California professor Hicham Bou Nassif said Lebanon is not paying the price for an Israeli conspiracy, but for decades of allowing outside powers to use Lebanese territory for their own wars.
In a May 23 interview with Beirut Times, Bou Nassif, assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said there is no “Greater Israel” plan and no Israeli conspiracy against Lebanon. He argued that Lebanon has suffered for more than 50 years because others have used the country to advance their own agendas.
Bou Nassif said Yasser Arafat used Lebanon as a base for the Palestinian cause at the expense of Lebanon’s destruction. He added that Lebanon later suffered from the actions of the Assad regime in Syria and the Iranian regime.
He said the idea of a “Greater Israel” plan is only an “ideological illusion,” and that Israel is an internationally recognized state that cannot be expected to avoid retaliation when it is attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.