I don’t know what precisely motivated Lebanese Army officers to open fire at Israeli soldiers on the border all of a sudden last week. Whether or not Hezbollah was directly involved, there will be a price. There might even be two. When the next war starts, the Israel Defense Forces may consider the Lebanese Army a belligerent and a combatant, which is a shame because that’s not how it was during the last two Lebanon wars. And the United States government has just put on hold 100 million dollars in aid to Lebanon’s army.
The U.S. should continue supporting, however it can, the liberal and democratic forces in Lebanon. The army, though, has been too corrupted. It’s not even a real army anyway, which is why Hezbollah can do what it wants despite losing the recent election.
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