Another decisive moment
At his press conference during the G-7 summit in Geneva, President Trump engaged in a mendacious and demagogical diatribe against Israel’s conduct in Lebanon. The fight against Hezbollah takes too long, he said, and too many people are dying. When some drones fall in the desert and do not cause any harm, he continued, you don’t need to go bomb apartment buildings in Beirut. They (i.e. Israel) are not doing well, he concluded.
Firstly, there is no desert in northern Israel. Secondly, those particular drones may not have harmed anyone, but they were meant to kill, and they certainly terrorized. Currently, northern Israel is virtually unlivable because of Hezbollah’s attacks, with thousands of Israelis abandoning the area, leaving behind properties, livelihoods, schools, relationships. To Trump this is irrelevant. The hypocrisy of his rant was so glaring it was risible. Not long ago, an American Apache helicopter was brought down by an Iranian drone. The pilots managed to extract themselves; there was no harm to life. Yet Trump perceived this, rightfully so, as an attack on America, and two days of heavy bombing of Iran by America followed. But Israel, according to the President, should just acquiesce to explosive-laden drones lobbed into their sovereign territory, so long as they don’t kill anyone, even if their purpose is to kill and terrorize.
Trump then went on reminiscing about what a beautiful country Lebanon used to be. But for the past 50 years, said he, they just have been pummeled. The juxtaposition of his wistful musing about the Lebanon of yore with his calumny against Israel without mentioning the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah, two entities whose only purpose is the destruction of Israel and who chose Lebanon at one time or another as their theater of operations against Israel, was undoubtedly meant to imply that it is Israel who is responsible for the loss of the affable Mediterranean Lebanese culture.
The purpose of Trump’s invective was likely to lay the stage for what is soon to come. In the first point of the now published Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the US, it is stated that “the United States of America, Iran, and their allies declare the permanent termination of military operation on all fronts including Lebanon…and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including Lebanon.” Right now, Israeli Defense Force is present in the southernmost portion of South Lebanon, an area that abuts Israel’s northern border. This region is replete with Hezbollah tunnels, weapon caches, rocket launchers, and combatants who initiate relentless attacks at northern Israel. The reason for the presence of Israeli troops in the area is to protect the Israeli population by mitigating and ultimately eliminating these attacks.
President Trump’s current overarching objective is to open the Strait of Hormuz and to keep it open. He intends to achieve this not by forcing Iran to do so, but by appeasing it. Because of Trump’s lack of resolve, the concept of Middle East engagement has changed drastically in recent days. Iran has realized that, because of the fecklessness of the American administration, it can now actively intervene on behalf of Hezbollah and its other proxies, either by sending missiles or by using its powerful weapon, the Strait, to manipulate the region and the Americans. One of Iran’s objectives, as stated in the Memorandum of Understanding which Israel wasn’t privy to be part of, is to remove Israeli forces from southern Lebanon so that Hezbollah, Iran’s prolonged arm, can fully reestablish itself in the area and sooner or later break the putative cease fire and restart its attacks against Israel. After all, Hezbollah’s only purpose is to destroy Israel at the direction of Iran. Thus, for Israel, the presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon is an existential threat.
None of this matters to Trump, however. Therefore it is likely that in the upcoming days or weeks, Trump will order Israel to remove its military units from southern Lebanon, even if Hezbollah presents a threat, in order to satisfy Iran. When this happens, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government will be faced with a stark choice. The Prime Minister is a keen student of history and it would serve him well to recall that there are precedents of Israeli prime ministers defying American demands and directives, or otherwise circumventing them. In 1967, Prime Minister Eshkol ultimately, with the help of opposition leaders, made the agonizing decision to launch a preemptive strike against three Arab states, notwithstanding the pressure form President Johnson not to do so. The results was the Six Day War, one of only two wars in a long string of engagements Israel has fought with its enemies, where a clear victory was achieved. In 1981, Prime Minister Begin did not inform President Reagan beforehand about the mission to destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor. For this operation he incurred intense wrath of Reagan, which lead to a temporary suspension of arms deliveries to Israel. And Netanyahu himself squared up against President Obama in 2015 during the JCPOA negotiations.
When the order to pull out of southern Lebanon and let Hezbollah move back in comes, will Netanyahu be able to fill his own previous shoes, or the shoes of Begin and other Israeli leaders who faced American presidents with resolve? Judging the current circumstances, the answer will be revealed soon.
