Dana El-Kurd

And they have made certain moves to that end as well.

But the Lebanese army is the army of a very poor country that has been in economic crisis for a long time.

When we had wildfires in 2019, there wasn't even enough equipment to tackle them.

And foreign government had to donate helicopters and stuff like that.

And that Lebanese army is also heavily subsidized, if you want to say, funded in any case by the United States itself.

The same United States that obviously heavily funds and arms the Israelis.

Of course, the weapons that the Lebanese get is nothing compared to the weapons that the Israelis get.

There's no such thing as an Iron Dome in Lebanon.

None of these things are available to the Lebanese.

And so effectively what is being asked of Lebanon itself, and especially of South Lebanon, of Dahi and East Lebanon, ultimately of all of Lebanon, is that just accept your fate.

Just accept that there's nothing you can do about the Israelis.

There's nothing you can do about their actions in Lebanon proper.

I'm not even talking about any actions like rockets towards Israel.

I'm talking their actions in Lebanon itself.

And they're also asking Hezbollah, for example, to disarm, which in and of itself I am not opposed to.

But in the context of what has been happening, in the context of what's happening now,

I think it's ludicrous to imagine that people in a context like in South Lebanon, who have decades now, long experience of seeing Israeli occupation, of seeing Israeli troops on their lands, no matter like multiple different prime ministers in Israel taking the charge and whatnot, but that continuing to be this kind of almost eternal fact in a sense, or at least that's how it feels.

They're being asked to just disarm and hope for the best.

That's really like effectively the policy towards Lebanon at the moment.

Like I saw an interview with one of the French ministers a few days ago, and she was asked like, why aren't we doing more to help Lebanon by someone in the audience or whatever?