Can Israel and Hezbollah step back from the brink of war? – The Washington Post

“We’ve seen this movie before.” People often say that about wars in the Middle East, but it isn’t true. Each one is a unique catastrophe, with its own combination of horrific causes and effects. I’ve been covering the Middle East for nearly 45 years, and I’ve grown to hate these wars and the immense suffering they bring to both Israelis and Arabs. But too often, they can’t. The spillover of the Gaza war into Lebanon this month might have seemed inevitable, but it wasn’t. The Biden administration, knowing the terrible cost, has been trying to find an exit ramp for 11 months. I’m a journalist, and it’s part of my job to talk to all the combatants, if I can. Follow David Ignatius Follow But I’ve seen Israel make some recurring mistakes, as well. Those are agonizing to watch if, like me, you think of Israel as an outpost of democracy in the Middle East and, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “a light unto the nations.” What I’m watching now in Lebanon is hauntingly similar to what I saw in 1982 as a young reporter in Beirut covering the Israeli invasion that year. Israel wanted to go to the root, to crush its chief adversary at the time, the Palestine Liberation Organization. Advertisement Israel had dazzling military and intelligence dominance back then, just as it does now. Israel’s overwhelming power masked a strategic weakness: Its leaders didn’t have a good answer to the question, “Tell me how this ends.” The siege of Beirut continued until a U.S. mediator finally negotiated an exit for PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his fighters. I had the good fortune at the time to be able to talk with Israeli leaders, such as Prime Minister Menachem Begin, as well as Palestinian officials. The last time I visited with Begin was in August 1983, after the war in Lebanon had soured. I described the Israeli leader as “the lion in winter,” brooding about the casualties in Lebanon and the trauma the war had brought to his people. “The truth is that he is sad,” explained Yehiel Kadishai, Begin’s personal secretary and colleague since the days of the Irgun underground. “He is a person who can’t show a laughing face when there is sadness in his heart.” Aides explained that Begin asked to be briefed each day on the latest casualty figures from Lebanon and the families of each Israeli soldier who had died. He cherished Israel, but friends told me that in his depression, he feared that he had left it weaker. Advertisement The scourge of Hezbollah has a special meaning for me, too. I visited the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, and left about half an hour before a terrorist car bomb demolished the building. Most years since then, I exchange messages with the embassy official who escorted me to the elevator that day. She emailed me last week, after an Israeli airstrike killed Ibrahim Aqil, one of the Iran-backed terrorists who plotted the embassy bombing that day. Suffice to say, she doesn’t grieve for Aqil’s loss. By driving the PLO from Beirut, Israel removed the main check against Shiite militia power. Over the next 40 years, Hezbollah forced the nation of Lebanon into submission. Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was another of the unlikely cast of characters I interviewed over the decades. In answering my questions, he was clever, nimble, sometimes teasing. He seemed intrigued by the idea of talking with an American, as though it were a novelty. His bodyguards disassembled my pens, my notebooks, the contents of my wallet — looking for a hidden Israeli bomb or surveillance device. The neighborhood where I met Nasrallah, in the Dahiya, or southern suburbs, of Beirut, has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes this past week. You think you know where you’re going, but when sudden events strike, they obliterate the past and all you see is the present — and the need to act. And then, you’re somewhere you never intended to be. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/23/lebanon-war-hezbollah-israel-catastrophe/