[Salon] Two stories one border - ArabDigest.org.

Two stories one border Summary: with Hezbollah and Israel duelling along the border civilians on both sides, having already fled their communities, fear the worst is yet to come. As the IDF continues its Rafah offensive and Benjamin Netanyahu his dance (see our 14 June newsletter) by sacking the War Cabinet, tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israelis on either side of the shared border who were forced to abandon their homes see little hope that they will return any time soon. Since the start of the war Hezbollah has played a cautious hand not wanting the full weight of the Israeli military unleashed on their brigades and their stockpile of warheads, mortar shells and drones. For their part the Israelis, increasingly trapped in a war in Gaza they cannot win, are sensing that a major offensive into Lebanon is a bridge too far. At least for now. But that uncomfortable and unacknowledged understanding has been sorely tested in the past week. The Israelis upped the ante with a missile strike on 11 June that killed Tajj Abu Taleb a senior Hezbollah military commander. Hezbollah retaliated the following day targeting six IDF sites with a barrage of more than 200 rockets. Over the weekend the UN special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and the head of the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon Aroldo Lázaro issued a joint statement that said in part: We are deeply concerned about the escalation we have seen recently. The danger of miscalculation leading to a sudden and wider conflict is very real and we continue to engage with the parties and urge all actors to cease their fire and commit to working toward a political and diplomatic solution. It doesn’t appear that Israel was listening as on Monday it was reported that another Hezbollah senior field commander was killed in a targeted attack near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. That was after the IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari had warned that “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation, one that would have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.” Hezbollah published drone video footage of sensitive Israeli positions including chemical and oil storage facilities around the port of Haifa, June 18, 2024 [photo credit: Al Manar] In a bid to halt what seems a spiral into all out war along the Lebanese border the senior US envoy Amos Hochstein met with Benjamin Netanyahu and his estranged defence minister Yoav Gallant on Monday before heading to Beirut to meet with Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s dysfunctional parliament and a close ally of Hezbollah. As the military skirmishes and the diplomatic shuffles continue the more than 170,000 Lebanese and Israelis who have been displaced on either side of the border wait and wonder when or if they will ever get back to their homes. After undertaking a road trip to the Israeli north Haaretz’s Yaniv Kubovich was prompted to write: Road 899, commonly known as the northern road, is silent, and one can drive a while on it without seeing a single vehicle. The country seems to have abandoned the region itself, and not just the residents who left immediately after October 7 in fear of their lives. A journey by another journalist Agnes Helou writing for Breaking Defense presented a similar picture this time from Lebanon. Helou described a landscape of “villages …ground to almost nothing, only debris and ruins left,” and added: Lebanon now feels as if the 4,000 square mile-sized country is shattered into two realities: one north of the Nabatieh district, more or less carrying on as normal, and the rest as another country in the grips of war. A trip from Beirut to towns in Marjeyoun on a Sunday, which used to be the highest traffic day of the week, took only an hour and fifteen minutes, almost half the time it normally would. Of course the thing about normal in Lebanon is that with a paralysed parliament and a wrecked economy normal always gets worse. And should the Israelis carry out their threat of “devastating consequences” the worst is easily imaginable and terrible to comprehend. What happens next in Gaza and on the border as ever comes back to Benjamin Netanyahu. Haaretz’s Amos Harel puts it well: One reason the goals of the fighting in the north haven't changed is that Netanyahu doesn't want to set forth ambitious, clear targets, which will make it possible to examine his performance in accordance with their attainment. The heart of the matter – and this is true of both arenas – lies in the prime minister's difficulty in making decisions whose political ramifications will be able to influence his surviving in power. In practice, there is no real Israeli policy; It's more a rolling campaign, on both fronts. A rolling campaign with no end in sight orchestrated by a man who wants to stay out of jail. No wonder the anxiety meter is heading to ten.