Editorial: Netanyahu’s threat to destroy Lebanon admits military failure

By threatening to transform Lebanon into a « new Gaza », Benjamin Netanyahu is paradoxically exposing the military and strategic failure of the Israeli army after years of conflict in the Gaza Strip. This alarming rhetoric, designed to deter the Lebanese and weaken the resistance, also reveals a stalemate in the face of Hezbollah’s resilience in southern Lebanon, a territory much larger than Gaza, which covers 10,452 square kilometers. Comparatively, Gaza, with its 365 km², seems tiny. Yet, after more than a year of strikes, blockades, and incessant conflicts, Hamas continues to stand up to Israel, even launching salvos of rockets at Tel Aviv, like the one yesterday, October 7, a year after the beginning of the events.

Netanyahu seems, by his threats, to be trying to push the Lebanese into a desperate choice: to push them to fight Hezbollah. But what is its real objective? He could hope to divide the Lebanese, prompting some to reject Hezbollah to avoid an all-out war. But this strategy raises a crucial question: Israel, with the most powerful army in the Middle East, has failed to defeat Hezbollah on the ground despite its considerable means and air superiority. How can Netanyahu imagine that the Lebanese themselves, already exhausted by years of economic and political crisis, would be able — or even willing — to disarm this force on their own? The idea is therefore to provoke a civil war in Lebanon. This posture seems to be an approach as dangerous as it is unrealistic. Lebanon is a country deeply scarred by its own civil conflict, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. The Lebanese know better than anyone the human, social and economic costs of such a division.

Also, destroying Lebanon would not create the security expected for Israel. On the contrary, it would open a Pandora’s box of permanent threats and regional instability, reminiscent of the IDF’s bogging down in the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s. The human cost will be significant.

The military failure is damning for Netanyahu, especially since he tacitly acknowledges the difficulty of penetrating southern Lebanon in the long term, despite the massive resources deployed by this call. Lebanon, unlike Gaza, offers a military challenge of a completely different scale. This mountainous and politically complex country will be defended « tooth and nail » by a determined resistance. Significant loss of life is inevitable for Israel if an invasion materializes.

Moreover, the destruction of Lebanon would not be limited to Hezbollah. It would be a war against all Lebanese communities: Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze. Such an assault would provoke a national unity against Israel, where every Lebanese, regardless of their faith, could become the symbol of resistance against the occupation.

On the economic level, the consequences of such a strategy would be catastrophic. According to the Israeli Central Bank, a year of conflict in Gaza has already cost $66 billion. Lebanon, with its infrastructure, population and strategic position, would cost Israel far more if total destruction were envisaged. Destroying Lebanon would not be limited to human or material losses for Israel, but would send economic and diplomatic shockwaves through the region, and beyond.

Netanyahu, in waving this threat, seems to ignore the global risks: pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees towards Europe would accentuate the migration crisis, destabilizing the political and social balance of several European countries and what about the United States. Attacking Gaza, a state that does not exist, is very different from invading a state or threatening to destroy it. Public opinion, which goes far beyond the centres of power, will find it difficult to accept the continuation of unfailing support for an aggressor state. The international community could therefore hardly remain indifferent to such a situation, isolating the State of Israel all the more as it is today on the world level. Many countries recognize the state of Palestine, and many countries will still side with Lebanon.

This scorched-earth strategy only underscores Israel’s weaknesses in its attempts to subjugate its neighbors. The long-term solution lies not in destruction, but in diplomacy and respect for international resolutions. It is about the choice of peace, it is about the choice to create a Palestinian state, to obtain peace with Lebanon and Syria, a dream that was thought to be close in the 1990s but distant by the policy of escalation and provocations carried out by Israel since the end of the 1990s.
To destroy Lebanon in the end is to risk turning the entire region into an endless quagmire, where neither Israel nor its neighbors will find peace.