DRAMATIC DAYS

On 8 March, a few days after Lebanese Islamist Hezbollah fighters launched a barrage of rockets toward northern Israel triggering Israeli counterstrikes, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank fired a shell at a house in the border-hugging Lebanese village of Kafr Kela (Qlei’a). The shell killed Father Pierre a-Ra’I, a Maronite priest. A-Ra’I was apparently visiting parishioners and the Israeli gunners mistook him for a Hezbollah gunman.

The IDF had ordered the inhabitants of the towns and villages between the Israeli border and the Litani River to the north, 90% of them Shi’ite Muslims, the Hezbollah’s base of support, to evacuate northwards. Over the following days most fled, and by the third week of March, about a million Lebanese, mostly Shi’ites, from the south and from Beirut’s Dahiya neighborhood, the Hezbollah stronghold, had abandoned their homes and become “refugees,” living in parking lots, fields or empty buildings in other parts of Beirut or in areas to the east or north of the Lebanese capital. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the refugees from south Lebanon will not be allowed to return home unless Israel’s border inhabitants, who are under constant Hezbollah rocketry, are “safe.” The Israeli government hopes that the massive uprooting of Hezbollah’s demographic base of support will eventually generate pressure on the Islamist terrorists\guerrillas to halt their war on Israel - launched on 2 March following the start of the Israeli-American assault on Iran three days earlier and the assassination by IDF jets of Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei, the most important political figure in Shi’ite Islam.

But among those who have stayed put in their homes south of the Litani are most of the inhabitants of the dozen or so Christian (or mostly Christian) villages. Some of these villages, mistakenly or not, were on the IDF list ordered to evacuate, but their inhabitants decided to stay – leaving them stranded between the IDF and the Hezbollah as the two traded shot and shell during the past few weeks. The Christian villagers, always distrusted by the Hezbollah, declared, as they had for decades, that they were “neutral” and not a party to the conflict, though during the 1980s and 1990s, many Christian villagers served in the “South Lebanese Army” (SLA), a local militia that served alongside the IDF in the Israeli-established “security zone” just north of the frontier designed to keep Hezbollah gunmen and rocketeers away from northern Israel. Since the Israeli withdrawal from the “security zone” and the dissolution of the SLA in 2000, the Christians of south Lebanon have generally resisted Hezbollah efforts to install rocket-launchers, personnel and arms caches in their villages.

Nonetheless, amid the chaos of rocket- and gun-fire and mass evacuation earlier this month, some Shi’ite villagers, and probably Hezbollah fighters, sought shelter in Christian villages. Here and there the inhabitants refused to host them, as had happened in Kafr Kela. Following Father Ra’I’s death, the inhabitants of Rmaish, a Christian village a few miles to the southwest, in coordination with the Lebanese army, organized the evacuation of the Shi’ite villagers who had found a haven in their midst.

But the inhabitants of south Leban’s dozen Christian villages fear that they will inevitably become embroiled in the Israeli-Hezbollah fight and that, should the Hezbollah eventually resume control of the area, they will be targeted for “aiding Israel.”

More generally, the Lebanese – Christian, Muslim and Druze - remain traumatized by the memory of the 1975-1991 Muslim-Christian civil war that resulted in some 100,000 deaths. The current Lebanese government, led by President Joseph Aoun (Christian) and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (Sunni Muslim), has been unprecedently outspoken against the Hezbollah and has formally outlawed its attacks on Israel; indeed, the government has demanded, alongside Israel and the United States, that the organization disarm. But the Hezbollah has refused, and the government has failed to act, given the weakness of the Lebanese Army and the fear that taking on the Hezbollah would result in the army’s break-up (many of its soldiers are Shi’ites) and a descent into civil war. So far, the government’s only significant action was Tuesday’s expulsion of the Iranian ambassador (to which the Iranians responded, within hours, by launching a ballistic missile toward Beirut, possibly aiming at the American Embassy in the city. The missile was shot down by American interceptors).

Israel, for its part, its northern border settlements under continuous barrages of rockets and armed drones, has so far been unsuccessful in subduing Hezbollah fire. Israeli jets and artillery have been steadily bombing and shelling Hezbollah installations and personnel, both in southern Lebanon and in Beirut’s Dahiya neighborhood, but the Hezbollah so far appears unfazed. Israel has threatened to destroy Lebanese infrastructure targets as a means of pressuring the Lebanese government to act, but has so far desisted, apparently warned off by Washington. So far, the IDF has destroyed only a set of bridges spanning the Litani.

The Hezbollah, which was severely mauled by the IDF in the previous bout of hostilities during October 2023-November 2024, prepared well for the current hostilities and managed to retain thousands of rockets and drones. It even held onto some long-range rockets, one of which landed a fortnight ago in the Valley of the Elah in central Israel (not far from my home).

During the past weeks Israel pushed three IDF divisions to the Lebanon border, some of the troops deploying on the Lebanese side. Their immediate objective was to prevent incursions into Israel by Hezbollah raiders and flat-trajectory anti-tank missile fire, which in the previous bout of hostilities devastated the border settlements and IDF positions. But the current Hezbollah rocketing of the border settlements, principally the town of Kiryat Shmona, originates in areas north of the Litani River. Many observers believed that the Israeli troop concentrations heralded a massive IDF push to the Litani River line and even areas to the north, creating a new “security zone” in southern Lebanon. So far, this has not happened. The IDF command appears wary of (re-)occupying the area as the troops will serve as static targets for Hezbollah missiles and rockets and raiding squads. The IDF is chary of repeating its “security zone” experiment of the 1980s and 1990s. It is possible that the IDF formations will remain close to the Israel-Lebanon international frontier but will declare the area to the north, as far as the Litani, a “free-fire” zone to be left uninhabited by civilians (except for Christians) for years to come.

But short of an Israeli offensive reaching as far as Beirut (as carried out by Israel in 1982, when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) ruled south Lebanon), observers don’t see how the IDF will succeed in suppressing the Hezbollah rocketry. Indeed, most Israelis believe that, even if Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran end their war, the battle between Israel and Hezbollah will continue. Like Iran’s Islamist rulers, Hezbollah leaders and fighters, driven by fanatical religious passions and jihadism against the “infidel,” will not easily give up the fight, however severe their losses. Meanwhile, Israel seemingly faces a prolonged war of attrition, with much of northern Israel paralyzed by the hostilities and many of its inhabitants simply evacuating to safer climes southward. In the earlier bout of Israeli-Hezbollah warfare, in October 2023-October 2024, the government ordered the northern border settlers to evacuate and paid for their upkeep during that “exile” in hotel rooms and other lodgings. This time, no such order has been forthcoming and the government is refusing to underwrite those who abandon their homes along the border.

Of course, the Israel-Hezbollah dueling is – at least for the rest of the world - a sidebar to the main event, the Israeli-American-Iran war. At the moment, a type of stalemate prevails. Israeli and American flyers daily bomb Iranian military and military-industrial installations and the Iranians attack with ballistic missiles and drones Israeli, Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini, Kuwaiti and Qatari oil and gas installations and civilian centers and Israeli cities and, occasionally, Israeli strategic targets. Most significantly, the Iranians, using drones and missiles (and threats) have closed the Strait of Hormuz to “unfriendly” international shipping, blocking the export to Africa, Asia and Europe of 20% of their oil and gas, resulting in a surge in fuel prices and threatening a global economic crisis. In the past few days Iranian ballistic missiles have apparently been aimed at Israel’s nuclear reactor, and purported nuclear bomb-making plant, at Dimona, but without hitting the target. So far, Israel’s multi-layered anti-missile defense systems have shot down some 90% of Iranian and Hezbollah missiles and drones and Israel has suffered less than 20 dead and several hundred, mostly lightly, wounded. Iran has so far fired some 500 ballistic missiles at Israel and, apparently, twice that number at the Arab gulf states. To Iranian chagrin, Israel (and the US) have lost no aircraft to Iranian defenses during the past three weeks and retain complete freedom of Iranian airspace. Iranian dead apparently run into the thousands while the Lebanese government says that over 1,000 of its citizens have so far died (it is unclear if this figure includes Hezbollah dead). But Iran and Hezbollah remain defiant.

To break the stalemate, President Trump last weekend served Tehran with an ultimatum, threatening to destroy Iran’s electricity-producing plants. Iran responded saying that it would retaliate by further targeting oil and gas installations and desalination plants in the Gulf states and Israel. This would raise the war, and civilian suffering, to a new level. But Trump, possibly enjoined by leaders of the Gulf states, then suspended the ultimatum for five days, announcing that America and Iran were now engaged in “very strong” negotiations aimed at ending the war.

Iran has denied that such talks are actually taking place and has added that, to end the war, the Americans must cease hostilities, remove all their bases from the Middle East, pay Iran reparations for war damage, end all economic sanctions and agree to permanent, internationally-agreed Iranian control of the straits, effectively conceding Iranian sovereignty over the international waterway. Iran has already stated that it will charge all ships $2 million for passage through the strait.

It is unknown whether Trump informed Netanyahu, his ally, of the clandestine talks with Iran and it is unclear what coordination exists between the two regarding the possible terms for a settlement. It is also unclear who is Trump’s Iranian interlocutor and what powers he has, given that most of the Iranian leadership has been killed over the past three weeks (though most observers believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders are in real control in Tehran.

At the start of the war Trump declared that Iran must end its nuclear weapons and ballistic weapons programs and cease support for its subversive proxy militias around the Middle East, including Hezbollah. An undeclared aim of both Washington and Netanyahu in embarking on the war was the toppling of the murderous Islamist regime in Tehran. (Weeks before, the regime had slaughtered tens of thousands of unarmed anti-government protestors in Iran’s city streets). Negotiating with the regime and eventually reaching an agreement with it would mean that Washington has now conceded the continued existence of the regime.

Israel fears that leaving the regime in place – and many observers believe that the regime is now led by more extreme figures than before the war and that they are driven by an almost boundless vengefulness – means that Israel (and possibly America) will face new bouts of warfare with Iran in a year or two or three’s time. Some Israelis are worried that Trump will sell Israel down the river and back off from their joint previously-agreed war aims or “red lines.”

Given the war’s domestic unpopularity, Trump is clearly worried by the prospect of defeat in America’s November mid-term elections and wants to end the war as soon as possible. Jerusalem fears that Trump will drop his insistence that Iran hand over the 440 kilograms of Uranium it has enriched to 60% (and hundreds of kilograms of Uranium enriched to 20%) and bow to Iran’s insistence on its right to continue Uranium enrichment. With atomic weaponry, Iran would become – like North Korea – immune from attack and would possess the means to destroy Israel (long a core aim of Iranian policy). Similarly, Jerusalem fears that Trump will drop his demand that Iran restrict its ballistic missile program. Before the current war, Iranian spokesmen said Iran aimed to build “20,000” ballistic missiles; a week ago Iran fired two such missiles at the US-UK airbase on Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island 4,000 kilometers from Iran. If perfected such missiles could reach Paris and Berlin and most American military bases in Europe.

If Trump reaches a deal and ends America’s war with Iran, he will no doubt “order” Israel to halt anti-Iranian hostilities as well (and possibly also its war against the Hezbollah, leaving the Islamist rocketeers a constant threat to the Galilee). Israel’s leaders keenly remember Trump’s intervention last June, when he abruptly “ordered” Netanyahu to recall the fleet of Israel Air Force jets on their way to bomb Tehran ending the 12-day war. Given Israel’s dependence on American munitions, arms and political cover, it is hard to see Netanyahu not complying with Trump’s diktats.

But this time around, Netanyahu may feel that, with Israel’s very existence at stake, he must resist. Israel cannot allow the Iranians to possess nuclear weapons or “20,000” ballistic missiles. (The handful of Iranian ballistic missiles that got through during the past few weeks caused great devastation in Tel Aviv and other towns.) Netanyahu, to be sure, is at the moment exerting maximum pressure on Trump to stand firm in the negotiation with Iran.

And it is quite possible that Trump, on his own, may feel unable to agree to Tehran’s terms. To be bested by Iran – meaning to be seen as a “loser” - runs contrary to Trump’s nature and ethos. And he is no doubt aware that appeasing Iran will have a knockdown global effect, possibly tempting China or Russia to challenge America and the West elsewhere, say in Taiwan or eastern Europe, and undermine confidence in America among its Middle Eastern Arab allies.

Let’s see what happens on Friday-Saturday, when the five-day suspension of Trump’s ultimatum is up. So far, Iran’s spokesmen do not appear to be giving an inch. Trump may well announce a further “extension” of the suspension and of his peace-making diplomacy. Or, in the hope of softening Tehran, he may send in his bombers to knock out one or more of Iran’s electricity-generating plants, or order his Marines and 82^nd Airborne paratroopers to attack along the Strait of Hormuz or Kharj Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal. Meanwhile, Israel’s fighter-bombers appear to be flying non-stop to Iran to destroy as many of the enemy’s military assets as possible before a “halt” order arrives in Jerusalem.