Lebanon is bracing for intensified Israeli attacks in the new year, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration set a December 31 deadline for Hezbollah to disarm, following its assassination of the group’s military commander.
Rather than heralding another land invasion like a year ago, however, analysts say the military ultimatum issued by Defence Minister Israel Katz last week aims to further diminish the role of Hezbollah – and its creator Iran – in Lebanon’s national politics.
Speaking days after the elimination of Hezbollah’s chief of staff Haytham Ali al-Tabatabai in an air strike on a block of flats in suburban Beirut, Katz warned on Wednesday that there would be “no calm in Beirut, nor order and stability in Lebanon, until the security of the State of Israel is guaranteed”.
“If Hezbollah does not give up its weapons by the year’s end, we will work forcefully again in Lebanon,” Katz said.
But another Israeli assault would achieve “nothing” in terms of disarming Hezbollah, according to Michael Young, senior editor at the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Centre. “If anything, it will reinforce Hezbollah’s argument that ‘we need to keep alive the resistance’ against Israel’s occupation of Lebanon.”
