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Lebanon is being devastated by an Israeli onslaught,
and this hasn't been discussed enough.
That's obviously because of the shadow of the warning ran.
That's where the vast majority of people's focus has been,
but we need to talk about this.
There's a catastrophe unfolding in Lebanon.
Bezile Smotchich, the far right finance minister, has talked about annexing
southern Lebanon, extending the border, saying the litany river will become the new
border with the state of Lebanon, just like the buffer line in Gaza.
Seeing the estimates about a quarter of the population have been displaced,
huge numbers of people have been killed, men, women, children.
I'm really delighted to be joined by Karim Safidin,
and I hope I said just a certain name, kind of okay there.
He's a brilliant Lebanese researcher, organizer, writer, expert.
Someone I've been following for a very long time,
and sort of one of the go-to people I looked at on social media
to try and understand what's going on in Lebanon.
So Karim, firstly, thanks for joining us.
I know you're in Beirut right now.
This is a terrible situation, so I'm really grateful for being here to join us.
No, thank you. Thank you for having us, and I think it's really important to really
bring to light everything that's going on in the country today, particularly with the influence
that many Western governments and audiences do have on their situation at the moment.
Such a critical point. Could you just give us an overview of the impact of the Israeli
offensive on Lebanon? Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, when we're looking at everything that
happened in the past 20 years, I think this is, well, not 20 years, past 50 years, I think this is
one of the large displacement crises in Lebanese history, particularly because obviously there's
been a population growth that has, you know, extraordinary compared to anything we used to have
before, but primarily because the Israeli assault is so technologically robust, advanced,
quick swift. The tools that Israel has at its disposal to actually advance the displacement
crisis is unprecedented. It never had that capacity before, and it's really using and leveraging
that capacity with a click of a button on social media with the click of a button of AI cluster
bombs all over the border towns of South Lebanon with the complete erasure of residential and
agricultural property in just a few days Israel created more than a million displaced people.
And what we're seeing is a catastrophe because what it does on a recurrent basis is increase
that displacement current further and further every single time. And every day there is a new
unsafe region that we're surprised about and that new people are killed as not even collateral,
just purely cruel collective punishment, just to make sure the overall population pays the price
for as well as choices politically and militarily. And I think what's even worrisome further
is that Israel does have a real plan in South Lebanon which goes beyond collective punishment,
which really is a plan of erasure, which really is creating a buffer zone and a security zone
that could eventually become permanent, which we saw in the Golan Heights. This is a real fear,
we know it may not be mainstream is really policy at the moment in a sense that it may be
immediately executed right now, but we do know that many right wing Israeli officials are
talking very openly about settling South Lebanon. So this is a threat, it's something that we
need to account for and it is something that is in the divergent control of many governments
and the global north that may have the capacity to really stop it.
So just tell us about the dynamics I guess it play here. I mean obviously,
Israel and the US launched a war in Iran, a legal war, just you know, not hyperbole there,
it's just a legal description of what they've done. And obviously,
Hezbollah is allied to Iran. Israel, their official position is, we're responding to attacks
on our people and this is our response military. What would you say to all of that?
Well, obviously Hezbollah took the choice on October 8, 2023 to be part of an Axis alignment and
he bet and they bet on that Axis alignment that did eventually put Lebanon into a regional
conflict and that was a strategic catastrophe. That was a strategic catastrophe and you really put
Lebanon in a vulnerable position. That doesn't justify that doesn't even explain the way Israel
is dealing with the current moment because Israel is not looking for a negotiated stance. Israel
is not looking to empower Lebanese institutions. Israel is not looking to even make sure that Lebanese
government has a better standing point compared to Hezbollah or contrast with Hezbollah. Israel is
making sure Lebanon's social fabric and institutions are basically collectively dysfunctional
in the next year or two. That is the threat we face today and every single military campaign
pursued by Israel since October 8, 2023 goes in that direction. It goes in the direction
of depopulation, expropriation. It goes in the direction of really making sure that people
pay a long-term price for a certain policy taken by Hezbollah. Why are not ignoring the fact that
Israel, even prior to 2023, did violate Lebanon's aerospace and never behave like it's a ceasefire
and in the past 15 months it has continued to really undermine the Lebanese government in every
step of the way. Does that mean we don't have a Hezbollah problem? No, we do have a Hezbollah problem.
Israel's policy choices and military assaults do not solve that problem, makes the problem
worse and worse and worse. This of course goes right in alignment with the way they're dealing with
the regional war as a whole because it's very clear that the Netanyahu government and the Trump
administration are not interested in stopping this war. They're interested in leveraging this war
further on domestic usages and considerations. Just a bit of historical context. Some will be
more or less aware of what happens to Lebanon in the 1980s. He just tell us a bit about that.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which Ronald Reagan at the time denounced as a Holocaust in
a private conversation with the then Israeli Prime Minister, Dominican Reagan, and we saw the
Shabranish Tia massacre, one of the great horrors. Well, I'm saying one of the great horrors. There's so
many horrors, but I think people understand what I mean. And how has Hezbollah grew out of that?
Because obviously that invasion was not to do with Hezbollah because Hezbollah didn't exist.
So if we look at what happened in 1982, I think it goes back to this very initial thesis that we have
is that we cannot solve the question of security in the region without solving the Palestinian
question. So what happened? What happened is that after the Nakaba, after the explicit and deliberate
expulsion of the Palestinian population, which of course is going to militarize and respond to
that expulsion, you had the PLO and the PLO as expulsion of Jordan and then came to Lebanon and
Captain South Lebanon. And what happened there that there was a conflict between Israel and the PLO
from Lebanese to the Lebanese standpoint. And instead of actually solving that problem,
instead of going through a negotiated settlement, Israel decided to make it worse. And to make it
worse means that we opted for several invasions, one in 1978 and another in 1982, which looks exactly
like the Mo the Laan thesis that it pursues the Gaza Strip. So in 1982, Israel basically
destroyed South Lebanon altogether, bombed by root killing tens of thousands of people,
and of course engaged in a series of geniuses and infamous massacres, including the Subdain
and then maintained an 18-year-long occupation after that, even after the PLO was expelled from
Beirut, even after the PLO left Lebanon. And even after noting that there was almost a Lebanese
consensus, after the 1990s, that Lebanon cannot be used anymore as a military standpoint in the
face of Israel. But because Israel was so adamant about maintaining its security operation,
that gave a lot of legitimacy to Hasballa's military engagement against Israel in the 1990s,
eventually leading to Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Because of what that happened,
they remained a question in Lebanon about how we're going to deal with South Lebanon,
how we're going to deal with Hasballa. And Israel made that exponentially worse,
because every single time it had a military engagement with Hasballa, it really made sure
to make the population pay the price. While assuming that Lebanon ought to normalize with Israel
without even solving the Palestine question, and hence going against 2000 and to Arab Peace Summit,
which suggests that normalization could only take place in exchange for a democratic Palestinian state.
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So, I mean, fast-forwarding to the 2000s, we get, again, another Israeli war in Lebanon,
and you have the so-called Dada Doctrine, Dada Doctrine. You mentioned Dada there,
this suburb of Bayri, which is a Hezbollah stronghold. Can you tell us about that?
What happened in that war and, I guess, is legacy?
Yeah, I mean, what basically happened is that Israel made the explicit choice
to go against Hezbollah's supporting population to pressure Hezbollah.
So, it wasn't anymore, and I think that doctrine was used in Gaza for a long period of time,
even before the genocide, that, of course, Israel accelerated in 2023, 2024.
But I think that policy became official Israeli policy since 2006.
Is that you don't actually have to make the militant organization pay the price.
You can make the civilian population pay the price to the maximum and make a concentrated
assault against the civilian population. Now, what basically happened since then,
and I think Israel has arrived to that realization partly,
is that that doesn't always work. That doesn't always work because that militant organization
can capitalize over that reality and then the conflict will be sustained.
And so, in 2024, 2025, you'd see a lot of really calculated assassinations.
Sorry, I think the electricity went out. Welcome to Lebanon.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, you see a rubber.
You know, calculated assassinations, you see it like something like the Pagers attack.
But even then, all with that revision strategy, be taking into account,
Israel continued to pursue that process in South Awinon Dahia and the Baka, alongside
other more strategic, innovative tactics that it is arrived to technologically.
So, even given all the technological prowess, Israel has to target those militant groups directly,
it is making a deliberate choice to continue pursuing that far off collective punishment.
Just that black out there, I'm glad I quickly reversed. I've just come back from Havana,
and I've seen just how exhausting those blackouts are when people haven't to go through them.
And I mean, in terms of, I mean, Israel, quite notoriously, there was the Pager bombings,
which supposedly chatted and Hezbollah as an organisation.
And tell us about that and how Hezbollah managed to, obviously, regroup to a point where
Israel's launched this onslaught.
Yeah, I mean, basically, as you were assumed that if it just
increase the bombs, then people will just stop, and a militant group will vanish.
And I don't think it assumes that entirely, but I think it got very overly optimistic after
2023-2024. And I noticed that that's something that's related to the way Israel deals with
militant groups altogether. And it's always surprised when the militant group regroups.
In Gaza, Hamas regrouped 20 times. And Israel would be surprised again and say, how did that
happen? And pro-Israel analysts would say, how did that happen? How does this happen?
It happens because militant groups are not just resources, leaders, and organisations,
militant groups grow out of a context. And that context cannot be divorced from the original
context created by Israel, which is first and foremost, the occupation. And second, the devastating
form of social death created by its recurrent invasions of Lebanon. And the reality is that with
every Israeli assault, Hasbullah's moral and ideological manifestation and legitimacy is
reprimed. That's a reality that stays within the discourse of Lebanon not solely within Hasbullah's
own constituency. It happens to be framed within the wider constituency of Lebanese people that
have a frustration with Israel, but who are not necessarily supporters of Hasbullah. So
every time Israel pursues these attacks, it assumes that a militant group is, you know,
something going to go away, but in reality, all these forms of collective punishment do is simply
reinforces capacity to do so. And second of all, Hasbullah is an intricate situation because it's
also related to Iran. And it is also adapted to that reality in South Lebanon and has revisited
some of its strategic miscalculations and has found ways to regroup. So we cannot solve this with
a war of erasure. We need a political settlement. And this political settlement does need a real
progress on the Lebanese side in dealing with the Hasbullah problem, but it also needs
real progress on the U.S. in the Israeli side and at the U.S. become a good faith negotiator.
And not simply a full negotiator that is in fact supportive of the assault.
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Just how devastating is this assault on South Lebanon and Bay Area compared to what has
been unleashed by Israel in the past? I think compared to 2006. I mean, in the totality of 2006
and the July war, I think we're talking about a thousand and a hundred plus civilians killed
in the course of a month. That thousand mark happened in two weeks and we're talking primarily
of civilians here. So we're seeing a great escalation in the way this violence has
really unraveled. Right now, at the very moment, especially with the eight-time, I think there
has been a slight de-escalation, but that usually tells us that we're off for a surprise.
That's something that the Israeli military has made an effort to do is that it gives a great
spirit and then pursues the assaults further. In two weeks, thousand people were killed in two weeks
and complete silence on the international level. It's worth obviously bearing in mind.
I mean, Lebanon has got a population of about a few million or so. I can't, yeah, sorry,
up to six million, between five and six million or maybe more. So it's worth putting
those statistics in comparison because if a thousand people were killed in the UK in that period
of time, it would be an absolute catastrophe in the population is 10 times bigger. So I mean,
just in terms of Beirut, I don't like playing this mindy, I'm necessarily, but just to kind of
flesh it out to people in terms of what's been attacked in Beirut. What would be the equivalent
if it was London or Paris or New York? What kind of buildings? What's been hit? What kind of areas?
I mean, if we look at the Dakhner region altogether, in certain sections of the southern suburbs,
entire neighborhoods have been erased. Certain streets have been completely erased.
I mean, if you account for the population comparison, I mean, that's almost like a quarter of
the city of London being almost under rubble, right? It's a tragedy. What we're seeing is actually a
tragedy. If you look, if we combine what happened in the Dakhner, the southern suburbs,
with the Bakaar region, what's happening in South Lebanon, anything in comparison to any European
capital would simply be considered an unprecedented tragedy ever since World War II. I mean,
this is what we're faced, but we're faced with a form of infrastructural and residential damage,
which sees no comparison to anything happening in the global north for the past 20 to 30 years.
There were just a couple of things that as of that threat we talked about towards the beginning
about what Israel's intentions are, insolent liberty. Now, bezel little smot-tritch is the
finance minister, and sometimes the West plays a bit of a bogeyman game. He's just a genocidal
extremist politician. In any case, what they have called for an agitated fall has been instituted,
so it's not like they're just playing to their own particular audience. What do you think about
that? The threat of annexation of Lebanon and its settlement, and you mentioned Syria and obviously
the going on heights, there's been occupied decades now, but they've also expanded the occupation
since. Do you think that's a very real prospect? This is, of course, the project of a great Israel,
which Netanyahu himself has publicly kept said he's sympathetic to the point of mind.
I do think that anything of that sort is a threat. Now, one would have to be very sober and
calculated in looking at what our threats are and what Israel has done in the past. Now, there
isn't a signal on the ground that Israel has aimed for annexation very directly because it has
withdrew from South Lebanon prior to that, and even in prior assaults has not enforced a settlement
plan in South Lebanon, but right now we have a new Israel. This is not the Israel of the 1980s.
This is not even the Israel of Sharon. Sharon is a liberal reformer compared to these crazy
fanatics. I mean, it's a completely different landscape. So given what Israel is today compared to
anything it has ever pursued, there is a real threat. Do I hope that we can arrive to a political
settlement that allows the Lebanese to maintain sovereignty over South Lebanon? Of course, I hope so,
but that won't happen just if we hope for it. That will happen if there is a real
critical public that is able to make sure that the governments in Europe and in North America
really put serious pressure to the extent of sanctions so that Israel does not pursue an
annexation plan of South Lebanon. It has already erased the border town area and everything
suggests from the landscape that this is a possibility, but the only way this possibility
is nulled if a collective action goes in that direction. Just finally, how do you see this playing
out in terms of Iran, I guess, in the wall there, which is a strategic catastrophe from the
perspective of the West? How does that play out in terms of what happens in Lebanon, not least
because Israel and the U.S. have divergent strategic aims in Iran first off? Where do you see that
kind of, what do you think the knock on impact in terms of how this is likely to progress?
So in my view, the war in Iran is a separate war from the war in Lebanon.
And I also think that Israel sees the war in Lebanon with equal importance to the way it sees
the war in Iran because Israel has a serious problem with, has ball up particularly,
irregard this of Iran's nuclear program and irregard this of Iran's own standing at the region.
So even if the U.S. arrives to a settlement with Iran because the Iran war, I assume,
is not very popular within the U.S. landscape politically and in terms of the wider audience of
Donald Trump, people are not that fond of this war. Even if people are kind of paralyzed right now
in terms of real street action, but people don't like this war and the gas prices are going to tell
us how much they really dislike it. But that in my view won't affect Israel's assault on South Lebanon.
Now, Iran has sold the Lebanese people, I think, a myth that there is a unity of fronts between
Hezbollah and Iran on this level and that Iran will make sure that we are a part of any package
deal. I don't think Iran even has the capacity to negotiate for that. So irregardless of what happens
on the Iran front, I think we have a long-term war ahead of us in Lebanon, unfortunately.
Sovereign devastating stuff, but unbelievably educational. And I know everyone watching this,
listening to this will be hugely grateful for your insights and into what is a catastrophe,
obviously, a completely avoidable catastrophe. For those watching, please like and subscribe,
leave your thoughts, leave your comments, share the video, but honestly, Karim, really, really appreciate it.
Thank you.
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