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BACK STORY WITH DANA LEWIS
Dana Lewis is a veteran World Affairs Correspondent. He's been everywhere. From global war zones to the streets of London where he is based.
He has been based in Jerusalem, and Moscow.
And he loves talking to people about whats behind the headlines. Award winning. "A real in the trenches reporter". Great interviewing skills and easy to listen to.
BACK STORY WITH DANA LEWIS
SPIRALLING WAR - ISRAEL, LEBANON AND IRAN
What does Israel hope to achieve with its limited ground operation in Lebanon, and how is Iran’s involvement shaping the conflict? Join us as we tackle these pressing questions with former Israeli Army Colonel Miri Eisen, who provides exclusive insights into Israel's defense strategies and the broader geopolitical landscape.
The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is heartbreaking and deserves global attention. This episode highlights the severe displacement of over a million people, compounded by Lebanon's economic collapse and political instability. Dana Lewis talks to UNHRC's Rula Amin.
And, Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated by Israel, led the Hezbollah for 32 years. He was a key actor for Iran's meddling in Syria, Lebanon, and a role model for other extremist groups including ISIS and Al Qaeda. I discuss his violent legacy with writer Kareem Shaheen.
Talk about Lebanon, if you will, as we speak today. I mean there's a lot happening, right. So now Israel is saying, suggested going to be a limited operation, because you know, once these things start, they don't tend to be very limited.
Miri Eisan:First of all, the intention is important and clear. It is being stated as a limited operation, both in its scope, the amount of forces and in its length, meaning how long it will take and how deep they're going into Lebanon. They're talking about cross-border attacks.
Rula Amin:So, on one hand, in terms of the Israeli bombardment and the number of people killed, this is much bigger than what we saw in 2006 war, which was considered to be a very vicious war, and, just to give you one example, in one day more than 550 Lebanese and refugees were killed.
Kareem Shaheen:So in one day, the soul of Hezbollah. He created the machinery of the organization that went on to become a linchpin of Iran's power projection in the region. He was instrumental in the preservation of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
Dana Lewis :Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Backstory. I'm Dana Lewis. This week, Lebanon, the Hezbollah in Israel and you can't speak about the Hezbollah without discussing Iran. Iran has launched almost 200 missiles at Israel, retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. If you want to know more about who Nasrallah was, we lead you through that with Kareem Shaheen. The Israeli ground attack inside Lebanon, displacing more than a million people. So we talked to the UN's refugee spokesperson, Rula Amin, but first former Israeli Army Colonel Miri Eisen. Miri Eisen is a former Israeli Army Colonel and was the foreign media advisor for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Israel, and she has a background in intelligence. Minister Ehud Olmert in Israel, and she has a background in intelligence. And, Mary, I've watched you over the years and greatly value your comments and perspective. First of all, a missile attack from Iran and that is overtaking events in Lebanon right now. Are you comfortable, Are you safe where you are?
Miri Eisan:I always feel more comfortable in Israel than anywhere else. This country, in that sense, the Israelis around me, and the defense systems which are that basic reason why there's been such a difference in just the numbers of casualties, is because of that defense and I am going to continue to believe in that defense. I think that the Iranians are a horrible threat and I think that we'll withstand that. So I'm comfortable. If there is an air raid siren, then you'll hear it together with me and I will go to the safe place inside my own house.
Dana Lewis :Don't hesitate to run from this interview. No, it's okay. What would Iran be trying to accomplish right now? This is payback for Nasrallah.
Miri Eisan:I'm not even sure if it's Nasrallah or if it's the very high-ranking Iranian Revolutionary Guard that was killed together with Nasrallah. I'll remind everybody that the attack that Iran has already done directly against Israel on the night of April 13th 14th, was done after Israel had killed a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer in Damascus. So in that sense, they did it then and I think they'll do it now. Is it a shorter time period? Well, it's also Hassan Nasrallah, but I would say it's for both and that is their modus operandi. I can't say I know more than that. I know that most countries do copycat things, meaning I expect something similar to April 13th 14th, but I don't know.
Dana Lewis :Gary has said there'll be consequences. This time Israel has capabilities, essentially saying that they're going to hit them back this time. Was there, in the wake of the April attack in which Britain and America and other allies helped intercept some of those missiles along with Israel? Was there a conversation in Israel that Iran should have been penalized in a more serious way?
Miri Eisan:In Israel. We're constantly talking about the Iranians in that sense how they're getting out of this with supplying the weapons, giving the ideology, the backing, the training to all of these proxies. All of these missiles, uavs, suicide drones, you name it all of them are being supplied by Iran. So certainly it's a question of why are they the ones who get out of it every time? Having said that, iran is over a thousand miles away from Israel and having said that before yesterday, israel attacked in Yemen, and that's also over a thousand miles away from Israel.
Dana Lewis :Talk about Lebanon, if you will, as we speak today. I mean, there's a lot happening right. So now Israel is saying they're going forward with a ground operation. You must take a big breath and wonder how dangerous that will be. And is this really, as the Israeli government spokesman has suggested, going to be a limited operation? Because, you know, once these things start, they don't tend to be very limited?
Miri Eisan:First of all, the intention is important and clear. It is being stated as a limited operation, both in its scope, the amount of forces and in its length, meaning how long it will take and how deep they're going into Lebanon. They're talking about cross-border attacks. Today, dana, as we're speaking and this was Daniel Hagari, brigadier General, idf spokesperson has been very busy today and today, just an hour ago, he posted and I highly recommend everybody go look at it.
Miri Eisan:He put out a series of short clip movies that are of Israeli troops who have done in the last 200 days, while Hezbollah was attacking Israel, while Israel was acting on the ground in the Gaza Strip and not responding in that sense to Hezbollah, they went into a series of underground attack tunnels that Hezbollah built from Lebanon into Israel and there's all sorts of different footage of this, of the soldiers going down into them, showing the different weapon arsenals, showing the openings, going from the children's room under the bed down into the underground tunnel. So when we talk about that ground incursion and the fear of what will happen there, we are already in that sense into that action there, trying to destroy the Radwan force, that's, the Hezbollah force, the Radwan force capabilities on the ground, so that they will not be able to do an October 7th attack.
Dana Lewis :Right, and he made a point of that. He made a point of that. He said this is more than just about missiles being fired into Israel, which no country would put up with, but the fact that their intelligence is that they were planning an October 7th style massacre in Israel to be carried out by the Hezbollah.
Miri Eisan:And they were training for it and they built all of the attack tunnels and they had the weaponry for it, that's the motorcycles and the pickup trucks. You know, that's like what looks kind of sexy. I'm talking about the ATGMs, the anti-tank guided missiles, the different type of weaponry, all of the different things. And they have found and exposed and again, I recommend going to look at it, it's a lot of footage. They've exposed the maps of Hezbollah. The operation was called Operation Liberation of the Galilee and Hassan Nasrallah himself spoke about this operation, showed maps of it and we, the IDF forces, have found this in these underground Hezbollah Lebanese tunnels on the Lebanese side in the last few months.
Dana Lewis :Okay, if we thought the tunnel situation in Gaza was complicated and you've been fighting in there for almost a year what could this look like in Lebanon? I mean, it could be a honeycomb of Hezbollah launch platforms and weapons storage that can go on for miles and can draw the Israeli army further and further into a kind of ground hell there.
Miri Eisan:First of all, we've learned lessons over the last 11 months. We've been fighting on the ground in the Gaza Strip in the last 11 months and the biggest challenge is the combination, dana, meaning it's not just the underground, subterranean, it's also the urban civilian area that's above it when it's outside, in the middle of nowhere, the caves of Osama bin Laden, that's one thing, but we're talking right now and that's also a terrorist right. That's also horrible. Here we're talking about all of these different tunnels underneath the towns and villages and the idea of troops. These are special forces that went into it and took, considering that Hezbollah, until two weeks ago, fired, as you said before, 8,000 rockets into Israel, and in the last two weeks it started firing the mid and long range rockets, including today when I was in an air siren. And now we're waiting for the Iranian rockets and missiles and UAVs and suicide drones to come towards Israel.
Dana Lewis :Right, it just keeps getting worse. So doesn't that strengthen the position by a lot of diplomats in different countries that say you're not going to eliminate Hamas, you're not going to eliminate Hezbollah in the north? What you really need is a ceasefire and then probably some kind of peace plan with Palestinians to put out the fire, not as the flames are spreading right now.
Miri Eisan:I think that you can say that when you aren't an Israeli. I think you can say that when you are in Canada, the UK and in Europe and around the world. I live here and when you look at what was on the other side of the Israeli border, the type of attack that Hezbollah was planning, was implementing, was ready to do an October 7th attack on steroids times 10 against Israeli communities and I just want to remind you that the Hamas attack was into Israel and Israeli communities on October 7th and it was. Could it have been worse? Yes, it could have also been Hezbollah.
Miri Eisan:To sit and say ceasefire is to say that we agree that this non-state terror military army that's what it is a terror military army. It's not the state's army has a right to be there. Be that it should deter us. I think that that is actually a horrible thing. It's saying it's okay for Israel to have that on the other side and at the end, maybe on October 7th will happen. I can't live with that. Here. You need to destroy the capabilities. It isn't about destroying the ideology. It's about destroying the capabilities. Their ideology calls for our destruction. So all of the lovely people, including myself, who want peace, who want two states who want a resolution for the Palestinians. I separate between what I'm talking about and between what Hezbollah and Hamas both say, which is the destruction, annihilation of the state of Israel.
Dana Lewis :You worked for a prime minister who supported a two-state solution.
Miri Eisan:Absolutely.
Dana Lewis :Do you have a? Prime minister now that you think is leading you in a good direction.
Miri Eisan:It's not about that. At the end of the day, there are 5 million Palestinians who deserve their own future. My problem right now is that the extreme, very extreme ideological voices that don't only say Israel is the worst place on earth, they delegitimize our right to exist, they say we don't have a right to exist and they also state very clearly, in very clear voices, that the way to achieve their state, instead of Israel, is through the use of force. And in that sense, I'm like I'm going to talk to the people who are willing to talk to me, but I am going to listen, after October 7th, to those who called for my destruction, because I am one of those who thought that Hamas, as the responsible authority in the Gaza Strip responsible authority in the Gaza Strip would change its path.
Miri Eisan:And what I got in my mistake not just the IDF's mistake or Mary's mistake is that I thought that they would be responsible and authority, and what they built was years of a kind of plan that Hezbollah has been building, which is to attack, to destroy in a barbaric way and at the end, the idea is to destroy me. I'm not going to acquiesce with that. I don't think Prime Minister Olmert would acquiesce with that. Having said that, at the end, yes, we will arrive at some kind of resolution, but don't make me the one. Sorry, I'll say this otherwise I'm not the one who is going to help establish a Palestinian state and that that state is going to call for my destruction.
Dana Lewis :I'm not going to help. Do that? Colonel Eisen, will you tell me what your worst, your best case scenario is in Lebanon? If you go in, dismantle some of the tunnels you've already dealt? The Israeli army has already dealt a seismic blow to the leadership of Hezbollah. How does it end? If you paint a rosy picture? What would it be?
Miri Eisan:Dana. We've been in a war for a year. There are no more rosy pictures. It's a war. War is horrible. So what we're talking about is the scenario that, in this war, is something that I, for Israel, would see as an achievement. So for me, it would be A the exposure of what Hezbollah was planning to do without Hezbollah doing it. That's a very important achievement. Until now, for 11 months, I've been talking about Hezbollah. Everybody has talked about the Gaza Strip and, in this case, about the casualties in the Gaza Strip, and I've talked about Hezbollah, and they're firing in. I want us to expose what they've done and that we're starting to do today in a very visual way. Second aspect is to physically destroy the arsenals of weapons, the tunnels themselves, the different aspects that are adjacent to the border. I don't aspire to destroy all of Hezbollah's capabilities in Lebanon, but through exposing it and destroying the ones that are right next to Israel. For me, the best achievement would be to hear world leaders calling Hezbollah a terror organization, understanding what that means and what it is.
Miri Eisan:Which they do which most of them do. Well, the governments do. The achievements would be to not see young, liberal, progressive, amazing young people. I have kids those age who are all fighting right now because they have no choice. And I say that they're not flying a Hezbollah flag because they think that that's cool or neat. Hezbollah is a horrific terror organization supplied and trained by Iran. And, yes, the Shiites of Lebanon are oppressed. Let's put a difference between the oppression of the Shiites of Lebanon and between what Hezbollah stands for.
Dana Lewis :How do you stop going over the next hilltop? And so further, my fear deeper, and that's okay, let's deal with that, Sorry.
Miri Eisan:So I said that's the scenario that I'd like us to do.
Miri Eisan:I'll add in that what I'd like it is that we will be the mature adult and I have no other way to put it to know that when we've done what we want to achieve, that we stop.
Miri Eisan:This is not about the country Lebanon, the prime minister that everybody seems to vilify, but the prime minister, he has said that himself. Every single person in Israel in authority has said this is not about the country Lebanon, it's not about the people of Lebanon and I know that sounds horrible, because we're attacking in Lebanon, destroy this terror army going in to destroy their weapons, their tunnels, their caches, all the different communications and controls, and then be the mature adult and go out. And what I worry is because when you go in, as you said before, you start something, you don't know where it will lead. I'm worried about surprises that Hezbollah has in store for us, because everybody prepares surprises and you need to adapt, and that those surprises can be horrific in high-intensity warfare. And so I worry about those and I want to hope that we will still be the mature adult and not get, not just bogged down. I don't want a buffer zone, I don't want us to stay there. I want us to go in, expose and destroy expose it's very important and then to come back out.
Dana Lewis :Mary, last question to you You've lived, you have an intelligence background, you know Lebanon quite well. You've seen this, what a lot of people would describe as a failed state, unable at various times to fill this void and to push its army and take control of Lebanon and create security for Lebanese people. Right, because if there are rockets going over the Israeli border, you know that on the Lebanese side something's going to be coming back, and so it's up to the Lebanese government to somehow become strong enough to secure Lebanon for its own people. It just seems like we get further and further away from that. So I always wonder how much.
Miri Eisan:It's a real crisis and I wonder how much. In that sense, I always say because we do, as Israelis, get blamed for everything, including, I mean, this war is our fault and I'm like you're right, we exist. If we didn't exist, everything would be wonderful. That was me being very sarcastic, but when it comes to the country next to us, lebanon, lebanon is a complex country. Israel has had a complex relationship.
Miri Eisan:Most Lebanese view Israel as being the one who is the responsible one for all of their woes, and I'm going to say, sadly, we are responsible for some of their woes, but they have lots of woes that have nothing to do with us their failure in the last four years as a government to put together a government.
Miri Eisan:In that fact, what happened inside the Beirut port, the way that they addressed COVID their finance crashed and burned not connected to Israel. I would say to the Lebanese go and look at Hezbollah. What were they doing, both inside the port and in other areas? There are this non-state entity, but they are Lebanese and I don't have an answer for it. At the end, when I look at all of the Middle East, lebanon is such a unique, different Middle Eastern country. It has such diverse, different voices and I hope that they'll come up with one where Israel is not the problem. Rather, perhaps something joint could become part of a resolution and I would love to see that and that's called easier said than done and further away, because right now we are in a real war Not that we haven't been in a real war for the last, and we have been for the last 12 months and all of this is something that we need to address in the future.
Dana Lewis :Mary Eisen, thank you so much. Great pleasure to talk to you.
Miri Eisan:Thank you so much.
Dana Lewis :Rula Amin is a former correspondent for CNN and Al Jazeera and she is now the spokesperson for the UNHCR Refugee Agency, and she's based in Amman, jordan. Hi Rula, hello, you have, look, so much experience in the region and I've known you for years and you've covered a lot of the conflicts. We often headline these stories of what's happening in Lebanon more refugees on the move. It's a crisis and I think people's eyes glaze over. Can you give me some perspective on how big this is and how much bigger it may get as it is unfolding as we speak?
Rula Amin:So when we talk about how big, there are different issues that we can use to illustrate that. So, on one hand, in terms of the Israeli bombardment and the number of people killed, this is much bigger than what we saw in 2006 war, which was considered to be a very vicious war, which was considered to be a very vicious war, and just to give you one example, in one day, more than 550 Lebanese and refugees were killed. So in one day, and that's a large number for a very small country like Lebanon, that is only about 5 to 6 million people. The other thing is to remember why this is causing so much suffering is that before this crisis began, lebanon was going through a very severe socioeconomic crisis. Inflation is so high At $1 used to make, you know, we would exchange $1 for 1,500 Syrian liras. We would exchange $1 for 1,500 Syrian liras.
Dana Lewis :That has jumped between 100,000 and 150,000, sometimes 70,000, but you can A financial collapse in Lebanon really.
Rula Amin:A financial collapse. So that means not only people don't have the resources, but also the government's infrastructure to provide basic services has also been crippled. And this crisis comes. It starts in October. We start seeing people displaced, fleeing the bombings, but it was mostly concentrated in the south and it was a little bit more targeted. So until last week we saw about 111,000 Lebanese and refugees who had to flee their homes. That's, you know it's a large number, but that happened over months and then within one week, we are now talking about almost the government says a million people displaced. The UN estimates is more than 300,000, maybe 400,000. Every day the number increases, but it's definitely hundreds of thousands of people who had to flee.
Rula Amin:It's definitely hundreds of thousands of people who had to flee, which means these people, you know, left their homes in a hurry. They couldn't pick up anything. Basically, some even forgot their civil documents, because sometimes they get this warning from the Israeli army that they need to leave immediately because the bombing is going to start in minutes. So they just run, many of them. They don't carry any clothes, any spare clothes and, with the expanding of targets and areas that are being targeted by the Israeli army, their choice of what is a safe spot and where is a safe place that we can run to. That choice has been shrinking because the areas that are not being targeted are also shrinking.
Dana Lewis :Yeah, as we were getting ready to do the interview. Sorry to jump in, but the IDF on the ground was ordering the evacuation of at least 27 villages in South Lebanon north of the Israeli-Lebanese border. And when you look at those 27 villages it's an area some 30 miles north of the border. That's a huge area.
Rula Amin:Yes, and even the bombings. Before that, they had been expanded to other areas, like the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Beqa. And one thing to keep in mind, too, when we talk about the scope of this conflict is that before this crisis started, lebanon hosted at least a million and a half Syrian refugees who had fled the war in Syria in the past few years, crossed to Lebanon to find safety, to find shelter. They thought they are protecting their families In addition to Iraqi refugees, palestinian refugees. So Lebanon used to host the largest number of refugees in comparison to its per capita in the world, that's, the largest number of refugees hosted in one country per capita in the world. So now we're not looking only at Lebanese who had to flee, but we're also talking about people who had come, who fled Syria to come to Lebanon, for example, and now they are reliving the experience. They thought they are bringing their families here to protect them from the violence in Syria and suddenly they see these bombs falling on them. They run and they keep on running because every day when they go to one place and the targeting area is expanded, they have to flee again.
Rula Amin:The government did expand, tried to accommodate, so they established these almost 800 makeshift shelters, but it's basically schools that are now housing all these people who fled. But it's not enough, because the number, according to the government, is reaching a 1 million. We're not so sure. It's not enough, because the number, according to the government, is reaching a one million. We're not so sure. It's all estimates, but it's hundreds of thousands of people.
Rula Amin:So they have been sleeping in the open air along the corniche in Beirut. They need everything they need cash, assist, they need water, they need food, they need mattresses, they need blankets, they need diapers, they need medicine, they need medical care, they need blankets, they need diapers, they need medicine, they need medical care and, most of all, they want to feel safe. They want to be protected. So most of the people have been on the move for days now, some of them more than 100,000 at least, and we think the number could be. By the end of today we jump to 180,000. By the end of today we jumped to 180,000. Most of them sorry those people Lebanese and Syrians chose to cross the border into Syria. So on one hand, you have Lebanese fleeing into Syria and you have Syrians who fled Syria to Lebanon in the past few years now finding it that it's better for them to cross back to Syria to try to avoid and escape the violence and the bombs.
Dana Lewis :You know, yeah, it's what a disaster. And I was listening to the IDF spokesman. Haghari did a live news conference which was carried in many different places, and he went way out of his way to talk about the fact that, you know, many of these homes in South Lebanon were staging areas for the Hezbollah. Many of them have tunnels underneath them, many of them are weapons storage facilities. You know, in essence he links the people and the population of South Lebanon with the terror, as he calls it, spread by the Hezbollah. So it paints not a very good picture of the people who are on the move. But you can't do that to a million people, can you?
Rula Amin:You know I'm here representing a humanitarian agency, and so what we say in these situations is that, no matter what are the circumstances, the protection of civilians during conflict is stipulated by international law, and that law had been put there specifically to address situations like intense conflicts like what's happening now. The warring parties have a duty they must do everything possible to avoid targeting civilians and they need to ensure the protection of civilians. What we are seeing on the streets of Lebanon, in the shelters, are whole families, women, children, teenagers, elderly so all kinds of populations on the run and fleeing, and what they're telling us is they feel that they, the civilian population, has borne the brunt of this conflict and this war so far.
Rula Amin:And every day the conflict continues, there will be more people who are losing their lives, more people displaced, the needs will grow more. Now, a humanitarian agency, aid agency like UNHCR, we're on the ground and we've been in Lebanon for decades, mostly helping vulnerable refugees and Lebanese and Lebanese. Now we're still on the ground, providing water, you know, providing blankets, mattresses, sleeping mats, helping repair shelters, helping equip these makeshift schools on how to be safe for people to come in. But that's not enough, because the numbers increase by the day and so are their needs. So today, the UN humanitarian agencies in Lebanon, they made this appeal to the international community and they said we need over $420 million to be able to respond to the needs of this displaced population and the people who have not been displaced, because there are people who are still in their homes but maybe get displaced, but they can't go to work. They need aid.
Rula Amin:I'll give you an example those people, for example, who crossed the border into Syria. So I have UNHCR colleagues who are on the ground in Syria and they are trying to help. So we provide water, food, blankets, mattresses. We establish these big tents, rub holes, we call them for people to stay in and to spare them the sun as they are being processed. But we're giving them this kind of assistance on the day they arrive. And they arrive exhausted, traumatized. Many of them have reached the border by foot, those who even took transportation. It took them hours to get to the border and they really don't have a plan for the next day. They don't know what will their next day look like.
Rula Amin:As we are speaking, like early this morning, there was an Israeli attack on the capital, damascus. Now this is one of the areas that these people who are fleeing the bombing in Lebanon are heading to. So it's really becoming it's you feel that the Lebanese, the refugees who are hosted in Lebanon, they're all stuck in this very cruel situation where they can't find safety anywhere. Lebanon is a very small country and they don't have the means, you know, to buy a plane ticket and go to Cyprus, for example. They don't have the means to rent an apartment because of the economic situation that was prevailing inside Lebanon before this. So you can see that the civilian population, really they have been suffering immensely. They are terrified, feel very vulnerable and they need urgent help.
Dana Lewis :I put you on the spot and asked you to predict where this is going to go, because as news correspondents, we covered lots of these right and they are different every time and they are distinct every time, but they are also some of them run in parallel with one another. The Israelis are saying limited ground operation Raids they are using the term raids, which would suggest they go in with special forces, they try to dismantle part of the Hezbollah launch areas and staging areas and then they maybe go out again. The reality is, in past conflicts in Lebanon, the go-out part, the go-back part, is long delayed and doesn't happen in some cases for years. That is a very big problem for several million people.
Rula Amin:Yes, you know we work with UNHCR. We work with refugee situations around the globe and unfortunately, in the past years, the number of years where people stay displaced before it becomes safe to go back for them to their original towns and villages is now almost 10 years. That's a long time. It's a long time because people, when they run, they have nothing with them In the beginning. The international community sometimes is committed and they start providing assistance, but with every passing year the support for them decreases while their needs increase, because whatever means they had, even if they had sold their own golden bracelets they have exhausted their personal means to be able to survive.
Dana Lewis :And they're out of the headlines and support decreases. People tire of it.
Rula Amin:It may be charitable in the beginning, but over time… and the crisis emerges, it's in the headlines because of the politics and they are forgotten and then they're left on their own to try to make ends meet to protect their children. When we say we don't have the resources to meet all the needs, that's a dangerous situation, because what does it mean? It means these families they stop eating proper food or the parents stop eating so that they can feed their children. The nutritious food is not available anymore. When the kids get sick, they can't take them to a doctor. They sometimes have to drop out of school because they need to go to work to assist the parents.
Rula Amin:These are consequences that affect not only the present time, but it has effect throughout generations of people in the region and beyond. The Syria crisis, for example it's been going on for 13 years and until this day, there are 7.2 million people displaced inside Syria and there are more than 5 million Syrian refugees just in the countries surrounding Syria Jordan, turkey, lebanon, iraq and Egypt. That's a huge number. That means there are generations of children who haven't been able to go to school, who have not had the right food to be healthy, and this will affect the whole region. It doesn't affect this one population.
Dana Lewis :So you really, when you listen, even if there is sympathy for Israel, which has had shelling on its northern border for a year, since October 7th, and the Hamas raid into southern Israel and the kidnapping of Israelis, even if you sympathize with the fact that Israel has a right to take action against the Hezbollah, you have to discuss proportionality and thus the calls around the globe by many different governments calling for a ceasefire now, because they're saying you're never going to dismantle Hezbollah, all of it, and you can't do this to the people now that are caught in the crossfire. You can only go so far, and they are probably already going far enough by launching this ground operation today as we speak.
Rula Amin:You know, as a humanitarian agency, is where we are on the ground in so many different conflicts. We always say humanitarian aid cannot end the suffering of people, it can only ease some of it.
Rula Amin:But, the only way, the only solution to end people's suffering and the consequences is to end these conflicts and to be, you know, to be probably more blunt, is to try to preempt these conflicts and avoid them erupting from the first place, because the minute it starts it's so hard to roll the ball back. And now what we are dealing with in Lebanon is displaced Lebanese, displaced refugees who are making very difficult choices on where to go and how can they go. Who will receive them? What is a safe spot? So we are seeing this as people have carried their children from one street to another, from one corner in Beirut to another, trying to stay safe. They hear the news the minute you hear about a ground invasion. They are not sitting there and assessing whether it's going to be limited, five kilos, 10 kilos. All they know is that this is an escalation, it's going to bring more intensification of the bombing and duration of this war and again they are so terrified.
Dana Lewis :And, by the way, even if you get a ceasefire and you know this better than me even if you get a ceasefire in place, what are they going to have to go back to?
Rula Amin:That's another thing. You know. We, our colleagues, met people who are Syrian refugees, who were crossing the border back to Syria, and we asked them where are you going? And they said we don't know. All we know is that we're running from the bombs. We will try to get to our towns and villages. We're not sure if our homes are still standing.
Dana Lewis :But for today, this is what we're doing to run away from the violence. Yeah, man, I guess any of us who have children and loved ones you just try to move your family and get the hell out of an emerging hell around you.
Rula Amin:And you know there's so many civilians who have been killed and it's not something that one has to work very hard to prove. We lost two of our colleagues in UNHCR. One is a UNHCR colleague who has been working with UNHCR for 12 years. She was at her home in the Beqa. The airstrike hit her building. Her husband and one of the children were rescued, but they are in a critical situation and she and one of her children you know they passed away. We lost them under the rubble. We have another colleague also who was in a cafe. It got struck and he was killed.
Rula Amin:So we know of many cases where these people are. The civilians are paying a very, very high price for this conflict and they just want it to end. For now they're looking for a safe spot, they want to protect their children, they need all kinds of assistance and that's why we say, you know, we call on the international community, countries with influence, like the United States, who always say we have two appeals. Like the United States, who always say we have two appeals One is to provide the financial resources that are needed for us to be able to continue meeting the needs, to continue delivering assistance, and the other thing is to pressure the parties to end this today, before tomorrow.
Dana Lewis :Yeah, because they're just going to get in deeper and deeper. Rula, you and I have covered conflicts like that and the idea of any short war. I haven't seen one, even though they're always headlined as that and limited incursions. So, rula Amin with the UNHCR, rula, it's great to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Rula Amin:Thanks for having me.
Dana Lewis :Thanks for having me. Kareem Shaheen is a newsletters editor for New Lines magazine and he joins us from Quebec, Canada. Hi, Kareem, and I should mention you were a Guardian reporter and you were based in Beirut for many years.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Thank you for having me, Dana. Yeah, I was based in Beirut for the Guardian and then later on in Istanbul and right now I'm the newsletters editor but also the Middle East editor at the magazine. So I'm kind of responsible for our Middle East coverage and we do mostly long form journalism, you know, for people who want something a little bit more, Not long enough, because just before the interview, I was telling you you have to write your book now, right?
Dana Lewis :So let me ask you you've written an essay that I read the other day on the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, which I consider to be a significant event because he's the head of Hezbollah, but you went sort of way beyond, probably, and see him as a much weightier leader than maybe we give him credit for.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, I mean, I think his influence over Hezbollah is very much, as we said in the piece, the soul of Hezbollah. He created the machinery of the organization that went on to become a linchpin of Iran's power projection in the region. He was instrumental in the preservation of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria through his intervention of it. It he's very much a figure that was ever-present, that was culturally incredibly significant for both Lebanon and for the rest of the region, whether you hated him or whether you supported his campaign against Israel by any Arab force. And he was obviously instrumental in Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon back in 2000. Back in 2000,.
Kareem Shaheen:Israel's occupation of Lebanon, starting in 1982, was a key event that led to the creation of Hezbollah. He, you know, up until the early 2010s, hezbollah's leader, was probably the most popular Arab leader in the region and you know his legacy, obviously in Lebanon was very complicated because of the brutality that Hezbollah visited on its opponents inside the country, the political assassinations they carried out against liberal politicians who opposed them and who opposed their stranglehold over Lebanon. Uh, and obviously for the, for the people who saw them as uh, as a sectarian militia primarily, rather than a, a movement that was meant to resist Israel's occupation and they had the guns, you know, so they could always intimidate anyone that opposed them inside Lebanon. But for the rest of the region, you know, up until 2011,. He was someone who was seen as one of the few Arab leaders who was willing to stand up to Israel and to its leaders, who was willing to stand up to Israel and to its actions in the region.
Dana Lewis :But after the war in Syria began and Hezbollah joined, yeah, I wanted to ask you about Syria, because that's where the love for Nasrallah if there is love for him in the Middle East turns pretty sour. I mean, he is responsible for the killing of tens of thousands and helping the Assad regime in Syria for killing tens of thousands of Syrians during the Syrian civil war.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, I mean, we compared Nasrallah in the piece to Gamal Abdel Nasser, the infamous ex-Egyptian president who was very much synonymous with the dream of pan-Arab nationalism and the unification of the Arab world. And you know, nasser lost every single war he went to with Israel, but he's still revered by many figures in the region, by many ordinary people in the region. Nasrallah occupied a very similar space. They carried out immense brutality against their opponents in Lebanon, but they also trafficked in this currency that, according to them, represented Arab dignity, which is that there were no Arab leaders who were willing to stand up to Israel, except for Nasrallah and before him, nasser. And you know the fact that he ended up joining the war in Syria.
Kareem Shaheen:I mean, hezbollah carried out some, you know, horrible crimes in the course of the conflict. You know they starved Syrian civilians in this border town called Madaya that, you know, for a brief amount of time, was the focus of international media attention. That you know literally besieging people and starving them to death. You know, in addition to the fact that they just you know they propped up this regime, it was in defense of the indefensible, you know, as we said, in peace. So you know, at that point Hezbollah became much more broadly seen in the region as an instrument of Iranian power projection and essentially a sectarian militia that was no different than any other. You know, brutal occupation in the region.
Dana Lewis :So can you explain this paragraph that you wrote in the essay? And I'll just read it, and I'll just read it. He provided the ideological and operational template for militias and Islamist groups that stretched far beyond Hezbollah. Even extremist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State group have borrowed from his playbook, imitating Hezbollah's ability to merge military action with political legitimacy and mass mobilization, and even emulating his style and persona, I mean what was so different about what he was doing?
Kareem Shaheen:Correct? Yeah, I mean. Hezbollah, you know, has always been a dual political and military organization in Lebanon. You know it was a grassroots organization. That, yes, they became an Iranian client, but they were founded due to real grievances in Lebanon, whether that had to do with the ongoing civil war and the destruction that was happening in Lebanon in the 1980s, whether it has to do with the Israeli occupation of Lebanese land and whether it had to do with the marginalization of Shiites in Lebanon, you know, who were always, you know kind of not part of the elite power structure in the country, grassroots movement that still has, you know, roots all across South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. You know where the party's constituents lived and were based.
Kareem Shaheen:But you know, in addition to that, there was a lot of logistical efforts. I mean, hezbollah was, you know, for the longest time seen as this crown jewel in Iran's militia network, and for good reason. They had established this deterrence to the archenemy that even all these terrorist groups that terrorize civilians all across the region they still claim that to be their highest ideal the liberation of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, hezbollah was one of the few militias that was actually in combat with Israel on a regular basis.
Dana Lewis :They went out of In a fearsome way and put the Israeli army back on their heels more than once.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct and that's why for them, you know they used to tout the 2006 war as the divine victory, even though you know much of Lebanon was destroyed in the course of Israel's, you know, aerial campaign over Lebanon and over Beirut. You know they were able to hold the Israeli suspense and they won by denying Israel the aims that they had stated, you know, when they launched the 2006 campaign. But you know Hezbollah has used this position, you know, as a way to also spread its influence far and wide. You know they were training all these Iraqi militias, iraqi Shiite militias. They were, you know, training the Houthis in Yemen. They obviously, you know, intervened in the war in Syria and were an instrumental part of the campaign there and of training other groups and professionalizing them to allow for greater Iranian power projection in the region. So they both inspired those groups and were directly involved in improving their capabilities.
Dana Lewis :And over your many coffees and getting to know the Lebanese as well as you did by being based in Beirut, was there a lot of resentment in different areas of Lebanon, of the state within the state. I mean. The Hezbollah essentially has hijacked the state, not allowed government to function, has been a violent organization within Lebanon itself.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, but you know, as with anything Lebanon, it was a polarizing question. You know there were people who directly benefited, obviously, from Hezbollah's power. There were people who, you know, would think of the struggle against Israel as being the paramount cause in the Arab world, and so they were prepared to overlook Hezbollah's crimes in Syria and its assassination of opposition politicians because it was in service of preserving this resistance to Israel. And obviously, there were the victims of Hezbollah's actions.
Kareem Shaheen:You know whether that was the Lebanese politicians and their families who were killed by Hezbollah, whether it was the people who felt that Lebanon's development and Lebanon's realization of Lebanon's potential, both politically and economically, was stymied by Hezbollah's allegiance to a foreign power. There were the Lebanese nationalists, you know, who felt that the country should be sovereign. You know that the nation state should be sovereign and that it should have power over its foreign policy and its borders. And therefore, you know, hezbollah should be disarmed because it was bullying the rest of the Lebanese. So you know, and there were obviously the people who saw it in more religious terms, you know that Hezbollah was essentially a Shiite millenarian movement that you know, preserved Shiite supremacy both in Lebanon and across the rest of the region. So there were many diverse viewpoints on this and there wasn't one belief, one way or the other, that predominated.
Dana Lewis :How earth-shaking do you think? The assassination of Nasrallah? Many of the top leaders, many others are in hospital, even low-level lieutenants, field lieutenants, are in the hospital because of, you know, with these explosion of pagers. This is pretty jarring to that organization. How debilitating is it? And and followed up as we speak, the israelis are launching a ground war today, however limited they claim it may be yeah, it's, it's enormous.
Kareem Shaheen:I mean, there's no denying that this was a an enormous victory for for israel and, uh, and a major defeat for hezbollah.
Kareem Shaheen:I think hezbollah is, uh is facing a um, uh, you know, crossroads right now.
Kareem Shaheen:Uh, the party and the movement is trying to absorb the shocks, uh, the repeated shocks. In fact, I mean, if you look back, it's only been a week since the Pager's attack, which was an extraordinary event Moving at lightning speed, correct? Yeah, I mean, it's an extraordinary event, and Israel's decapitation of the leadership is not something that is just limited to Nasrallah. Obviously, as you alluded to, they essentially assassinated the entirety of the top military echelon of the party and a lot of their political leaders. So whether how much of the command and control structure continues to exist, who's calling the shots, who's going to call the shots in a few weeks is very much an open question and I think, as well as on and is on the defensive right now, they're in the position where they're, you know, trying to absorb all of these shocks and and and trying to see if the, if the party survives intact, you know, after this campaign is is over and whether this campaign ends up being over, but it is worth remembering that Hasbllah was born out of Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Dana Lewis :They changed out the PLO and they got the Hezbollah.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct, and so you know what the Israelis end up with after Hezbollah. Post-nasrallah is very much an open question. Ground invasions are very finicky. You know, there's always another hill to take over because the guys over the next hill are threatening your positions.
Dana Lewis :And you get an army gets sucked in further and further.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, and as the economist correspondent in Israel, anshul Pfeffer, said today, israel is very good at invading, but they don't always have an exit plan. And whether that exit plan comes under the guns of the next iteration of whatever movement emerges out of the ashes of the conflict right now is very much up to the question.
Dana Lewis :Is there a big danger there for Israel, do you think? When you look at what happened to American forces in Iraq, for instance, there are militias that are sympathetic to the Hezbollah in Iraq, in Syria. They are funded, they are trained by Iran. This doesn't easily end, and if Israel wades too deep in that water, I wouldn't say they would drown, but I would say that they can find themselves fighting for air.
Kareem Shaheen:Look, I mean, the challenge is that there's no denying that what israel achieved over the past week, um, in lebanon anyway, uh is, um, is an immense strategic and tactical success. Um, I mean, they, they perceived hasbullah as their greatest uh rival in the region, um, in the immediate neighborhood anyway, um, you know, outside of iran, uh, and, and they, they truly uh, the party, like right now, the party does not have the capacity to respond to Israel in the same way it would have if it still retained its leadership, if it still retained its arsenal. And so Israel is going to take the lesson from this that violence does work, you know, as a solution. The problem is that Israel is kind of stumbling from operation to operation, where they see everything, as you know, the square peg problem, where violence is the only solution to everything. And so they're going, they're lurching from war to war, from military operation to military operation, without any end game in sight, and eventually this will catch up to them. Because you know, if you alienate all of your neighbors, if you alienate all the partners, potentially, you know for peace, by going ahead and invading Lebanon, or you know assassinating all of these top leaders.
Kareem Shaheen:The thing is, you know what the Israelis have proven is that nobody's out of reach, right? You know, they assassinated Qasem Soleimani back in 2020. It was the Americans who assassinated Qasem Soleimani back in 2020, and Iran did not respond. Then Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas. You know, a few months ago In Iran, nothing happened exactly, and now it was Nasrallah's turn, you know, and so the Israelis are very much saying that nobody is out of our crosshairs.
Kareem Shaheen:And eventually, this orgy of violence. What is it going to lead to? What is the end game as a result of it? Ismail Hani's assassination led to Nasrallah's assassination, and the assassination of Hezbollah stopped military echelons. Nasrallah's assassination now leads to a ground invasion. And then what will the ground invasion lead to after that? So there's clearly no end game that the Israelis have, even if the violence is working in the short term. And so if there is no plan for what peace looks like in the aftermath of all of this violence, then where are we going? You know what's the end goal? I think it's a huge problem and you know there are no scenarios that are, you know, out of the imagination now, because Israel is ready to do anything.
Dana Lewis :What would be your worst case scenario?
Kareem Shaheen:what would be your worst case scenario, if I mean, if Israel continues along this path, you know you very quickly end up in a situation where the only way to stability and peace in the region may be mutually assured destruction. You know, if Israel perceives that it has the power and the righteousness and the ability to pursue all of these enemies through these military means and the only way to deter Israel, you know, and this includes also its Gulf partners, you know, and other states that don't have a quarrel with Israel, but if Israel is willing to pursue these sorts of military aims against any organization or state or party that opposes Israel's regional policies, then the only deterrent is for everyone to have nuclear weapons, everyone to have an arsenal that can have the capacity to deter Israel truly from military adventurism.
Dana Lewis :I guess Israel would melt this down right now, though, and say, hey, they've been shooting rockets at us for a year over our northern border. The shooting has to stop, and we don't care if they're in support of Palestinians in Gaza or not. No country would put up with that, and that's what we're going to do, and a lot of people will sympathize with them.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, and that's what the Americans are saying right now. You know which is uh, which is that? Uh, yeah, we don't want a regional war in the middle East, but you know Israel has a right to defend itself. Um, but equally uh, you know, if you consider the other side of it, um, you know Israel uh is essentially uh terrorizing much of Lebanon. I mean, you know the attacks are not limited to the south, where they want to establish. You know deterrence over there. You know there's a million Lebanese civilians who want to leave their homes.
Dana Lewis :A million and that rolls off our tongues pretty quick, right, but a million people on the move who will probably have no homes to go back to, by the way, even if you get a ceasefire in place now, because a lot of it's being destroyed and it's only a small country.
Kareem Shaheen:It's a million people out of a population of 4 million. It's literally a quarter of the country has fled, you know, as a result of these attacks, you know, 100,000 people have crossed over into Syria, for God's sake, you know, and that's where they're seeking shelter and safety. You know, this is a country that's been in economic freefall for years, where you know everyone is impoverished, where, you know the country has been suffering for such a long time. And, don't get me wrong, I think that the solution right now is for, you know, for the space to be created for Lebanon to reclaim its own sovereignty. You know, this is a golden opportunity, I think, for the Lebanese states to be empowered, for the Lebanese military to take control over its borders. Except, you know, nobody cares. The only thing that matters is those short-term gains of, you know, which leader has been assassinated, which bombing operation has been successful and the chess-beating part of war, you know, and nothing else matters. No political solution, nothing.
Dana Lewis :Wouldn't that be wonderful for Lebanon. If this is a turning point, inflection point to, to steal somebody else's term Um, if this is a great inflection point for Lebanon to to take sovereignty and control and to be able to get its government working again and remove, I mean Hezbollah has been part of the paralysis.
Kareem Shaheen:Correct. Yeah, I mean. Except, you know, in all these situations, you know the region is run by middle managers. You know it's not run by actual leaders with a vision. You know, I mean Netanyahu is lurching from war to war because it's essential for its political survival currently and there is no end game in place. And so this idea that we might look for an opportunity or a silver lining within this absolute catastrophe that's occurring and trying to figure out a way for the Lebanese state to exist in its aftermath is very much not a question that's on the mind of Western policymakers or Israeli policymakers, largely because Arab lives don't really matter. You know it's unfortunate.
Kareem Shaheen:In their view, correct? Yeah, of course. Yeah, as an Arab myself, I certainly hope that my life does matter. But you know, it's an unfortunate reality in this world that Hezbollah is paying for its crimes against Lebanese civilians and against Syrian civilians of the poorest parts of Beirut, you know, and vaporizing six or seven apartment buildings in the process, and nobody's talking about that, nobody cares about the people who were there, because, you know, nasrallah was the ultimate target and he was killed, and that's obviously a monumental event for the region. But the reality is that it was a mass casualty event in which, uh, you know, a huge number of civilians was was vaporized by it, and, and that you know the number of people who've been killed in lebanon uh, already, uh, rivals, uh, the number of people who died in the entirety of the 2006 war, which lasted a whole month, um, and, and the same number of people have already been killed in about a week of hostilities.
Dana Lewis :And unfortunately if I would add my comment none of these conflicts, whether it be in Gaza or the West Bank, or in Syria or in Lebanon, none of them, unfortunately end with moderates being strengthened. It's people who are very angry, who have lost loved ones. It breathes and empowers hatred in the region and Netanyahu, despite standing on the podium saying he's just defending northern Israel right now, has probably not been one of the greatest detractors from any kind of peace process with Palestinians and others.
Kareem Shaheen:So yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, the Jordanian foreign minister was at the UN recently and you know the UN General Assembly meetings and he sounded incredibly irritated by, you know, questions related to peace in the region, because he was saying that you know, I'm representing a group of countries that have repeatedly said that they're willing to guarantee Israel's security, that they're willing to completely normalize with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, for a Palestinian state. And the reality is that the agenda that Netanyahu is pursuing in the region of this perpetual war is because he does not want a two-state solution, he does not want a solution for the Palestinians, he wants to win it all and he does not have an endgame in sight.
Dana Lewis :And as a result, we're suffering problems. Our next interview with Karim is going to be what does win it all mean? But nobody's quite sure what that looks like, but probably just stagnation and ignoring the Palestinian problem, which Netanyahu has done for his entire career. But hey, man, thank you so much.
Miri Eisan:It's a pleasure.
Kareem Shaheen:Thank you for having me.
Dana Lewis :Do the Lebanese book and let me know. Thank you so much for having me, dan. I appreciate it. Thank you, take care, and that's our backstory this week, thanks to our terrific guests. If you like the podcast, share it with someone else. I'm Dana Lewis. Thanks for listening. No-transcript.
