Choosing the path that spills less Lebanese blood

Netanyahu's electoral position is more difficult. Polls suggest he will be unable to rebuild the coalition of hardened racist extremists with whom he formed his last government, and that he is awaiting a pardon from the Israeli president to avoid prison. But the good news ends here. The alternative on offer is the tripartite alliance of Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, and Gadi Eisenkot, who are hardly doves. In fact, their opposition to Netanyahu stems from the belief that he failed to win the war against Iran and Hezbollah, and that he surrendered Israel's strategic decision-making to the Americans. This comes alongside objections to domestic policy and to the scale of Netanyahu's megalomania after tying Israel's future to his own fate.

Apart from removing certain figures who provoke Israeli society as much as they provoke the outside world, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, it is difficult to wager that an Israeli government led by this tripartite alliance would pursue a policy closer to de-escalation, whether in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza or in Lebanon. It is apparent that war has become an intrinsic part of an Israeli society shaded by far-right, messianic and nationalist hues.

Two futile paths

This context helps explain the sharp Lebanese divide over negotiations with such a state. There are those who want to talk to Israel and work out some form of lasting peace or truce, and others who see no benefit in negotiating with such a maniacal entity. In their view, Israel only understands the language of force and violence; therefore, armed resistance is the only path forward.

Fantastical illusions

Some in Lebanon are proposing a middle-ground compromise, but as I noted in my opinion piece last week, this option is largely fantastical. It is the illusion that Lebanon—where hardly a day passes without a sectarian incident in the streets because of the hysterical tension gripping the country and where the danger of collapse hovers over what remains of the state and its institutions—can depend on imaginary friends who will rush to its rescue and ease its suffering.

The elements of the crisis are so entangled that negotiations, like continued fighting, verge on futility. On one side lies the calamity that has befallen the Shiite community, the retreat of Hezbollah's hard core into itself, and its insistence on a suicidal course whose price is paid by all Lebanese. On the other side lies the complete political bankruptcy of the ruling system, regardless of the names of its leading figures. The choice here is not between good and bad. All options are terrible. The real choice is which option will spare more Lebanese blood.