"Planes, planes, planes"

The night was pleasant in Beirut. The cafes were awake like lanterns by the sea. This city has a habit of covering up its wounds and disappointments. It defies its death and the rubble. It convinces visitors that a wedding is coming despite the deaths of many of the guests. We were turning over the maps of misfortune, counting the losses and gains. We tried to ward off the cup of despair from our days. But a constant buzzing poured poison into the table of oblivion.

In the skies, a roaming killer. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. He counts breaths and takes pictures. He searches for his prey, surrounds it, and then issues the death sentence. A roaming killer. He stays awake over the killing fields of Gaza, never forgetting the West Bank. He violates the arteries of Lebanon, never leaving Syria. He preys on a tent in the Gaza Strip, or a car in southern Lebanon. Neither Gaza, Beirut, nor Damascus can expel him. And when the opportunity arises for a grand killing feast, drones are aided by advanced warplanes, and funerals take place. Artificial intelligence is an amazing being. It multiplies the ability of drones to kill and swim in the blood of maps. And drones, like militias, do not respect international laws and border markers.

Two news items in our newspaper caught my attention. The first states that the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps conveyed a clear message from the Iranian leadership to Iraqi factions. The message called on the relevant factions to "avoid all forms of provocation against the Americans and Israelis" to avoid repercussions. The second quotes Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein as saying, "Iraq is not part of the axis of resistance and does not accept the unity of arenas. We believe only in the Iraqi arena."

I was also struck by the Palestinian Ministry of Health's announcement that the death toll in Gaza since the outbreak of "Operation Protective Edge" has reached fifty thousand.

The retired general said he feared that Israeli aircraft had broken the previous "balance" in the region in a greater and more dangerous way than they did in the 1967 war. He noted that Netanyahu's aircraft had almost completely destroyed what remained of Bashar al-Assad's army arsenal. They destroyed weapons and facilities as if to ensure that no hostile force would arise in the coming years. The current Syrian regime had no choice but to watch as the aircraft targeted airports, facilities, and barracks.

Perhaps the aircraft intended to convey a message that President Ahmad al-Sharaa's rule in Syria would be unstable unless he completely abandons the possibility of confronting Israel one day, and that he must accept Syria's withdrawal from the Arab-Israeli conflict despite the Golan Heights remaining occupied. Israel has gone beyond this, demanding a safe zone deep within Syrian territory and threatening to play on the fears of various factions.

The same drones had turned the tide in Syria. No one imagined that when Israeli aircraft were pursuing the positions and hideouts of Revolutionary Guard generals in Syria, the Guard would quickly leave the country. Nor was it expected that the drones would cause President Bashar al-Assad to flee and for Sharaa to appear before Syria from the palace where the elder Assad, and later the younger Assad, had sat.

The warplanes have completely revolutionized the Syrian scene. The "axis of resistance" has lost the Syrian link, which was the main bridge that brought General Qassem Soleimani's dreams to the Mediterranean shores.

The warplanes punished the Lebanese Hezbollah party with excessive severity for launching the "Support Front," which it announced the day after Yahya Sinwar's storm began. The party lost thousands of fighters and its most prominent leader in history, Hassan Nasrallah. A clear coup. The trilogy of "army, people, and resistance" was absent from Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's government statement, and President Joseph Aoun's inaugural statement clearly spoke of the monopoly of arms. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continued its killing operations. Its air dominance remains unthreatened. It is clear that Hezbollah cannot return to war in light of the new balance of power, whose shift in Syria has revealed the extent of its imbalance.

The drones changed the calculations. Some Iraqi factions, like the Houthis, were eager to engage Israel, even from afar. Israel threatened to send its drones toward Baghdad. Tehran cannot prevent Israeli aircraft from targeting its allies in Iraq. Iran itself was unable to continue the exchange of strikes with Israel, and the issue of its nuclear facilities was open to US-Israeli negotiations. Trump's envoy to the Middle East reiterated yesterday: "Iran cannot and will not be allowed to possess a nuclear bomb."

Israeli aircraft violate several maps. They kill, destroy, and impose conditions. To protect themselves from them, one must knock on the door of the American mediator. To convince them, one must pay a heavy price, starting with withdrawing from the "axis of resistance." The picture is stark and clear. There will be no stability in Syria unless it withdraws from the conflict. There will be no reconstruction in Lebanon unless Hezbollah's weapons are retired. There will be no end to the raids on Yemen unless the Houthis stop targeting shipping in the Red Sea and Israel. There will be no leniency with Iran unless it abandons its dream of the bomb and its policy of mobilizing proxies. Israel is aggressive by nature and by its approach. But did we have the right to push our maps into confrontations that would tear them apart, forgetting the technological gap and the strict American support for Israel?

The story of the planes reminded me of those days when the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, a voice that transcends eras, watched from his apartment as Israeli planes rained down on Beirut, which was surrounded by General Ariel Sharon's forces. I also remembered his poem "That's Her Picture, This Is the Lover's Suicide," in which he repeatedly repeats the phrase "planes, planes, planes." I couldn't think of a better title for this article than to borrow that phrase.