Ultimately the point of a military is to ensure the territorial integrity of your state. IOW, defend your borders from being crossed by invaders.
Lebanon’s territorial integrity is semi-guaranteed by the fact that neither Syria nor Israel want to inherit trying to manage the mess on the other side of their own borders. IOW: It’s already broken; do you want to buy it?
Israel of course has the additional problem that Hezbollah does want to break (or at least damage) Israel.
Unrelated to the above:
The OP has moved the discussion from whether/why Lebanon isn’t defending itself to Israel’s actions and whether they are justified. Those are certainly fine questions, but not FQ questions.
Again, Lebanon cannot protect itself from terrorists on its own soil. That’s why those terrorists run the country.
If the IDF and Hezbollah go to all out war, I expect you’ll be able to find the Lebanese army by listening to the sounds of fighting and heading in the opposite direction.
I think a more interesting possibility is the idea that if Israel and Hezbollah fight, the Lebanese army might use the opportunity to try and free Lebanon from Hezbollah. But I don’t think they’re organized or motivated enough for that to be a realistic possibility.
The armed forces exists and is highly dependent on US aid. But basically they stick to the northern 2/3 or so of the country and look east for most operations (ISIS was a concern for awhile). And Hezbolllah is a de facto defense/offense force pointed south. Christian and Sunni interests might support the military, but Shia interests get defended by Hezb and it’s important to know that’s where a lot of their base comes from. While they do things recognized as terror, like a lot of groups in the world they provide personal benefits on a semi-sectarian way.
Keep in mind how Lebanon got that way. As LSL mentions, it was a major economic hub, an oasis of peace and stability…
But Lebanon got that way with a power-sharing agreement between the Christians and the Moslems. There was a balance and seats in parliament, president, prime minister, tc. were doled out to give both factions a share of government.
Add into the mix the Palestinian refugee camps. Originally, they were locked down. Occupants could not come out and work in Lebanon (take jobs from lebanese citizens). The polite fiction was that they were there temporarily until Israel let back in the Palestinians who fled during the 1948 war. (Yeah, right). The camps became a law unto themselves, unsafe for Lebanese authorities to go and a breeding ground (literally and figuratively) for the PLO and others.
For years Lebanon would not do a census because the Christians were afraid (rightly) it would reveal the Moslem population now significantly outnumbered the Christians. Eventually the balance fell apart with a civil war, abetted by Palestinians and support from outside countries. Things descended into chaos and then Syria had to come in and settle things down. Lebanon has been a dysfunctional mess ever since. They can’t control Hezbollah, the government is broke, and as mentioned above, the nominal armed forces only exist with the generosity of the West hoping to avoid total Somalian chaos. And as also mentioned above, when you see “militia” think criminal gangs doing shakedowns too. It’s har to tell the difference. The government pretends to govern.
The last thing an impotent pretend goveernment need to do is to pick a fight with Israel, and they have no great urgency to support Hezbollah’s side.
After all, if you cannot stop people on your territory from committing unlawful acts against a neighbour, you cannot complain if the neighbour retaliates. The fact that this could help reduce the internal anarchy by decimating one faction does not hurt the government.
For years, Hezbollah has been paying poor Lebanese families to store long-range missiles in their homes. Now that war has broken out, Israel faces a dilemma: if you find one of those houses, do you bomb the missile, possibly killing the Lebanese family, or do you let Hezbollah launch it, possibly killing an Israeli family? For the Israeli government, military and public, there’s no question here at all.
This is an example of stories now coming out of Israel about Lebanese civilians supposedly renting out their homes for missile launching.
Israeli spokesmen seem to be vague on the logistics of how you’d fire missiles from, say, a home’s attic through a small hole in the roof without severely damaging or demolishing the home.
Maybe it’s true, but it’s hard to imagine families dumb enough to host missile launchers.
Yes, this seems like a post-facto justification for collateral damage rather than something real. I would not be surprised to learn maybe a few farmers have an outbuilding which is an outsourced missile storage shed - but I doubt that the practice is widespread. If we’re talking thousands of missiles, who keeps track of it all? If it’s time to fire another salvo, while the IDF is irritated as all heck, you want to drive all over the countryside exposed to pick up a rocket here and a rocket there… How do they get to these houses? Someone carting a missile around is a sitting duck begging to be hit from above. Even in Lebanon, who wants a gizmo in their house that can flatten the whole building?
Hezbollah built entire new towns in the south, where people live in houses that Hezbollah designed, such that their southern face (the one aimed towards Israel) is fortified. Dual use residential/fortification zoning.
You’d think it would be hard to find people dumb enough to launch the rockets, and yet…
These are precision munitions fired by fighter jets in sorties that cost thousands of dollars each. Why would they waste money firing at homes that DIDN’T contain missiles?
I’ll just say this once because I don’t want to derail my own OP, but a few people have questioned me on this… When I say Israel is not doing “targeted assassinations” in Lebanon, I mean they’re not sending in a bunch of snipers to kill a few specific invidividuals. I mean they’re bombing buildings and ordering evacuations of entire towns because they’re going to do what they did in Gaza.
End of rant. On to more facts. And thanks to ALL of you for the info. I had not realized that Lebanon continued to be in this bad of a shape this long after the civil war.
This thread has strayed pretty far out of FQ bounds. Since the factual aspects of this have been pretty well covered, I think it’s best to let the topic continue to drift, but let’s move this to a more appropriate forum.
Moving from FQ to MPSIMS.
Any further factual information on the topic is of course still welcome.
Israel’s strikes on Lebanon on Monday amounted to one of the most intense air raids in contemporary warfare, outstripping even the bombing of Gaza during the opening days of the Israeli-Hamas war in October, war experts said.
The death count is also one of the highest daily tolls in recent global wars, and could rise because people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble in Lebanon.
Although by “free Lebanon from Hezbollah” I’d say instead “put themselves in controlling power with weak international support or secure a puppet leadership while they keep all the real power”.
What about what happened in 1982? Gemayel was assassinated, we saw Sabra and Shatila, and of course Israel secured everlasting peace and security following its great victory (which also included trashing Beirut).
For the record, I wasn’t talking about it happening as a favor for, or influenced by Israel, just that being in charge of a semi-functional military when your political opponents are exhausted has always been seen as a fast-track to leadership in most of the world.
But of course, and not by any means limited to failed or semi-failed states, how many times has a new leader risen up and said “Well, of course XYZ failed, they just didn’t do it right?”
People don’t learn from history, they mine it for ideas that just need the right person, at the right time, in the right place! [massive sarcastic, ironic tone]
As regards civilians in Lebanon, Netanyahu’s take on the situation seems to be “tough shit”:
Relevant section, Netanyahu’s words on the subject:
“For too long, Hizbullah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your livingrooms and missiles in your garage. I urge you – take this warning seriously. Please, get out of harm’s way now. Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.”
So in other words, we’re bombing and if you (the royal civilian) don’t want some, we suggest you not be home when it happens.