Europe’s condemnation of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah has been as dispiriting as it is revealing. Having already opposed the campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Britain and the EU have now adopted Tehran’s own framing of the conflict: that any ceasefire with the regime must encompass Lebanon.
A day before Tuesday’s historic peace negotiations between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to Washington, Keir Starmer reiterated Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper’s criticism of Jerusalem’s military offensive against Hezbollah – a position also shared by the EU.
“We call for Lebanon to be included urgently in the ceasefire. Diplomacy is the right path, and I welcome the talks taking place this week,” the prime minister said in parliament. “Hezbollah must disarm. But I'm equally clear: Israel's strikes are wrong. They are having devastating humanitarian consequences and pushing Lebanon into a crisis. The bombing should stop now.”
This is not merely a diplomatic misstep but a strategic error of the first order. Insisting that Lebanon’s sovereignty must be protected by folding it into a deal with the Islamic Republic is a contradiction in terms. In calling for such a policy, British and European leaders tacitly concede what they otherwise deny: that Lebanese sovereignty is a fiction. The country is effectively occupied – not by Israel, but by Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah.
The Israeli-Lebanese talks the prime minister has welcomed are happening for one reason: Israel ignored European advice and continued to degrade Hezbollah. In doing so, it has given the Lebanese state just enough room to act independently of the Shia terror group and agree to negotiations. Israeli action has, in effect, helped Beirut begin to recover a measure of sovereignty – sufficient to resist being folded into an Iranian ceasefire and to take the first steps away from the very Iranian domination Europe’s policy risks entrenching.
Hezbollah, though, is only weakened, not defeated. If Lebanese sovereignty – for which Europe claims to care so much – is to be protected, respectively restored, Hezbollah must be disarmed. Yet whenever Israel moves decisively in that direction, Europe reaches for its habitual response to Israeli self-defence: calls for de-escalation.
Equally troubling is the cursory attention paid to Israel’s own sovereignty and the suffering of its population. For decades, Israeli civilians in the north have lived under constant threat from Hezbollah fire and invasion, forced at times to flee their homes. Many are still displaced. The day after October 7, the Shia terror group joined the war on Hamas’s side, opening a second front against Israel, and has since escalated its attacks following the Iran campaign – not in defence of Lebanon, but in defence of its Iranian patrons. Since March 2 alone, Hezbollah has fired more than 6,500 missiles, rockets, and UAVs at Israeli civilians. Yet European and British statements treat these war crimes as an afterthought, if they acknowledge them at all.
Instead, the focus is as always on Israel’s response. Claims of disproportionate civilian harm are repeated with the same lack of scrutiny as during the Gaza war and ignore the well-documented strategy of Iran and its proxies to use their own civilian populations as human shields. When France’s president accused Israel of “indiscriminate” bombing, he crossed a line from unbalanced criticism into outright calumny.
Israel’s objectives in Lebanon are limited and clear. Jerusalem seeks neither territory nor domination, only the removal of an immediate and persistent threat: the use of Lebanese soil as a platform for attacks on Israeli civilians. The establishment of a buffer zone is not an act of expansion, but of self-defence, intended to prevent anti-tank missile fire on border communities and avert future incursions.
Peace between Israel and Lebanon is not an impossible dream. But it rests on a single, indispensable condition: that Lebanon becomes a genuinely sovereign state, free from Iranian control. By pressing Israel to halt its campaign against Hezbollah, and by insisting on Lebanon’s inclusion in a ceasefire with the Islamic Republic, Europe risks entrenching the very instability it claims to oppose.
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