Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his ministers and his supporters are hammering home the existential nature of Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It is all the more important to remember that these two militias simply would not exist if the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not been expelled from Lebanon by Israel in 1982, allowing Hezbollah to establish itself in the space thereby left vacant. And if the PLO had been able to bring the peace process with Israel that began in 1993 to a successful conclusion, as the collapse of this process paved the way for Hamas before offering it the keys to Gaza in 2007.

Such a historical reminder puts into perspective the significance of Israel's military successes, however spectacular they may be, since the elimination of the enemy of the moment often facilitates the emergence of an even more formidable adversary in the end. The only lasting victory for Israel, especially given the current overwhelming balance of power in its favor, can only be a political one, even if it is hard for such evidence to assert itself in the face of the current escalation.

PLO expelled from Lebanon to the benefit of Hezbollah

Beginning in 1969, PLO leader Yasser Arafat organized his fedayeen's raids into Israeli territory from Lebanon, in the name of the armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Regular bombardments by the Israeli army did not prevent the PLO from establishing a veritable state within a state in Lebanon and developing its diplomatic activities from Beirut.

In March 1978, the PLO's deadliest attack on Israel (38 civilians killed) led to a first invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army, which was forced to withdraw under pressure from the US. In June 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, launched an invasion, this time on a large scale, with the aim of eliminating Arafat and the fedayeen, under siege in Beirut for many weeks.

But the PLO leader and thousands of his fighters were evacuated from Lebanon under the joint protection of France and the US, while Arafat chose to settle in faraway Tunisia, which was then the headquarters of the Arab League.

The expulsion of the PLO left the way clear for Hezbollah, literally the "Party of God," established clandestinely in Lebanon in the summer of 1982 under the aegis of Syrian intelligence from the Assad regime and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Although Hezbollah operated secretly under different names before formalizing its existence in 1985, it immediately recruited from the mass of Shiite militiamen trained by and, until then, paid by the PLO.

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