I can’t tell you how anguished I feel watch­ing Lebanon, my new adopted home, being attacked by American-made F-16s and Israeli artillery. To hear that the Israeli Defense Forces have imposed an air and sea block­ade on the coun­try. To know that the only link Lebanon now has to the out­side world is … Syria.
I can’t reach any of my friends on the phone, although email seems to be work­ing. My friend Irina reported that in Hamra, peo­ple are going about their busi­ness in the hot and humid Beirut sum­mer. The Lebanese will take this in stride, hav­ing endured worse at the hands of numer­ous ene­mies, but this is only the first day of what looks to be a pro­longed attack. The shut­ting down of Hariri Inter­na­tional Air­port will hit hard on the econ­omy. This is the high tourist sea­son and many Gulf tourists with their Gulf money will either be unable to get in or flee through Dam­as­cus — although the road to Dam­as­cus has been bombed. The IDF has said a naval block­ade is in effect and all ships enter­ing and leav­ing Lebanon’s ports will be stopped. Israel is try­ing to box Lebanon — and Hezbol­lah — in.
This will have seri­ous reper­cus­sions in Lebanese pol­i­tics. It could start another civil war. The Shi’a over­whelm­ingly sup­port Hezbol­lah and the other polit­i­cal par­ties of the March 14 alliance are in a bad spot. Who will reign in Hezbol­lah? Will Lebanon’s already frag­ile polit­i­cal arrange­ment col­lapse into a Shi’ites vs. every­one else arrange­ment, with Iran, Syria and Hezbol­lah on one side and Chris­tians, Druze and Sun­nis on the other backed up by … Israel? And/or the United States and France? I’m just not sure how many Chris­tians will turn on Hezbol­lah, even though they blame them for bring­ing the wrath of Israel down on the coun­try.
Then there’s the Pales­tin­ian ques­tion. Groups allied to the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Palestine-General Com­mand, are not based in the big Fatah-run camps and are instead loyal to Syria. They are effec­tive part­ners to Hezbol­lah. But with the cur­rent oper­a­tion against Gaza going strong, I would guess that _all_ Pales­tini­ans would ally with Hezbol­lah against Israel and what­ever allies it might pick up in Lebanon.
I’ve been told by very smart peo­ple that another civil war in Lebanon is impos­si­ble, not because the Lebanese peo­ple don’t want one — so what? Wars usu­ally hap­pen despite the wishes of the pop­u­la­tions involved — but because no one would pay for one. Well, one side is being armed by Syria and Iran. If Lebanon splin­ters into two (or more camps), you can bet the Israelis and oth­ers will arm those hos­tile to the Party of God, the idea being that if Israel has to fight a two-front war, Hezbol­lah can be made to fight one, too.
But won’t that bring chaos? Again, so what? Look­ing at Gaza and the West Bank, it’s pretty clear that Israel will tol­er­ate some chaos on its bor­ders as long as it doesn’t get out of hand and can be kept at arm’s length. Israel was quite will­ing to let Fatah and Hamas mili­tias slaugh­ter each other as long as they didn’t stray over the bor­der too much.
So where to go from here? More fight­ing, it looks like. Israel today is start­ing to make bel­li­cose state­ments about “enforc­ing 1559″ (which calls for the dis­arm­ing of Hezbol­lah and other mili­tias) and not let­ting Hezbol­lah back near the bor­der (by a new occu­pa­tion of a 1-km-wide “secu­rity band” on Lebanese ter­ri­tory). This is a recipe for chaos, vio­lence and renewed civil con­flict, and it’s very real and very close.
But for Israel, keep­ing a bunch of weak­ened scor­pi­ons in a bot­tle may be exactly what they want. It’s a crime that it’s the Lebanese peo­ple who will get stung.
*UPDATE 7÷13÷06 9:22:13 PM:* IDF is report­ing two mis­siles have struck the port city of Haifa in north­ern Israel. Haifa is about 35km from the Lebanese bor­der, which is deeper than Hezbol­lah has ever man­aged to pen­e­trate. This indi­cates the mis­siles are prob­a­bly not Katyushas, but larger — and pos­si­bly more deadly — rock­ets. I’m also get­ting con­flict­ing reports of a jour­nal­ist wounded in a rocket attack in Nahariya, a coastal town about 7km from the border.