Dr. Imad Rizk: The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not going to stop

Pravda.Ru special correspondent Daria Aslamova interviewed Dr. Imad Rizk, Director of the Institute of Strategic and Communication Studies of Lebanon (Beirut). In the interview, Dr. Rizk shared his thoughts about Hezbollah’s support for the Gaza Strip, how the United States wanted to create a new architecture for the Middle East, and when and how the conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel may end.

Photo: Pravda.Ru by Daria Aslamova

I am Imad Rizk, I am head of strategic study center in Beirut, a company specializing in strategy, communication and  analyzing speculation of activities in Middle East - activities related to politics, economy and crisis. We have been in Beirut for 15 years. I also write weekly articles for Lebanese newspapers. Now we focus on what’s happening on our border and region against the background of the crisis in Gaza. Before we were focusing on Syria and Iran, an all the time we were focusing on Palestinian negotiations and peace process. One of our direction of work was devoted to nuclear program negotiations between 5+1 Group and Iran. 

This is in brief about what we do. The mission of our center is to promote peace in Middle East and stop this war through analysis, through making a possibility of communication between each parties. 

We're now in the midst of war in the Middle East, which is still a regional war between Hamas and Israel. There is a possibility for it to development to a much bigger war between Lebanon and Israel. Do you think this can be possible? 

First we have we have to look at what happened after October 7. We were not expecting this reaction from Netanyahu. Yes it was for the first time it was related to the image of the Israeli army, but the ensuing resistance made it hard to make a balance of terror with Israel. This is why maybe Netanyahu made a decision to make this reaction, or rather overreaction.

Analyst from inside Israel, or from the US say that Israel had been prepared to attack Gaza and maybe also Lebanon before October 7.

Really? What does it mean? Was all this prepared in advance? 

It was an operation made by Palestinian resistance, Hamas especially. Everybody knows that Gaza is under sanctions and embargo. Life in Gaza started to be unbearable. You cannot find a place in the word surrounded and under sanction like this place. I wasn’t shocked to see this reaction from Palestinians against Israeli army because during years, Israeli army was killing and putting pressure, psychological pressure, military pressure and economic pressure on Palestinians. It was normal psychologically to see that happening in response. Anyone living under this psychological pressure could do it. Yet, the reaction that came from Netanyahu seems to be related to his internal political problems with Yair Lapid. It was also related to his desire to get his power back in Israel, especially after his problems with media. Netanyahu was preparing himself to become the emperor of Israel. He started thinking of himself as the savior of the Jewish people. That is why he made that decision.

Some people believe that Israel already knew that there would be some action from Hamas. Israel was waiting for it to happen to use it as a reason to attack Gaza. Is it true or not?

This is just a piece of information that comes from different sources. It was reported that Hamas was preparing an operation or something unusual. Why did they want to do that? Netanyahu never believed that they could do something that serious. Israel's relations with Saudi Arabia and other states may become more complicated. Up to 500,000 Palestinians, who live in Gaza, they used to work at Israeli farms, but now this cooperation has been destroyed. Israel may have a lot of problem in its future economy. It will be very difficult to restore trust between people, to restore their mentality. More than 65% of Gazans are young people. It was a real treat for Israel if Palestinian continued living like that. What’s Netanyahu is doing it’s like a genocide reaction related to October 7 attacks. In the future, the relations between Palestinians and Israelis will become even more complicated. The radical will get even more radical and the liberal will want to leave this place because this place is not a place for business. Israel will enter a new dark circle.

So year after year problems of demography and economic problems, lack of investment trust will grow. Companies working in the sphere of nanotechnology will not be able to establish their presence there, because they will not feel safe. There is no trust inside the state and there will be no trust between the states of the region either. The fight for Mediterranean oil and gas resources will continue, and communication between neighbours will be getting worse. The crisis in the West Bank is not subsiding, the number of Jewish settlements there is growing. It means we enter a circle of violence and instability in this region.

The current crisis will not stop - it will not be a crisis only between Gaza and Israel. It will be a crisis between Palestine and Israel at one level and at another level it will be a crisis between Muslims and Israel. Hezbollah and Lebanon live under Shia law, and whoever in the world lives under the name of Daesh, Nusra, whatever - they will fight to support Muslims. Israel may clash with Muslims, so Netanyahu is making a lot of problem for the future of the young generations inside Israel. 

So you are saying that there are a few levels of this war  - do you think Hamas has some chances in this war? Israel is a nuclear power that has a large and professional army, but Hamas does not have all that, it does not have good artillery weapons either. Chances are not equal are they?

Chances are not equal from the military point of view. They’re not equal from the point of view of  technology, resources and support. Israel now has the support of NATO, the US, the EU - everyone is supporting so they bring Israel tanks, rockets, bullets, ships and everything else from all over the world. They say to Israel: you are safe, don’t be afraid, we are supporting you. But who is supporting Hamas? Hamas is supported by Palestinians. After four months of this war you can see Israel has not won. Israeli troops have not established firm presence in either the south or the north of Gaza. They are fighting for every meter, even centimeter of land. When we talk about Gaza, everyone knows that Gaza is only 400 km² it’s as small as a city.

I wrote an article for a newspaper in which I compared Bakhmut and Gaza. What they have in common is fighting in underground places. Bakhmut had been prepared very well and used the Ukrainian to fight, but in Gaza they are fighting for themselves, with their own military equipment. When you believe in yourself and you believe in your land you fight till the end. Those who were fighting in Bakhmut were not from Bakhmut. This is why at the end they lose. But those who fight in Gaza they fight for their land for their own home. Netanyahu is from Yakud and the founders of Yakud came from Bakhmut and Odessa, so this is the relation between what’s happening there and what’s happening now in Gaza. 

Well, it's difficult to find this connection between these two cities. What I wanted to ask you in the beginning - do you think that this regional war will come to Lebanon? Do you think it will be a war between Israel and Lebanon?

If Lebanon enters real war, it means there will be a large-scale operation coming. It is not going to be about Hezbollah attacking targets at the border. It is not going to be about Israel attacking civilian places inside Lebanon by airplane. Israel can use airplanes and high-tech for attacks, but it seems for the first time after 2006 that Hezbollah gets a lot of technology and techniques. It is well informed about what’s happening inside the occupied Palestinian land. There are different kinds of missile that Hezbollah uses today. The Alburkan is like Katyusha - it was a prepared and modified by Hezbollah. Hezbollah also benefits from what happened in Syria. Most of their equipment is Russian. Today they use Sagar, Majorca….  

Where do they take all this?

They get it from the war in Syria and from black market, it seems. There are more than 2,400 anti-tank missiles, they use them against Israeli Merkava tanks for four months already. It’s like 2006 (the time of war between Israel and Lebanon - ed.) when there was Russian equipment against NATO equipment and the Russian equipment won. In today's fighting, we can still see Russian equipment vs. American technology, American-Israeli technology. This is all like a continuous war to what happened in Syria when the CIA and American Javelins were involved, when Americans were fighting Russia in Syria, when Russia was supporting the Syrian army, changing tactics, equipment and other things. Russia took advantage of its experience in Syria to fight NATO in Ukraine.

This is all one battlefield - Syria, Ukraine and now South Lebanon. It seems we have the same battlefield with Russian, Soviet, American and NATO equipment involved. This is the first technology war or artificial intelligence war when they are trying to use all what they tried to test before. They use artificial intelligence, space and aviation technology in this combined combat. Eisenhower aircraft was here. They use drones to attack Hezbollah positions in South Lebanon. Netanyahu and Americans want to test their technology in combat - the want to use everything that they tested before in Syria, in Iraq or in Libya. They want to kill Palestinians, to destroy Gaza, to destroy any opportunity of life, and also to test their artificial intelligence equipment and other equipment on this battlefield in Gaza or on Lebanese border.

What you have now is a battle between the collective West in the face of the United States, European Union and Great Britain from one side. From the other side, it’s Russia. There are conflicts in Syria and Ukraine and now we have this happening in Lebanon and Gaza. This is the same competition, the same battle between the collective West and Russia.

It seems this is a continuous war. The Americans want to benefit from this war, and this competition and this crisis is also meant to sell arms and use them directly. They also bring Iran involved in the Middle East. If we read the peace process from 91 to 94 when they start the peace process between Palestine and Israel at that moment, we can not find the real supporter of Palestine at that moment. Palestine was getting in dialogue or in discussion with Israel to make the peace process but after 2000 the USA became involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and was near Iran. Also at that moment everything changed so we start to see the uprising of Palestinians, Palestine started getting new military equipment. From that moment Americans started promoting a deal with Iran, not related to the nuclear project but to make a settlement in the new Middle East.

After 2006 they promote the new Middle East to reshape or make a new architecture for the Middle East. Now Iranians bring American and British to the Red Sea inside the Gulf region. if someone attacks American or French or British the Americans will say they were supported by Iran. That by proxy means Houthi or Hezbollah. The Americans start to be involved directly. We have two ways of dialogue - fight or table. Iran is winning this fight by points because neither the US nor Israel  can defeat Hamas, the youngest organisation. As we can see from recent developments, there is a sea fight between the Americans, the Brits and the Houthi rebels.

The Americans leave and the Houthi want to continue, they can fight so they don’t care. The US and Israeli are not ready to fight Iran, they are not ready to fight China or Russia either. They just want to say  -  I am here. they can not actually do anything so it means that they’re searching for negotiations. if we go back to our Lebanese border, they say we want to fight. Israel will be different - it will no longer be the dream home for the Jews. The region will stage a military operation against it, and if they lose, they lose forever. This is why the Americans have to fight Hezbollah and Iran. When we say we say Iran, we say acts of resistance or acts of fighting against NATO, Russia and China. Lebanese resistance fighters are not fighting for Lebanon. They are fighting to change the stability or the form of, the balance between the west and the east, between Russia, China, and NATO-US.

This is why we have an expectation for the small war. Israel will continue to attack civilians and South Lebanon or maybe another place in Lebanon to accuse Hezbollah to start the war Israel does not want to start. They want to make aggressive attacks and to push Hezbollah for it, Hezbollah controls everything, ad one can see that as a result of the four months of war. I believe that the operation will grow bigger in a few weeks, Israel will increase the number of attacks, and Lebanon together with Hezbollah will continue to make more problems for Israel, but at the end Israel, as a nuclear power, will say that it is the biggest and most powerful state. When they say so they will lose to Hamas, and if they lose to Hamas, it will be normal to lose to Hezbollah, a more powerful, more equipped and more prepared group.

Everybody was waiting for Hezbollah to open a second front against Hamas but officially they didn’t. How do you explain this?

From the beginning Hezbollah announced its support for Palestine - morally, not militarily. That announcement was supposed to put military, economic and political pressure on Israel. It’s not Hezbollah that started this war. Hezbollah is not fighting Israel just to fight Israel. Yes, we have our land occupied, but it was under discussion. Hezbollah is supporting the Palestinian resistance in West Bank in Gaza. Mr. Nasrallah said -  once Israel stops operation and Gaza, we stop. He’s not making this fight just for fight. if we start negotiations for a ceasefire, Hezbollah will be ready to stop and corporate with Palestinians against Israel's project. Israel plans to put Palestinian people outside Gaza to Egypt or another country, for example to Africa. Rumour has it that they want to send 300,000 to Lebanon. 

Did Israel really say that they wanted to send 300,000 Gazans to Egypt or Africa?

Through Egypt they proposed to Chad, Libya and other countries.

Is this information true?

Well, this is just information. This is what we get in the media.

They want to send 300,000 Palestinians through Egypt to Africa?

Yes. What is happening in Gaza is genocide. More than 100,000 were killed and more than 600,000 were injured. They have big social, health problems, thee is no drinking water, no food, no electricity - nothing. There is no possibility of life. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.