Will the fight between Israel and Hezbollah trigger a new civil war in Lebanon?

The battle between Israel and the Shiite militias of Hezbollah on the other side of the border threatens to unleash a new civil war in Lebanon. Shiite refugees from the war zone in southern Lebanon are fleeing to nearby Christian and Druze communities, which are blocking the mass access of said refugees to their areas. This could easily lead to a confrontation between those communities and Hezbollah, which in turn could lead to a nationwide conflagration. This time, the balance of power could shift, leaving behind a profoundly transformed country and region. Let’s look at the implications.

The last Lebanese civil war lasted 15 years, killed 150,000 people, and ended in 1990. It began with unrest between Lebanese Christians (who were largely Maronite) and Palestinian Muslim refugees, whose population had grown enough to create a Muslim majority in the country, including local Sunnis and Shiites. So the Christian pro-Western faction allied with Israel was confronted by a coalition of pan-Arabists, Muslims, and leftists. Yes, leftists – this was the height of the Cold War, and any tendency sympathetic to the West was immediately associated with imperialism. Those who resisted were associated with liberation, revolution, and the Soviet-oriented countries of the time, such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya. It sounds like ancient history, a time when the world was becoming familiar with obscure terms like Druze, Maronite, and PLO.

That’s a very rough sketch, because alliances were constantly changing and non-aligned Iran entered the fray, eventually becoming the dominant power in the country through its Shiite proxy Hezbollah. At one point, in the Reagan era, the US tried to intervene, sending in troops and being driven out by truck bombs and guerrilla warfare. Oddly enough, tired of the constant threat of instability from civil war to a strategically important oil-producing region, the West agreed to an outcome that favored its opponents. Over time, Syria and Iran emerged as the winners in Lebanon. The US quietly allowed Lebanese banks to operate with lax regulations to allow for rapid capitalization and reconstruction. As a result, money laundering and smuggling at the ports became increasingly common, and continues to this day, particularly in support of Hezbollah. Dark money from all over the world flowed into the country, even from drug cartels. This corruption had global ramifications, with Hezbollah establishing a presence in Venezuela and entering the gold, oil, narco and other markets that benefited the Maduro hierarchy. Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, all attempts to sanction Syria, for example, proved futile due to neighboring Lebanon’s open back door to the world.

Much has changed since the first Lebanese civil war, and some things have changed again. The Soviet Union collapsed and the international leftist bien-pensant bloc disappeared, as did the Iraqi and Libyan regimes. Syria disintegrated. But Iranian influence remains, and Russia is back, both in Syria and potentially as a supporter of Iran in Lebanon, but increasingly neutralized by its distraction in Ukraine. Anti-Western pan-Arabism is no longer a significant force, nor is a claim to national liberation, for after all, the Mullahs in Tehran run Hezbollah while Russia has troops in Syria. Certainly, anti-Israel sentiment is once again widespread in Lebanon, at least for the time being, until internal factionalism complicates sympathies later. And therein lies the rub—for if there is a clear possibility of renewed civil war, there is also a strong possibility of power shifts and altered outcomes.

While many Lebanese currently agree that Israel is the bad guy, not least because of its potential to destabilize the country, there is absolutely no national consensus on who the good guys are. That means no ideological unity on “resistance,” on defending Arab lands, on Hezbollah as heroic defenders of last resort. Many quietly think that Israel could even lead the way in throwing off the Hezbollah/Iran yoke that has frozen the country’s fate for decades. From a very sober perspective—not uncommon in the region—Israel’s exhaustion of Hezbollah’s military and financial resources could mean liberation from the legacy of the old civil war.

For that to happen, there are two options. 1) A rival power like the West must replace Iran as a cohesive presence, but that seems unlikely with the current focus on Ukraine and Taiwan. 2) Israel must launch a diplomatic offensive for regional allies to fill the vacuum left by an exhausted Hezbollah. Otherwise, the age-old criticism applies – that Israel has the power to wage war but not to make lasting peace in its neighborhood, to destroy but not to restore, and therefore ends up in endless wars with no permanent security. Who might those states be? Certainly the Abraham Accords, possibly including Turkey and Egypt. None of them would die to help Bibi Netanyahu in the current climate, but if the incentive is to replace Iran as hegemon, and parade as peacemakers, especially after a prolonged period of civil war, then the outlook could change.