Who will deal the final blow? Israel, Lebanon and Hizbullah

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The Economist.

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Rosie Blore.

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And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

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Many in the west used to think that as people got richer, they'd become less religious. Recent history suggests that may be wrong. Our correspondent considers the rise of Islam in Southeast Asia,

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and for seven decades, Jurgen Habermas worried about democracy. How to align the fickle needs of a polity through civil liberties. Rational discourse Our obituary's editor reflects on his life. First up, though, In Beirut, Lebanon's capital, this week, an Israeli strike took down an entire building. Israel obviously has one eye on Iran, its biggest regional foe for decades. But while that war rages, it has another eye on Hezbollah, a loyal proxy of the Iranian regime just over its northern border. Hezbollah has been weakened, its top ranks thinned out, and now its patron, Iran, is embroiled in war. By now, more than 900 Lebanese people have been killed by Israeli bombardment. A million more have fled the south of the country. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, promised that Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, would look like Khan Yunis in Gaza. When we're done, let's be clear.

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No one will allow Hezbollah to get out of this alive.

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Sami Jamail, one of Lebanon's most prominent Christian leaders, sees this as a decisive moment.

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People should understand that Hezbollah is not an ally of Iran. Hezbollah is not a friend of Iran. Hezbollah is the product of Iran.

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The question is, who should deal a final blow to the group and what cost the country and its people will pay.

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Once again, Lebanon has been dragged into war, but this time feels very different.

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Gareth Brown is a Middle east correspondent for the Economist and is based in Beirut.

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In the first 24, 48 hours of the war, you could see a real anger, a real fury at Hezbollah from across the country. Even people within their own community were publicly questioning, why have you dragged us into another war? We wanted nothing to do with this US Israel attack on Iran. And here we are now Israel is hounding the whole country. But I think within a few days, you did see something of a rally around the flag dynamic. The attack by Israel was so vast, the displacement of people so great, you know, and that tapped into Lebanese patriotism. So that dynamic is shifting. But I think the overwhelming mood is people in Lebanon are sick and tired of war,

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but part of that is that they're sick and tired of Hezbollah, too. Right?

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Hezbollah has for years positioned itself as this state within a state. It fought a war against Israel in 2006, which it claimed victory off the back of in the south. It provides social services. It runs schools. But that social contract has really faltered in the last few years. It hasn't been able to rebuild anything in the south since the last war in 2024, because of problems in Iran. It hasn't had the financing to provide all these social services. And I think in the last few weeks, it's been under question even more. Dragging Lebanon into this regional conflict. This feels like a very different conflict. It feels like one which is going to completely change the makeup of Lebanon, of Hezbollah, you know, the future of the region.

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And the sense is that Israel's intentions are expanding, that this might stretch to a ground offensive.

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Israel hasn't yet decided to launch a deeper offensive. There are over 100,000 Israeli troops massing on the southern border. And the IDF has made incursions into the Lebanese border. I think the key question is how far is Israel going to go? Between 1982 and 2000, Israel occupied about a third of Lebanon. It was a disastrous occupation which spawned the birth of Hezbollah. And I think if we see the rhetoric coming out of Israel, if we look at the number of troops on the border and the fact that Israel started bombing bridges across the main river, I think the concern gripping many Lebanese is that once again, Lebanon may be facing a prolonged invasion and occupation by Israel.

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And the idea for Israel here is that Hezbollah is weak and this is the time to strike.

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I think from Israel's perspective, this may well be the final war. Hezbollah is weakened to a point it's never been before. You speak to politicians in Beirut and diplomats, and you get the sense that this War is not going to end with a ceasefire. It's going to end with victory and loss for one side or another. There's also a question here about the role that the Lebanese government is playing. You know, for years, the idea of the Lebanese government confronting Hezbollah, trying to disarm them, take away their weapons has been not just a taboo, but a dangerous one. People have been killed and assassinated for even talking about Hezbollah's guns. And now it's firmly on the table. A week ago, when Hezbollah launched a salvo of rockets which dragged Lebanon into this regional war, the Lebanese government came out very strongly. They explicitly said that their aim now was to disarm the group. This is an armed group with tens of thousands of fighters. Advanced rockets received hundreds of millions of dollars every year from Iran, a very powerful dominant actor within Lebanon and in many cases far stronger than the state. And I think what you've seen in the last week or two is the overton window in Lebanon shift with a government talking about Hezbollah in a way that was unthinkable even just a few months ago.

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And what's your take on the possibility that the Lebanese government could actually take on Hezbollah at this stage? Never mind that it has been taboo. Could it accomplish the task?

7:40

So there's two factors at play here. One is its political willingness and the other is its capacity to do so. Now, the political willingness is the thing that has really shifted in the last few weeks. I do think there is a growing realization that the army needs to do something about it. It needs to reclaim sovereignty. There's a question of capacity. The Lebanese army is one of the few functioning cross sectarian institutions in the country. But it's really been hit hard by the financial crisis in Lebanon in recent years. You have soldiers earning maybe $200 a month. And a lot of the soldiers actually are only expected to turn up to duty every two or three days. And they're allowed to have second jobs to supplement their income. Do they have the weapons? Do they have the training? It's hard to say for sure, but I think even the people who are sort of advocating for the army to do more aren't expecting an all out overnight clash between the army and Hezbollah. They're looking for the army to exert itself in certain areas. But I think there's a growing realization that if this doesn't happen, then an Israeli invasion, an occupation, is inevitable. You have a Lebanese government which is already very weak. Its ministries and institutions are fledgling. And there is a real possibility that actually the Lebanese government is the first casualty of a new Israeli occupation.

7:49

Well, would a more concerted effort by the state, would some general moves in the direction as you describe basically keep Israel at bay, do you think? Or is Israel chomping at the bit in all cases?

9:15

I think there's a general willingness to see the Lebanese government and army do more. You know, at the minute, we have sort of US and French diplomats ferrying around trying to find some sort of solution, trying to broker a diplomatic pause in the fighting which would give the Lebanese government one last chance. The Lebanese army has two key backers, the US and France and the United Kingdom to a lesser extent. And I think there is a sense that that support is no longer inevitable. I think the other risk is the sectarian consequences of an Israeli invasion. What we've seen in the last week is over a million people displaced from the south. They are overwhelmingly Shia, and they're going not entirely, but largely into non Shia areas. And you can see this movement of people really pulling at the sectarian fishes in the country, which only decades ago ripped the whole country apart in civil war. And I think that's a big concern, that if the army isn't seen to act now, this wave of displacement could continue to push these sectarian wounds open. I think this notion that a reckoning is coming was really summed up well by Sami Jamail when I spoke with him.

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The minute Iran collapses the next day, Hezbollah will come to the table and say, okay, let's rethink the future.

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And if Iran survives, Trump cuts the deal to open Straits of Hormuz, and

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then Lebanon is doomed for the next 50 years.

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For the first time in a long while, the government is actually mobilizing to do something. And I think the realization is that if it doesn't, disaster, occupation and invasion await. But with 100,000 soldiers massed on the southern border, even that may not be enough. Perhaps the DAI are already cast, but I think the days of Lebanon's political leadership being able to equivocate, obfuscate, and kick the can down the road are over.

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Gareth, thanks very much for your time.

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Thank you, Jason.

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In Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, even non Islamic traditions often take on a Muslim twist. In February, the start of Ramadan happened to coincide with the lunar New Year. At a mall in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, a crowd gathered to watch a traditional lion dance performed not to the usual drums, but but to Islamic music.

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Su Lin Wong is our Asia correspondent.

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In Southeast Asia, Islam is asserting itself in all parts of civic life through politics, law, consumer culture and social pressure. And as the region modernizes its Muslim majority, societies are becoming more religious, not less. That challenges a long held assumption that economic development leads to secularization.

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So let's take that assumption, that modernization makes societies more secular. Is that just wrong?

13:46

Not really. So across East Asia and Europe, economic development has usually gone hand in hand with declining religious observance. There's long been this argument that with education liberalization and Internet access, that all naturally pushes societies towards more secular values. So it's really interesting because actually there's a very different trend that we're seeing in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, where what matters isn't so much education levels or the rate of economic development, but rather what communities value and reward. And in Indonesia and Malaysia, we're actually seeing these societies becoming more and more religious and public piety has increasingly become a marker of prestige and social status.

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What does that actually mean in practice? How do we see piety and religious zeal come through?

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There are all kinds of examples in both Indonesia and Malaysia. So earlier this year, Indonesia implemented a new criminal code banning premarital sex and expanding the crimes of blasphemy and apostasy. The code also recognises, quote, any living law which potentially would allow local officials to enforce stricter interpretations of Sharia law that that could discriminate against women or minorities. And then across the border in Malaysia, enforcement is sometimes even stricter than what we're seeing in Indonesia. So in August of last year, one state began enforcing a Sharia provision that imposes fines of more than US$700 and prison terms of up to two years on Muslim men who miss even a single Friday prayer. And I guess it's important to note here that not even Iran or Saudi Arabia jails people for skipping prayers.

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So how do you explain that shift?

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So the dynamics are quite different in each country. In Malaysia, what's really important to understand is that Islam is central to politics, and different political parties vie for the Malay vote, which is roughly 60% of the electorate. And under the Constitution, Malays must be Muslim. So as a result, politics politicians will often try to out Islamize each other. As of a couple of years ago, the Islamist party Pass controlled four states and is now the largest party in parliament, although it's still in opposition. And what we are also seeing is that religious authorities are increasingly pushing into areas that are traditionally handled by civil courts. Whereas in Indonesia, I would say the shift is more social rather than political. And if you take a sort of step back and look at broader trends over the past few decades, the share of women who wear the hijab has risen from about 5% in the late 1990s to roughly 3/4 today. On top of that, conservative religious influences attract huge online audiences, not just in Indonesia, but also in Malaysia.

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Su Lin of course, there's been a lot of change in the world since the late 1990s, but one of them, as you say, is the rise of the Internet and social media. How much of a part does that play?

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I would say social media is hugely influential in this part of the world. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have become major arenas for religious teaching, debate, and policing of religious practices. And just a few examples off the top of my head, TikTok really helped pass the Islamist party expand its vote in Malaysia's last election. Celebrity preachers now reach millions, millions via their short videos on social media. And in fact, actually particularly in Malaysia, social media can push authorities to act in ways that they wouldn't have pre social media. So in January, a Zumba instructor went viral, dancing in a headscarf and an outfit that exposed her knees. And as a result of this video spreading all over TikTok, religious authorities in Malaysia actually opened an investigation into the case, and she had to come out and apologize. And a few years ago, a supermarket chain was charged after socks bearing the word Allah appeared in a few of its stores because it was seen as insulting to Muslims.

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Su Lin, where does this leave the sectors of society that are either not particularly religious or not Muslim?

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I think there's increasing friction where the lives of Muslims and non Muslims intersect, especially in the case of Malaysia. And where we see this most obviously is in family law, in custody battles where a husband and wife divorce and there are questions over the religion of the children. In Malaysia, the question of Islam can be quite important in deciding the outcomes of these cases. And one person I spoke to for this story said that these examples are just happening day after day. So it's very likely that in Malaysia we're going to see these tensions between different religious groups continue to rise. In Indonesia, on the other hand, politicians have actually largely avoided weaponizing religion, and there's a much more tolerant, syncretic kind of Islam that is practiced in many parts of the country. But I do think that preserving the country's pluralism requires constant vigilance.

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Su Lin, thank you for talking to me.

19:27

Thanks, Rosie.

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Jurgen Habermas was born with a cleft palate, and this influenced his whole life.

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Ann Ro is the Economist's obituary's editor.

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He had two serious operations by the age of five, and at that age he found it extremely difficult to speak. He would attempt to, but people couldn't understand what he was saying. When he went to school, he was bullied for it. He was ostracized, and for the rest of his life he had a speech impediment which, while it wasn't terrible, made it quite an ordeal for him to have to speak in public. So he tried not to do it. And this was ironic because his whole view of the ideal society was a place built on people talking to each other. He liked to take the model of the coffee houses of the Enlightenment, where mainly men, some women in Europe would get together, read the current magazines and articles, and then debate the issues of the day. Quite reasonably, Jurgen Habermas tried to take this attitude of taking arguments on board and carefully dissecting them to all the universities he moved around. In Germany, his main concern always was how to foster democracy best. And the great enemies of democracy as he saw them were first of all, institutions which took control of the public sphere, which weighed too heavily on people's arguments, so that political parties did, and any institution like churches or even governments could. As far as his own politics went, he caught himself a man of the left, and he was aligned with the Social Democratic Party and gave it advice. But he was very quick to call it out if he didn't agree with it. The other chief enemies of democracy as he saw them were nationalism and authoritarianism, and he'd had a good dose both in his boyhood and his teenage years, when of course, he was living under Nazism, his father, who was an economist, joined up in the Wehrmacht. Habermas himself joined the Hitler Youth. And that involved going to the Western Front, the Siegfried Line, which was defending Germany from attacks from the west by the Allies. And there he acted as a first aider and also as an operator of anti aircraft guns. When the war finished, rather worse things happened. First of all, there were the Nuremberg trials and then there was the discovery of the concentration camps and the film that emerged from them. And he saw to his horror that suddenly the country he had come been serving was engaged in a criminal enterprise. And after that he became extremely outspoken on the subject of making it up to the Jews. The way to make up for history, perhaps the way to come to terms with it and to certainly stop wars in Europe as far as possible, was the founding of the European Union. And this was his greatest hope and his greatest project. He did a lot to shape the way it went and to try to recommend improvements to it, such as a constitution for Europe and a common fiscal and economic policy. And of course, a lot of these dreams didn't actually come to pass. The trouble with the public sphere, as he imagined it, whether it was on a national level or whether it was on a European level, was that very soon institutions took charge of it. And also what happened was that nations and nationalism began to want to make the public sphere work in their own interest. They began to weigh on it so heavily that in fact, there couldn't be a common opinion on things because the various nations that made up the European Union were too aware of what their electorates wanted. So you did not really have a reasonably discussing bunch of people or group of countries. It was an idealistic vision and he was very much criticized for it. There had been a thought for a while when the Internet arrived that that could be the equivalent of the Enlightenment coffee houses. Everyone would get together, exchange opinions and learn to live happily with each other. But of course, as Habermas himself was the first to agree, the effect it really had was to polarize the populace, to fragment it into various camps, and then to distract it with all sorts of stupidities. So the Internet, no, was not the savior of democracy. But he continued for seven decades altogether to worry about it and to write about it. He produced dozens of books and many, many articles saying what should be done. In fact, though of course not saying them so much as writing them, it was still difficult for him to join in what he called the commonality of human speech. But there were other ways to speak.

19:59

Ann Ro? On Jurgen Habermas, who's died aged 96. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is Sarah Larniuk. And our sound designer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Henrietta McFarlane and Alize Jean Baptiste. Our senior creative producer is William Warren. And our senior development producer is Rory Galloway. Our producers are Jonathan Day and Anne Hanna. And our assistant producer is Kunal Patel. With extra production help this week from Sarah Treiner and Benji Guy, we'll all see you back here tomorrow for the weekend. Intelligence. This week it's going to be on the saucy side. Our correspondent attends the big annual conference of the porn industry. It's just another kind of work that's at risk of disruption in the age of AI. What happens to both the makers and the consumers of porn when its workers can do absolutely anything, anytime? See you there, you naughty thing.

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