Israel appears to be ethnically cleansing the south of Lebanon, mostly of its Shiite Muslim population. The majority of the Shiites are traveling northward and eastward to the other Shiite heartland of the Bekaa Valley very close to the Syrian border. Others have sought shelter in the politically hostile Christian heartland (Districts of the Matn, Kesrouan, Byblos, Batroun and others) but where compassion has so far prevailed and assistance is being provided in food and shelter.
Meanwhile, Israel is systematically bombing all border crossing points - legal and illegal - between Lebanon and Syria, which is now preventing the ~2.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon from fleeing back into their country. This is also preventing the Lebanese Shiites from seeking refuge in Syria itself, although there are reports that upwards of 400,000 Lebanese Shiites have fled to Iraq. I doubt the acccuracy of that number which is nearly a third of the Shiite population of Lebanon. But the destination of Iraq is the most plausible because Iraq is a majority Shiite country, unlike Syria (majority Sunni, and the Alawite sect of the Assads hold power). In fact, from Iraq, the refugees could continue on to Iran on whose dole the entire Hezbollah "resistance" bullshit has been funded for decades. So the Iranians would be the best chance for the Shiites of Lebanon to settle there, temporarily perhaps but permanently if the conflict persists.
Once a Shiite refugee, say a head of household, settles in a different environment than his own, he might have a few thousand dollars on him (Lebanon's banks are not functional, the economy is basically a cash economy and everyone hides thousands of dollars in their homes). The money the refugee has managed to carry with him might last him for a few weeks. Then he might start to look for work or re-start the business he had in his village in the south, which can be very complicated because the new environment is not very favorable to a long term arrangement, not to mention the competition.
Compassion - and good weather - may prevail for a while. It has been particularly warm this October with barely a shower and moderate temperatures, but winter is around the corner with its slew of unique problems. And if the Israeli onslaught continues, conflicts and disputes may break out between the hosts and the guests. Once you give someone an empty room or section or your house or an empty floor, and if that someone ends up staying there for some time, it becomes difficult to ask them to leave. Some of the refugees have in fact invaded and squatted empty floors of residential buildings, leading to clashes with the owners.
Many of the shiites fleeing the southern border villages are known to be Hezbollah sympathizers and operatives. Hezbollah has always claimed that it cannot be asked to evacuate the southern border area because its militants are all natives of the villages there. Thus, one might rightly assume that many of the refugees sheltering among Christians, Druze and Sunnis are potential targets for Israeli attacks. How long can the hosts tolerate this threat?
Should the conflict persist, disputes could potentially escalate into civil strife. The Shiites are all armed, as they are mostly affiliated with Hezbollah and its sister militia of Amal. As a collective, the Shiite community is armed. On the other hand, neither the Sunnis nor the Christians have formally created militias, but most Lebanese own firearms. It would be easy to create a militia on short notice. Politically and publicly, the Christians and mainstream Sunnis (other than the radical Hamas-like affiliates) keep calling on the state, the army and security forces to protect them should problems erupt with the Hezbollah-Amal militants.
If history is any guide, back in 1975 the situation was very similar, with the only difference that the Palestinian usurpers of power were foreigners, whereas Hezbollah's popular base is Lebanese. But just as the Palestinians were armed while the Christians were not, it didn't take long for the Christians to form militias and fight the Palestinians. Something similar could develop at this time.
And in 1975, the Lebanese Sunni Muslims sided with the Palestinians against their own Christian fellow countrymen, and a sedition of Sunni officers who formed the so-called "Arab Army of Lebanon" caused the breakdown of the national army into sectarian brigades that joined the fighting, each on the side of its community. This too, can happen now.
With the concentration of Lebanese Shiites and Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley along the Syrian border, an incubator of potential violence could be in the making in that area in which Syria's Assad, always hostile to Lebanon, would supply arms and logistics to the nascent joint Syrian-Shiite militia to fight the Christians and perhaps the Sunnis.
The level of destruction of the Shiite villages in the south is a hundred-fold that sustained in the July 2006 33-day long war between Hezbollah and Israel. Back then, as soon as UN resolution 1701 was voted at the UN security council, the Shiite refugees immediatley returned to their villages in the south. It is difficult to see this happening this time around. Thus, it seems that the Shiites will be refugees for quite some time before returning, if they ever do. Rumors abound on Israel's objective of permanent displacement and de-Shiitizing the south (which is how it created itself in Palestine) by creating a Shiite-free security belt of some 5 - 10 Km north of the border. Israel's attacks on the cities of Tyre and Sidon suggest an even more sinister plan.
Lebanon stands on a crossroads like the ones it faced in 1840-1860 and again in 1918-1920. Will it retain its current borders and demographic composition? Will it self-partition into sectarian cantons that may or may not federate? The Christians of Lebanon have had a long history of autonomy, but not the Muslims who were coerced to join the Christians into forming the Greater Lebanon in 1920. They wanted to remain part of Syria. Have the Muslims tasted enough separation from Damascus? Will they re-attach their regions to Syria? One things is for certain: The Christians are publicly saying they want some form of separation from the Muslims, be it by decentralizing government and grating more autonomy to the provinces, or in a federal state where each community can rule itself as it wishes but without the country imploding, or at the other extreme a partition of the country into smaller independent entities.
Christian Lebanon managed to shrug off Turkish Ottoman rule in 1840-1860 and build an autonomous Mount Lebanon Governorate that included the Christian heartland, namely the Mountain hinterland that stretches from the north all the way to the south. To the Governorate were annexed in 1920 the Muslim and formerly Syrian coastal cities (Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut) and the Muslim plains (Akkar, Hermel, Bekaa and Jabal Amel) in the north, east and south surrounding the central Mountain to form modern Greater Lebanon which has failed for the past 100 years.
Will this "experiment" fail or will it continue in a different form?
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