Learning the lessons of Lebanon's civil war
Fifty years ago today, Lebanon and its people were plunged into the abyss of civil war. Partly as a reaction to the horror of more than 150,000 deaths in 15 years of bitter armed conflict, there has been a tendency to somewhat romanticise the country's pre-war history – yet Lebanon's sectarian tensions and social inequalities left the state brittle and prone to collapse. The war brought a special period in Lebanon's history to a shuddering halt. Its position as a vibrant cultural and intellectual bridge between East and West became another victim of the conflict. Before the war, cosmopolitan Beirut was a luxury tourism destination, a hub for Arab commerce and home to a flourishing and stable banking sector. The conflict that erupted on April 13, 1975 was manipulated by an array of countries including Israel, Syria and Iran. The early 1980s saw the rise of Hezbollah after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, leaving successive Lebanese governments struggling to cope with an Iranian-backed state within a state. However, despite this dark history – or, in some ways, because of it – Lebanon has much to teach the world about resilience. In spite of facing some very long odds and amid repeated predictions that the state would not survive, Lebanon is still standing. It is a country that has worked hard to manage its diversity, and has not given up on the goal of creating a civic society and multi-confessional republic that all Lebanese can call home. That various Lebanese governments have often fallen short of these ideals does not invalidate them. Lebanon has been through more than its fair share of hardships: occupation; sectarian violence; repeated governmental collapse; financial crises; corruption; the destabilising assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri in 2005; the 2020 Beirut port blast and last year's Israeli invasion to name but a few. Although the civil war ended in 1990, there has been little accountability or justice for the many families who lost loved ones in the fighting. It is worth considering however, that in early 2025, Lebanon is in a better position to build a brighter future that it has been for several years. A new President, Prime Minister and government are in place, there is international support for the state's institutions, and a weakened Hezbollah has lost much of its ability to act as a spoiler. Added to these are the energy and spirit of the Lebanese people, who are among the most educated, entrepreneurial and dynamic in the Middle East. If the country wants to harness this energy and stem the brain drain of young talent, there is much work to be done. Lebanon's sovereignty must be re-established by building up institutions such as its armed forces and removing occupying Israeli troops in the south. The Lebanese authorities must also work to curtail corruption, provide essential services, maintain law and order, and ensure opportunity for all. Friends of Lebanon must step up and ensure its government has the tools to maintain a real path of reform. The ultimate goal should include restoring the Lebanese people's confidence in their institutions and leaders, and reinstating the country's place as a regional and international hub, therefore ensuring that the kind of deadly divisions seen 50 years ago are never allowed to return.
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Early on Friday morning, Israel launched unprovoked air strikes deep inside Iranian territory, targeting sites near Isfahan and Tehran. Among those reportedly killed were scientists, senior government officials and civilians, including women and children. Yet, within hours, western leaders and media outlets cast Israel's aggression as "preemptive" self-defence. US officials claimed that Israel acted to thwart an "imminent" Iranian threat, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune insisted the strikes were necessary to counter "Iranian aggression" and protect Americans. Despite its ongoing belligerence across the region, the depiction of violent, predatory Israel as a victim of its victims has prevailed in the West since before the establishment of the settler-colonial state in 1948. The more lands and people Israel conquers and oppresses, the more insistently the West portrays it as the victim. This framing was no accident. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters In 1936, a few months after the eruption of the Great Palestinian Rebellion against Zionist settler-colonialism and British occupation, the Polish Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion (born Grun) explained how Zionists must present their conquest of Palestine: We are not Arabs, and others measure us by a different standard… Our instruments of war are different from those of the Arabs, and only our instruments can guarantee our victory. Our strength is in defence… and this strength will give us a political victory if England and the world know that we are defending ourselves rather than attacking. In 1948, and in line with this Zionist strategy, the dominant western narrative cast the Zionists, who massacred Palestinians and expelled them from their homeland, as poor victims merely defending themselves against the indigenous population whose lands they had conquered. It was, however, Israel's "defensive" conquest of the West Bank and Gaza - 58 years ago this month - that firmly entrenched its image as a besieged "victim" and laid the groundwork for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Today, even that genocide is presented in the West as a matter of self-defence. Israel, we are told, remains the victim of its victims - 200,000 of whom it has killed or injured in its latest war to "defend itself". Saintly victimhood The June 1967 War elevated Israel to the status of untouchable, saintly victimhood in the West. Its supporters multiplied, among western Christians and Jews alike, who viewed Arabs and Palestinians as the oppressors of Israel. Indeed, it was this climate of extreme anti-Arab hostility that marked a turning point in the politicisation of the late intellectual Edward Said, who witnessed it first-hand in the United States. Israel's territorial conquests were celebrated as acts of heroic self-defence - a deliberate inversion of victim and aggressor that continues to shape western perceptions. A review of the 1967 war's so-called achievements helps explain how Israel's image as a victim has endured, even as it carries out mass killings and forced displacement A review of the 1967 war's so-called achievements - and the planning that preceded them - helps explain how Israel's image as a victim has endured, even as it carries out mass killings and forced displacement. Between 1948 and 1967, Israel destroyed some 500 Palestinian villages, replacing them with Jewish colonies. This erasure was hailed in the West as a miracle: the building of a Jewish state after the Holocaust in spite of the hateful resistance of the indigenous Palestinians seeking to save their homeland. The historian Isaac Deutscher - often described as a critic of Zionism - called Israel's effacement of Palestine and the Palestinians "a marvel and a prodigy of history", akin to "the great heroic myths and legends" of antiquity. Moshe Dayan, Israel's military chief of staff, reflected on its mythical achievements in destroying Palestine in 1969: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books are no longer in existence. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either." Dayan's pride in Israel's theft of Palestinian land led him a year earlier to urge Israelis never to say "that's enough" when it came to acquiring territory: "You must not call a halt - heaven forbid - and say, 'that's all; up to here, up to Degania, to Muffalasim, to Nahal Oz!' For that is not all." Western complicity That the Zionists established their state on stolen Palestinian land was never a cause for criticism in the West. While glorifying Israel's legendary land thefts, western powers lamented its small territory and backed its colonial expansionist plans - already well underway. After all, if Israel was the victim, then it naturally required more territory to occupy. This view was recently echoed by US President Donald Trump, who in February defended planned Israeli annexation of the West Bank by claiming: "It's a small country… it's a small country in terms of land." Israel's attack on Iran: Why Netanyahu opted to roll the dice Read More » Israel's avarice for the land of others was made unmistakably clear before and after its 1956 invasion and first occupation of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. After this conquest, the secular David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, waxed biblical, claiming that the invasion of Sinai "was the greatest and most glorious in the annals of our people". The successful invasion and occupation, he claimed, restored "King Solomon's patrimony from the island of Yotvat in the south to the foothills of Lebanon in the north". "Yotvat" - as the Israelis rushed to rename the Egyptian island of Tiran - "will once more become part of the Third Kingdom of Israel". Amid inter-imperial rivalry with France and Britain, the US insisted on Israeli withdrawal, prompting outrage from Ben-Gurion: "Up to the middle of the sixth century Jewish independence was maintained on the island of Yotvat… which was liberated yesterday by the Israeli army." He also declared the Gaza Strip "an integral part of the nation". Invoking the biblical prophecy of Isaiah, he vowed: "No force, whatever it is called, was going to make Israel evacuate Sinai." Despite popular support for Israel in the West, the Israelis withdrew four months later under pressure from the UN, the US and the Soviet Union. Egypt welcomed the UN Emergency Force (Unef) to its side of the border, but Israel refused to receive Unef monitors. Expansionist strategy In 1954, Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon "proposed entering the demilitarised zones [on the Israeli-Syrian frontier], seizing the high ground across the Syrian border [that is part or all of the Golan Heights], and entering the Gaza Strip or seizing an Egyptian position near Eilat." Dayan also suggested that Israel conquer Egyptian territory at Ras al-Naqab in the south, or cut through Sinai, south of Rafah, to the Mediterranean. In May 1955, he even proposed that Israel annex Lebanon south of the Litani River. The Israelis also moved forward with plans to steal all the land in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) along the Syrian border near the Golan Heights. By 1967, they had taken over the entire area. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war In addition to these land seizures and occupations, Israel's territorial ambitions expanded steadily between 1948 and 1967. It repeatedly sought to provoke its Arab victims into responding to attacks, in order to create a pretext for invading coveted Arab lands, while continuing to frame itself as the victim of its victims. On 13 November 1966, the Israelis invaded the southern West Bank village of Samu, across the border inside Jordan, and blew up more than 125 houses, along with the village clinic and school. Jordanian soldiers responding to the attack were ambushed before reaching the village. The Israelis killed 15 soldiers and three civilians, and they wounded 54 others. In April 1967, the Israelis were threatening Syria, chipping away at more of the DMZ by sending in farmers, tractors and soldiers disguised as police. When the Syrians responded with mortar fire, the Israeli "victims" launched 70 fighter jets, bombed Damascus itself and killed 100 Syrians. Manufacturing pretext Israeli provocations incensed Arab public opinion. In May 1967, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser finally yielded to popular pressure from across the Arab world to remove Unef from Egypt - forces that Israel had never permitted on its side of the border - and to close the Straits of Tiran, at the mouth of the Red Sea, to Israeli shipping, which was lawful under international law as it fell within Egyptian territorial waters. Nasser sent two army divisions to Sinai to protect the border after Unef's departure and closed the straits, through which less than 5 percent of Israeli shipping passed. Israel, which had been provoking an Arab response and waiting for the right pretext to invade its victims and steal their lands, now had several. Destruction can be seen in Egypt's Suez city following Israeli air raids during the June 1967 War, in which Israel seized Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and Sinai (AFP) On 5 June 1967, Israel invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Within six days, it had occupied the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula all the way to the Suez Canal - for the second time in a decade - as well as the entire West Bank from Jordan and Syria's Golan Heights. Unlike the Arab world, which refers to the invasion as the "June 1967 War", the Israelis and their western imperial sponsors not only insist that Israel was the one "invaded", rather than the invader of its Arab neighbours, but also refer to its multiple invasions as the "Six-Day War" - likening Israel to God, who created a new world in six days and rested on the seventh. The West erupted in unbridled racist jubilation. The Daily Telegraph called the war "The Triumph of the Civilised", while the French daily Le Monde declared that Israel's conquest had "rid" Europe "of the guilt it incurred in the drama of the Second World War and, before that, in the persecutions, which from the Russian pogroms to the Dreyfus affair, accompanied the birth of Zionism. In the continent of Europe, the Jews were at last avenged - but alas, on the backs of the Arabs – for the tragic and stupid accusation: "they went like sheep to the slaughter". Erasing Palestine As they had done in 1948, the Israelis proceeded to wipe Palestinian villages in the West Bank off the map, including Beit Nuba, Imwas, and Yalu, expelling their 10,000 inhabitants. They went on to decimate the villages of Beit Marsam, Beit Awa, Hablah and Jiftlik, among others. In East Jerusalem, the Israelis descended on the Mughrabi Quarter, so named seven centuries earlier when Mughrabi volunteers from North Africa joined Saladin's war against the Crusading Franks. In Gaza, Israel expelled 75,000 Palestinians by the end of 1968 and barred another 50,000 from returning home The neighbourhood had been owned by an Islamic endowment for centuries. Thousands of residents were given only minutes to vacate their homes, which were immediately bulldozed to make way for the conquering Jewish masses to enter the Old City and celebrate their victory facing the Buraq Wall - the so-called "Western Wall". The first Israeli military governor of the occupied territories, the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, who would later become Israel's sixth president, took credit for the destruction of the ancient, densely populated neighbourhood. In typical Israeli racist fashion, he described it as a "toilet" that they "decided to remove". This, it seems, is what "civilised" victims do when they triumph over their victims. Israeli jeeps drove through Bethlehem with loudspeakers threatening the population: "You have two hours to leave your homes and flee to Jericho or Amman. If you don't your houses will be shelled." Mass expulsion followed, with more than 200,000 Palestinians forced to cross the River Jordan to the East Bank. As in 1948, Israeli civilians and soldiers looted Palestinian property. In Gaza, Israeli forces expelled 75,000 Palestinians by December 1968 and barred another 50,000, who had been working, studying or travelling in Egypt or elsewhere during the 1967 war, from returning home. The UN recorded 323,000 Palestinians displaced from Gaza and the West Bank, 113,000 of whom were 1948 refugees now expelled a second time. Apparently, this, too, was consistent with "civilised" behaviour. 'Civilised victims' Israel expelled more than 100,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights, leaving just 15,000 in the territory at the end of the war. It demolished 100 Syrian towns and villages, transferring their lands to Jewish colonists. In the Sinai, where the population at the time was mostly Bedouin and farmers, 38,000 people became refugees. Israel killed more than 18,000 Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians during the war, while losing fewer than 1,000 soldiers. During and after the war, the Israelis shot dead at least 1,000 Egyptian prisoners of war who had surrendered, forcing many to dig their own graves before being executed. The Israelis killed the captured Palestinians serving in the Egyptian army, selecting them specifically for execution. Israel continued to deport Palestinians by the hundreds as the occupation advanced. All of the above was, in the eyes of the West, further proof of what "civilised" victims do when they conquer the lands of those they deem uncivilised. Yet, despite its signature war crimes, crimes against humanity and unabashed anti-Arab racism and supremacist contempt, Israel's conquest was still portrayed as a righteous victory by Israeli "victims" over their Arab "oppressors". Colonial expansion While a pro-Israeli chorus in the West insisted that poor Israel was maintaining its brutal occupation of the territories it conquered in 1967 in order to barter them for peace from its warlike victims, in reality, it was proceeding with the business of colonisation. Israeli atrocities are nothing new. The only novelty is the scale Joseph Massad Read More » Let us take a quick inventory. By 1977, 10 years after the invasion, successive Israeli Labor governments had annexed East Jerusalem, built 30 Jewish settler-colonies in the West Bank alone and four in the Gaza Strip, with more under construction. Upwards of 50,000 Jewish colonists had already moved to colonies established in East Jerusalem, which came to be deliberately mischaracterised as "neighbourhoods". Labor governments also established the majority of the 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula before the Likud party came to power. In 1972, Labor expelled 10,000 Egyptians after confiscating their lands in 1969. Their homes, crops, mosques and schools were bulldozed to make way for six kibbutzim, nine rural Jewish settlements, and the Jewish colony of Yamit in occupied Sinai. The Sinai colonies were ultimately dismantled in 1982, following the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. In occupied Syria, Israel established its first Jewish colony, Kibbutz Golan, in July 1967. While touring the Golan Heights immediately after the 1967 war, Israeli Labor Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, born Shkolnik, was overwhelmed with nostalgia for his birthplace, exclaiming joyously: "Just like in the Ukraine." The Israelis evicted some 5,000 Palestinian refugees from their homes in East Jerusalem's "Jewish Quarter", which was never exclusively Jewish and which, before 1948, was less than 20 percent Jewish-owned. At the time, Jewish property consisted of no more than three synagogues and their enclosures. After 1967, Israel returned Jewish property in East Jerusalem to its original owners while confiscating all Palestinian property in the same area In 1948, the quarter's 2,000 Jewish inhabitants fled to the Zionist side when the Jordanian army saved East Jerusalem from Zionist plunder and occupation. Even before 1948, Muslims and Christians were in fact the majority of the inhabitants who lived in the 2-hectare "Jewish Quarter", and most of the Jews who lived there rented their property from them or from Christian and Muslim endowments. After the Israeli conquest, the quarter was substantially expanded to cover more than 16 hectares. The Jordanian Custodian of Absentee Property had preserved all Jewish holdings in the name of their original owners and never expropriated them. After 1967, the Israeli government returned Jewish property in East Jerusalem to its original Israeli Jewish owners, while confiscating all Palestinian property in the quarter. Meanwhile, Palestinian property in West Jerusalem, seized by Israel in 1948, was never returned to the Palestinians of East Jerusalem who now, under occupation, laid claim to it. Remaking Jerusalem On 29 June 1967, Israel placed occupied East Jerusalem under the expanded municipality of West Jerusalem. It dismissed and later deported the Palestinian-Jordanian mayor, dissolved the municipal council and Judaised the entire city administration. Immediately following the conquest, the area was declared "a site of antiquity", banning all construction. Israel closes Al-Aqsa Mosque to worshippers until further notice Read More » Israeli authorities launched archaeological excavations underground in a desperate search for the Jewish temple, leading to the destruction of numerous historic Palestinian buildings, including the 14th-century Fakhriyyah hospice and al-Tankiziyya school. In 1980, Israel officially annexed the city - a move declared "null and void" by a UN Security Council resolution. Excavations and drilling under and next to Muslim holy sites proceeded apace in search of the elusive First Temple, which has never been found - assuming it ever existed. Evictions of Palestinian Jerusalemites soon followed. Periodic curfews and collective punishment were imposed across the occupied territories. The Israelis also renamed the West Bank "Judea and Samaria" and altered the names of cities and streets to accord with their biblical fantasies. All this and much more preceded the current genocide, and drew either accolades or indifference from Israel's western supporters and funders. Enduring template It seems that support for Israel in the western mainstream increases in proportion to its cruelty towards its victims. The Nakba it perpetrated in 1948 and the apartheid system it imposed on those Palestinians it could not expel between 1948 and 1967 were hailed as epic achievements of "Jewish victims" over the people whose lands they had usurped and whose lives they have destroyed ever since. But if in the West today, it is deemed a moral crime to describe the Palestinian response to ongoing Israeli colonialism as resistance, the very same Ben-Gurion did not hesitate to call it just that in 1938. It was Israel's 'defensive' and near-divine capacity to annihilate its victims in 1967 that assured the West of its lofty civilisational prowess The Palestinian revolt, he explained, "is an active resistance by the Palestinians to what they regard as a usurpation of their homeland by the Jews - that's why they fight". He continued: "Behind the terrorists is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice... we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view, we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside." This aside, it was Israel's "defensive" and near-divine capacity to annihilate its victims in 1967 that assured the West of its lofty civilisational prowess. That war became the enduring template for Israel's so-called "preemptive" campaigns, wars that expand its colonial reach while allowing it to pose as the righteous victim. It is no surprise, then, that Israel's western supporters have invoked this legacy not only after its latest strikes on Iran, but throughout its genocidal campaign in Gaza and its wider aggression in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. In their view, Israel is not merely defending itself, but acting as a proxy for the West. Its current rampage is yet another striking demonstration of what western "victims" can and should do to their non-western victims. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Sharjah 24
2 hours ago
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Oil prices soar, stocks slide after Israel strikes Iran
Oil prices surge Oil futures skyrocketed more than 13 percent at one point before settling to gains of around seven percent, reigniting concerns about a renewed spike in inflation. Stock market reaction Following a downturn in Europe and Asia, Wall Street indices remained in the red throughout the day, finishing down more than one percent. Art Hogan, chief market strategist of B. Riley Wealth, noted, "After having a pretty solid run in May and the first part of June, markets found an excuse to take some profits." Airline shares drop Shares in major airlines plummeted as flights around the Middle East were suspended, further impacting market sentiment. Safe-Haven assets rise The dollar climbed higher, while gold, a safe haven investment, approached its record high of over $3,500 an ounce, having increased by around 30 percent since the year's start. David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation, remarked that the drop in equities and rise in safe-haven assets highlight the fragility of market sentiment amid geopolitical events. Escalating tensions On Friday, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes targeting its nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of "several waves of Iranian attacks" in response, with smoke seen rising above Tel Aviv. Market sentiment Despite a negative day for equities, analysts described the selling as orderly. Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers noted, "Investors are paring back some risk, but this is hardly a panicky sell-off," indicating a cautious wait-and-see approach among investors. Implications for oil prices and inflation Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at Ebury, stated that further escalation could disrupt Iranian oil production, raising oil prices and complicating the decisions of major central banks regarding interest rates. Rising oil prices could weigh on global growth and maintain inflationary pressures for longer.
