‘Foreign interference’ – US wants Lebanon returned to ‘a 1980s future’

Muhammad Amin

US diplomats are seeking to “Palestinianize” Lebanon by pitting Christians against Muslims, Sunni against Shia, and resurrecting iron-clad security arrangements that return it to a familiar 1980s framework, when Israel and Western-supported Phalangists held the country in the grip of daily terror.
Like Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli-born US envoy to Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, believes Hezbollah is on its last legs following the successful assassination of its top leadership, but The Cradle is saying they have badly miscalculated.
Hezbollah’s stiff resistance to Israel’s attempted invasion, particularly in southern Lebanon is proving to be a strong counter-argument to the meddling diplomat’s efforts, with the Israeli military on the run from villages in the region where its troops have encountered deadly ambushes.
‘Kill anyone, anywhere, any time’
Netanyahu and Hochstein are betting on exploiting sectarian, religious and demographic divisions in Lebanon’s population to break the country’s unity, to instal a pro-Western government and to replace Hezbollah with a compliant Lebanese military that enforces Israel’s wishes.
These include being able to enforce a Hezbollah ban, to hunt down its fighters inside Lebanon without hindrance, to be entitled to patrol a demilitarised zone along the shared border and to exercise “freedom of the skies” to bomb anywhere and anyone whenever it pleases.
Lebanon’s official stance is that UNSC Resolution 1701 is the basis of any solution. It’s open to expanding the role of UN peacekeepers, but insists of reciprocal action from Israel – that it end ifs daily airspace violations and hands back the Shebaa farms.
Lebanon has been without a president since 2020, mainly because the president must be a Maronite Christian and Hochstein is trying to exploit this by demanding the parliament vote on a new head of state who will be compliant to Washington’s wishes. Lebanon’s prime minister is always a Sunni and the parliamentary speaker a Shia, Associated Press reports.
Berri fights back
“While many reject the election of a president amid war, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his call for Lebanon to fill the presidential vacuum – a clear signal of misplaced priorities,” The Cradle reports.
The biggest obstacle to their ambitions is Speaker Nabih Berri, a longtime Hezbollah ally and the most powerful authority in Lebanon. he has firmly rejected the “1701+” demands that cast everything in Israel’s favour. He has also dismissed any suggestions of a presidential election with Lebanon is under attack.
If the US and Israel get their way, the Lebanese “government” would be installed with powers and functions similar to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – a Quisling state in place to do the bidding of America and Israel.
The Cradle says some Lebanese politicians “are champing at the bit, ready to act as Lebanon’s version of Abu Mazen – willing to cede power by disarming the resistance, accepting limited sovereignty akin to that of the PA, and allowing enemy forces to enter cities and villages at will, carrying out assassinations and raids under Tel Aviv’s orders”.
Warlord Geagea resurfaces
Chief among them is Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea, whose name became synonymous with Western terrorism during the 80s and 90s, and with the horrific war crimes committed during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
“While Geagea was by no means the only person with a proven record of war crimes, it is indubitable that his record exceeds that of other warlords during that brutal period – even by the standards of the right-wing militias which perpetrated many of the worst atrocities.
“According to news reports last week, snipers loyal to the Lebanese Forces were responsible for killing six protesters in Tayouneh in Beirut, although later accounts, based on security camera footage, showed a Lebanese Army soldier firing the first lethal shot in the events of that day,” The Cradle notes.
But the Lebanese people are awake to such “third-force” activities and Lebanese media immediately held Geagea responsible, with Al-Akhbar newspaper publishing pictures of him photoshopped to depict him in Nazi uniform, a Lebanese Hitler.
Calls are growing in Lebanon for the dissolution of Geagea’s LF, which was originally an Israeli surrogate militia, which later transformed into a political party after Geagea’s 2005 release from prison.
Lebanon’s Inkatha
The LF is playing the same role as Inkatha did during South Africa’s transition; it’s all from the same CIA playbook. Geagea was the main enforcer of Bashir Gemayel, the military leader of the Phalanges, a Maronite-Christian militia, who enforced a reign of terror in East Beirut during the civil war years. He “butchered Palestinians in their refugee camps and never encountered a US-Israel policy suggestion he didn’t like”, The Cradle notes.
His LF has already held meetings of “resistance opponents” to discuss “the day after” Hezbolla’s theoretical defeat.
Top of their agenda is electing an “amenable” president – Hochstein’s top demand – and resurrecting international resolutions like UN Resolution 1559, which calls for the disbanding and disarmament of militias like Hezbollah, right in the middle of a full-scale Israeli invasion.
‘Moving forward into the past’
“What Israel wants from Lebanon, according to sources speaking to The Cradle, resembles the ill-fated 17 May agreement of 1983 – a controversial peace deal signed between Beirut and Tel Aviv under US mediation which aimed to end hostilities but effectively undermined Lebanon’s sovereignty, deepened internal divisions, and sparked widespread backlash, eventually fueling a new phase of resistance”.
Geagea is clearly trying to position himself as a new, potential president.
He’s facing competition from Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader Gebran Bassil who has suddenly split from Hezbollah. He’s being given a lot of airtime on Saudi television channels wherein he blames Hezbollah for the latest conflict.
The West’s other main sycophantic candidate for Lebanese president is Lebanese Army Commander Joseph Aoun, Hochstein’s favourite. US ambassador Lisa Johnson last month gathered Lebanese politicians together to urge them to boot out Hezbollah and to appoint Aoun as president.
Gathering a lynch mob
“Why do you seem afraid? Hezbollah has been defeated, its leadership is destroyed, and we are with you, and the entire free world stands by your side. Israel cannot achieve everything through war; it’s time for you to do your part and launch an internal uprising under the banner of ‘Enough,’” Johnson told the politicians.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has also muddied the waters, calling for an anti-Hezbollah front, but she badly miscalculated: “Baerbock had the gall to arrive in Beirut after publicly endorsing Israel’s right to attack civilians if ‘terrorists’ were supposedly among them,” The Cradle notes.
Germany’s proposals align closely with Hochstein’s which are seeking to return Lebanon to the security framework that kept it violently divided as it was in the days of the civil war. Hochstein wants a return to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that will dismantle Hezbollah and extend “the armed presence-free” zone to the Awali River, not just south of the Litani River, as originally stipulated.
Berri in ‘danger zone’
Analysts have expressed concern for the safety of Speaker Berri, leader of the Amal Movement, noting he is in the “danger zone” for assassination. Israel air attacks targeted Amal Movement strongholds in Nabatieh and Tyre last month after he insisted on keeping Resolution 1701 unchanged.
Sunni Prime Minister Najib Mikati is showing signs of capitulating to the Americans, last week criticising Teheran’s “blatant interference in Lebanese affairs”, while welcoming Hochstein, a former Israeli tank crewman and maintaining silence about Israel’s many civilian victims.