Punch Drunk

Listen to Today's Edition:

Smoke billowed from the streets of Khiam in southern Lebanon recently after Israeli military forces shelled the area in response to the Iran-backed militant group and political party Hezbollah launching missiles into northern Israel.

In Dahieh, a densely populated residential and commercial district of the capital Beirut that was devastated during the 2006 war with Israel, residents believe they are next to be hit, as Israel has warned. As a result, some residents say they are moving to other parts of Beirut, but others have vowed to stay, going about their business, reported Euronews.

“I will not leave Dahieh, no matter what happens,” said Khalil Nassar, 75. “They are trying to intimidate us.”

Across the border, much of this part of northern Israel has been evacuated. Tens of thousands remain displaced, their villages ghost towns. Some residents wonder when they can return to an area that, because of nearly two decades of relative calm since the last full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah, had been part of a push to attract start-ups and other businesses to Israel’s under-developed periphery, the Financial Times wrote. Others refuse to leave – but feel hopeless about returning to normal.

“For the last 17 years we thought we lived in Tuscany,” Nisan Zeevi, of Kfar Giladi kibbutz in Israel, about a mile from the Lebanese border, told the newspaper. “But when missiles started shooting from Lebanon, all of a sudden we realized that with all due respect to the start-ups, the innovation, climate tech, food tech, agtech, we live in the (expletive) Middle East. And we had forgotten about this.”

As residents flee and others stockpile goods, escalating violence in Khiam and elsewhere is one reason why mediators are now “scrambling” to tone down tensions between Lebanon and Israel, the BBC reported.

A full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could expand the fighting that is already occurring in the region, namely in Gaza. When in 2006 Israel and Hezbollah fought a war that lasted six weeks, more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, 200 Hezbollah fighters, and 160 Israelis perished. Hezbollah survived that war, however, leading its leaders to consider themselves victorious in the fight, added Prensa Latina, a Cuban state-owned news service.

“The more time goes by of escalated tensions, the more time goes by of daily conflict, the more the odds and the chances go up for accidents, for mistakes, for inadvertent targets to be hit that could easily cause escalation that goes out of control,” US diplomat Amos Hochstein told the Associated Press during a recent visit to Lebanon.

Perhaps most importantly, an Israel-Hezbollah fight could also drag Iran into direct conflict with Israel.

Arguably Iran can’t afford a war, argued the Wall Street Journal. A new Iranian president has recently assumed office. The country’s Supreme Leader is old. The Iranian economy is suffering under sanctions and other economic weaknesses. But Iran has also vowed “severe revenge” for the Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital Tehran, noted CNN.

The Lebanese, meanwhile, are preparing for the worst, reported NBC News. They instituted a new system to move critically injured patients to high-level care quickly, constructed facilities to wash off weapons like white phosphorous, and trained surgeons in treating major wounds and trauma.

These moves likely won’t be enough. Before the specter of war reared its head following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Lebanon was considered a collapsing state, Sky News reported. Reeling from the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, officials have been struggling to provide basic services amid an economic collapse and following a massive explosion four years ago that destroyed much of Beirut’s port.

Across the border, deep under the northern Israeli city of Haifa, a vast underground parking garage is now a hospital with 2,000 beds, operating theatres, a maternity ward and medical supplies stacked up in corners wait ready for patients.

“When, when, when is it going to happen? Nobody knows. We talk about it a lot,” Avi Weissman, the medical director of the center, told the BBC regarding a possible attack.

Still, many in Israel go about their business, shopping, to the beach, to a café, just like in Lebanon. They have been here before.

“We just want it to be calm,” said Shauli Jan of Nahariya, Lebanon, who was enjoying the beach as usual. “We prefer to have a political arrangement and not war.”