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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1408 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 25

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Lebanon

There has been scattered fighting between the Israelis and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, but so far a serious general war has been avoided. Hezbollah leader Hassa Nasrallah last Friday gave a much awaited and heavily attended speech endorsing the Palestinian side of the conflict, reiterated that they had nothing to do with it and giving a bellicose but indirect response to the question of whether he planned to escalate: “Some claim that we are about to engage in the war. I am telling you, we have been engaged in this battle since October 8”.

Following a recent Israeli missile strike that killed several Lebanese civilians, tensions are high, with one Hezbollah lawmaker threatening to respond “double over” against any Israeli attacks.

The violence along the Lebanese border has killed more than 60 Hezbollah fighters and 10 civilians, Lebanese security officials say. At least seven Israeli soldiers and one civilian have been killed.

France, which has been so pro-Israel they banned anti-Israeli marches, has still found themselves calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, and has now offered to send armored vehicles to the Lebanese army to “beef up the Lebanese national army so that it could coordinate well with the United Nations peacekeeping force as tensions mount between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon”.

Hamas has also now claimed that it too is operating within Southern Lebanon and “had launched 16 rockets targeting the northern Israeli city of Nahariya and the southern outskirts of the city of Haifa.”

So I take it from the French response that Hezbollah’s involvement in the Israel war would be expected to trigger a declaration of war on them by the rest of Lebanon? I know a prominent Christian leader had said it would be taken as an aggressive act, but thought Hezbollah was the main remaining military force in Lebanon.

You're 100% correct that Hezbollah is the only meaningful fighting force in Lebanon but they do actually retain a military still, which sounds funny to even say lol. It's hard to say what would happen (and hopefully cooler heads prevail) but yeah I would definitely say arming the actual armed forces is at the least a sign that Hezbollah should expect internal politics to not give them a blank check in the conflict. The last Christian President Aoun actually had a tacit alliance with Hezollah, but there's no President now and no alliance to paper over demographic divisions, and the Christian population of Lebanon has often looked to France as a possible protector.

Alternatively, the French response hasn't been a warning to the Israeli's, it's been a warning to Iran- in the sense of 'if Hezbollah gets involved, these APCs go to the other side of a potential Lebanese civil war.'

While the OP's framing is that the French position is a response to Israel, a lot of maneuverings going on in the region right now have been aimed at Iran, who reportedly was preparing to try and arrange basically a regional intifada that was supposed to have been called for by Hezbollah as the relevant proxy. There's been quite a bit of shuttle diplomacy in the region in the region, and depending on who you believe, there were direct threats that if other Iranian proxies got involved in earnest, it would be considered a formal act of war by Iran by the US. This allegedly occured right before Hezbollah did a significant announcement speach that had some potential groundwork for being the referenced call to arms, but ended up being an underwhelming 'we're staying out of it, mostly' and restriction to token efforts.

If you believe those framings- and I wouldn't discount them entirely- the French action isn't 'we will help Lebanese national army against Israel'- for which APCs would do little to no good- but 'we will help the Lebanese national army against Hezbollah,' in which the APCs would be directly relevant.

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