“I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” Donald Trump pledged in his victory speech. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his right-wing coalition partners, are hoping that doesn’t apply to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. They aren’t finished yet — and their ultimate target is Iran. Netanyahu will be hoping to tempt Trump into backing his grand strategy to recast the Middle East, one that has no place for Tehran’s clerical leadership, sponsors of Hamas and Hezbollah. He will, of course, recall that Trump was a proponent of a strategy of “maximum pressure” against Iran. “Bibi…
Author: Jamie Dettmer
CHANAY, Lebanon — Sheikh Akl Sami Abi al-Mona, the spiritual leader of Lebanon’s 300,000-strong Druze community, knows full well the horrors of sectarian conflict. His father was killed during the civil war that tore the country apart between 1975 and 1990, claiming the lives of 150,000 people. Speaking in his residence in Chanay on Mount Lebanon, southeast of Beirut, he expressed his alarm that Israel’s war against Hezbollah could trigger a return to sectarian violence, something that almost no-one in the country wants but could prove very hard to prevent. “The Israelis are playing a game,” he told POLITICO,…