Iraq has requested an Arab League meeting at the foreign ministers level on 7 October to discuss the Lebanese crisis. The request followed a series of Israeli assassinations of Hizbullah members which culminated in the use of bunker-buster missiles targeting Hizbullah leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, and when fears of the consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon have reached fever pitch. Iraq is a close ally of both Hizbullah and its sponsor, Iran.

An Arab diplomatic source said that 7 October was “just a tentative date”, consultations are ongoing, and “the meeting could convene either before or after that date.”

It was not immediately clear whether the proposed ministerial meeting, which could well be held a year since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began, will also discuss developments in the Strip.

“Not sure, but it is possible that a statement of the ministers, when they meet, will call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon,” said the source.

He explained that some Arab League members are loath to link the issues. They argue, said the source, that Gaza is a humanitarian situation, and concerns occupation, while Lebanon is a sovereign state the territorial integrity of which is being violated.

The meeting might not take place if participants are unable to agree a final statement in advance, the bone of contention being whether or not the statement mentions the assassinations of Hamas and Hizbullah leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh who was killed in Tehran on 31 July, and Nasrallah.

Scheduling a date for the meeting is further complicated by the uncertainty surrounding the funeral of Hizbullah’s charismatic leader, who was killed on 27 September in the Israeli attack on southern Beirut.

An Arab diplomatic source in the Lebanese capital said that the date of the funeral is still being discussed.

“It is not clear what arrangement will be made. What do Hizbullah leaders who have so far escaped Israeli assassinations want? What would the Iranians prefer? On one hand it would be a sign of defeat if Nasrallah is interred in secret, as some have speculated will happen, and on the other it would be an enormous risk, amid growing signs of an Israeli ground invasion, to stage a large funeral.”

On Tuesday morning, while Israel said that it had already begun a limited ground invasion of southern Lebanon, Hizbullah denied that Israeli forces had crossed the border.

According to the Beirut-based Arab source, this could simply be a question of semantics, a matter of whether Israeli troops have moved beyond the areas Israel is already occupying or not.

“One thing is clear, a ground invasion is on, and the details will be clarified soon enough,” he said at noon on Tuesday. He noted that Israel is also intensifying its air attacks on South Lebanon, including the southern suburbs of Beirut.

“We will soon know how far Israel intends to go with its ground operation, and whether or not it will target other top Hizbullah leaders, including Naim Kassem.”

Hizbullah Deputy Kassem issued a defiant statement on Monday saying that Hizbullah will repel Israel in Southern Lebanon and continue to support Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

According to the same Arab diplomat, “this is a critical moment for Hamas and for the entire project of Islamic militant resistance movements, in Gaza and in Lebanon.”

Acknowledging that there are movements elsewhere in the Arab world, including in Iraq and Yemen, he said none has accrued the popular support and legitimacy enjoyed by Hamas, Jihad, and Hizbullah.

Another source, with connections in Arab Gulf capitals and Washington, argued that Islamic resistance movements were passing through a phase of “unprecedented weakness”.

“Hizbullah and Hamas have sustained enormous damage,” he said, and “many in the Gulf and in the US are now talking about how a new Middle East can emerge now the threat posed by Islamic resistance movements who always opposed any normalisation in Arab-Israeli relations has been removed.”

Such views closely echo those contained in the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave before the UN General Assembly last Thursday.

“That is the choice we face today,” said Netanyahu. “The curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arabs and Jews.” He was speaking less than 24 hours before ordering the assassination of Nasrallah in southern Beirut and a new round of attacks in Gaza.

“Clearly, Netanyahu feels emboldened, especially when it comes to a ground operation in Lebanon,” says Omar Moneib, senior analyst at Eurasia, a political and economic risk group. But while it is clear that Hizbullah’s strongest ally Iran is unwilling to enter into direct conflict, “it could still cause damage by proxy, through its allies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”

And though Hizbullah’s chain of command and communication network has been significantly degraded, Moneib says no one knows whether the same applies to its stocks of weapons.

According to Hisham Youssef, an Egyptian diplomat who has long experience of Lebanon and Gaza, it is too early to reach a verdict on the future of Islamic resistance movements or to argue that the kind of Middle East that Netanyahu wants is now emerging.

First, said Youssef, who was involved in direct talks with Hamas and Hizbullah leaders for over 25 years, it is a mistake to lump Hamas and Hizbullah in the same basket when talking about the future of resistance movements because “they are very different organisations in terms of capacity, influence, and access.”

Second, while it is clear Hamas has seen its capabilities seriously eroded over the past year, the same cannot be said of Hizbullah.

“Yes, we know that there is a problem with command and control in Hizbullah, given the assassinations that eliminated the secretary-general and many other leaders of Hizbullah, but we don’t know where Hizbullah stands in terms of armament or combat readiness, says Youssef.

He also argues that it is “simplistic” to assume, as some have speculated, that Iran will turn its back on Islamic resistance movements in return for some political deal, especially when it comes to Hizbullah.

“This is a decades-long political, financial, and military investment on the part of Iran to strengthen the cards in its hands. It is very hard to think that Tehran will now just drop them.”

Today, Youssef argues, the most pressing questions are how long the wars in Gaza and Lebanon will continue, and how long it will take Hizbullah and Hamas to recover. It is the answer to these questions that will determine whether or not the Middle East changes in the way Netanyahu predicted in his speech before the UN General Assembly, “or go exactly in the other direction”.

As Al-Ahram Weekly was going to press on Tuesday, Iran had launched a barrage of missiles that hit Israel. By 7pm GMT, Israel confirmed that at least 200 missiles had hit several cities from the north to the south of Israel, forcing a nationwide order for all citizens to move to the shelters. For two hours civil defence sirens kept echoing in almost every Israeli city, with sources close to the office of the Iranian supreme guide saying more missiles were going to hit Israel — without specifying a date.

The Iranian attacks on Israel brought waves of joy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly in Gaza where people went out to celebrate at the end of another very tough day of Israeli attacks that killed and wounded dozens of Palestinian civilians.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday evening, Israel announced that eight Israeli settlers died as a result of a shooting attack in Tel Aviv by two Palestinians with machine guns, adding that the number of dead might increase given the bad condition of some of those wounded.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly