By far, the largest majority of Lebanon's complex social structure wants Hezbollah gone or dead. No one is really complaining about Israel's savagery, even though the Lebanese put Israel and Hezbollah on an equal footing as the most detested ultra-religious, supremacist and violent behemoths. In fact, the Lebanese are celebrating - mostly in silence so as not to be accused of inciting violence - the fact that their sworn enemies, Iran and Israel, are at each other's throas. When confronted with the scenario of two ugly bullies they don't care much for fighting it out, the Lebanese repeat the saying, "خلّي الخرى يخبّط بعضو" - literally, let the shit beat the shit.
Fine, and one has to understand that they do not enjoy the never-ending violence unfolding, again and again, on their soil. But after some 60 years (since the late 1960s) of every ethnic and religious barbarian experimenting their warfare on Lebanese soil, for equally barbaric ideologies spawned during the Stone and Bronze Ages, including things like God's Chosen Ones, or God's Ultimate Message to humanity, the Lebanese have become jaded and watch war like a live movie, a reality TV moment, with popcorn and beer. The "art" of war has become their "life", and not just an imitation.
As they watch Israel erase the south of their country, with perhaps the likelihood of a predictable invasion by ultra-religious Jewish settlers and a Zionist annexation of that part of their country, the Lebanese present a symptom similar to a rotating Stockholm's syndrome. As hostages of Hezbollah and Iran, some Lebanese fall in love with the romanticism of a fin-de-siècle resistance bullshit that draws its roots back to the 1960s times of revolution. As Israel bombs right and left, eardicates olive groves and essentially kills land with phosphorus bombs, some Lebanese cannot help but fall in love with the Israelis and sustain the thought that, perhaps, this will be the last time and they are willing to see it through despite the barbarity and the loss of land.
Many Arabs have signed treaties and made pseudo- and superficial "normalization" agreements with the genocidal colonial Zionists, all without any serious peace. The resentment across all Arab peoples is still very deep in regard to the continued rape of Palestine, despite their governments cavorting to idiots-on-Zionist-Netanyahu's-leash Trump. That is why no one is really banking on a "new Middle East" proclaimed by the Great Moron Trump, which promises to keep the region on the same sinusoidal up-and-down cycle of real wars and fake peaces, while the Zionists keep pilfering land from their neighbors and westerners secute their access to oil.
Granted that Hezbollah and Iran have given the Zionists ample pretexts to wage their wars, and the two Shiite criminal organizations are to blame. As you can tell, the Lebanese are caught between two devils, and hard as they try to manintain a semblance of normal life amidst the horror, the movie goes on with a vicious circular plot that is exactly like the snake eating its own tail: Israel raped Palestine. Arabs tried to restore their "honor" (a big thing in the region) in several wars, but failed to restore honor and regain lost lands. So they bent down, kissed the ring and signed. Not really convinced, but what choice did they have when fighting Israel amounts to fighting the American father of the bastard child? Then Iran stepped in and decided to try its hand at restoring honor and land, and as we call can see, they are failing like imbeciles.
And that is exactly the price the Lebanese have been paying for more than six decades.
Again, if Israel does - and it's a big if - eliminate Hezbollah, the Lebanese know there is a dear price to pay. You see, Zionists and their American poodles are not known to freely give: They will exact a price.
To those Lebanese who are still stupid enough to believe that Israel and/or the US are doing them a favor: Beware. For those six decades, Lebanon has been the cheapest chip on the table, and after much confrontations between the big guys around them, Lebanon ends up being the bargaining chip. Every US administration since Eisenhower has fucked the Lebanese from behind in order to remain cordial with, of course its bastard child Israel, but also its Saudi, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, Syrian ... oily and mildly Israel-friendly clients. Lebanon does not have oil, and even if oil is discovered in the waters across its shoreline, it would be too late and in puny quantities that do not amount to "an interest".
This is what the Lebanese have never really understood. They live in a world of semi-liberal fiction, and are still deeply religious, just like their Jewish and Muslim neighbors. It's just that they are so small and weak that they refrain from warmongering (except the idiots of Hezbollah). De Gaulle once told the Lebanese, "countries don't have friends, they have interests". But the Lebanese continue to believe that Saudi Arabia and Iran are the friends of Lebanon's Muslims, and that the US and Europe are the friends of Lebanon's Christians, even though all of these "friends" have sold and bought them when necessary and convenient.
The bottom line of the ongoing war - the umpteenth one in six decades - is that Lebanon is being driven to suicide by everyone else. And suicide, the Lebanese have proven themselves capable of it many times in the past. It's just that they suck at suicide, which makes living more depressing because they fail at killing themselves once and for all. The US is pushing the Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to wage a war against Hezbollah with a divided and badly armed army and then sign literally anything with Israel, just so Trump and Netanyahu can claim that they fought a war for peace (Trump) and land (Netanyahu).
The Lebanese have been there before many times: With Eisenhower who disptatched 10,000 US Marines to Beirut in 1958; with Nixon and Kissinger who assured Israel's safety by making a deal with the Syrian dictator in 1974: Abandon the Golan to Israel and take Lebanon instead (which Assad did between 1974 and 2005); with George Bush Sr. who literally asked the Stalinist regime in Damascus to put down a rebellion by the Lebanese against the Kissinger-instigated Syrian occupation; with George Bush Jr. who decided to ask the Syrians to leave Lebanon (because they were not helping him with Iraq's Saddam Hussein) but re-installed the criminal Lebanese warlords to the helm; and now Trump who, I think will again, sell Lebanon and "pacify" it by giving the new Damascus friend Al-Sharaa and the old Tel Aviv friend Netanyahu "shares" in his new investments in Lebanon.
Not once did the Americans or the Europeans really try to shield this tiny country from the bullies. They did it for Bosnia. They did it for East Timor. They did for Kuwait. But never for interest-free Lebanon.
For now, all the Lebanese can do is watch Israel battle it out with Hezbollah, perhaps maybe "liberate" Lebanon from Hezbollah and Iran, but steal the southern third of the puny country as payola. Jaded the Lebanese are. They don't give a damn anymore. Finish the 60-year old masturbatory exercises between Muslims and Jews and let us move on with an amputated but peaceful country.
The big question in my mind is: When will the Lebanese learn De Gaulle's lesson?
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