Israel Is Struggling to Divide Lebanon | Julian Sayarer - Sopuli

> The permanent buzzing is integral to Israel’s strategy. Sometimes, even when bombs aren’t dropped, at night the drones remain low and loud overhead. “Every night my son is scared,” said Ali, a delivery man outside a cafe where we sit each morning. “He holds on to me so tight.” > The predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Achrafieh, where we talk, is comparatively safe. The Israeli intention, colonial to its core, is to produce enough division within Lebanon that the Lebanese state and its army – the former famously corrupt and the latter US-aligned – will take the fight to both Hezbollah and the wider Muslim community on its behalf, with a history of far-right and Christian extremist groups that can be drawn upon to help. Amid such sectarian strife, encouraged by increasing Israeli bombings outside of predominantly Shia areas, Lebanon would become more easily occupied for the project of Israeli settlement. > A nearby billboard shows a cross and a crescent, marking this year’s coinciding Lent and Ramadan – testament to Lebanon’s natural cosmopolitanism that coexists well without external instigation. Hezbollah – a proscribed organisation in the UK which successfully forced the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in 2000 – is neither popular across Lebanon’s political spectrum nor so broadly unpopular as Anglosphere media represents, but after years of broadcast genocide by the Israeli military against Palestinian Arabs, Lebanese Arabs need no convincing that Israelis are not their friends.