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Israel attempting to impose ‘new security reality’ in Middle East
Israel hasn’t had a plan throughout its war on Gaza and now Lebanon but is trying to “impose a new security reality on the entire region”, according to an analyst.
The Israeli army is “trying to neutralise any opposition and resistance coming from the north, from the front with Hezbollah, in an attempt to be able to basically continue to commit its genocide in Gaza unchallenged”, Abdullah Al-Arian, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera
“What really needs to be discussed is the extent to which there is an attempt to occupy parts of southern Lebanon and try to reshape the entire Lebanese political system in a way that is much more favourable to both the US and Israel,” he said.
Israel is not interested in implementing any UN resolutions at the Israel-Lebanon border, he added.
Israel’s “continued destruction” of Gaza and Lebanon – at a scale much larger than ever before – is collective punishment for the resistance groups that have emerged over the decades in response to Israeli military actions, said Al-Arian.
Israel is a ‘gambler’ that doesn’t learn from experience
Gideon Levy, a columnist with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, says that although defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon is an “unachievable goal”, Israel believes this is an opportunity to beat its enemies and “delete all dangers”.
“This is obviously an unachievable goal, but Israel is aiming there, first in Gaza to smash Hamas and then to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon and if possible also to at least hit the potential power of Iran, or at least to minimise it,” he told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.
Israel has tried and failed to accomplish this in the past, such as in its 1982 invasion with the hopes to install a friendly government in Lebanon.
“A gambler goes again and again to the casino, and he never learns,” Levy said of Israel’s unwavering belief that it will succeed in its goals this time. “He loses and loses and loses, and he tries again because he believes that the next time will be his chance, his great chance.”
Levy added: “Israel in many ways is behaving very similarly, not learning anything from its own experience.”
Arab states will continue ‘tying security to that of Israel’
Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, says Arab states will do little to prevent Israel and the US from remaking the region.
“Arab states have, for the most part, been … tying their security to that of Israel,” Al-Arian told Al Jazeera. “As a result, they have very little to say or do as far as the question of what’s happening in Palestine. And this, of course, is contrary to what their populations are expressing.”
The crushing of past Arab uprisings indicates that these states “are not in any way accountable to the sentiments of their populations, which very much stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, while their regimes are certainly seeking these alliances with Israel with the United States”, he said.
“As a result, there’s been such a muted response. If anything … we’ve seen quite the opposite – that they’ve worked quite aggressively to support Israel’s ambitions and campaigns,” said Al-Arian, pointing to the shooting down of missiles aimed at Israel, or rerouting goods that have been blockaded in the Red Sea.
