The job of an analyst is to make sense of facts by adding context and spotting trends. Here is one for you: the number of people killed in Lebanon by relentless Israeli air strikes last Monday was the highest daily death toll since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990.
Here is another: Official figures at the time of writing put the number of internally displaced people at more than 90,000 and counting. That’s already 10% of the number of people who fled their homes in more than one month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Mind you, 18 years ago, the war involved an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Judging by Israeli statements and Hezbollah’s response, that could still be coming this time around, too.
Modern-day Lebanon was born out of the agreements that followed the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. It was, in the immortal words of historian David Fromkin, a “peace to end all peace.” We’ve become so used to conflict ever since that we like to boast about the ability to party at night after a day of bombardment.
But the cold facts numbers present today show that my homeland is on the brink of a disaster that makes you pity the living just as you mourn the dead.
Lebanon enters this conflict with Israel after enduring the worst economic depression in its history—one that saw the state default on billions of dollars of debt for the first time. Public services, already dismal by global standards, have collapsed. Banks have imposed informal capital controls.
