Dana El-Kurd

So, of course, it's directly related.

But there's all of this like wider and older context that can help at the very least explain why the Israelis are doing that in Lebanon and also help explain what's happening to Lebanon itself, which tends to be not as focused on.

I mean, despair is, I guess, one word to describe it.

There's definitely a sense of helplessness.

Hezbollah is not a popular party in the country in terms of like the percentage of the population.

The recent actions, whether this one or like after October 7th, the decision to join the war,

was unpopular and still is unpopular.

This is something that the Israelis are trying to capitalize on, obviously, either because they want to just destroy the party or because as part of doing that, they also want to destabilize all of Lebanon.

So both of those things are happening at the same time.

The current government in Lebanon is led by the guy who was the head of the ICJ when South Africa had started its case of accusing Israel of genocide like a year or so ago.

So his binomial is naive of what Israeli intentions are.

But I think what's really important to understand of what's kind of the mood of the country is the sense that no matter what we decide as a nation, it's completely out of our hands.

And this goes beyond even questions related to Hezbollah and Hezbollah's actions.

Because as I said, even when Hezbollah does not

launch rockets or whatnot the israelis continue to violate ceasefires anyway they encroach land anyway they dynamite entire villages anyway they spray those herbicides and so on and so on anyway and it's one of those things that it's also important to know this to understand why there are people for example in south lebanon that regardless of their personal feelings towards hezbollah

don't see any alternatives because in fact there are none something that i know isn't talked about as much and certainly not covered as much is the fact that the armed force that is supposed to be the alternative to hezbollah the thing that we hear about all the time that the americans what they want is for hezbollah to be disarmed and for the lebanese army to take over

And so on and so forth.

And this is basically the stated goal of the entire world in a sense, or at least a good chunk of it.

And in fact, it's officially the stated policy of the Lebanese state itself.

That is their intention as far as like their public declarations and so on.