Beirut, Lebanon – As Israel’s October ۲۷ election nears, so does the possibility that the government that has overseen the invasion and reoccupation of southern Lebanon could be deposed.
But for people in Lebanon, optimism that a change in the Israeli government will bode well for Israel’s neighbours is low.
“I don’t think anything major – or at all – will change for Lebanon even if there’s a change in [Israeli] leadership,” said Beirut resident Fouad Debs.
“Any internal change might lead to small, insignificant changes just to show the outside world that Israeli society and politics are not messed up or evil,” added the lawyer.
For many in Lebanon, Israel’s history of airspace violations, ground invasions and occupation has led to a general atmosphere of distrust, regardless of who is in charge of the country.
“Proof is what people [in Israel] are saying as the elections [approach],” said Karim Safieddine, a Beirut-based nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
“No one is promising withdrawal, and no one is addressing south Lebanon as a crisis or a mistake,” he added, noting that the “general Israeli establishment looks at Lebanon as its prize”.
Israel and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah have been fighting, with different levels of intensity, since October ۲۰۲۳ in the wake of the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel and Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that followed it. Israel has twice escalated the conflict – first in September ۲۰۲۴ and then in March this year, following the start of the United States-Israeli war on Iran.
In June, following direct negotations that were rejected by Hezbollah, Israel and the Lebanese government signed a US-brokered framework agreement that included the goal of securing the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Still, Israel continues to occupy large parts of its neighbour’s south, where it has systematically demolished homes and infrastructure in dozens of villages, forcing more than one million people from their homes.
Lebanese generally disagree on how to deal with Israel, as shown by a June ۲۰۲۶ survey by Lebanese American University professor Jad Melki and his team.
In the study, ۵۴ percent of Lebanese polled said they supported diplomacy with Israel, while ۳۵ percent preferred armed resistance. But the poll also found that regardless of the tactic, Lebanese views of Israel were overwhelmingly negative, with ۸۷ percent of those polled considering it “as their enemy”.
Netanyahu vs Dahiyeh Doctrine inventor
In next week’s polls, the primary challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the man who has overseen Israel’s war on Lebanon that has killed almost ۹,۰۰۰ people since October ۲۰۲۳, including journalists, first responders and children – appears to be Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party.
Many Israelis see Eisenkot as a break from Netanyahu, who has been inundated with corruption trials, accusations of failure to prevent a Hamas-led attack in October ۲۰۲۳ and of prioritising attacking Gaza over releasing Israeli captives.
But in Lebanon, the general feeling is that whoever replaces Netanyahu is unlikely to deviate from the current policy of occupation and destruction.
Eisenkot, in particular, is a former general and chief of staff in the Israeli army with a historical impact on Lebanon. He acted as northern front commander in Israel’s ۲۰۰۶ war on Lebanon and is the architect of the Dahiyeh Doctrine, an Israeli military strategy of using disproportionate damage and destruction currently being used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.
More recently, he has accused Netanyahu of giving in to US pressure by stopping attacks on Beirut since April, arguing that the Israeli military should attack Hezbollah targets anywhere in Lebanon.
‘Normalised dehumanisation’
Lebanese analysts said that, although Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, Eisenkot and other challengers have mostly attacked him on domestic issues and from the right, calling him soft on issues of security.
“Those that have come forward as candidates in Israeli elections criticise Netanyahu and his handling of the war,” Elia Ayoub, a Lebanese researcher and podcaster, told Al Jazeera. “They’re not criticising him based on any kind of humanitarianism or anything [related to] human rights.”
Ayoub said the attitude towards Lebanon and other peoples and countries in the region goes beyond the Netanyahu government. He pointed out the governmental and societal backlash to the recent release of NAZA, a documentary made by Israeli journalists in which Israeli soldiers speak about the calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“There’s a profoundly dehumanising discourse that is completely normalised in Israeli society, and the backlash against any pushback is drastic,” said Ayoub. “I don’t necessarily believe that it’s going to change Israeli policy towards Lebanon.”
Since the June trilateral framework agreement, Lebanon appears stuck in a limbo. While active fighting between the two sides has largely stopped, Israel continues its demolition campaign with little opposition. As the occupation becomes increasingly entrenched, many Lebanese fear it could last another generation.
“Definitely, it’s a prolonged situation of neither war nor peace,” said Safieddine. “We’re going to be living in this grey area for a very long time.”
With next week’s election unlikely to bring any meaningful change to Israel’s policies towards Lebanon and the wider region, Ayoub stressed the importance of the midterm polls in the US on November ۳.
“The US elections are just as important, if not more important,” he said, “because they tend to determine how much the Israelis feel emboldened toward Palestinians first and foremost, but of course, towards Lebanon as well, and Syria to a large extent.”
