Global Perspective: Israel cannot erase Arab people's will by force

By Keiko Sakai, Professor, Chiba University

On Sept. 27, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israeli forces fired 2,000 pounds of bombs into southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut, causing extensive damage not only to Hezbollah-related facilities but also to civilians. In the early hours of Oct. 1, the Israeli army invaded Lebanese territory, starting a ground war. The same day, Iran, which saw a high-ranking general killed alongside Nasrallah, launched a retaliatory attack on Israel in solidarity with Hezbollah, and there are concerns that Israel will respond militarily. In Lebanon, about 1,600 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced since Sept. 20, according to the United Nations.

Let me first discuss changes in the scope of Israel's war. Israel, which has been concentrating on attacking the Palestine enclave of Gaza for a year, opened a front in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah, and the war has entered a new phase. There are fears that the front will expand further.

The attack on Gaza, which began on Oct. 7 last year in retaliation for cross-border raids and abductions by the Islamist group Hamas, was aimed at freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas. Therefore, the target of the attack was, in principle, in the Israeli-occupied territory of Gaza.

But the inclusion of Hezbollah as one of Israel's targets has expanded the front into Lebanon. Hezbollah is a political organization in Lebanon that was not directly involved in last October's Hamas's attack on Israel. The main aim of Hamas is resistance against Israel within the occupied territory.

From 'self-defense' to 'intimidation'

What this change means is that Israel has decided to go beyond retaliation for last year's events and thoroughly destroy the forces that oppose it. All anti-Israel forces, public or unofficial, domestic or external, are now the targets of fierce military attacks. Fear over this Israeli posture is not only felt in Lebanon but is spreading throughout the region. The new operations go beyond "exercising the right to self-defense" and are nothing less than "intimidation by force."

The second change worth noting is Israel's almost complete abandonment of a peaceful solution to regional conflicts. Hezbollah is a non-state actor that was originally established as a resistance group against Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but it has played important roles in regional and international politics as a state within a state. The organization is said to have a certain unofficial tacit understanding with Israel about their relations, and Nasrallah was supposed to be a "negotiable" partner. His killing means that Israel has given up the possibility of negotiating with Hezbollah.

The same can be said of the murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah. In early July, U.S. President Joe Biden agreed with both Israel and Hamas on a framework for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. But after Haniyah's murder later that month, Hamas's new leadership shifted from a pragmatic to a militaristic one, and Israel added terms for a ceasefire, derailing the negotiations.

In other words, it is none other than Israel that is closing the path to peace and actively expanding the war.

Deflecting domestic discontent

Why did Israel turn its arrows of attack toward Lebanon? In addition to the more than 40,000 deaths directly from military operations in Gaza, 180,000 deaths have been caused by extreme deterioration in the sanitary and food situation in the enclave, according to an article in the medical journal The Lancet, highlighting Israel's inhumanity in its war conduct.

More than 60 percent of respondents in a June poll by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in Israel said they were concerned about their country being regarded as a "rogue state" by the West. This result shows that there is a strong sense among the Israeli people that they don't want to be seen by Western countries as "inhumane," even if they do not mind criticism from the United Nations. It can be said that the government began attacking Hezbollah in a bid to defect the people's discontent toward the impasse over the Gaza war.

Imitating the logic of the United States

More seriously, Israel's shift is covering up the core of the issue of the country's occupation of Palestine and making it seem as if the focus is on a dichotomy between "moderate Arab states" and "anti-Israel Islamist forces." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to the U.S. Congress in July and at the United Nations General Assembly in September, emphasized that the Middle East is divided into two groups -- one comprising moderate and pro-American Gulf oil-producing states as well as Jordan and Egypt, and the other, "the axis of resistance" formed by Iran and other players in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen -- and that Israel will work with the former to promote peace. This is exactly the same logic that the U.S. administration of George W. Bush used to justify its military action following the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- dividing the world in two with the ultimatum "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

This rhetoric, however, obscures the root cause of the conflict, which is that Israel is occupying Arab lands, expelling Palestinians, and settling its own people in those lands in violation of international law.

Lastly, I would like to point out that Israel's armed crushing of the opposition will bring about the end of democracy in the Middle East, which was already in its death throes.

It was not until the 1980s that Islamist groups began to take up arms in the Middle East in opposition to Israel's occupation policies, taking the place of nationalist forces such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Since the 1990s, countries in the region have been struggling with how to control the Islamist forces that have emerged in the resistance movement against Israel domestically and how to make them comply with the rules. Those efforts in part led to the process of democratization, which invited the participation of those forces in the elections.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah have gained ground in domestic politics through elections. They gained dominance over Israel in Gaza and southern Lebanon around 2006, when Hamas won a majority and Hezbollah won just over 10 percent of the seats in their respective elections. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt came to power thanks to election results after the "Arab Spring," the popular movements against dictatorships in 2011.

These Islamist groups are being eliminated by force by Israel, and by Arab authoritarian states that Israel describes as "moderate." In reality, the dichotomy in the Middle East on which Israel bases its policy is one between states and Islamist groups that have promoted a certain level of democracy (with the exception of Syria), and those that want to eliminate democracy by force.

Indeed, these Islamist organizations have not been spared from criticism over their oppression or from the loss of popular support. Still, one cannot ignore the will of the people those groups have represented. How will the backlash against Israel erupt in the future, with no organization representing the voices of the people?

Profile: Keiko Sakai

A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Sakai earned her Ph.D. in area studies from Kyoto University. After working as a researcher at the Institute of Developing Economies and as a researcher attache at the Embassy of Japan in Iraq, she then taught at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies as a professor, and assumed her current position in 2012. A specialist in Middle Eastern politics and Iraq affairs, she is the recipient of the Asia Pacific Prize Grand Prize in 2003, and was the chairperson of the Japan Association of International Relations from 2012 to 2014.