Lebanese miscalculation of US Middle East strategy
On the night of October 12, Israeli Prime Minister B. Netanyahu and one of the opposition leaders B. Gantz, after the formation of the government of national unity, issued a joint address.
Apparently, there is no particular point in revealing the general message and its tone, but one thesis from B. Ganz deserves special attention:
“If necessary, Lebanon will feel everything that Gaza is now receiving.”
What Gaza feels is evident from numerous chronicles. On the border between Israel and Lebanon, there are actually skirmishes and periodic exchanges of blows, at low intensity for now.
Israel's attitude towards representatives of the Hezbollah movement is known, as is the opposite, but here B. Gantz is threatening Lebanon as a whole with carpet bombing.
However, Hezbollah is not all of Lebanon. Yes, this is part of the Lebanese socio-political field, but only part of it. What have all the other Lebanese done wrong to Israel, and can this small state, torn apart by contradictions and a severe economic crisis, threaten Tel Aviv?
Beirut has suffered from hostilities more than once, but still has not yet heard threats similar to the bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Two materials were previously published on the background of Lebanon’s economic problems, the peculiarities of the political crisis, and the reasons why the United States is paying such close, strategic attention to Lebanon in the military: “On the growing risks of a crisis in Lebanon" and "Why Lebanon's finances have become the object of US scrutiny?»
Genesis of the Palestinian protest movement
In this case, in order to understand what B. Gantz generally means and why the Americans are sending a second aircraft carrier group to Lebanon, we should dive a little into the genesis of the Palestinian protest movement in recent years and its transformation in terms of involvement in regional influence groups. This will give a relative (if possible) completeness of the picture to previous materials.
This is an even more important aspect of the problem, since in Russia lately you can very often hear on various information platforms that “decrepit old Joe Biden is a self-propelled grandfather on punch cards,” together with his hawks, it will take a little while longer to fail in the elections, and then it will come D. Trump will “fix everything.”
The genesis of the Palestinian problem and the position of the republican wing should somewhat sober up these optimists. Although, in theory, the statements of such “Trumpists” as Senator L. Graham would be enough for this. Today the Trumpists are calling for an investigation history the appearance of Western weapons in Hamas in light of corruption in Ukraine, but these are pre-election political maneuvers, and the Middle East is generally a separate strategy, and it is far from a fact that Russia will be easier to work with this strategy than with the concepts of the current administration.
One can often hear the opinion that the ruling circles in the Middle East itself are frankly tired of the Palestinian problem. This is partly true, if only due to the fact that these same circles are forced to focus on public sentiment (and they are forced, despite all the royal regalia, since they are all also heads of tribal confederations), sacrificing commercial projects.
But the Arab street, when it comes to details, often turns out to be very heterogeneous. When it comes to the problem as a whole, everyone is behind Palestine and the wall, but when it comes to specifics, contradictions begin.
There are many reasons for this, but as a basis we can highlight the fact that Palestinian Arabs are a separate Arab, if not an ethnic group, then definitely an ethnic phenomenon. A feature of the Arab community is the very large historical depth of tribal ties. Arab tribal confederations are patches of sorts that are scattered throughout the region but interconnected. The threads of this web one way or another go to Yemen and Arabian Najd.
The Palestinians are basically tribal confederations with roots in the Mediterranean region itself, western Jordan and Sinai. In general, when one of the Hamas representatives stated that “we are all Egyptians,” he was not very far from the truth, however, he also said that half of the Palestinians are Saudis.
There is no point in looking for logic here, because it was also necessary to be a “Saudi” or a “Yemeni”. Because the homeland of the Arabs is still not in modern Palestine, and the older tribal confederations of a significant part of the Palestinians belong more to Jordan and Sinai.
For the region, this is much more important than even for the modern “broad Ukrainian” the search for his national identity in the pots of Trypillian culture. In the Middle East these are really living connections and living threads. Another thing is that everyone there knows how to spin these narratives in terms of politics. The Alawite H. Assad was no different, who spoke in such a way that he seemed to be a greater Arab than the Yemeni Bedouins.
This problem, that the Palestinians are sort of “their Arabs”, but still “somewhat separate Arabs,” was largely the reason that neither Egypt, nor even the historically actually and literally related Jordan, nor the Arabian countries sought to take Palestine under direct control.
There were many forms of supporting the Palestinians and using the problem as a political instrument, but in certain periods some of these territories could have been taken not just “for allowance”, but for themselves, but they did not take it. In this regard, one must understand that when some Israeli observers say that the Palestinians were “imposed” on them by the Arabs themselves, they are, of course, disingenuous, but they are only partially disingenuous, not completely.
The modern Palestinian political and social map was largely shaped by several waves of Palestinian emigration to neighboring regions, where, again, they were only partly their own. In fact, this is a colossal tragedy of the people, which can be called in modern language the “Palestinian subethnic group,” who were forced to emigrate to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and part of them found themselves locked in an outright ghetto called the Gaza Strip.
These are not just diasporas. Thus, in Syria, 11 million people were officially registered in 0,5 Palestinian camps, in Lebanon - the same number of people in 12 camps, in Jordan - 13 million people in 2,5 camps. The tiny Gaza Strip gained a population of 2,4 million people also due to these waves of migration. But these are only registered camps with official status, and in total 6 million people took part in the waves of migration over fifty years, i.e. 50% of all Palestinians.
But emigration was only part of the Palestinian tragedy, since all these enclaves were used in one way or another in the political struggle and became directly or indirectly beneficial to all players in the region. It is usually customary to cite Israel itself as the main beneficiary, but all regional political and religious forces, regional elites, were also interested in such a “combat asset.”
Combat asset
Here we need to highlight three parallel currents.
The first is the official administration of the Palestinian Authority, the so-called. Fatah, as the direct heir of Ya. Arafat's PLO. At one time, the Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank represented some semblance of unity. Moreover, for a long time the PLO/Fatah had a predominant influence on the Lebanese Palestinians. The Oslo agreements split this community, for which both the official authorities in Damascus and the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as the now notorious Hamas, fought simultaneously.
To bring some clarity, it should be noted that Hamas was created largely to split the all-Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat, and Israel itself did not interfere with this. Today, these memoirs of participants in the events began to be quoted quite widely, such as, for example, the words of I. Rabin that the creation of Hamas was a “fatal mistake,” but this is only half the story, and the other part was that Hamas was an organic part for a long time Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Today, almost everyone who is interested in the Middle East knows that the main centers of this movement are Turkey and Qatar. But first of all, this movement is the so-called. "political Islam". The movement has closed organizational forms, somewhat reminiscent of a mixture of Masonic lodges and Catholic orders, with its own practices, hierarchy, as well as open ones - with a soft religious and political platform. In Russia, this trend was represented by circles associated with the Dzhemal family.
In our sources, it is customary to identify the “Muslim Brotherhood” in the old fashioned way with Western intelligence services, since the movement really proceeded as an alternative to civil, secular forms like “pan-Arabism”, “Arab socialism”, etc. But now this has long been a separate movement, which builds its own political model. And one of the features of the Palestinian issue was that the influence of this movement on Hamas was significant, but on the forces in Lebanon and Syria it was weak. Actually, the major targets of this movement were Egypt, as well as Libya and Sudan.
In Lebanon itself, Fatah split into two unequal parts: as a continuation of the Palestinian movement itself, against the “conciliatory policy” of official Ramallah, as a part gravitating toward Hezbollah, and as a part that gradually integrated with radical groups that would later be known as “ Al-Qaeda" (banned in the Russian Federation). The latter found itself in the minority in Lebanon.
Al-Qaeda gradually covered Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt with its network, but, oddly enough, the Palestinian component was represented relatively weakly in it, although it was for the Palestinians in the region that all local players, even official Syria, fought with related projects like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But such secular projects no longer had any prospects in the wake of the general “re-Islamization” of the Middle East.
Al-Qaeda gradually squeezed out the Muslim Brotherhood not only from the Middle East, but also from Africa, and even from Europe. What does it mean - squeezed out? This means that billions of donations - as the main basis of any such movement - went to competitors.
The United States, like the Arabian monarchies, never developed any working strategies with this radicalism: either they relied on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or they tried to use some of these groups in their work on the “Arab Spring” projects.
The CIA played its game, acquiring money, reporting on “undercover work” and at the same time overseeing smuggling, while the Pentagon chased these groups in helicopters. But what happened in Syria, where these groups ended up with part of the Palestinian emigrants in an anti-government camp, did not work in Lebanon. The part of the Palestinians who integrated with al-Qaeda in refugee camps eventually simply left the region for other fronts. In Syria itself, some Palestinians even organized such a phenomenon as the Yarmouk camp - an enclave that swore allegiance to ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation), where such crazy things happened that B. Assad had to burn it out with a hot iron.
But in Lebanon, such a movement essentially only strengthened Hezbollah and the opposition to official Ramallah. The defeat of the backbone of radicals in Syria allowed Hezbollah to gradually increase its financial resources through the transit of money and goods (control of flows through Anti-Lebanon goes through their territories). The Palestinian movement also received an influx of supporters.
In Gaza itself, the position of Egypt, which took control of the border and generally cleared the Sinai of radicals, made Hamas no longer a priority target for the Muslim brothers - the movement lost its geopolitical weight as part of a large regional map.
The fact that the Lebanese Palestinians remained largely in the positions of the original Palestinian movement had two reasons: first, there was initially a political patchwork in which the same Arab radicalism of “reformed Islam” had no basis, and the Ikhwan movement was not represented before, and the second reason has roots in the premises described in the first part - they remained there as “individual Arabs,” and even in a foreign environment.
Lack of attention to detail
The USA is a unique state. Sometimes you are amazed at the scale with which they approach the geopolitical map, with what tenacity and strategic depth they are able to draw new regions, launch large-scale processes, but either the management system itself or some gaps in the analytical model itself no longer allows us to figure out the details.
In fact, in Lebanon they themselves strengthened Hezbollah and turned the Lebanese Palestinians not into radical “jihadists”, but returned them to the rails of the national liberation movement. At the same time, Hamas in Gaza was forced to move exactly along the same path, although there with the “jihadists” everything was much richer.
Moreover, at one time they acted as opposition to B. Assad, trying to somehow integrate into the flows of funding that came from the Arabians. It was not possible to integrate, but relations between Damascus and Hamas went into negative territory and were subsequently restored with great difficulty. It was during this period, when Hamas began to understand that there would be no breakthroughs along the Arabian line, they began to build relations with Iran and even receive small annual funding.
Having worked for a long time with official Ramallah, constantly bending the Abbas administration to make concessions in order to sign truly significant and significant agreements for the region between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the United States left relations with Hamas to the B. Netanyahu cabinet, and with the predictable result. At the same time, Palestinians in Lebanon viewed these agreements with outright rejection.
Hamas, realizing that after the agreements there was nothing strategically possible for it and Gaza, went for broke, but in the end turned the operation, which was certainly planned very seriously from the beginning, almost into popular revenge “for everything and everyone”, which spilled out into a massacre and atrocities. Israel's generally understandable response provoked a reaction from the Lebanese Palestinians, who inevitably caught Hezbollah's attention, and in the end may simply relegate the official Palestinian administration to the background, or even the third plan.
So I. Rabin was traditionally half right - the fatal mistake was not in the creation of Hamas, but in the fact that in recent years the United States and its satellites, convening conferences on Lebanon, producing multi-volume works about the bad Hezbollah, actually only strengthened and “ Hezbollah” and the Palestinian national liberation movement in Lebanon. Although the latter, with certain approaches, could even act as an ally of the United States. And the Arabian monarchies here, for the root reasons described above, would not be able to do anything for the United States, because this is simply not their direction.
Hamas ultimately turned out to be not so interesting to the sponsors of radicalism, since it could not bring out a sufficient number of bayonets, it could not give the Qatari and Turkish Ikhwans a strategic perspective in Egypt and North Africa, and the Lebanese national liberation agenda passed by both regional and Western players. This is an interesting gap in the strategy of a variety of players, and in what would seem to be one of the most historically significant problem areas.
As a result, there is nothing strange that Iran began to gradually fill this void in the issue of the Palestinian national movement itself, but to whom should the complaints be directed?
In itself, the US’s close attention to Lebanon was correct, both taking Lebanon into account in terms of the monetary system and influencing Iran’s strategy, but the Lebanese Palestinians were not included in this analysis as a significant factor.
Many observers are trying to look for threads of a “global plan” in everything that is happening; they search and find with great difficulty, because these threads lead not to a conspiracy, but to US mistakes in working in specific areas regarding Lebanon in general and the Lebanese Palestinians in particular.
Not only and not so much with Hezbollah and the game with al-Qaeda cells that CIA strategists had to deal with for years, but also specifically with the Palestinian national liberation movement. This has been neglected given the scale of geopolitical maps. But what is even more surprising is that these scenarios were not worked out in Israel itself, where they are only now beginning to understand the strategic depth of the miscalculation of working with Lebanon.
Now Hamas, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Palestinians are forced, but allies not just in “confronting Israel,” but specifically in the Palestinian national liberation movement, although it will traditionally take place in a religious shell.
Whether one or two aircraft carrier groups will cope with this problem, especially in the Lebanese mountains and foothills, dug up like an anthill, is a big question.
And even more so, our supporters of the arrival of D. Trump, who can make all these problems even larger, need to somehow cool down.
If the current administration, threatening outwardly with thunder and lightning, somehow stops its failures, then one can really expect from the Trumpists something like carpet bombing of a fictitious (and maybe real) Beirut, simply for lack of another approach, which, in fact, is what personalities like the odious Senator L. Graham are telling us today, not to mention the hawks in Israel itself.
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