Blinken’s linking of Lebanon to Gaza is flawed
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the events in the north in shocking terms on Monday.
“About 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel,” he said at the Brookings Institute in Washington. “Israel has effectively lost its sovereignty in the northern quadrant of the country because people do not feel safe going home.”
The reason for this shock is that over the past nine months of war – both in Gaza and in a low-intensity war on the northern border – Israelis have become accustomed to certain realities. One of them is that the towns, moshavim and kibbutzim along the Lebanese border are deserted.
The public learns of the number of residents forced to leave their homes, hears their suffering reported in the media, feels terrible about the situation and sympathizes with the residents, but most see them as just another casualty of October 7 and the war that followed. What is really at stake is not necessarily taken into account.
But Blinken’s portrayal of the situation was stark: Israel has lost sovereignty over a strip of its territory. And that’s nothing more. If the residents of a country cannot live in their homes in a certain region of the country due to security threats, then that country has lost its sovereignty – defined as supreme power or authority over an area – over that area.
And that is very significant.
Houses, villages abandoned
According to a report by Yediot Ahronot on Tuesday, 1,023 homes, public buildings and infrastructure facilities were hit by rockets, drones and projectiles fired from Lebanon. The most affected municipalities are Kiryat Shmona (147 incidents), Menara (130), Metulla (121), Shlomi (115) and Arab al-Aramshe (88). In total, more than 130 municipalities have been affected.
To illustrate the extent of Israel’s loss of sovereignty in these areas, in many cases, due to security risks, families were not even able to visit their homes to see the damage.
Blinken said something else in this context that was displeasing. “Hezbollah has linked its actions to the situation in Gaza and said it will stop shooting at Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Well, they shouldn’t shoot in the first place, that’s wrong in and of itself. But it’s also a reality, and that just underscores why a ceasefire (in Gaza) could also be critical to further empower diplomacy to create the conditions under which diplomacy can really solve this problem.”
In other words, what Hezbollah is doing is bad, but it is what it is doing. To get it to stop, Israel would have to agree to a ceasefire with a terrorist organization in Gaza that is demanding an end to the war it started after barbarously violating Israeli sovereignty in the south.
Imagine this scenario: Immediately after the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda, a Mexican drug cartel begins firing rockets into Texas in solidarity with the jihadist terrorists. It will not stop until the United States permanently ends its Operation Enduring Freedom to eradicate al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
This logic doesn’t make sense.
Equally shocking was the calmness with which the US Secretary of State essentially stated: “Hey, what Hezbollah is doing is wrong, but this is the reality.”
It is a reality that is neither adequately addressed nor condemned by the international community, and in particular by the United Nations.
Why does the world not condemn Hezbollah for this unprovoked act of war? Why is there no enormous pressure on the Lebanese government – which is admittedly extremely weak – to rein in Hezbollah?
Why does the world accept it as normal that one UN country is constantly attacked by another? Why is this not a topic in the world’s media? Why does the international community not impose economic sanctions on Hezbollah and its supporters – especially Iran – to prevent attacks? Why does it not attack Hezbollah’s financial networks more strongly?
Not only has the international community not mobilized against Hezbollah, but last week the Arab League also removed the “terrorist” label it had imposed on the organization in 2016. In other words, in the eyes of the Arab League, Hezbollah is no longer a terrorist organization. This may have been motivated by an attempt to deny Israel the legitimacy to pursue the organization more seriously.
Limits of American politics
And what does Blinken propose for Israel to regain its sovereignty over the north? By agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza. On what terms? On terms dictated by Hamas, which started this war?
Aside from urging Israel to refrain from a large-scale military strike against Hezbollah, the Biden administration does not appear to have any other plans or strategies to help Israel deal with the problem and regain its sovereignty. Delaying arms deliveries to Israel – weapons needed for a major operation in Lebanon – only hampers Israel if it decides to restore its lost sovereignty by military means.
Blinken’s words show the limits of American policy. It was the United States that pressured Israel at the very beginning of the war not to take preventive measures against Hezbollah. This position was supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Benny Gantz and Gabi Eisenkot, but was rejected by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the Israeli Defense Forces.
The US goal since October 7, Blinken said, has been to prevent a major regional conflict. That is a noble goal. But, as he acknowledged, in the meantime Israel has lost sovereignty over part of its own land – meaning that Hezbollah, which long ago wrested sovereignty from Lebanon, has now effectively done the same to a piece of Israeli territory. US diplomatic efforts to prevent this have proved ineffective.
Instead of pinning all of the United States’ hopes for stabilizing the situation in Lebanon on an unlikely ceasefire in Gaza, Blinken should work with U.S. allies and Israel to find other ways to force Hezbollah to withdraw.
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