Is the US Trying to Pick a Fight With Hezbollah?
The DNC quietly added platform language hinting at a US escalation in Lebanon.
As Israel’s war on Gaza has spurred broader regional violence, fears of a severe escalation in Lebanon are growing. Tucked away in the Democratic National Committee’s new 2024 platform is language that seems to indicate the party’s openness to it.
"The Lebanese people deserve to live in an independent and sovereign Lebanon that is free from the grip of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and a corruption-free, competent, reform-minded government focused on addressing the needs of its people,” the DNC 2024 platform reads. “In this regard, the Administration is also committed to facilitating a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border that would ensure the return of both Israeli and Lebanese families to their homes.”
The language — published last week at the beginning of a political party convention that actively excluded Palestinian voices — came just days before Israel launched a “pre-emptive strike” on Lebanon in response to a “detected” forthcoming attack from Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has maintained that it is acting in support of Hamas, as ceasefire negotiations continue to stall. The new language — formally echoing the stance the Biden-Harris administration has maintained toward Hamas — could portend escalation in Lebanon broadly, considering the administration’s unconditional support of Israel in its quest to “eliminate Hamas,” resulting in broader devastation in Gaza.
‘AIPAC’s Extreme Regional Agenda’
Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, warns as much. "This language results from the Biden-Harris administration adopting AIPAC’s extreme regional agenda but giving it a softer edge with ‘Rules-Based International Order’ framing,” he told me, referring to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Now that Israel has seen the previously unimaginable levels of mass killing the US will permit, it’s likely only a matter of time before we see further escalation in Lebanon.”
Arab American Institute president James Zogby, who co-chairs the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council, told me he did not know what motivated those who wrote the platform to add the language, but that it’s not unprecedented for such documents to be disconnected from reality. “Platforms are political documents that reflect power balances at work in the party. When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, they are always tone deaf to real policy concerns,” said Zogby, who has served for three decades in leadership roles at the DNC, and recalls failed efforts to get “occupation” into the DNC platform.
It would’ve been one thing, Zogby said, if the platform not only criticized Hezbollah, but also the “obstructionism and provocations, and violence” of right-wing Israeli governments,” but “AIPAC would never let that go through.”
