By Badr Al-Hajj, Lebanese writer
*This article was first published in Al Akhbar newspaper on September 2, 2025, and translated to English by The Levant Files for its readers.
On March 17, 1975, just a few months before the order was given to ignite the civil war in Lebanon, Ehud Ya'ari, the most prominent commentator for the Hebrew newspaper Davar, wrote an article titled "Calculations on the Northern Border (Lebanon): To Eat the Grapes or Fight the Watchman." Ya'ari, who usually receives his directives from the military command, summarized the situation in Lebanon as follows: "Israel currently holds the key to Lebanon's future in several respects. Every company commander on the northern line has the potential to influence what happens in Beirut. Every infiltration, every operation, and every statement is immediately registered on the delicate scales of the confrontation inside Lebanon. Therefore, we must weigh our steps carefully. Whoever wants to eat grapes (eliminate saboteurs) must be careful not to kill the watchman (the Lebanese regime), and in no way should we yield to recommendations calling for storming in and acting like elephants in a porcelain shop."
Recalling the contents of that article today is primarily intended as a warning to the Lebanese regime—which this time faces the Lebanese people, not the Palestine Liberation Organization—that its attempt to eliminate the Lebanese resistance fighters forces it to seek help from the Americans and, consequently, the Zionists, in addition to the regimes that have normalized relations. But all the injections of encouragement will not prevent the Lebanese from drowning in a sea of blood incomparable to what happened in the civil war.
Suppose you are weak and refuse to build a defensive force to protect citizens and the land. Your refusal is solely due to a pledge you made to those who parachuted you into your seat of power to carry out their wishes; then you are undoubtedly gambling with Lebanon and the fate of the Lebanese people. And this is something that will not pass as easily as its architects imagine. Just look around you and see the results. Your colleague in compliance, Mahmoud Abbas, sits cooped up in Ramallah like a hen, while Israeli army forces gradually swallow what remains of Palestine in full view of the world. Lebanon's situation is identical to that of Mahmoud Abbas.
Every day, the Lebanese are killed, enemy drones are in Lebanon's skies, and the occupation expands southward. The Zionist project of preventing the inhabitants of frontline villages from being in their destroyed villages is but a step toward achieving their old dream of seizing the region up to the Litani River. And just as Mahmoud Abbas is silent about the Zionists swallowing the land, the authorities in Beirut are also quiet, to the point that they are forbidden from even issuing a worthless statement of condemnation or filing a complaint with the United Nations. This deafening silence can only be explained as a reluctance to reveal their true wishes, which can be summarized as: "Continue the killing and shelling until we reach a stage where it becomes easy for us to implement your desires." Yes, a replica of Mahmoud Abbas governs in Beirut!
To those enthusiastic about killing those who resisted the occupation in Lebanon, will you learn from what is happening in Palestine? I do not think your minds are capable of ever grasping this. The storming of Ramallah, the capital of Abbas's enterprise, proves to everyone that the cardboard authority, which coordinates with the occupation day and night, is nothing but an illusion. No sovereignty to speak of! And the narratives of a two-state solution or a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital are nothing but fantasy and delusion.
The occupation kills the youth of Palestine in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, builds more settlements, and Finance Minister Smotrich promises settlers to donate towards building the Temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. At the same time, the occupation authority preserves the rule of Mahmoud Abbas—just as Ya'ari expressed in his article above—and is equally keen on maintaining the current jurisdiction in Beirut.
And if Lebanon's rulers are not convinced by what is happening in Palestine and the experience of Abbas, they can observe what is happening daily in Damascus. The rulers of Damascus are acting like Mahmoud Abbas, burying their heads in the sand like an ostrich. The celebratory charade of the "victory of the revolution" quickly lost its effect. The Golan is a thing of the past, and they have pushed the people of Jabal al-Arab into the arms of Israel, because the "Arab embrace" covered up their crimes against the Druze, even though seeking help from Israel is a crime similar to the crime of the Damascus regime.
We will not speak of the crimes that were and still are being committed against the Alawites, nor of the Damascus church massacre, nor of the daily killings, confiscation of homes, and the racist displacement of their owners... But despite this destructive assault on the social fabric in Damascus, from which only the Zionists benefit, and despite the Damascus rulers considering no enemies but Iran and Hezbollah, all that prostration before the Zionist and the direct contacts—mediated at times by Turkey and Qatar, and at other times by America, and for nothing in return—has not stopped the Zionist army's incursion into southern Syria and its arrival at the outskirts of Damascus, not to mention the airstrikes and landing operations on Syrian military bases. Thus, it becomes clear that Netanyahu not only aims to occupy what he deems appropriate of Syrian land on his path toward a Greater Israel, but also wants to fragment further and divide the Syrian people, which has been the ambition of Zionist leaders since 1920.
So, before Lebanon's rulers are the Palestinian and Syrian experiences, and before them is the experience of American promises previously made by Tom Barrack's colleague, a certain Philip Habib—and ironically, both are of Lebanese origin—and what followed those promises: the Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by the Zionists and their allies in Lebanon. After all these experiences, the Lebanese realize they will face a fate similar to what has happened before. Hence, the conviction that surrender is impossible, despite the military and psychological war waged daily by the enemy and its allies of mercenaries in Lebanon, who feed on Arab oil money, some with hands dripping with the blood of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians.
I believe that whoever deludes themselves into thinking they can repeat the Jordanian army's experience with the Palestinians is delusional and lost in their dreams. The mere attempt would tear Lebanon apart, making it impossible to ever gather this collection of different sects into a single melting pot. The threatened Lebanese regime is maneuvering and trying to be clever, but it has not given up on trying to save its key figures. The core of the current conflict is the existence of a Lebanon free from tutelage. And the regime will not be able to escape the pressure of the Zionists, via the Americans and their allies in Lebanon and the Arab region. It faces only one choice: sedition and the killing of its own people! An outcome that means the destruction of everything.
In short, the issue is not about destroying the weapon that liberated Lebanon from occupation, but about gaining complete control south of the Litani River and attempting to fully empty the area, as a prelude to placing the government in Beirut under Israeli hegemony without the need for an Israeli military governor. And those who paid a heavy price to liberate the land are on the lookout, standing as an impenetrable barrier against the Israeli-stoked sedition, which, if it occurs, will be worse than the Israeli sedition carried out by Lebanese hands in the war that broke out in 1975. It will also put an end, forever, to the Lebanon that we know.
Photo: Generated by Gemini AI.