring<\/a> Lebanese Shi\u2019a Muslims displaced by the IDF\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n Whether or not there are negotiations, Israel\u2019s strikes, together with growing resentment towards Hezbollah among non-Shi\u2019a Lebanese citizens, point toward a looming reorientation of Lebanon\u2019s sectarian dynamics in the long term. Though this may fall short of a complete civil war, it could still tear at the country\u2019s fragile social fabric.<\/p>\n Lebanon\u2019s Shi\u2019a have increasingly been ostracized<\/a> by much of the country\u2019s Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Druze populations because they make up Hezbollah\u2019s traditional support base. Wherever they go, according to this logic, militia members \u2014 and therefore Israeli bombs \u2014 follow. This tension is unlikely to lead to the sort of large-scale, multi-party conflict of the kind that dominated Lebanon in the Eighties, given the security of the US-backed government in Beirut, but a more likely outcome is the spread of localized, low-level violence.<\/p>\n In this instance, religious communities \u2014 primarily Christians and Druze \u2014 will seek to put up walls against dangerous interlopers in their midst, strengthening their sectarian institutions in the process. Over the long term, the result will be a dramatically more segregated country where non-Shi\u2019a Lebanese will do whatever they can to remove themselves from the war between Israel and Hezbollah, weakening intercommunal relations even as the central government paradoxically enjoys more authority over the country\u2019s national institutions than at any point in the last two decades.<\/p>\n Yet as Lebanon\u2019s cohesion decreases and its desire to extricate itself from the firing line grows, Lebanese Shi\u2019a will only be further pushed into Hezbollah\u2019s embrace. This may result in the militant group adopting an even more overtly sectarian stance, focusing its attention only on the fight with Israel in the south as the IDF entrenches itself in the area. And while the goal of the government in Beirut has previously been to disarm Hezbollah across the entire country, a new policy of sequestering the group and its weapons within the militia\u2019s own territories is already starting to take shape. This week, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam\u00a0directed<\/a>\u00a0the Lebanese army to establish an arms monopoly, not across the contentious south but only within the limits of Beirut itself.<\/p>\n The US is evidently trying to rein in Netanyahu\u2019s use of force in Lebanon, understanding that a continued shock-and-awe campaign will undermine the fragile ceasefire with Iran. But while Trump may have succeeded in getting Israel to the negotiation table with Lebanon, Netanyahu\u2019s continued invasion promises to reopen backroom tensions with the US down the line. Still, the Israeli PM understands that despite occasional hiccups, Trump\u2019s America acts largely as his enforcer in Beirut, urging Lebanon\u2019s leaders to keep their focus on Hezbollah even if civil strife unravels.<\/p>\n Middle Eastern powers will surely attempt to use Lebanon\u2019s plight for their own gain, inviting further regional destabilization in the process. Whatever happens, it\u2019s clear that this is no longer merely a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah wrapped up in the broader Iran war. Rather, it is the culmination of decades of history following the Lebanese Civil War. And, like its predecessor, it will serve as a prelude to the next phase of conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When fighting exploded across the Middle East at the end of February, Lebanon was dragged into the maelstrom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[41,8531,100,34,196,37,93,12508],"class_list":{"0":"post-61875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lebanon","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-druze","10":"tag-hezbollah","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-iran-war","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-lebanon","15":"tag-uncategorized"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116384889761761547","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62872,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61875\/revisions\/62872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}