Thread by @amalsaad_lb

Thread on the upcoming Lebanon–Israel talks:
The so-called negotiations set to take place between Israel and the Lebanese government are little more than a thinly veiled weapon of war aimed at delinking Lebanon from the Iran cease-fire and enabling Netanyahu to prolong the war across both Iran and Lebanon. 1/6

Israel knows the Lebanese authorities can't deliver at the negotiating table any of the objectives they failed to achieve on the battlefield, whether the occupation of even a single village or town, let alone the far more ambitious objectives of a 3-4 km wide buffer zone or Hizbullah’s disarmament. But what Israel hopes to achieve with these talks, beyond prolonging the war on both fronts, is to push Lebanon toward civil strife, in ways that would weaken Hizbullah and further immiserate its Shia constituency. 2/6

And conversely, the Lebanese authorities, despite their evident willingness to surrender South Lebanon to Israel and expose the Shia community to displacement and violence (in short, their intent to rid themselves of what they see as the burden of this territory and its people), are equally aware that Israel cannot secure these outcomes on their behalf either, given that the IDF command has signalled it is nearing “collapse” and cannot be expected to disarm Hizbullah. Yet they continue to wager that prolonging the war on their own people and territory will significantly weaken Hizbullah and erode any political capital it might otherwise have gained in the post-war period. 3/6

While the opening of an official Lebanese negotiation track may somewhat complicate Iran’s diplomatic position, given that Lebanon is a nominally sovereign state, it will not weaken its resolve to keep the two tracks linked. Iran has repeatedly asserted its refusal to extricate itself from the resistance, rather than Lebanon per se, and its strategic, ideological, and political commitment to Hizbullah and the Shia community, represents a commitment it's prepared to uphold even at the cost of collapsing the talks altogether. Khamenei’s assertion moments ago that “we will not give up our legitimate rights in any way; in this regard, we consider the entire resistance front as a single entity” reinforces this argument. 4/6

Assuming Hizbullah and its Shia base do not move to topple the government in the interim, the most likely scenario is that Israel will pursue these talks under fire, with Hizbullah continuing its resistance, while Iran sustains its effective control over the Strait of Hormuz and may escalate further, including direct strikes on Israel if attacks on Lebanon persist. Even if the war drags on for months, Iran’s Hormuz deterrent, combined with its military capacity and social resilience, alongside Hizbullah’s military capabilities, will eventually shift the strategic balance and force an end to the war on terms that go well beyond a simple restoration of the status quo in the region. 5/6

And the fate of the Lebanese government, which has effectively become a co-belligerent in Israel’s war on its own people and territory, will be its loss of political viability in any post-war scenario. From a purely analytical and conceptual standpoint, comparisons to Vichy France do not capture the level of collaboration at play. Vichy aligned after defeat/occupation had been consolidated and justified its position as a fait accompli, whereas here collaboration is unfolding during an ongoing war in which Israel has failed to secure even minimal gains, invoking an unprecedented and obscene claim of state “sovereignty” to justify it. This is an altogether different order of collaboration, one that cannot be accommodated into a post-war settlement as was the case for Seniora government in 2006. Nothing less than a war crimes tribunal will do justice to the violations of Lebanese and international law that this illegitimate government has committed. 6/6