statement<\/a> issued by Netanyahu\u2019s office.<\/p>\nThe threats have led to a sense of trepidation among many in Lebanon, who fear a return to the widespread attacks across the country prior to the first anniversary of the ceasefire. However, for many in the country, particularly those in the south, where air raids and other attacks have been persistent over the last year, the ceasefire has never been implemented properly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis war is always here,\u201d Abbas Fakih, a Lebanese journalist from the southern city of Nabatieh, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are from a border village, you cannot visit [it] because you will be targeted. Anyone can be targeted at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Lebanonisation\u2019 of Gaza<\/h2>\n
This new status quo allows Israel to strike where it sees fit almost anywhere in the region. Israel has struck Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and has been accused of attacking Tunisia \u2013 without any action taken against it. It was only when Israel struck Qatar that a red line appeared to have been crossed, with the United States forcing Netanyahu to apologise.<\/p>\n
In Lebanon specifically, Israel\u2019s attacks have continued for a year with sparse international condemnation, with those statements usually only issued when Israel attacked the United Nations peacekeepers. Israel has also failed to withdraw its troops from at least five locations inside Lebanon, despite its commitment in the original agreement. In Gaza, some analysts believe this pattern may be repeating as Israel looks set to leave its troops deeper in the Strip than originally agreed upon.<\/p>\n
But with the odd condemnation aside, there has been no effort by the ceasefire\u2019s primary enforcer \u2013 the US \u2013 or the international community at large to hold Israel accountable for violating the ceasefire with Lebanon.<\/p>\n
In the last year, Hezbollah has responded to Israel\u2019s attacks only on one occasion. In December, Hezbollah launched an attack against an Israeli military position as a response to multiple ceasefire violations. There were no casualties, but Israel responded with force, killing 11 people in Lebanon, including a state security officer.<\/p>\n
Analysts believe that Israel now wants to recreate a similar dynamic in Gaza, whereby Israel unilaterally sets the terms of what constitutes a ceasefire violation. Under this dynamic, Israel can continue to attack Gaza at will and any response from Hamas or any other Palestinian group will result in an Israeli escalation.<\/p>\n
\u201cNetanyahu knows very well there is no excuse for his air strikes today, but it is clear he is trying to establish a new situation in Gaza where you have no war and no peace,\u201d Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said during an interview with the Arab Center Washington DC on October 29. \u201cNo full war but continuous Israeli military attacks, exactly like he is doing in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Osieck, a freelance researcher who has contributed to investigations from Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat on Palestine and Israel, said the comparison to Lebanon is recent but parallels can be drawn to Israel\u2019s behaviour from further back in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they have done in Gaza during the current iteration of the [ongoing] genocide and Lebanon is actually what they\u2019ve been doing historically in al-Khalil and Dawaymeh, as well as Jerusalem,\u201d Osieck told Al Jazeera, referring to massacres and land grabs from the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 onwards.<\/p>\n
He said the Gaza genocide is continuing in a \u201cgradual form\u201d through the continuation of air raids, while simultaneously blocking Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanese in the south from rebuilding.<\/p>\n
Israeli journalists close to the Netanyahu government also say this is the new status quo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [pre-war] Lebanonisation means your enemy is one inch from your border with their commando division and you trust the legitimacy or international border being sacred,\u201d Amit Segal, an Israeli media personality with strong ties to Netanyahu\u2019s government, told the Ezra Klein podcast recently. \u201cThe new Lebanonisation says you have military outposts behind, far from your international border, and you attack when needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new viewpoint of the Israelis, according to Segal, is, \u201cyou have to be wherever there is danger. This is the main lesson of October 7\u201d.<\/p>\n
Is the new status quo bearable?<\/h2>\n
In its new role as regional hegemon, Israel is flexing its military superiority over its neighbours. Some analysts believe it has a strategy to keep its neighbours weak and fractured to avoid any kind of economic or military competition.<\/p>\n
But the question now is whether this strategy of constant war is sustainable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael cannot bomb the Middle East into a stable new order,\u201d Marc Lynch, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, wrote in a recent article for Foreign Affairs. \u201cRegional leadership requires more than military primacy. It also demands some degree of consent and cooperation from other regional powers.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as Gaza is concerned, the new strategy appears to be to stay deep in the Strip and have the military ready to strike. That, of course, means Israel has more land to monitor but also more room for resistance from Palestinian factions. And that could be a lose-lose situation for all involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis status quo is more bearable for Hamas than for Israel,\u201d Pinfold said. \u201cThe problem is that it is a direct impediment to reconstruction for the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A ceasefire was agreed to end the war, but that has not stopped Israel from attacking. On Sunday, an air attack killed four people. A few days before that, last Friday, another Israeli strike killed a man on a motorbike. And on October 17 Israeli warplanes killed at least one person. None of these attacks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}