{"id":6223,"date":"2026-07-17T07:34:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=6223"},"modified":"2026-07-17T07:34:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:34:39","slug":"a-former-prime-minister-who-led-israel-out-of-lebanon-fears-mistakes-are-being-repeated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=6223","title":{"rendered":"A former prime minister who led Israel out of Lebanon fears mistakes are being repeated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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JERUSALEM (AP) \u2014 It was just before sunrise when the last columns of Israeli tanks crossed from Lebanon back into Israel and then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who ordered the withdrawal, said the homecoming of Israeli troops sent \u201cshivers down his spine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Israel\u2019s parliament dissolves ahead of Oct. 27 elections<\/a><\/p>\n

That was May 24, 2000, the day Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. <\/p>\n

By then, many Israelis had grown to view the invasion \u2014 initially aimed at ousting Palestinian militants \u2014 as a strategic failure, akin to the U.S. military quagmire in Vietnam. <\/p>\n

Now, 26 years later, Israel is again occupying much of southern Lebanon, and while polling shows that a majority of Israelis currently support an extended military presence in Lebanon, some, including Barak, who remember the pitfalls of the last occupation, are afraid that Israel is falling into the same trap.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur very presence will become the only goal,\u201d Barak said in a recent interview, recounting what he said he thought of the occupation in 1985, when he was a general in the Israeli military, and Israel was shifting from active fighting to long-term deployment in Lebanon. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe will protect our fortresses, we will protect our convoys of supply, the logistics, the patrols, everything,\u201d he said he warned. \u201cBut we were not serving Israeli security, we were not serving the state. There was no logic to this in 1985, and there was no logic in 2000, when we pulled out.\u201d <\/p>\n

An open-ended occupation<\/h3>\n

Israel again invaded Lebanon in March and now controls more than 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of territory. It began the operation after Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, launched a wave of drone and missile attacks in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Last month, Israel signed a framework agreement with the Lebanese government to use at least two areas in southern Lebanon as \u201cpilot zones\u201d for removing Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure and handing over security to Lebanon\u2019s army. Israel would then redeploy or withdraw its forces from those areas. Hezbollah was not part of the agreement and has vowed to oppose it.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Israeli officials have vowed to keep troops inside a broader \u201csecurity zone\u201d in Lebanon as long as Hezbollah retains its weapons. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has maintained smaller \u201csecurity zones\u201d in Gaza and Syria, which it says are needed to prevent future attacks by militants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t ask anyone\u2019s permission to enter Lebanon, and we don\u2019t need anyone\u2019s permission to stay in Lebanon,\u201d Defense Minister Israel Katz said recently, calling it Israel\u2019s \u201cright and our duty\u201d to protect residents in northern border towns.<\/p>\n

A former prime minister warns of similar pitfalls<\/h3>\n

Barak, who served as Israel\u2019s military chief before coming prime minister, still considers the pullout one of his proudest achievements.<\/p>\n

As a general, he recalls visiting soldiers stationed in Lebanon in the early 1980s. He said they told him, \u201cWe are fighting to remove the threat from Hezbollah so that our children will be safe and won\u2019t have to serve here.\u201d <\/p>\n

But when Barak ordered the withdrawal nearly two decades later, he said some of the children of those same soldiers were serving in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s self-declared security zone inside Lebanon did not deliver for Israelis during the previous occupation, and it is unlikely the new zone will either, Barak said. Even in the 1990s, rudimentary Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah could easily bypass it and hit northern Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to destroy, totally destroy Hezbollah, you\u2019d have to conquer the whole of Lebanon,\u201d Barak said, something most Israelis consider to be impractical. <\/p>\n

But even Israel\u2019s presence in the south, and the widespread destruction of villages there, runs the risk of rallying Lebanese support for Hezbollah, he said. Israel says the group embeds fighters and weapons in these border towns, but Israeli operations since March had displaced around 1 million Lebanese. <\/p>\n

Read more Landslide in southwest China traps people, rescue efforts underway<\/a><\/p>\n

About 40% of them have since returned home, according to the Lebanese government. More than 4,300 people have been killed since hostilities began on March 2. Nearly 40 Israeli soldiers have also died, as well as a defense contractor and two civilians in northern Israel. <\/p>\n

Same place, different war<\/h3>\n

Hezbollah was founded in 1982, as a response to the Israeli occupation, and fought a deadly guerrilla war that included high-profile suicide bombings and assassinations, roadside bombs and ambushes. <\/p>\n

Israel carried out bombing campaigns and airstrikes against the militant groups. It also helped establish a local proxy force, a mostly-Christian militia known as the South Lebanon Army that carried out patrols and provided a buffer between Israeli troops and Hezbollah. Thousands of SLA fighters and their families fled to Israel following the withdrawal. <\/p>\n

But the type of warfare between the two sides has also changed. <\/p>\n

Israel is now operating without a local proxy, instead relying on monitoring and strikes either by air or from vantage points on ridges and hilltops. And Hezbollah, which once relied on insurgent tactics, now uses high-precision missiles and drones, including fiber-optic drones that are hard to defend against and have caused Israeli casualties.<\/p>\n

Unique diplomatic opportunity could shift balance<\/h3>\n

One key difference from 2000 is the possibility of a diplomatic solution with Lebanon, said Orna Mizrahi, former deputy director of Israel\u2019s National Security Council.<\/p>\n

Israel has an opportunity in Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Mizrahi said. Since he was elected last year, he has publicly condemned Hezbollah and expressed readiness to negotiate a permanent ceasefire with Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military operation needs to complement a diplomatic process,\u201d said Mizrahi, now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.<\/p>\n

Although Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to disarm, it has been severely weakened by wars with Israel, she said, adding that its main sponsor, Iran, is also busy weathering U.S. strikes and battling for control of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Mizrahi said this has created an opportunity for a new balance of power inside Lebanon, by strengthening the Lebanese government and military. Israel will never destroy Hezbollah completely, she said. But while the group is scrambling to reorganize, Israel can work with international powers to empower Lebanon to confront it, she added.<\/p>\n

4 mothers against the war<\/h3>\n

By the time Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the occupation had become deeply unpopular, in large part because of the more than 1,200 Israeli soldiers killed in operations.<\/p>\n

In 1997, four mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon founded a grassroots movement advocating for withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Brurya Sharon, now 84, one of the founding members, recalls sending both of her sons off to fight in Lebanon. At the time, she said she felt like Israel\u2019s government and military were maintaining the occupation out of inertia, without stopping to consider if it was effective.<\/p>\n

The \u201cFour Mothers\u201d movement has been widely cited as a major factor in Israel\u2019s withdrawal in 2000. They tried to steer clear of politics, instead focusing on the soldiers\u2019 lives, a bipartisan issue, Sharon said.<\/p>\n

But now, the country is so divided, especially after the Oct. 7 attack, that Sharon says she sees no option for a broad-based public movement to pressure Israel to withdraw.<\/p>\n

Israelis, still traumatized from the Hamas attack, are also concerned about leaving the country\u2019s borders vulnerable. Currently, more than seven in 10 Israelis support a permanent security presence in southern Lebanon, according to a recent poll by the think tank Israel Democracy Institute.<\/p>\n

Read more US strikes bridges and collapses a tower at a key port as its Iran campaign expands<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see a sunbeam of hope, I don\u2019t even see a speck of light,\u201d Sharon said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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