Political shadows cast by the Antarctic curtain

Kobe University

 

image: 

To protect the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting, a gigantic underwater curtain has been proposed to be installed on the Antarctic seabed. However, the political ramifications of such a superproject urgently require careful consideration by scholars of international law to anticipate potential political fault lines for the Antarctic Treaty System that has preserved the seventh continent as a place for peaceful scientific exploration.

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Credit: SHIBATA Akiho

The scientific debate around the installation of a massive underwater curtain to protect Antarctic ice sheets from melting lacks its vital political perspective. A Kobe University research team argues that the serious questions around authority, sovereignty and security should be addressed proactively by the scientific community to avoid the protected seventh continent becoming the scene or object of international discord.

A January 2024 article in Nature put the spotlight on a bold idea originally proposed by Finnish researchers to save the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting, which is estimated to potentially raise global sea levels by up to 5 meters. The idea of installing an underground curtain 80 kilometers long and 100 meters high to prevent warm underground water from reaching the glaciers made an international splash, and “What had been a technical discussion among some scientists quickly became a social debate involving the general public,” says Kobe University international law researcher SHIBATA Akiho. In the scientific debate, however, the political aspect has either been completely ignored or dangerously downplayed, which runs the risk of kindling conflict around a project that is meant to protect humanity, in a setting that has been a model for peaceful international collaboration for over 60 years.

As experts on the international law that governs the Antarctic’s peaceful existence dedicated to scientific investigation, Shibata and a visiting scholar from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Patrick FLAMM, scrambled to put together a careful analysis of the political repercussions of the global superproject. Shibata says, “We believe that it was important to publish a paper within one year of the original proposal, before the social debate takes on a life of its own.”

In a policy paper now published in the journal International Affairs, the Kobe University researcher points out consequences along three main themes: authority, sovereignty and security. Concerns about authority ask who is in a position to decide on the realization of such a project and what this means for the power balance in the body governing access to the Antarctic. Sovereignty concerns are centered around the implications for extant and dormant territorial claims. And questions around security consider how to practically safeguard a structure that would certainly be seen as planetary critical infrastructure. Shibata sums up, saying: “This paper sheds light on the political and legal ‘shadows’ hidden behind the exciting surface of science and technology. However, we believe that it is necessary for the members of society to make decisions on the development of these technologies based on a thorough understanding of such negative aspects.”

While the researchers write that “In the current climate, with growing international rivalry and great power strategic competition, it would be an extremely unlikely diplomatic achievement to secure the level of international cooperation … required for the proposed glacial geoengineering infrastructures,” they also point out a way forward by looking back. In the early 1980s, a smoldering conflict around guidelines for Antarctic mineral extraction got resolved by the 1991 “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” which proactively prohibited mining in the Antarctic indefinitely. This solution set a precedent for the treaty parties to seek solutions that avoid international discord over the Antarctic.

The Kobe University law expert is careful to point out that prohibition is not the default solution, however. He explains: “Recently, momentum has gathered among natural scientists to examine such technologies more multilaterally from the viewpoint of whether they are appropriate in the first place. If in such a deeper scientific and technical discussion the argument is that there are social benefits that outweigh the governance risks we have presented, then again, we international political scientists and international legal scholars need to be involved in this discussion. Perhaps then the discussion will no longer be about protecting the key principles of the current Antarctic Treaty System while considering this technology but about modifying those key principles themselves.”

This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 21K18124) and the Kobe University Strategic International Collaborative Research Grant Type C. It was conducted in collaboration with a researcher from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.

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Journal

International Affairs

DOI

10.1093/ia/iiae281 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

‘Ice sheet conservation’ and international discord: governing (potential) glacial geoengineering in the Antarctica

Article Publication Date

18-Nov-2024

"At the Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft

The H.P. Lovecraft Archive

https://www.hplovecraft.com › writings › texts › fiction

Aug 20, 2009 — I could not help feeling that they were evil things—mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That ...

 

Study reveals significant global disparities in cancer care across different countries

Researchers address increasing rates of cancer incidence and mortality in developing countries, and challenges in accessing treatments.

Wiley

A recent analysis reveals striking disparities in the cost and availability of cancer drugs across different regions of the globe, with significant gaps between high- and low-income countries. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

The analysis, which drew on relevant published studies and reviews related to cancer and the availability of cancer treatments, predicts that there will be an estimated 28.4 million new cancer cases worldwide in 2040 alone. In the coming years, cancer incidence is expected to increase most significantly in low-income countries. Cancer mortality rates are also increasing in low-income countries, whereas they have leveled off in developed countries.

Research indicates that inequity in access to therapy, lack of proper screening, persistent carcinogenic risk factors, and inadequate healthcare infrastructure are major contributors to the higher cancer incidence and cancer-related mortality rates observed in low-income countries compared with high-income countries. Also, clinicians’ current understanding of cancer and its optimal treatment is primarily based on research conducted in high-income countries, whose residents may differ from individuals in middle- and low-income countries.

Studies reveal that economics can be a major challenge for optimal cancer care around the world. Newer cancer drugs such as immunotherapy medications can cost thousands of dollars more per year than standard chemotherapy. Also, low-income countries spend less of their total gross domestic product on cancer care than high-income countries, yet they often must pay more for the same essential cancer drugs.

“Cancer incidence and mortality are on the rise globally and are expected to disproportionately affect people in low- and middle-income countries. Unfortunately, access to newer cancer therapeutics is far more restricted in low- and middle-income countries due to prohibitive costs,” said senior author Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, in Lebanon. “In this paper, we analyze the data and propose a few solutions that could help alleviate these worsening disparities—including the use of quality generics and biosimilars and the implementation of universal healthcare coverage and international medical funding.”

 

Additional information
NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. A free abstract of this article will be available via the CANCER Newsroom upon online publication. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com

Full Citation:
“Global Disparities in Cancer Care: Bridging the Gap in Affordability and Access to Medications between High and Low-Income Countries.” Arafat H. Tfayli, Laura N. El-Halabi, and Fadlo R. Khuri. CANCER; Published Online: November 18, 2024 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.35590).

URL Upon Publication: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/cncr.35590

Author Contact: Simon Kachar, Executive Director of Communications at the American University of Beirut, at sk158@aub.edu.lb

About the Journal     
CANCER is a peer-reviewed publication of the American Cancer Society integrating scientific information from worldwide sources for all oncologic specialties. The objective of CANCER is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of information among oncologic disciplines concerned with the etiology, course, and treatment of human cancer. CANCER is published on behalf of the American Cancer Society by Wiley and can be accessed online. Follow CANCER on X @JournalCancer and Instagram @ACSJournalCancer, and stay up to date with the American Cancer Society Journals on LinkedIn.

About Wiley      
Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a trusted leader in research and learning. Our industry-leading content, services, platforms, and knowledge networks are tailored to meet the evolving needs of our customers and partners, including researchers, students, instructors, professionals, institutions, and corporations. We empower knowledge-seekers to transform today’s biggest obstacles into tomorrow’s brightest opportunities. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Journal

Cancer

DOI

10.1002/cncr.35590 

Article Title

Global Disparities in Cancer Care: Bridging the Gap in Affordability and Access to Medications between High and Low-Income Countries

Article Publication Date

18-Nov-2024

 

Saudi executes more than 100 foreigners in 2024: AFP tally

Agence France-Presse

Nov 17, 2024

A spike in executions undercuts statements by Saudi de facto ruler that the kingdom had slashed the use of the death penalty — FAYEZ NURELDINE

Saudi Arabia has executed more than 100 foreigners this year, according to an AFP tally indicating a sharp increase which one rights group said was unprecedented.

The latest execution, on Saturday in the southwestern region of Najran, was of a Yemeni national convicted of smuggling drugs into the Gulf kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

That brought to 101 the number of foreigners executed so far in 2024, according to the tally which is compiled from state media reports.

This is almost triple the figures for 2023 and 2022, when Saudi authorities had put to death 34 foreigners each year, according to AFP tallies.

The Berlin-based European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) said this year's executions had already broken a record.

"This is the largest number of executions of foreigners in one year. Saudi Arabia has never executed 100 foreigners in a year," said Taha al-Hajji, the group's legal director.

Saudi Arabia has faced persistent criticism over its use of the death penalty, which human rights groups have condemned as excessive and out of step with efforts to soften its forbidding image and welcome international tourists and investors.

The oil-rich kingdom executed the third highest number of prisoners in the world after China and Iran in 2023, according to Amnesty International.

In September, AFP reported that Saudi Arabia had carried out its highest number of executions in more than three decades, surpassing its previous highs of 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995.

Executions have continued at a rapid clip since then and totalled 274 for the year as of Sunday, according to AFP's tally.

- 'Execution crisis' -

Foreigners executed this year have included 21 from Pakistan, 20 from Yemen, 14 from Syria, 10 from Nigeria, nine from Egypt, eight from Jordan and seven from Ethiopia.

There were also three each from Sudan, India and Afghanistan, and one each from Sri Lanka, Eritrea and the Philippines.

Saudi Arabia in 2022 ended a three-year moratorium on the execution of drug offenders, and executions for drug-related crimes have boosted this year's numbers.

There have been 92 such executions so far this year, 69 of them of foreigners, according to the AFP tally.

Diplomats and activists say that foreign defendants usually face a higher barrier to fair trials, including the right to access court documents.

Foreigners "are the most vulnerable group", said Hajji of the ESOHR.

Not only are they often "victims of major drug dealers" but also "subjected to a series of violations from the moment of their arrest until their execution," he said.

Saudi Arabia is notorious for beheading those convicted of capital crimes, although official statements tend not to mention the method of execution.

The high number of executions undercuts statements by Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that the kingdom had eliminated the death penalty with the exception of murder cases or when an individual posed a threat to many lives.

Jeed Basyouni, who heads Middle East anti-death penalty advocacy for the NGO Reprieve, said persistent drug arrests were "perpetuating the cycle of violence".

The overall number of executions was on track to exceed 300 for the year, she noted.

"This is an unprecedented execution crisis in Saudi Arabia," said Basyouni.

"Families of foreign nationals on death row are understandably terrified that their loved one will be next."

How EU planned a new prison for Jenin during an Israeli invasion


David Cronin

14 November 2024

The Electronic Intifada

An EU team visits the new prison in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank. (EUPOL COPPS)

Annexation is back on the agenda.

Bezalel Smotrich, a senior Israeli government minister, is threatening that 2025 will be the “year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”

If he is serious – and there’s no reason to suspect the self-proclaimed “fascist homophobe” is bluffing – then we can expect Israel will soon formally claim ownership of the Palestinian land it has stolen in the West Bank.

Of course, Israel will not include a confession to land theft in any announcement. Calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria” is a way of asserting a biblically-ordained “right” to a territory Israel has occupied since 1967.

No other nation recognizes that “right.” But Smotrich and his colleagues are hoping that the US will do so – once Donald Trump is inaugurated as president in January.

Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick as US ambassador to Israel, has already signaled that annexation could occur.

Will the European Union prove less acquiescent than Trump?

Four years ago, a formal annexation of Israel’s settlement blocs in the West Bank seemed imminent. At the time, the EU warned that any such move would inevitably have consequences for its relationship with Israel.

With the benefit of hindsight, there are reasons to doubt that Brussels officials regarded their own warnings as credible.

Genocide should be an even bigger red line than formal annexation. Yet the EU has kept on cooperating with Israel as it wages a war of extermination against Gaza.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has condemned Smotrich’s new threat on the basis that it jeopardizes “any prospects for” a two-state solution.



The endless repetition of the two-state mantra does not alter an unpalatable truth: The European Union has paved the way for annexation.

It has done so by playing a significant role in carving up the West Bank.

Under the Oslo accords – signed in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – the territory was divided into three zones. The largest zone – Area C – comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank and encompasses Israel’s main settlements.

As Israel’s domination was essentially guaranteed when the accords were being implemented, the Israeli authorities were easily able to exploit them so that colonization could be ramped up. The logical next step is to do precisely what Smotrich is proposing: annex Area C.
Solitary confinement

By enforcing the Oslo accords, the European Union has helped to corral Palestinians into a sliver of their historic homeland.

For most of the past two decades, the EU has assumed responsibility for training the Palestinian Authority’s police force and prison administrators.

That force is obligated to keep out of Area C. In the other parts of the West Bank, it is completely subservient to Israel.

Its subservience has been emphasized each time this year that Israel has invaded Area A of the West Bank – the largest Palestinian towns and cities. The PA’s forces were, for all intents and purposes, absent as Israel killed and maimed Palestinians, many of them children.

Israel’s raids of Jenin and Tulkarm in August and September lasted for 10 days. It was the longest such offensive against the West Bank since 2002 – when the notoriously bellicose Ariel Sharon was Israel’s prime minister.

Grotesquely, the EU spent the days and weeks before, during and after the raids in August and September helping the Palestinian Authority to establish a new prison just outside Jenin.

Through a freedom of information request, I have obtained several reports drawn up by the EU’s policing mission in the West Bank on that prison.

They describe how the prison – named the Barghasha Rehabilitation Correction and Rehabilitation Centre – has eight solitary confinement cells.

As the documents have been censored, it is not known what comments the EU team made about solitary confinement, though it undertook to raise concerns about the privacy of detainees.

I contacted the EU policing mission asking if it was seeking to avoid the use of solitary confinement in Palestine. The mission, which goes by the acronym EUPOL COPPS, refused to answer my question, bar claiming that its work on detention is “always aligned with international standards.”

The Palestinian Authority has a record of coupling solitary confinement with other cruelty toward prisoners.

In 2022, a number of detainees went on hunger strike after they had been arrested by PA forces. Amnesty International and other human rights groups documented how they were placed in solitary confinement, as well as being physically tortured.

EUPOL COPPS has publicly lauded the new prison beside Jenin as a “model” rehabilitation center.

The internal documents I have obtained indicate that there is something quite murky behind the “model.”

The new prison has been set up ostensibly to address overcrowding in other jails.

One of the internal papers indicates that the EU team held discussions on 29 August – the day after Israel’s invasion of Jenin began – with a brigadier serving the Palestinian Authority. The paper notes that “the brigadier will ask for coordination from the Israeli authorities for the transport of the prisoners” to Jenin from other jails.

Another document indicates that Israel checks “electricity equipment” in the prison.

The way such “coordination” and “checks” are treated as purely practical belies the fact that Israel is calling the shots more than ever.

The destruction of Gaza and the increased violence by Israel’s soldiers and settlers in the West Bank are aimed at ousting Palestinians from their homeland.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, stated last month that “the devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

She observed that Israel as a state is “predicated on the goal of Palestinian erasure.”

Opening a “model” prison does not magically change how Israel is not only depriving Palestinians of basic freedom but ultimately trying to wipe them out. And the European Union’s propaganda cannot obscure how it is helping Israel to advance its objectives.

Why the EU won’t divorce Israel

David Cronin 

7 November 2024 

Josep Borrell has advocated stronger EU-Israel relations for most of the past five years. (Lukasz Kobus / European Union)

Josep Borrell is turning into Mister Angry now that his term as European Union’s foreign policy chief is almost over. In one recent comment, he argued that it is “high time” to end the “illegal occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza.

Borrell has nothing to lose by being blunt and accurate.

There is zero prospect of a swift reconciliation between him and the Israeli government, which has baselessly smeared Borrell as an anti-Semite. And if anyone complains about how he calls the occupation “illegal,” Borrell can point to a ruling issued by the International Court of Justice in July.



Yet it will take more than a few strident comments to compensate for how Borrell advocated stronger relations with Israel during most of his five-year term.

He enjoyed some success in that respect. In 2022, the EU-Israel Association Council – a high-level forum of dialogue – was revived after it had been mothballed for a decade.

Nor should Borrell’s anger disguise how the Brussels bureaucracy has kept on doing business with Israel as it slaughters people in Gaza and Lebanon.

Last month the EU announced that it was giving a “mission label” to Eilat, a city in Israel. The “label” – which is supposed to help local authorities gain greater access to funding – rewards plans aimed at achieving “climate neutrality.”

Praising an Israeli authority for “climate neutrality” is a warped joke considering that the war against Gaza has been an environmental disaster. By one estimate, the quantity of carbon released during its first 120 days exceeded what 26 low polluting countries would emit in an entire year.

Crass incongruity

Another example of crass incongruity can be found in how the EU recently approved a scientific research grant for a pancreatitis project run by Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The grant was signed on 21 October – just a few days after Israel attacked two of the three hospitals still functioning (albeit barely) in northern Gaza.

Why is the EU prepared to support Israeli medical projects at the very same time Israel is annihilating Palestine’s medical system?

A clue can be found in an internal EU briefing document I obtained via a freedom of information request. Dating from December 2021, it argues that Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe, the EU’s science program, is valuable.

“For the EU, we benefit from Israel’s excellence, top-notch innovation capacity in our key priority areas (green, digital, public health), as well as a substantial financial contribution,” it says.

The financial contribution was “very important” at the time “in view of the uncertainty” around whether Britain would be involved with Horizon Europe, the paper (see below) adds.

These few sentences are revealing. Countries taking part in Horizon Europe from outside the EU pay to do so.

After Britain left the European Union in 2020, it was no longer involved with EU research activities for a few years.

Britain eventually joined Horizon Europe in January 2024. During its absence, some Brussels insiders evidently saw Israel as akin to a replacement for Britain – at least when it came to the research program, a major focus of EU expenditure.

Josep Borrell is the second Spaniard to hold the post of the EU’s foreign policy chief.

When his compatriot Javier Solana was nearing the end of his term in that job, he called Israel “a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution.”

Solana singled out scientific research cooperation with Israel as being “very important” at that time – October 2009.

EU insiders have continued making the same argument since then.

For quite a few people in Brussels, the relationship with Israel is regarded as a type of marriage. No matter what barbarity Israel resorts to, the EU hierarchy will not dare contemplate divorce.

Absorption pits necessary but hazardous for Gaza’s displaced


Amjad Ayman Yaghi The Electronic Intifada 12 November 2024
A girl picks her way through raw sewage water in a camp for the displaced in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip in August. 

Omar Ashtawy APA images

It’s not a pleasant job.

But it is a vital one.

In February of this year, Abdul Salam al-Aswad dug an absorption trench or pit near his tent in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and placed a homemade toilet with a wooden board raised on bricks to act as a seat over it.

With Israel’s war on Gaza lurching into its 14th month, Gaza’s 1.9 million displaced people – who have found shelter mostly in tents and temporary structures erected to shield them from the elements – have had to prepare for the long term as they come to terms with the fact that Israel’s sponsors have so far shown no interest in reigning in their genocidal ally.

One crucial need is the safe disposal of sewage and waste in a territory where Israel’s destruction of infrastructure has been near total.

Going to the toilet has become “psychologically concerning,” al-Aswad told The Electronic Intifada in late October.

“We relieve ourselves in a pit that smells and certainly causes us disease, but we have no choice but to use it.”

Every overcrowded shelter in Gaza increasingly relies on such absorption pits to mitigate what is a growing health hazard, and digging tools, pipes, barrels and materials to build toilets are being sold in markets and by street side vendors.

They are needed.

Spread of disease

Muhammad Mansour, 39, said many absorption pits in his shelter west of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip have started to collapse due to oversaturation of the ground with wastewater.

His 5-year-old son fell into a pit in August while walking with other children. The child was immediately taken to Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital for tests because of the imminent danger of infectious disease, his father said.

But it’s impossible to take precautions. Sewage water is present everywhere in Deir al-Balah, Mansour said, flowing freely in between tents in shelters and in streets everywhere.

“It’s very ugly, and we have to use these pits knowing they are harmful to us,” he said.

He himself developed scabies and skin rashes from the sanitation issues, he said.

“We know the causes of the diseases that afflict us. But we can’t avoid them,” he told The Electronic Intifada.

Ahmed Shaheen, an environmental engineer with the Palestinian Water Authority, warns of a possible major health disaster.

“Absorption pits can lead to the seepage of sewage into groundwater. Increased humidity and foul odors from these pits can promote the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever,” Shaheen said.

International organizations have long warned of the effect of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza’s infrastructure and have reported a “rapid spread” of infectious diseases.

In October, the British Medical Journal, BMJ, noted that Gaza now has 40,000 cases of Hepatitis A, compared to just 18 before war started.

The territory has seen the re-emergence of polio and is enduring, according to the World Health Organization, one million reported cases of acute respiratory tract infections, half a million cases of acute diarrhea and over 100 000 cases of jaundice.

“Without an immediate and permanent ceasefire and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid for all of Gaza – including a vaccination campaign focused on young children, and the protection and rebuilding of the health system – people will continue to die from preventable diseases and treatable injuries,” the BMJ authors concluded.
No privacy

Shaheen was even more downbeat. What is happening in Gaza will have ramifications, “on humans and the environment, that may be felt for decades because of the amount of explosives and destruction.”

He pointed out that Gaza’s infrastructure had been inadequate for years as a result of Israel’s 16-year blockade on Gaza before last October that prevented entry for the necessary materials to fix the territory’s aging infrastructure.

As far back as 2018, well water samples indicated that pollution levels had risen to the point that 97 percent of Gaza coastal aquifer was contaminated with sewage water, according to UNICEF.

And it is not just a health hazard.

Jamileh Omar, who was displaced from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah, said many women are uncomfortable relieving themselves in absorption pits, so they often go early in the morning when fewer people are out and about.

“There are very few bathrooms provided in tents by international organizations to use,” she said. “It’s very crowded, and there is frequent movement of displaced people, so people have dug pits.”

Shaheen said people in Gaza perceive the response of governmental and international non-governmental organizations as insufficient and that improving the health and environmental conditions of displaced individuals is not just a pressing need but “a fundamental right.”

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

Resistance to colonialism, from Derry to Palestine

A delegation of Palestinian activists and movement leaders visited the north of Ireland to ground ourselves in its history of anti-imperialism. Derry was more than a city for us—it mirrored our shared history of colonial oppression and resistance

By Eman Mohammed 

 November 15, 2024 

MONDOWEISS

A visitor in a keffiyeh stands before the “Civil Rights Association” mural in Derry, Northern Ireland, depicting a scene from Bloody Sunday in 1972. The mural, part of Derry’s Bogside, honors the Irish civil rights movement and its resonance with global struggles for justice, including solidarity with Palestine. (Photo: Eman Mohammed)

Imagine being welcomed into a space where the weight of your grief, anger, and exile is not only recognized but embraced. A space where the pain of Palestine, Lebanon, and Ireland converged—not as disparate wounds, but as a shared resistance. That’s what Derry gave us: a refuge, a collective embrace at a time when our hearts were raw from fire.

In September 2024, Palestinian activists and movement leaders joined a week-long immersive movement-building gathering grounded in anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism in the north of Ireland hosted by the Bloody Sunday Trust. Ireland has a long history of surviving and resisting British colonialism and standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and the people of Derry have an acute understanding of what happens when a state murders with impunity. Over the course of the week, we engaged in political education, analysis of historical and current conditions, and shared strategies to strengthen the global movement against Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine as central to organizing for collective liberation in all of our different communities and contexts. Delegates included leaders from the Adalah Justice Project, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, FIG NYC, Hospitality for Humanity, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, Honor the Earth, Community Movement Builders, Palestinian Youth Movement – both Britain and U.S. leaders, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Students for Justice in Palestine, and 18 Million Rising.

The irony, of course, was that as we stood in Derry, our hearts heavy with the haunting images of Gaza engulfed in flames and the relentless bombings in Lebanon by the Zionist entity, Derry became our sanctuary from the violence of occupation. But not just any occupation. The ongoing British occupation of Ireland. There is no “Northern Ireland”—the very phrase is a colonial invention, an attempt to fracture Ireland into something less than whole. But Ireland is whole. The land is whole. The people are whole. This island, from Derry to Dublin, belongs to the Irish people, despite the colonial borders imposed on it.


Derry, for us, was more than a geographical stop on this delegation. It was a moment to feel human again, to be understood in our struggle.

Derry, for us, was more than a geographical stop on this delegation. It was a moment to feel human again, to be understood in our struggle, to be met with love while carrying the weight of collective grief. Because when you are Palestinian, Lebanese, Irish, African American, Indigenous, or Bangladeshi, your entire existence becomes defined by colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the constant fight for survival. Genocide from Gaza to Lebanon. From the river to the sea, our bodies and our lands are torn apart, our struggles made palatable by Western media, all in the name of neutrality.

The iconic ‘You Are Now Entering Free Derry’ mural in Derry’s Bogside neighborhood showcases messages of solidarity, including the phrase ‘Saoirse don Phalaistín’ (Irish for ‘Freedom for Palestine’). It features images of a Palestinian child and journalist Motaz Al Azaiza alongside Palestinian and Irish flags, underscoring themes of resistance and cross-border unity. (Photo: Eman Mohammed)

“Thats the border with the north of Ireland,” they said. The bus driver from Derry pointed to a speed sign reading, “Welcome to Northern Ireland.” That was it—Britain’s attempt to wash over decades of violent colonialism with a “soft” border. But nothing about it felt soft. The moment we crossed, it was as if a brick had been placed on my chest. The air thickened, the trees seemed to age before my eyes. For a Palestinian, it was an all-too-familiar sensation—entering occupied land. The delegates from Palestine, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Indigenous Native Americans of Turtle Island weren’t fooled by the “invisibility” of that line.

None of us cheered. But unlike the eerie quiet of occupation, there was no fear. Instead, the sound of resistance was louder. Palestinian flags embraced every corner as we approached the Free Derry zone. As someone who had just divested from nine years of forced exile in Washington, D.C., seeing those Palestinian flags brought my journey full circle. One step closer to home.

Derry’s streets told the story of rebellion. Graffiti became sacred art—every wall bore witness to the enduring solidarity between Palestine and the Irish people. This solidarity isn’t new, nor has it waned. It’s as strong as steel, binding two nations ravaged by British colonial violence. And while American tourists rave about their Irish roots they rarely stop to understand the deeper reality—that Ireland’s history of resistance hasn’t changed. The fight is ongoing, and it mirrors ours in Palestine.

Free Derry (Photo: Eman Mohammed)

We felt this even in the most unexpected spaces, like walking into local grocery stores or small shops. Each time, the locals would light up at the sight of our keffiyeh, identifying us immediately. They’d excitedly call out to their Palestinian friends within the Derry community to introduce us, as though someone had told them we were homesick or in desperate need of being around our own. They didn’t impose their opinions or feelings on us, though. They recognized our yearning for connection and genuinely sought to create a space for that reunion, Ahmad, from Khan Younis, has been living in Derry for three years. When he found out that most of us were coming from Turtle Island, he apologized furiously, knowing the complexities of exile.

This was more than just an episode of “Derry Girls” (although I do love the show). The continuous attempt by the so-called progressive society to belittle the catastrophic impact genocide has on humanity by reducing it to a “single issue” is infuriating. They sidestep the larger consequences that ripple across the globe. No arms embargo means unchecked erasure of an entire nation. Yet, progressives in the U.S. continue to elect genocide enablers or worshipers, presenting the “lesser evil” as an option. But the lesser evil is still evil—and it’s a betrayal not just of Palestine but of justice for all oppressed people.

Passing through loyalist neighborhoods was jarring. Their signs, blaming the drop in their population on Irish citizens, reeked of gaslighting. Loyalist communities, aligned with British colonial powers, had long benefited from institutional privileges, while the Catholic, nationalist communities were systematically denied political power, employment, and basic rights. During the Troubles, it wasn’t just a political disagreement. Catholics and nationalists faced horrific brutality—military invasions of their neighborhoods, imprisonment without trial, systematic torture, and indiscriminate violence. British soldiers, and the Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary, terrorized Catholic neighborhoods, while nationalist resistance was branded as “terrorism.”

The British state’s use of military might, alongside their divide-and-rule strategy, empowered loyalists to uphold colonial domination. But when industries tied to British imperialism, like shipbuilding, collapsed, the same British government abandoned them. Meanwhile, nationalist communities endured centuries of land dispossession and violence, all while fighting for basic human dignity. The term “Troubles” diminishes the brutality that Irish Catholics faced under British occupation. What the world calls “Troubles” was a war on colonized people.Free Derry (Photo: Eman Mohammed)

When we met with political prisoners, their testimonies echoed the stories of our imprisoned freedom fighters in Palestine. Martina Anderson’s words will stay with us. She recounted waking up in her prison cell, hemorrhaging from a forced hysterectomy. The British had sterilized her as part of their systemic weaponization of sexual violence—a barbaric tactic used across colonized lands, from Palestine to Turtle Island. This obsession with controlling and violating our bodies spans centuries, whether by forced sterilization of Indigenous and Black women in the U.S., or the dehumanization of Palestinian women and men in Israeli torture camps like Sde Teiman.

Derry was more than a city for us—it was a mirror reflecting our shared history of colonial oppression and resistance. We retraced the steps of the victims of Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers gunned down unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest in 1972. I stood in front of a glass frame containing two gigantic bullet holes. Bullets so large they tore through human bodies. It reminded me of Palestinian children, their faces blown apart by sniper fire. How many bullet-riddled frames would Gaza need to document its genocide?

We stood in silent reverence before that memorial—Kamau Franklin, a Black liberation organizer, and I, united in our grief. Though our struggles arose from different histories, we gazed upon the same painful truth, our shared humanity illuminating the profound connections between us. I couldn’t fathom his thoughts in that moment, but I felt our collective trauma stirring, fully alert and ready to haunt us anew. It’s not the echoes of past histories that keep us awake; it’s the stark reality of our present—of being hunted, of being lynched—right here and now.

Our delegation spent a week in Derry. We spoke with scholars, lawyers, ex-loyalists, political prisoners, and community leaders. And every time we met with a family member of a Bloody Sunday victim, their voice broke in a way that felt so familiar. Their grief, like ours, was suffocating but unyielding. They understood that the British occupation wasn’t just about borders; it was about erasure. They gaslit generations, just as they tried to wash away the blood of Bloody Sunday. The loyalists may claim grievances today, but those grievances are part of a colonial legacy that empowered them at the expense of the Irish people.

A glass pane covers a bullet hole in the wall of a house in Derry. The area, under British occupation, was the site of some of the most brutal violence, including Bloody Sunday, when 13 civilians were shot by the British army. (Photo: Eman Mohammed)

Though many delegates are still guests on Turtle Island, they carry the collective responsibility of resisting and dismantling the systems of occupation and colonialism that persist there. Just as the struggle for Ireland continues, Palestine is undergoing genocide. Resistance—from Derry to Gaza—is the only path to liberation. We will not bow to the blade; first comes justice, then everything else. Anything less is submission, a tactic often employed by colonizers who cloak their demands for compliance in the language of peace. Just like they call the fight for Irish liberation “the Troubles.” Troubles? The kind of troubles you have when you’ve lost your keys or run late to work? No. The “Troubles” were a struggle against British colonialism. Language matters. “Troubles” is the propaganda of the occupier, just like calling Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians a “conflict” or their bombing of southern Lebanon “self-defense.” This colonial playbook is universal, erasing our histories of resistance while whitewashing the violence imposed on us.

How can you call a decades-long war for Irish freedom just “troubles”? Words are weaponized in every colonized land, but we see through this. The same way Israel’s genocide is called a “conflict,” the way resistance is called terrorism, the way our people are criminalized for demanding dignity. And as we stand on Irish soil, we know all too well that this struggle isn’t abstract. Nationhood is not just a concept, not just a line on a map. It is survival. It is memory. It is the blood in the earth that refuses to be washed away by the hands of the occupier.

Eman Mohammed is an award-winning Palestinian photojournalist from Gaza and a Senior TED fellow. Her photographs have been featured in renowned publications such as The Guardian, Le Monde, VICE, Geo International, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, NPR, CNN, Marie Claire, and The Atlantic.

Hezbollah demystified

Despite relentless Israeli attempts to misrepresent and dismantle Hezbollah, the organization has endured. A look at the group's history and goals explains its enduring power and shows how much of what’s said in Western media is not true.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 15, 2024 

MONDOWEISS
A Palestinian man waves Hezbollah’ flag during a rally in Gaza city on January 28, 2015, after two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. The soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)


Hezbollah, Arabic for “The Party of God”, also named “The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon,” has been increasingly making headlines in recent months, as Israel continues its war on Lebanon. Earlier this week, Israel’s new war minister Yizrael Katz announced the “defeat” of Hezbollah. The group responded with unprecedented rocket barrages and more drone attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv, showcasing its fighting capacity.

In early October, Israel started its offensive on Lebanon with the pager explosion attacks that killed dozens of Lebanese, mostly civilians. The attacks were followed by a series of assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military leaders, culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, and then of the strongest candidate to succeed him, Hezbollah’s executive council chief, Hashem Safiyyudin. Israel then began a massive bombing campaign on the south of Lebanon, which expanded to the Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah’s rocket arsenals.

But Hezbollah didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it has been increasing its military action on a daily basis, introducing farther-reaching and heavier rockets to the fight, and offering a stiff resistance to Israeli incursion attempts in the south.

As during the ten-year-long Syrian war, in which Hezbollah played a major role, and as in 2006, when Hezbollah fought off another Israeli offensive on Lebanon, the group has become the object of speculations, curiosity and contradictory narratives about it. So, who is Hezbollah? What does it want? How does it work? And how much of what is said about it in the West and the media is true?
Lebanese, Shia, or pro-Palestinian?

In a way, Hezbollah is the product of the crossing of political, sectarian, class, and regional conflicts in Lebanon in the 1980s. The group was born as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, but its roots go back to the Shia movement that started as a social protest movement. Most of the founders of Hezbollah had made their first steps as activists in the ranks of the ‘Movement of the deprived’, started by the Iranian-Lebanese cleric and social leader Mousa Sadr in the mid 1970s, when the Shia were among the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Lebanon.

As Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanon to counter Palestinian resistance fighters based in the south of the country, Mousa Sadr was among the first to call for organized Lebanese resistance, and founded the ‘Legions of Lebanese Resistance’, which acronym in Arabic reads ‘Amal’, that also means ‘Hope’. The group soon became the Shia militia engaged in the civil war, especially after Sadr’s disappearance in 1978.

After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese communist party launched the ‘Lebanese National Resistance Front’ that was joined by other leftist and nationalist parties, and became the main resistance force to Israel. It is then that several Islamic activists from Amal, other Shia groups, charities, mosques, and neighborhood associations met in Al-Muntazar Islamic religious school in the city of Baalbek, and decided that they needed an Islamic force dedicated only to resist Israeli occupation. They named it ‘Hezbollah’, in reference to verse 56 of the surat 5 of the Quran, which says that “The partisans of [or those loyal to] God will be victorious.”

The founding group had two things in common: the priority of resistance to Israel, putting aside all other political differences, and their agreement on who their religious reference should be. The ‘religious reference’ is a centuries-old Shia tradition, where every community chooses a religious scholar that meets certain qualifications, and they accept their religious judgment in major issues in which the community can’t reach agreement. The founding members of Hezbollah who met in Baalbek agreed that they accepted, as religious reference, the Iranian cleric and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Iranian proxy”?

Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran has always been a contentious topic, as the group has been accused of being Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and in the region. However, the relationship between Hezbollah’s roots and Iran is older than the establishment of the current Iranian regime and more complex than it is often presented. In fact, it was Lebanese religious scholars, mystics, and preachers from Mount Amel, known today as the south of Lebanon, who introduced Shiism to Iran in the 17th century. The bond between Shiites in both countries continued, exchanging religious leaders, scholars and students, and forming family links. But in 1982, that relationship took on a new level.

As Israeli forces besieged Beirut, the recently-established Islamic republic of Iran sent members of its revolutionary guard to nearby Syria and offered the Syrian government to help fight the Israeli invasion. That Iranian force later changed its mission, after it became clear that Israel was not planning to invade Syria, and began to offer training to any Lebanese who wanted to resist the occupation. The newborn organization, Hezbollah, became the main recruiter of volunteers, and the main organizer of the newly trained fighters, and thus was able to grow its militant body in a short time. That relationship between the Lebanese group and the Iranian revolutionary guard grew, and continued to this day.

However, Hezbollah’s late leader Hasan Nasrallah explained multiple times in media interviews the distinction between the group’s relationship to the Iranian state and to its supreme leader. According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah considers Iran as a country a ”friend and ally”, while it considers the supreme leader, Khomeini and his successor Khamenei, its “religious reference” to whom it goes back only in matters that require a religious ruling to decide. This distinction remains blurry to many, as the supreme leader is also the head of the state in Iran, and because on the ideological level, he is also the “religious reference” of the Iranian state. However, other Lebanese parties have more unbalanced, dependent, and explicit relations to foreign countries. One example is the relation between Saudi Arabia and the ‘Future’ party of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which competes to represent the Sunni community. Another is the far-right anti-Palestinian Lebanese Phalanges party, who monopolized the representation of Maronite Christians during the civil war, and its relations with the US, France, and even Israel itself during the 1982 invasion. A complex context which makes Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran far from strange in the Lebanese political culture.
Hezbollah in politics

In its forty-two years of existence so far, Hezbollah has evolved as a major political force in Lebanon. It remained only a resistance movement until 1995, when it ran for parliamentary elections for the first time. At the time, the Lebanese civil war had just ended, and the new generation of Lebanese youth were looking for something new to believe in and to be united around, and the battle for the occupied south provided them that, increasing Hezbollah’s popularity. The group had also begun to develop social programs to assist the families of its fallen fighters, like health care institutions and schools, which also provided help for poor Lebanese.

This popularity increased even more after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, which marked the first unconditional liberation of an occupied Arab territory. Hezbollah continued to score successes in elections, maintaining a growing presence in the Lebanese parliament and in many municipalities, especially in Shia areas like the south and the Beqaa, forging alliances with other Lebanese parties.

In 2008, Hezbollah struck an alliance agreement with the emergent new Christian force, the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’, led by the veteran former army general Michael Aoun, who ironically had built his heroic image in the 1980s for standing up against Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The unusual Shia-Christian alliance gave Hezbollah unprecedented leverage in Lebanese politics when Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016. The president in Lebanon’s constitution must be a Maronite Christian, and Hezbollah suddenly had a powerful ally who made it to the presidential Baabda palace, with Hezbollah’s support. This, among other things, like the military capacity of Hezbollah to start or prevent war with Israel, earned it the accusation of controlling the Lebanese state.

However, Hezbollah has never been the only party with such an influence in Lebanese politics, and the overall position of the Lebanese state is unmovable on several issues, against the position of Hezbollah. For instance, Lebanon never accepted Hezbollah’s proposals to seek Iranian assistance to modernize and strengthen the Lebanese army, or to buy fuel from Iran to solve the fuel crisis in the country in 2021. Most importantly, Hezbollah only accessed state offices that can be reached through elections, in the parliament or municipalities, but it was never given any key administrative position in the government agencies, or in the judicial system. This is due, according to Hezbollah and its allies, to external pressure on Lebanon, mostly from western countries, who consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

More than a militant group

A designation of “terrorism” that has put Hezbollah in the crosshairs of successive US administrations, who have systematically given unconditional support to every Israeli war aimed at destroying Hezbollah, even if it caused destruction to the rest of Lebanon. In the latest ongoing attempt, Israel has tried its best by targeting the head of Hezbollah’s pyramid, Nasrallah, and several key leaders surrounding him. However, the Lebanese party’s capacity to sustain the blows and continue the fight, without wavering, has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief about Arab and Middle Eastern organizations, Hezbollah is not an ideological cult led by one or a few charismatic men. In fact, Nasrallah himself said multiple times that Hezbollah did not have a leader, but a “leadership system”, run by institutions, with a continuous process of forming new leaders, ready to step in whenever there is a vacancy.

But the most important aspect of Hezbollah, and the most overlooked too, is that it is far more than a militant group with a cause and guns. Hezbollah represents the tradition and the decades-long struggle of a key component of Lebanese society. It is also the strongest representative, today, of the political choice of resistance to the US and Israel in Lebanon, which is much older and much more diverse than Hezbollah itself. It is also a social force with a strong presence in all fields of Lebanese public life, from politics, to education, to charity, to art and culture. And in times of war, it represents the feelings of large parts of the Lebanese society, that extend beyond the limits of religious communities or political sectarianism.

Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Lebanese politics to oust Hezbollah — here’s why it won’t work

Israel and the U.S. are trying to install an anti-Hezbollah leader as president of Lebanon, hoping to eliminate the military presence of the resistance in southern Lebanon. But it's not the first time Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 12, 2024 
MONDOWEISS
Hezbollah supporters attend a mass rally and a televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, January 3, 2023. (Photo: Marwan Naamani/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)


In his first speech as Secretary General, the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah. According to Qassem, the ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah.

“You will never see our defeat,” Qassem said, addressing the ambassador, Lisa A. Johnson, directly and ignoring the Lebanese parties in question.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Lebanese Forces — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea. The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.” The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989. He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for president of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate. The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008. During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. After Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president who would be close to Hezbollah and its allies. This presidential vacancy has extended to the current day.

Why the Lebanese presidency is important for Israel

When Israel began its offensive on Lebanon with the exploding pager and electronics attacks in mid-September, some Lebanese politicians seemed to have sensed that the influential role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics was approaching its end. Calls to elect a new president increased, as the U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, brought his plan for a ceasefire.

Hochstein’s proposal included the retreat of Hezbollah’s fighting units north of the Litani River, essentially clearing Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south, and deploying more Lebanese army forces along the provisional border between Israel and Lebanon.

Hochstein’s plan, however, included another component — he called for electing a new president for Lebanon, even considering it a priority before a ceasefire with Israel.

The president in Lebanon is also the commander-in-chief of the army, which is why many many army chiefs of staff were elected to the presidency in the past. Historically, the president’s relationship with the army’s command influenced the role played by the armed forces, and this relationship has been especially crucial in the case of Hezbollah.

In the last years of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1998 and 2000, the Lebanese army played a role in covering safe routes for Hezbollah’s fighters in and out of the occupied area and in holding key positions. This support by the army to Hezbollah’s resistance was the result of the direction and influence of the country’s president, Emile Lahoud, who had served as chief of staff of the army a few years earlier and refused to obey orders to clash with and disarm Hezbollah’s fighters.

The position of the Lebanese president, his influence on the army’s performance, and his relationship with the resistance have always been at the heart of Israeli and U.S. attempts to intervene in Lebanese politics. It is not the first time that the U.S. and Israel have pressured for the election of a new Lebanese president as it is under Israeli attack. The presidency ploy is a worn U.S. tool for attempting to change Lebanon’s political landscape and to make it more Israel-friendly.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its capital, Beirut, after the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese parliament met to elect a new president — quite literally, under the watchful eye of Israeli tanks. The parliament building was non-functional, and the Lebanese representatives had to meet with an incomplete quorum in the building of the military school to elect Bashir Gemayel as president.

Gemayel was the leader of the far-right anti-Palestinian Phalange party, or Kataeb. The Phalangists had helped Israel plan the invasion of Lebanon and fought on Israel’s side in the 1982 war. Gemayel had traveled to Israel several times to meet with Israeli leaders and committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he became president.

Gemayel was the strongman of the anti-Palestinian Lebanese right, and he was the only leader with enough support and force to carry out Israel’s strategy in Lebanon. His assassination 22 days after his election and before he was sworn in was one of the most devastating blows to Israel’s plans to bring Lebanon under Israeli influence. In revenge for Gemayel’s death, the Phalangist militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in the periphery of Beirut under Israeli cover. There, they committed the now infamous Sabra and Shatilla Massacre, slaughtering between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.

Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the parties who had fought against each other entered into a power-sharing arrangement. Meanwhile, the nascent Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah — which started as an offshoot of the Shiite Amal militia during an episode of violence called the War of the Camps — increased its popularity and political influence. This influence grew exponentially after Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese south, which marked the first victory of an Arab resistance force against Israeli occupation. By the beginning of the 2000s, Hezbollah had become a political party that ran for elections, secured parliamentary representation, and forged alliances with other Lebanese forces. Political divisions in Lebanon began to appear once again on both sides of the question of the resistance, often assimilated by its antagonists to Syrian, and later Iranian, influence in the region.

The identity of Lebanon’s president became a central issue again, especially after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, during which Emile Lahoud’s presidency provided strong political support for Hezbollah. Lahoud finished his term the following year amid strong political division. The state of fragmentation in Lebanese politics was so endemic that the president’s chair remained vacant for an entire year. The crisis was partially resolved with the election of the army’s chief of staff, Michael Suleiman, in 2008, who remained neutral.

Forty-two years after the first election of a Lebanese president at the behest of Israel, not much has changed. Lebanon is again under attack, and the resistance continues to be a central point of division over the future of the country and its position in the broader region. Although Hezbollah insists that its resistance is tied to the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, both Israel and the U.S. continue to look for ways to neutralize Lebanon through internal divisions and political disagreements.

As Israeli army officials begin to voice their demands to end the war — a war that is hitting a wall in the villages and mountains of southern Lebanon — it seems that Hezbollah’s adversaries continue to bet on Israel’s military capacity to bring about a “day after Hezbollah.” Perhaps more confidently than Israel itself.