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The writing of our forthcoming issue, which began during the second phase of this timeline and ended during the fourth phase, has been chronicling the experiences of the real estate sector, the hospitality sector, industry leaders, humanitarian responders, agro-food entrepreneurs and representatives from the agricultural sector, the transport sector, and leaders in the private sector at large. Over a year of war—including nine months of intensifying, mostly cross-border exchanges that led to an Israeli escalation into open war lasting nearly three months—has wreaked havoc on Lebanon and its economy. There is a tendency to compare the 33-day July war of 2006 to this latest conflict, but the context and scope of these two wars are vastly different.
The July war of 2006 began after the kidnapping of five Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, an alleged attempt to secure a prisoner exchange. The very next day, Israel bombed the Beirut Airport, and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure ensued, including the bombing of bridges, power plants, the enactment of a Naval blockade, and the widespread use of cluster munitions that took years of demining work to remove. Hezbollah emerged politically stronger after 2006, with much of the country unified against Israeli aggression. The direct damages from the 2006 war totaled $5 billion according to a 2007 Lebanese government report, with the destruction of 30,000 housing units and extensive damage to infrastructure. Key sectors like tourism and agriculture were devastated, setting back Lebanon’s economic growth by years.
On October 8th, 2023, Hezbollah took the unilateral decision to fire rockets into northern Israel after Hamas’ October 7th, 2023 terrorist attack, a response that deeply divided the Lebanese population. Hezbollah Secretary General later referred to the rocket attacks as a “support front” aimed at supporting Hamas and Palestine by forcing the IDF to fight on two fronts. The parallel war on Gaza, that quickly turned into a genocide with the killing of thousands of civilians, continuous withholding of aid by Israel, and mass, repeated displacements increasing exponentially over the months following October 2023, elicited anger and popular protests from the Arab world and from Israel’s neighbor, Lebanon. However, much of the Lebanese population regarded Hezbollah’s support front as more of a threat to Lebanon than a means of stopping the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)’s brutal revenge campaign on Gaza and the West Bank. After repeated United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution vetoes by the United States, Israel’s primary and indefatigable funder, and after Prime Minister Netanyahu received a three-minute standing ovation from the United States congress before his address, the message couldn’t be clearer: the IDF would continue its mass devastation in Palestine, and not only would they be permitted to continue human rights violations on a mass scale, they would also be supplied with all the weapons needed to do so.
Those loyal to Hezbollah championed the Axis of Resistance, while those disillusioned with Iranian foreign policy dictating decision-making for Lebanon felt dragged into yet another war for which there would be no winner. Over a decade of Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty enabled the kind of illegal information-gathering and covert schemes that made the pager and walkie talkie attacks of September 17-18th possible, and then dictated the direction and scope of the following months of all-out war.
In this post-ceasefire phase, which ends on December 9th in the timeline but is still ongoing in reality, much remains uncertain. Syria’s fate, closely linked to Lebanon’s, has taken a colossal, yet still developing, change of course. Israel continues its attacks in southern Lebanon and its drone surveillance of Lebanon at large. Hezbollah has emerged politically and economically weaker. Lebanon’s economic losses remain unquantified, but the destruction has compounded Lebanon’s pre-existing economic collapse, with little fiscal capacity to recover. Southern Lebanon, a critical agricultural region, has been heavily bombarded and attacked with white phosphorous. According to the Lebanese government, at least 37 villages have been flattened. And Israel continues its rampage on Gaza and the West Bank. Lebanon’s best hope at this point in its long and storied history, is to take ownership of this moment as a chance to reclaim its broken governance and free itself from the dictates of external foreign policies and repeated violations of sovereignty.
click here to view the timeline.
