Amid an escalation of Israeli attacks, where is Hezbollah headed?

I assume that the nature of Israel’s role, especially under its current leadership, in the ongoing crime committed in Gaza is above dispute. It is now expanding its war and exacerbating the destruction in Lebanon.

There is no question or doubt about it, especially since the Palestinians and Lebanese have been promised that the worst is yet to come.

On the other hand, we must recognize the divisiveness in Palestine fostered by Iran, as well as Tehran’s relentless efforts to separate a key Lebanese community from the others, alienate it from the state and use it to undermine Lebanon’s sovereignty.

When a renewal of former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud’s term was imposed in 2004, the forces exercising de facto control defended the decision by claiming that he was the person “best equipped to stand up to the conspiracy threatening Lebanon.” At that time, the Lebanese called these forces the “Syrian-Lebanese security regime,” lacking the curiosity needed to delve deeper into the identity of that regime, which was only Syrian-Lebanese in name and in its tools. That is because this regime, as the events that would later unfold demonstrated, was part of an Iranian project to establish regional hegemony and sow division.

But this strategic project could not be marketed with an Iranian label or its dreams of “divisive hegemony” — especially with Israel. Thus, a national, bright and attractive slogan that deserves sacrifice was adopted: resistance. The slogan had some justification, as parts of southern Lebanon were occupied territory at that time and Israeli warplanes had free rein over its skies. The Lebanese had many wounds, pains and memories of this ... and they sympathized with their brothers in Palestine and the Golan Heights who suffered, and still suffer, the injustices of Israeli occupation.

Tehran has exploited its tools to further its project of hegemony and sit at the negotiating table with Israel and the US

Eyad Abu Shakra

Thus, just as the Lebanese rose to embrace the Palestinian resistance in 1968, they sympathized with Hezbollah when it was performing actual “resistance” duties ... before Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. However, opinions shifted after 2000 and the contours of the hegemony and division project began to become clear. Albeit timidly, its proponents justified the project by framing it as support for the resistance and confrontation of the so-called conspiracy against it.

The previously mentioned imposition of another Lahoud term in September 2004 (against the backdrop of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for an end to foreign interference in Lebanon) was the first station. The following month, there was an assassination attempt made against government minister Marwan Hamadeh, an ally of both Rafik Hariri and Walid Jumblatt. It was an early message to those involved.

The second station was the assassination of Hariri himself in February 2005, which triggered seismic repercussions, including a wave of horrific assassinations, and ultimately led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

Following this withdrawal, the third station had been reached. Hezbollah began openly taking actual power. It did not take long before we got to the fourth station. The 2006 war ended any illusions that Hezbollah was a Lebanese organization in its principles, loyalties and command and one that sought only resistance. This painful fact was affirmed when, in 2008, Hezbollah pointed its weapons (which had been directed southward until 2006) toward the interior ... invading Beirut and attempting to invade southern Mount Lebanon, antagonizing Lebanese sectarian and religious communities that it could have avoided antagonizing.

Then came the fifth station. The dimensions of the Iranian project and the party’s role in this project became clear: the “resistance” arsenal became a tool for killing, abusing and displacing Syrians, with Hezbollah fighters accused of committing numerous massacres and displacing people from entire regions of the country.

Now, we are at what can be considered the sixth station, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation and the catastrophic repercussions it has had for the Palestinians and Lebanese, exposing many assumptions and intentions. The planners, executors and supporters of the operation either overlooked fundamental facts or deliberately ignored them to serve their operators.

Chief among them are two facts. First, this Israeli government is the most extreme in the country’s history. It is led by the most belligerent and spiteful leaders Israel has ever had; no government has been less keen on a peaceful settlement and it includes two ministers whose declared aim is a population transfer. Second, they undertook an operation against Israeli civilians only a year before a US presidential election, meaning it is futile to seek American help to deter Israel against displacement aggression. Even if those who planned and executed the attack imagined that the regional climate could undermine Israel’s retaliation, here is what happened.

After nearly a year of limited to ineffective support from groups affiliated with Iran, the latter’s leadership is making contradictory, evasive and even weakening statements. In the Palestinian territories, the people of the Gaza Strip have been displaced following its destruction and the elimination of some of the prominent leaders of Hamas, including Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif and Saleh Al-Arouri.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure has been hit and much of its top brass has been eliminated, with thousands of citizens displaced from the south. In contrast, the supreme leader in Tehran said he supported a “tactical retreat” and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, before his visit to the US, assured us that the “Iranians and Americans are brothers” and that “there is no enmity between them.”

Thus, the Iranian project has reached an advanced stage. Tehran has exploited its tools, which have long deceived their popular base, to further its project of hegemony and sit at the negotiating table with Israel and the US, with which it seeks to share regional influence at the expense of Arab blood, Arab humanity and the Arabs’ future. However, I believe that it is not too late for Hamas to go back to supporting the cause of its people, or for Hezbollah to embrace its state.

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. X: @eyad1949

This article first appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat.