Last week, Israeli aircraft bombed the Abu Al Duhur air base in Syria. The Israelis initially failed to admit responsibility for the attack, but to a number of observers it was very reminiscent of the attacks in April last year against the Hama and T4 air bases. At the time, these were interpreted as an Israeli effort to prevent the Turkish military from using the bases, amid the rising regional rivalry between Israel and Turkey.
Sure enough, two days after the bombing of Abu Al Duhur, the US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, tweeted that Israel had been responsible, and Israeli sources later told Axios that the operation had indeed been directed against a Turkish military build-up in Syria. The Turks denied that they had a military presence at Abu Al Duhur, and accused Israel of “inventing pretexts to bomb neighbouring countries and destabilise the region”.
In early June, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defined what he described as Turkey’s security sphere of interest when he declared: “Turkey’s security does not begin in Hatay, but rather in Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. We will not allow a fait accompli in our brotherly countries, and we will not turn a blind eye to any attacks targeting them.”
Lebanon should watch very carefully what is taking place, because it is in the eye of the storm as regional antagonisms escalate and new alignments form in the Levant and the Gulf. The recent Makkah Joint Defence Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan was another manifestation of efforts by regional countries to create structures to counterbalance the emergence of any hegemonic power in the region – above all Israel or Iran.
For the Lebanese, the situation is worrisome. The country’s leadership is engaged in negotiations with Israel to bring about an Israeli withdrawal from the south of the country and to establish pilot zones in the south in which the Lebanese army can disarm and replace Hezbollah. The problem is that Israel does not actually appear to favour such an outcome.
The Israelis have refused to leave more pilot zones and have indicated that they intend to maintain a buffer zone in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed. Yet they have continued to raze villages in the border area, even as their forces have set alight expanses of land and bombed agricultural areas with white phosphorus, making them unfit for cultivation.
In other words, what the Israelis are doing is ensuring that the border area remains unsuited for human habitation for an extended period of time, perhaps decades. This suggests that even if Israel eventually pulls its soldiers out of Lebanon, it will seek to impose a security order in the south that effectively leaves it in de facto control of a mostly unpopulated area.
In parallel to this, the Israelis have created a situation in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiite citizens who lived in the border area have been displaced to areas in which the majority of the population is from other communities. If such a situation persists indefinitely, this may heighten sectarian tensions, as the displaced Shiite begin establishing businesses, buying property and building up a political presence in non-Shiite areas.
There are observers in Beirut, both Lebanese and foreign diplomatic representatives, who believe that such tensions are precisely what the Israelis want, because ultimately their objective is to provoke sectarian fragmentation and destabilise the country. Israel would welcome a situation that entangles Hezbollah in domestic hostilities, in such a way that the group will no longer have the same capacity to focus on Israel.
Fragmentation was certainly what Israel sought to facilitate in Syria when it endorsed a federal Syria and supported Druze and Kurdish aspirations for autonomy. The plan suffered a setback when the government in Damascus came to an agreement with the Kurds, but the situation with the Druze is at a deadlock. There is little doubt Israel would welcome being surrounded by weak Arab states broken up into small sectarian entities.
Most regional powers strongly oppose such an outcome, but the country that does so more than any other is Turkey, which fears that religious-ethnic fragmentation in Syria and Lebanon could facilitate the fragmentation of Turkey itself, with its large Kurdish minority. That is why Mr Erdogan has been keen to back moves in Syria that could avert a breakdown of the state, and in this he has had valuable support from the administration of US President Donald Trump.
In Lebanon, the situation is more complex. It is increasingly apparent that the real Israeli aim is to ensure that bilateral negotiations fail, so that Israel can impose an outcome to its liking, without making any of the concessions that negotiations require. This would be based on imposing security conditions unilaterally on an increasingly divided Lebanon.
It’s not surprising, then, that Turkey is seeking to strengthen the Lebanese army’s capacities, a topic Lebanese President Joseph Aoun addressed in a meeting with Mr Erdogan recently in Ankara. Enhancing the armed forces’ operational capacity is vital both to prevent internal disintegration and assert the state’s right to alone hold weapons.
Lebanon would do well to help advance such initiatives. Regional polarisation threatens to turn the country into a political football, which Lebanon has frequently been. However, it may also generate greater regional commitment to Lebanon’s stabilisation. If the Lebanese are looking for a solution to their problems, it lies in co-operating with such endeavours and maintaining connections with all sides.
