Lhe Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his ministers and his supporters are hammering home the existential nature of the war waged by Israel against Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, and against Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
Find the live | Live, conflict in the Middle East: after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Israel carried out “dozens” of strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon
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It is all the more important to remember that these two militias would simply not exist if the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not been expelled by Israel from Lebanon in 1982, allowing Hezbollah to take over. ‘install in the space thus left vacant. What if the PLO had been able to complete the peace process launched with Israel in 1993, the collapse of this process having favored Hamas, before offering it, in 2007, the keys to Gaza.
Such a historical reminder thus puts into perspective the scope of Israel’s military successes, however spectacular they may be, because the elimination of the enemy of the moment often facilitates the long-term emergence of an even more formidable adversary. The only lasting victory for Israel, especially in the context of the current overwhelming balance of power in its favor, can only be political, even if such evidence is difficult to assert in the face of the ongoing escalation.
PLO expelled from Lebanon in favor of Hezbollah
It was from 1969 that the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, organized, from Lebanon, raids by his fedayeen into Israeli territory, in the name of the armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Regular bombings by the Israeli army do not prevent the PLO from establishing a real state within a state in Lebanon and developing its diplomatic activity from Beirut.
In March 1978, the deadliest attack ever perpetrated by the PLO in Israel (thirty-eight civilians killed) led to a first invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army, forced to withdraw under pressure from the United States. In June 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, launched an invasion, this time on a large scale, the aim of which was to eliminate Arafat and the Fedayeen, who had been besieged in Beirut for many weeks.
But the leader of the PLO and thousands of his fighters were evacuated from Lebanon under the joint protection of France and the United States, Arafat choosing to settle in distant Tunisia, then headquarters of the Arab League.
The expulsion of the PLO leaves the field open to Hezbollah, literally the “party of God”, established clandestinely in Lebanon in the summer of 1982 under the aegis of the Syrian intelligence of the Assad regime and the revolutionary guards from Iran. Even if Hezbollah operated secretly under different names before formalizing its existence, in 1985, it immediately recruited from the mass of Shiite militiamen trained and until then paid by the PLO.
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