Lebanese cities reduced to ashes as Qassem talks of ‘victory’

In a speech that monotonously and mindlessly emphasized the word “victory,” new Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem declared last week: “As we won in July 2006, we will win today.” But Lebanon never won in 2006 and there is no victory to be obtained for the Lebanese people in 2024.

Qassem was unable to cite a single benefit that might accrue to Lebanon as a result of the current carnage. He boasted about the ability of the “resistance” to strike at an expanded range of Israeli cities, but for every building Hezbollah rockets hit, Israel destroys another dozen Lebanese villages: about a quarter of those in the south have already been razed to the ground and the destruction is spreading northward.

As in Gaza, civilians have been forced to move numerous times, with thousands of people displaced every day as Israel incessantly widens the number of communities subjected to relentless bombing. What victory awaits these poor families who have lost everything, including their children under the debris?

There was a time when many Lebanese would ridicule Hezbollah’s self-aggrandizing, bellicose rhetoric, but nobody was laughing when Qassem last week declared: “If the Israelis want to stop, it will be on our terms,” and Hezbollah “will come out of this even stronger.” Such nonsensical language left the Lebanese physically repulsed, after so much of the country had been left homeless and destitute.

The horrors of this futile war will permanently psychologically shatter yet another generation of Lebanese children

Baria Alamuddin

Grasping at straws to cite every conceivable encumbrance and annoyance inflicted upon the enemy, Qassem gloated at a statistic suggesting that 300,000 Israelis would require psychological assistance after the war — forgetting the millions of Lebanese who will never receive psychiatric help for the traumas and losses they are currently enduring. As with the orphans of Gaza, the horrors of this futile war will permanently psychologically shatter yet another generation of Lebanese children, combined with the damaging impact of interrupted education.

The continuing elimination of Hezbollah’s leadership leaves it entirely reliant on Iran and submissive to Iranian orders. There is no longer even a pretense of responsiveness to national Lebanese priorities after Hezbollah hubristically picked a fight with the strongest military in the region, backed up by the strongest superpower on the planet. So much for the “axis of resistance” — the Houthis, Al-Hashd Al-Sha’abi and the Quds Force clearly cannot and will not come to Lebanon’s rescue in any meaningful way.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed a “crushing response” to Israel’s latest strikes on Iran, with some predicting that this retaliation would emanate from Iraq and Syria, serving only to draw wider swathes of the Arab world into the carnage. It is high time for Hezbollah and Iran to take stock of their resistance project, which has proved to be an utter failure and which Israel has dismantled with such ease and relish. 

Contrary to Qassem’s boast that Hezbollah would impose its own terms for peace, Israel has strengthened its demands: it insists that the smoking remains of the south remain under some kind of occupation, while American diplomats shuttle uselessly around the region. Who does Qassem expect will rush in and bankroll the rebuilding of Lebanon? As winter brings colder, wetter weather, who will offer shelter, clothing and succor to the hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced citizens, about a quarter of the population?

The soaring death toll and widening devastation are bad enough, but Israel and Hezbollah are also jointly working to erase Lebanon’s history and cultural heritage. Last week, parts of Baalbek city, the site of one of humankind’s oldest habitations, was reduced to rubble.

Irrespective of US elections and ongoing mediation efforts, the medium-term outlook is relentlessly grim

Baria Alamuddin

As the economy has disintegrated in recent years, Lebanon has endured a vast exodus of its professionals, young people and creative figures. With the onset of war, this brain drain has turned into a flood, as everybody who can escape does so, joining Lebanon’s immense worldwide diaspora.

This is an outstanding country, composed of educated, cultured citizens, with a literate and sophisticated history stretching back to long before the Phoenicians. Is this what we have come to? Lebanon’s various communities must unite and figures such as parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati must demonstrate that they unambiguously stand in this national camp, for the sake of Lebanese salvation. Only then can Hezbollah and Iran be forced to accept that they are on the wrong path toward the annihilation of Lebanon, and Hezbollah with it.

Despite what Qassem has been led to believe by his Iranian handlers, there is nothing to be gained by allowing this war to drag on indefinitely. I do not appeal to Hezbollah’s better nature, I do not even naively ask it to put Lebanon first: but if only for the sake of not committing collective suicide in service to a hostile state’s agenda, Hezbollah’s surviving leaders must swallow their pride and call an immediate halt, while there is still something to be salvaged.

Irrespective of US elections and ongoing mediation efforts, the medium-term outlook is relentlessly grim, with Israel not even heeding its closest allies’ calls to rein in its offensives, along with fighting rhetoric from both Qassem and Khamenei. The broader agenda is not just the neutralization of Hezbollah, but also the depopulation and de facto occupation of south Lebanon, the decapitation of the Lebanese state and a scorched-earth policy to humiliate the Arab world. The warmongering agendas of Israel and Iran are as malign as each other.

Qassim should take a long, hard look at the smoking ruins of south Lebanon: there is no victory for him there.

• Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.