'Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah .. Beyond Lebanon and Israel, there is the example of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, a lesson in the wages of unfettered hubris..
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Beware of those who promise a new dawn, the birth of a new Middle East, a new balance of power in the region. Lebanon is a microcosm of all that can go wrong. It’s the land of unintended consequences.''Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 1982 Israeli invasion was the birth of Hezbollah, which went on to wage a relentless guerrilla war that compelled Israel to unilaterally withdraw from south Lebanon – significantly the first and only time an Arab military force successfully pushed Israel to retreat from Arab land. This new group, with Iran’s help, proved to be far more lethal and effective than the Palestinian militants Israel had successfully driven out.
Hezbollah went on to fight Israel to a standstill in the 2006 war, and in the following years grew only stronger, with significant Iranian help.
Today Hezbollah is crippled and in disarray, and clearly infiltrated by Israeli intelligence – but still, it would be premature to write its epitaph.
Beyond Lebanon and Israel, there is the example of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, a lesson in the wages of unfettered hubris. As the Iraqi army crumbled and US troops raced to Baghdad, the George W. Bush administration entertained fantasies that the fall of Saddam Hussein would lead to the toppling of regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and ignite a flowering of liberal democracies across the region.
Instead the US occupation of Iraq descended into a blood bath of sectarian violence, in which the US paid dearly in blood and treasure, the people of Iraq even more. The killing of Saddam Hussain allowed Iran to spread its influence to the very heart of the political establishment in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda, shattered by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, was reborn in Iraq’s Sunni triangle, and eventually morphed into the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
As I write this, I see smoke rising from across Beirut’s battered southern suburbs and recall the words of then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who, during the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war, said all the bloodshed and destruction we were witnessing then were “the birth pangs of the new Middle East.”
Beware of those who promise a new dawn, the birth of a new Middle East, a new balance of power in the region. Lebanon is a microcosm of all that can go wrong. It’s the land of unintended consequences.'
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Israel wants to change the balance of power in the Middle East. History has a warning, September 29, 2024
ContextOpinion | Israelis Must Ask Themselves if They're Willing to Live in a Country That Lives on Blood