In February 1992, when Israeli helicopter gunships opened fire on a convoy of vehicles in southern Lebanon, killing Hezbollah leader Abbas Al Musawi, many in Israel thought the country had reached a defining moment in its conflict with the organisation. Reading one contemporary Israeli newspaper’s front-page coverage of the assassination, the parallels with the killing of Al Musawi’s successor – Hassan Nasrallah – reveal much about the Israeli outlook.
Al Musawi’s death, Hadashot said “opened a new era in the fight against Hezbollah”. There were “no more limitations” on Israeli actions and “the era of tussling with Hezbollah on its convenient ground, along the [Lebanese] security strip, is over”. Fast forward to 2024, and in his first statement since Nasrallah’s killing in a devastating air strike on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country was on the cusp of “what appears to be a historic turning point” in the fight against its “enemies”.
Here, the similarities end. Although the Israeli strike on Al Musawi claimed the life of his wife and four-year-old son, Israel’s dropping of a so-called bunker buster bomb on Hezbollah’s HQ in the densely populated Beirut suburb of Dahieh was certain to cause much loss of civilian life. The fact that a country whose military and intelligence service can plant explosives in their enemy’s pagers and walkie-talkies has resorted to mass-casualty attacks reveals that restraint and non-combatants do not figure in its calculus. What has played out to such devastating effect in Gaza over the past year is now taking place in Lebanon.
Will this use of unrestrained force deliver the security that Israel’s leaders say they want? It is highly unlikely. As Al Musawi’s killing led to the rise of Nasrallah – a young, committed hardliner – the killing, jailing or sidelining of pragmatic Palestinian figures helped create the conditions for the militarists of Hamas to take power. Friday’s bombing of residential areas of Beirut adds to the displacement and impoverishment of the surviving civilians and the continuing destabilisation of Lebanon as a state. The bereavement, injury, trauma and financial ruin heaped upon Lebanon’s people – many of whom do not support Hezbollah – likely mean another generation will not see peace with their southern neighbours as something that is possible.
However, this does not detract from the devastation Hezbollah has wrought upon Lebanon and Syria, which requires attention and accountability. Its political agenda and role of a state-within-a-state has usurped the sovereignty of successive Lebanese governments, leaving the decision about whether to wage war in the hands of a foreign-backed militia.
Is there a way out of this spiralling conflict? There is – but it rests on having leaders willing to take steps towards peace with the peacemakers of the region. Israel must also begin contemplating their eventual withdrawal from occupied Arab lands in return for security guarantees. Continued occupation and war are not solutions.
Shortly after Friday’s air strike, the preparations for which were being finalised as Israeli leaders took part in the UN General Assembly in New York, a strong message from the Arab world was delivered. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, speaking before a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, said: "I can tell you here very unequivocally, all of us are willing to right now, guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state, independent state.”
No one is suggesting that such progress is imminent or easy. But without a clear-eyed understanding of the root cause behind this quagmire of conflict in the Levant, more decades could pass with each assassination being held up as the one that won the war. Without a settlement of the Palestinian question, and a sidelining of extremists from all sides, there will be no peace and it is civilians who will keep paying the highest price.
