To put an end to the war, Israel was agreed to a ceasefire, but that hasn’t stopped its attacks. Four people were killed in an air attack on Sunday. A motorcyclist was killed by another Israeli attack on Friday before that. Additionally, at least one person was killed by Israeli warplanes on October 17.
Israel has also carried out attacks in Gaza, many of which were much more deadly than those described above, in the few weeks since a ceasefire started on October 10.
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Instead, Israel carried out the attacks in Lebanon, which occurred a year after Israel and Hezbollah established a ceasefire. Despite that ceasefire, Israel has continued to attack locations all over Lebanon frequently, much to the chagrin of the Lebanese people and government.
Even if a ceasefire is declared in place, Israel asserts that it has the right to carry out attacks in Lebanon until Hezbollah completely disarms.
According to analysts, Israel is “Lebanonizing” Gaza by officially ending the war with its far superior military might, which grants it the right to launch attacks whenever it wants for an indefinite period. The attacks in Gaza have so far caused at least 236 Palestinians to die and 600 others to hurt.
According to Rob Geist Pinfold, a King’s College London scholar of international security, “They [Israelis] don’t want to resolve the conflict.” The new norm is “war.”
Relatives to the post-October 7 attacks
Prior to Israel’s start of its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it was thought that organizations like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon had some sort of deterrent against Israeli aggression.
According to Pinfold, “Before October 7 [2023], there was a belief that Israel could not have a long or protracted war.” Its society and economy made it a “country that couldn’t function”
Israel has launched a perpetual war, attacking various targets around the Middle East even after ceasefire agreements have been reached, but since the attacks on October 7 by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, which killed 1, 139 people in Israel and held more than 200 captive.
Lebanon is the most obvious example of a ceasefire that Israel repeatedly violated by continuing to attack in spite of it, which was signed on November 27, 2024.
If the Lebanese government didn’t do more to disarm Hezbollah, which had been severely weakened in the conflict with Israel, most notably losing its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that the Israeli military might launch further action.
According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, “We will not allow Lebanon to become a renewed front against us, and we will act as necessary.”
Many in Lebanon are concerned about a return to the frequent attacks that occurred before the first anniversary of the ceasefire as a result of the threats. The ceasefire has never been properly implemented, though for many in the nation, especially those in the south, where air raids and other attacks have been persisted for the past year.
Abbas Fakih, a journalist from Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, told Al Jazeera, “This war is always here.”
You can’t visit [it] because you will be targeted, if you’re from a border village. Anybody can be targeted at any time.
Gaza’s “Libertization” is described as “landmarking.”
With the current status quo, Israel can almost certainly strike almost anywhere in the region. Israel has been accused of attacking Tunisia without any legal action after hitting Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. A red line appeared to have been crossed when Israel struck Qatar, with the US obliging Netanyahu to apologize.
Israel’s attacks in particular have been ongoing for a year, with little international condemnation, with those statements typically only coming out when Israel attacked the UN peacekeepers. Despite its commitments under the original agreement, Israel has also failed to withdraw its troops from at least five locations inside Lebanon. Some analysts in Gaza think that this pattern may be occurring because Israel appears to be placing its troops farther away from the Strip than originally anticipated.
However, despite the occasional condemnation, neither the US nor the rest of the world have made an effort to hold Israel accountable for violating the ceasefire with Lebanon.
Hezbollah only responded to one attack in the past year when Israel attacked. In response to numerous ceasefire violations, Hezbollah launched an attack on an Israeli military base in December. Israel did not cause any casualties in Lebanon, but it did kill 11 people, including a state security officer, with force.
According to some analysts, Israel now wants to rekindle the situation in Gaza, where it unilaterally dictates what constitutes a ceasefire violation. In this situation, Israel has the freedom to launch an attack on Gaza at will, and any Hamas or other Palestinian organization response will lead to an Israeli uprising.
In an interview with the Arab Center Washington DC on October 29, Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian National Initiative’s secretary-general, said, “Netanyahu knows very well that there is no excuse for his air strikes today. However, it is clear he is trying to create a new situation in Gaza where there is no war and no peace.” No full-fledged war, but just constant Israeli military assaults, as he does in Lebanon.
Although the comparison to Lebanon is recent, according to Chris Osieck, a freelance researcher who has worked on investigations for Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat on Palestine and Israel, there are similarities.
According to Osieck, who spoke to Al Jazeera, “What they’ve been doing historically in al-Khalil and Dawaymeh, as well as Jerusalem,” is what they’ve done in Gaza since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
He claimed that while continuing the genocide against Gaza, the country is “gradually” preventing both the south of the country from rebuilding and the continuation of airstrikes.
This is the new status quo, claim Israeli officials who are close to the Netanyahu administration.
Amit Segal, an Israeli media figure with a strong connection to Netanyahu’s government, stated in an interview with the Ezra Klein podcast that “the]pre-war Lebanonization means your enemy is one inch from your border with their commando division and you trust the legitimacy or international border being sacred. You have military installations a distance from your international border, according to the new Lebanonization, and you can attack when necessary.
You must be where there is danger, according to Segal, the new perspective of Israelis. The main lesson of October 7 is this.
Can we accept the new status quo?
Israel is exercising its military might in its new role as the regional hegemon. Some analysts believe that it has a plan to prevent any kind of economic or military conflict by keeping its neighbors fragile and fracturing.
However, the key is whether this constant war strategy will work.
In a recent article for Foreign Affairs, Marc Lynch, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, wrote that Israel cannot bomb the Middle East to create a stable new order. More than just military prerogatives are required for regional leadership. Other regional powers must also give their consent and cooperation.
The new strategy appears to be to remain deep in the Strip with the military ready to strike in Gaza. Of course, that leaves more land for Palestinian factions to monitor as well as more land for resistance. And everyone involved could lose out on that.
