Jamie Dettmer
“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday as the Israel Defense Forces started a bombing campaign and ground incursion that has displaced more than a million Lebanese residents. Netanyahu is offering them a stark choice — throw Hezbollah out or expect “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
The Israeli leader has broad support in his country to take the fight to Iran-aligned Hezbollah, which has been launching cross-border rockets at Israel for over a year now. Even die-hard political adversaries like Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid — leaders of the country’s official opposition — have fallen in line, the former writing in the Economist that this war is perhaps the last chance for Lebanon “to become a normal state again.”
Meanwhile, several still influential former intelligence and security chiefs — including former Mossad head Tamir Pardo — have publicly urged sustaining the military campaign with the aim of redrawing the Middle East, arguing it presents “an opportunity that must not be missed” to ensure the paramilitary movement has no chance of rehabilitating itself. It’s a prospect that seems to have enthralled a hesitant U.S. administration as well, sidelining its fears of a broader regional war and quietly approving Israel’s incursion across the border.
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