SEARCH FOR A NEW BALANCE BEFORE TRUMP

It's uncertain for how long the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire will hold. When Hezbollah accepted the US-brokered deal, Iran showed it wants to weigh regional escalation against its own relevance

- LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN

At least 3,800 people have been killed and 16,000 wounded in Lebanon since the war began in Gaza in October last year, pointless casualties torn apart by warring militias and regular armies. A ceasefire has at last been brokered by the US and France, but the longevity of any agreement in West Asia is not worth even the paper on which it is typed.

While the Gaza issue is largely understood because of the direct relationship to the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the energetic campaign by the Israel Defence Forces to defeat it and get maximum hostages released, much less is known about the reasons why the war in southern Lebanon began in the first place. To appreciate the geopolitical implications of war and peace in Lebanon, it is necessary to briefly delve into that background.

In 1948, with the foundation of Israel and displacement of Palestinians, many of the latter gravitated to southern Lebanon as refugees. In the 1980s, Israeli military incursions into southern Lebanon aimed to weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had used this area as a base for attacks against Israel. This contributed to the destabilization of Lebanon and Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. Bekaa Valley was the prominent landmark of that time.