Ori Goldberg writes:

What is Israel doing in Lebanon? Before we delve into the byzantine brew that sustains Israel’s Lebanese “operation,” we must give the one answer we know to be true. Israel is killing Lebanese, nearly a thousand so far this month alone, in a combination of sabotage — the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies on Sept. 17 and 18 — and sustained, unchecked bombing. The indifference with which Israel kills, with explanations ranging from “they shouldn’t have had a missile in their garage” to “bad things happen to good people in war,” does not detract from the enormity of the killing. As it seeks to “dismantle Hezbollah” (Hamas is “eradicated,” in case you’re confused) Israel is killing a host of Lebanese, many of them innocent civilians.

That said, what is Israel doing in Lebanon? Or rather, what does Israel want in Lebanon? What is it seeking to accomplish with its sustained, unchecked attacks on Lebanon in its entirety? There are different answers to these questions. Civilian Israelis and the various branches of Israeli officialdom want different things, but all the answers begin with Israel’s civilian quandary. Nearly 100,000 Israelis evacuated their homes in the north of Israel after the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7. They left because Israel’s officials as much as told them that Hezbollah was planning its own version of the massacres that Hamas perpetrated in the south. They haven’t returned because the north has been under continual Hezbollah bombardment since Oct. 8, while the army has warned that it cannot guarantee any type of protection to those who choose to go home. In any case, they didn’t need much telling. The general sense in Israel has for some time been that an Iranian-orchestrated attack on multiple fronts was imminent. Israelis could not imagine that Hamas managed to pull off the Oct. 7 attack without Iranian assistance. Where Iranians were, Israelis believed, Hezbollah could not be far behind.

Since leaving their homes, they have been housed in various ways all over the country. For nearly a year, they have been living in temporary housing, often in three-star hotels, where whole families live in a single room. Neither the army nor the government has provided any information about when they will be able to return home, so they live with complete uncertainty about the future. Provisional schools have been opened for their children but their shuttered businesses in the empty north are, well, their problem — as are the rents and mortgages that they must continue to pay for houses and apartments they may not occupy. Their situation is not sustainable. They must be returned home. But Israel’s north is under continuous Hezbollah fire. These Israelis are reluctant to go home because they feel they have been abandoned by the state. And since November 2023, that state has been repeatedly telling them and itself that the only solution to this problem is a war that would push Hezbollah back from the Israeli-Lebanese border. [Continue reading…]