(This is a translation into English of my commentary for the Italian newspaper Domani, published on August 27, 2024)
BEIRUT – AUG 27 – The latest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, which occurred in the early hours of last Sunday, and the subsequent statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, an ally of Iran and Hamas, have confirmed the validity of the power equation that has underpinned Middle Eastern balances for decades, not just since October 7.
In other words: waging war for declared purposes of “security” or “resistance,” prolonging it over time without escalating it into a full-scale conflict, and constantly evoking the specter of a decisive and existential final battle to annihilate the enemy. With this formula, as ancient as it is current and proven, Netanyahu’s government, Iran, and its regional allies—primarily Hezbollah and Hamas—have been trying for nearly a year to maintain a dominant position in their respective political contexts.
From the perspective of these elites, who only appear to be rivals and different from each other but are all reactionary and rely on popular support fueled by the permanent external threat, the post-October 7 Middle Eastern scenario has been, and continues to be, a life-saving elixir for political and institutional longevity.
For those who represent these powers, the dystopian scenario of a devastating regional war that would involve the entire Eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and the Red Sea, bringing destruction and death to civilians in the main cities of the Middle East—including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Beirut—must be incessantly represented in public discourse but avoided at all costs.
Because an armed conflict of this kind would not only bring desolation to civilian populations; it would also have a potentially destabilizing impact on the very power structures in Iran, Israel, and Lebanon, with profound repercussions throughout the area.
The so-called security and stability of the Middle East, a formula present for decades in almost all statements from Western and regional chancelleries, is, first and foremost, the security and stability of these dominant, exclusive, and repressive political systems.
It is the status quo based on the tacitly consensual division of territories and resources in an area historically at the center of global interests, extending from the Levant to the Indian Ocean, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Suez Canal, passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
The total Middle Eastern war, so eagerly anticipated throughout August by the media around the world, in the now established collective imagination, must be truly explosive and widespread to make people forget the bland and disappointing prelude of last spring: when, for the first time in history, Iran launched ballistic missiles and drones against Israel, causing only one casualty, the young Amina, a 7-year-old girl from the Bedouin Palestinian community of the Negev.
Yet, the media hysteria of that mid-April night concealed a craving among many observers and ordinary people: to finally witness the end of a world that many dislike but serves only a few—namely, that Middle Eastern elite oligarchy (including Netanyahu) that, on the one hand, fuels a public discourse steeped in nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian identity politics; and, on the other, manages the complex system of resource extraction and exclusive distribution of privileges (not rights) to their respective subjects (not citizens).
The narrative hysteria of April has returned to dominate the media, political, and diplomatic discourse in recent weeks: soon forgotten the spiral of tension in April, political rhetoric has resumed generating images of a full-scale conflict, leading to a series of concrete actions on the ground: pushing, for example, airlines to cancel flights to Beirut and triggering a sequence of alerts issued by embassies, urging their nationals to leave Lebanon quickly.
The message was the same as in April. But in the general oblivion, for many, there was the news: the war—the definitive and sensational one, like in the most clichéd disaster movies—was at the gates. Now, after the last significant exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel, the sequence first skyrocketed, spiraling upwards, with sensational headlines and feverish expectations. And then it collapsed into the current boring apparent normality, made of a conflict still bloody and violent (about 150 civilians killed in Lebanon, about 30 in Israel, more than 100,000 displaced in Lebanon, about 90,000 in Israel), awaiting the next more exciting escalation.
Thus, while various public opinions are more or less consciously dragged along the rollercoaster of alarmism, the power structures remain dominant: not only do they buy time—a precious resource in politics and negotiations—but they also ensure a relative stability in popular support. In some cases, they manage to strengthen their positions. If the end of the world is just around the corner, the individual and collective horizon disappears. Only the here and now exists. The need to get through the day. With the eternal fear of the enemy’s bombardment.
It was not like this before last October 7, when, for reasons related to different local contexts, the ruling system in Iran, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Netanyahu in Israel had to contend with declines in support and genuine political crises, triggered by more or less extensive and prolonged popular protests.
And this in the context of a broader challenge to the status quo by segments of Middle Eastern societies: from 2005 to 2023, from Beirut to Tehran, passing through Tel Aviv, Cairo, Jerusalem, Tunis, Gaza, Baghdad, Sana’a, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Manama, Muscat, Aden, Tripoli, Rabat, the squares have mobilized to demand socio-economic and political rights. The elites have responded, as they always do in these cases: repression, a strategy of tension, but also, and above all, updating that reactionary narrative matrix called upon to offer a sense and perspective: we are at war against an enemy who wants to annihilate us; it is a state of exception that leaves no room, for now, for revising the social contract.
Last Sunday, Netanyahu said that the “preventive attack” on Hezbollah shortly before dawn “is not the end of the story.” Nasrallah, for his part, said that the attack on Israel is “only the first phase of the response” to the Israeli raid on July 31 in Beirut. Two shamans called upon to utter the magical formula of power: the war continues, we are here to defend you.
So, with the summer drawing to a close, professional dystopists are already gathering scattered content to give substance to the increasingly insistent predictions that the long-awaited open Middle Eastern conflict will occur between October and November, just before the American presidential elections. The horizon expands, at least in appearance, but only to the benefit of those in power and who intend to stay there.