• Lebanon Conflict
  • Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election
  By Shashi P.B.B. Malla A Broader Israel-Lebanon War Now Inevitable? For months we’re hearing the same story. The Washington Post analysts Ishaan Tharoor and Kelsey Baker write that while they supported Israel to the full, U.S. diplomats repeatedly stressed that they didn’t want to see a wider war across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Leaders of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, a longtime Israeli antagonist, and their supporters in Iran signaled that they too had little desire for a full-blown conflict. In Israel itself, top political and military officials in a country already in the throes of a sweeping, bloody campaign against Hamas in Gaza squabbled over what to do about the threat posed by Hesbollah. They recognized perhaps that as the Middle East’s most powerful military, they may be too extended for another massive war (World View, September 20). However, the performed restraint may be melting away. The stunning series of deadly blasts in Lebanon last week ushered in a new reality. At least 37 people – including a few children – were killed and some 3,000 others injured when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The devices appeared to belong to Hezbollah operatives, though the huge organization is embedded throughout Lebanese society and incorporates vast networks of noncombatants, including medical professionals. Israeli officials have not publicly taken responsibility for the attacks, but have in private confirmed their responsibility with officials in Washington. The sophistication of the strike raises profound questions about the future of cyber warfare, the vulnerability of tech supply chains and the ethics behind such operations. Numerous international law experts, including a U.N. panel, accused Israel of violating international law and carrying out a form of terrorism, no matter that it was an attempt to weaken a known terrorist organization. For Hezbollah, the operation has been disastrous. “The attacks dealt Hezbollah a severe blow, represented an embarrassing breach of its supply chains and illustrated Israeli’s ability to strike deep within the military group” The Washington Post commentators wrote. Furthermore: “Governments across the Middle East condemned it as a serious violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, and the United States, the United Nations and Western countries appealed for calm as the region appeared, once again, to teeter on the brink of wide-scale war.” A low-level conflict between Hezbollah and Israel has raged for months since October 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its deadly terrorist strike on southern Israel, triggering the devastating ongoing war in Gaza. In reaction to Israel’s withering bombardments of Palestinians, Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel’s north, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes. Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah rocket fire have taken place on an almost constant basis, claiming lives on both sides of the border.

Israeli airstrikes hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon

In recent days, Israel’s leadership has made the return of its displaced population to their communities in the north a stated war goal. But this stays in direct contradiction to its current by Last week Wednesday, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the war against Hezbollah had entered a “new phase” and that Israel would be concentrating more of its efforts against the group. “The centre of gravity is moving north. We are diverting forces, resources, and energy toward the north,” Gallant added. By the next day, dozens of airstrikes hit alleged Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, the group’s leader Hasan Nasrallah delivered an address describing the clandestine explosive attacks as an “an act of war” by Israel and “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime.” Diplomats were helpless and looked on in dismay. “This act of grave escalation will lead the region to what we have been warning against, which is an-out war which will turn the region into scorched earth,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said in Cairo on Wednesday last week, speaking alongside U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. In spite of Blinken’s robust shuttle diplomacy, it also represented a crass failure of Joe Biden’s Middle East policy which endlessly pampered Israel without having any control whatsoever over its wayward ally. Kamala Harris will definitely have to choose another path. Though the pager/walkie-talkie cyber attacks represent a dramatic tactical victory for Israel’s security establishment, it’s not clear what strategic goals it achieves. Hezbollah is reeling and in disarray, but it may be that Israel carried out the attack because the Lebanese group was about to discover that its technology had been compromised. “The timing does not reflect a strategic move by Israel,” a senior former Israel official with knowledge of the operation told Washington Post analysts. “The timing was coincidental because of things that may have happened on the ground that would have allowed the exposure of this capability.” In any case, it arguably locks the region into an inevitable escalatory chain. “Even if they were trying to send a message, why now?” a Middle East-based security official told the Washington Post. “There will be a reaction from Hezbollah. Why do this if you are truly interested in preventing a wider war?” Some Israeli and Western policymakers have hoped to delink the conflict with Hamas from tensions with Hezbollah. This is not only delusionary, but the current course of events makes that even harder. “Israel is poised to visit greater violence on Hezbollah in the hope of forcing it into ceasing cross border fire,” Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Tharoor of WaPo. “However, Hezbollah cannot yield without undermining the much vaunted ‘unity of fronts’ it and Iran proclaimed after October 7. The broadening of the war has, therefore, become inevitable.” The Primary Role of PM Netanyahu For Israel, much of the deliberation over what to do hinges on Prime Minister Benjamin Netahyahu’s calculations about maintaining power. The right-wing leader has appeased his far-right coalition through various stages of the war, even though some analysts suggest he may have preferred a de-escalation along the northern border at one point. “It is not about what Netanyahu wants but who has the leverage to drag Netanyahu into doing what they want,” Gayil Talshir, a professor of political science at Hebrew University, told WaPo analysts. “And his most extremist supporters want Israel having a military occupation of Gaza and a security zone in the southern part of Lebanon.” Earlier in the week, Netanyahu met with White House adviser Amos Hochstein, who was in Israel in part to urge restraint over Lebanon. “While Israel appreciates and respects the support of the United States, it will – ultimately – do what is necessary to safeguard its security.” Netanyahu told Hochstein. [And Netanyahu, of course, will do everything to safeguard his own personal interests, even as the Biden administration is unwilling and/or unable to protect America’s vital national interests!] Marxist Politician Wins Sri Lanka’s Presidential Vote Early results from Saturday’s vote strongly suggested that the 55-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayake could end up the first leftist commander-in-chief and head of state of the small but strategically located island nation. The Marxist politician Dissanayake did win after a historic second round of counting. No candidate won more than 50 % percent of the total votes in the first round, where Dissanayake got 42.31 % percent while his closest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa got 32.76 % percent. But Dassanayake, who had promised voters good governance and tough, anti-corruption measures, emerged as winner after the second count, which tallied voters’ second and third choice candidates according to the preferential voting system. Once preferences had been tallied, the Election Commission said he had won a total of 5,740,179 votes to Premadasa’s 4,530,902 (BBC, Sept. 22). The president-elect has already taken the oath of office, promising to “rewrite history” for a country that is recovering from the worst economic crisis. President Ranil Wickremesinghe had declared an eight-hour curfew despite the independent Election Commission describing Saturday’s vote as the most peaceful in the country’s electoral history. Wickemesinghe had sought re-election to continue belt-tightening measures that stabilized the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages after Sri Lanka’s worst economic meltdown in 2022. His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country as anger mounted. “I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot. But Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other measures, imposed under the terms of a US $ Dollar 2.9 billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet. Dissanayaka’s once-marginal Marxist party led two failed uprisings  in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than four percent of the vote in the previous parliamentary elections. But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for Dissanayaka who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture. Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, had been expected to be in second position. Premadasa had vowed to fight endemic corruption. Both he and Dissanayaka had pledged to renegotiate the terms of the IMF rescue package. Earlier, political analyst Kusal Perera said it was difficult to predict a winner from the three-way race – the first in the island’s history. Economic issues dominated the eight-week campaign, with public anger widespread over the hardships endured since the peak of the crisis two years ago. Official data showed that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate doubled to 25 percent between 2021 and 2022 adding more than 2.5 million people to those already living on less than US $ Dollar 3.65 a day. Experts warn that Sri Lanka’s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island’s US $ Dollar 46 billion foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default. The IMF said reforms enacted by Wickremesinghe’s government were beginning to pay off, with growth slowly returning. But the country was also warned that it was not out of the woods yet. The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com