On Tuesday, hundreds of handheld phasers used by members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, killing at least 11 people, including a 10-year-old girl. About 3,000 people were injured, many of them in critical condition.
No one has claimed responsibility for this operation, but it is not hard to guess who is behind it. Israel is a country that specializes in terrorizing Arab civilians in the name of fighting terrorism. Since October last year, the country has been busy carrying out mass killings in the Gaza Strip, officially killing over 41,000 Palestinians, but the actual death toll is likely several times higher.
The apparent targets of Tuesday’s attack were phaser-wielding Hezbollah members, but it was carried out with the full knowledge that the aftermath would be indiscriminate and that there would be massive civilian casualties. But isn’t that the point of terrorism?
It should be emphasized that Hezbollah owes its debt entirely to the terrorism that Israel inflicted on Lebanon in 1982, when it invaded and massacred tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. Israel’s torture-filled occupation of southern Lebanon lasted until May 2000, when the Israeli army was shamefully forced to withdraw its troops by the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah.
In 2006, Israel launched a 34-day offensive against Lebanon, destroying Lebanese infrastructure and killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians. After all, a country that thrives on constant war cannot afford to waste too much time between bombings.
Of course, Israel constantly claims that it acts in self-defense, and the indiscriminate firing of phasers across Lebanon seems to have become part of its “defense” repertoire. But history shows that Israel’s manoeuvres in Lebanon, as in Palestine, have traditionally been driven by distinctly predatory motives.
Consider it Diary entry from 1955 Courtesy of Israel’s second prime minister, Moshe Sharet, he outlined the vision of Moshe Dayan, then the Israeli army’s chief of staff: “We must capture his heart or buy him off with money so that he will declare himself the savior of Israel. [Lebanon’s] “Maronite population”.
After that, everything will fall into place quickly. “Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territories and create a Christian regime that will ally with Israel. The territory of Litani [River] The South will be fully incorporated into Israel and everything will be fine.”
Of course, things didn’t go exactly as Dayan had planned. But, hey, mergers can take time.
This particular diary entry was translated into English and published in a book titled Holy Terrorism in Israel: A Study Based on the Personal Diary and Other Documents of Moshe Sharet, 1980. The author of the manuscript is Livia Rockach, the daughter of former Israeli Interior Minister Israel Rockach.
A 1985 review of the book noted that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the man who handed the premiership over to Sharett, “pursued a policy he described as ‘retaliation,’ but which Sharett saw as one of a series of regular provocations designed to provoke a new war so that Israel could seize more territory from the Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, Syria and Lebanon.”
Nearly 70 years after that 1955 diary entry, provocation, amnesty and “revenge” remain Israel’s strategy.
Since the full-scale genocide began in Gaza in October, Israel has killed about 600 people in Lebanon in a series of side attacks. Israel also assassinated Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in July. The attack killed three civilians, including two children, and wounded 74.
But the bloodshed caused by the exploding pager has taken provocation to a new level. Lebanese hospitals are overwhelmed, and the Lebanese Health Ministry is scrambling to collect blood donations for the wounded. Meanwhile, the United States, as always, is on standby to make sure the situation remains as flammable as possible.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday after the phaser attack, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel would soon strike on the northern front. [with Lebanon] “This is a major front in the war,” and questions have been raised about America’s ability to prevent the conflict from “erupting into a regional war.”
In Miller’s eloquently coherent response, the United States will “continue to pursue diplomatic solutions” while “talking to our regional partners about the need to avoid any type of action that might escalate the conflict.” But ultimately, he stressed, “this is a question for the regional parties, and what kind of world they want to live in, what kind of future they want.”
But it’s very difficult to pursue a diplomatic solution when you’re simultaneously pouring billions of dollars and all kinds of weapons into a regional partner that’s committing mass genocide.
No matter how Hezbollah responds to Israel’s latest provocation, rest assured that the Israeli military will be ready for another bloody “revenge.” Frankly, this is not a world anyone would want to live in.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
