Israel using displacement as a weapon of war
This conflict has been going on for 11 months now. It had been confined to military targets, but the past week has been very difficult, with a very high casualty toll among civilians.
Civilians were hurt in last week’s pager and walkie-talkie explosions, as well as in that massive strike in Beirut’s southern suburb, in a residential district. And dozens of women and children were killed in Israeli strikes yesterday.
Israel employs a military strategy called the Dahiya doctrine, which refers to Beirut’s southern suburbs. They employed this during the 2006 war. It’s about pressuring Hezbollah by targeting civilian infrastructure, and it seems this is what they’re trying to do now. No doubt those strikes are also about degrading the group’s military capabilities, but they are also about displacement as a weapon of war.
The message of the Israelis is this: “If we cannot return our citizens to northern Israel, then your citizens will be displaced.” And what Israel has been doing is concentrating these strikes in areas where Hezbollah has a presence, where Hezbollah supporters live, south Lebanon and the east of the country,
They’ve still not carried out that kind of wave of attacks in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Because if they do that, then the equation changes between these warring sides. Hezbollah will target Tel Aviv.
Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes as seen from Tyre, southern Lebanon September 23
Israel aiming to break up Hezbollah and Hamas with Lebanon attacks
This is the largest military campaign Israel has launched into Lebanon in a generation.
Netanyahu’s stated aim has been that he wants to get Israelis back into their homes in northern Israel and military pressure may bring Hezbollah leader Nasrallah back to the negotiating table.
Israel wants to negotiate a deal from a position of strength and cut off the renewed relationship between the Lebanon front and the Gaza front, between Hezbollah and Hamas, since the war in the Strip began almost a year ago.
But Hezbollah has shown that it remains capable of launching strikes deeper inside Israel even though it suffered some of its biggest losses. It has driven the cabinet to approve a “special situation” across the country and that will include curfews and forced evacuations.
Lebanon sets up 89 temporary shelters
Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters that the 89 temporary shelters were set up in schools and other facilities. He said the shelters can house more than 26,000 people who have fled “Israeli atrocities”.
Children play as they take shelter in a school in Beirut
Ex-Israeli army spokesman warns against ground offensive in Lebanon
Brigadier-General Ronan Manelis has told the Maariv newspaper that if Israel sends ground troops into Lebanon, it will be fulfilling the “biggest dream” of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
“We are trying to push Nasrallah to raise the white flag, which is probably not characteristic of him,” he said, adding that the belief that the war will end quicker if Israel exercises maximum force is a fundamental mistake.
Israel’s stated objectives could have been achieved through diplomacy
Gideon Levy, a columnist with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, says that Israel claims the attack on Lebanon aims to secure the return of 60,000 displaced people to northern Israel.
“But this could have been achieved by a deal if Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza,” he said. “Israel was not ready to put an end to the war in Gaza, so here we are now in another war on a very big scale,” Levy added.
He also warned that the war in Lebanon was “just beginning”, but even after months of attacks “nothing will be achieved”. “Even if anything is achieved, it will be the same that could have been achieved yesterday through diplomacy.”
