Weaponizing food!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
Opinion
August 10, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

Food is a major strategic weapon that can be used against one’s enemy. It can be applied in three cases: When consumed, boycotted or as a deprivation tool!*

Like other types of essential ammunition, soldiers need food to be able to keep on fighting and advancing. No better phrase can explain this idea than the famous quote attributed to Emperor Napoleon when he said: “Armies crawl on their bellies”!

But sometimes, when the other side, your opponent, is also smart and you have the capitalist system of franchising products working in every corner, unexpected things can happen!

This story can, one day, become a classical case study in politics, economics, sociology, psychology and warfare!

It all began in the first half of October 2023 when a franchised company in Israel, representing a famous world food chain, thought it would be a cool idea to photograph Israeli soldiers on the Gaza front, receiving nicely packed items of food produced by that company!

Its Israeli CEO, probably, wanted to demonstrate a symbolic gesture, rather than providing an irreplaceable type of food for the Israeli soldiers on that occasion. But he seemed to have forgotten or deliberately ignore that the same kind of food is available all over the world, including places, where his “enemies” and their allies, by the millions, live and regularly consume the same commodity!

Those millions on the other side of the front line were dismayed and felt offended by those carefully taken shots of the Israeli soldiers receiving their food packages.

The former did not know who was really behind this gesture. But they couldn’t not care less if the gesture originated from within Israel, or was inspired by the mother company in another faraway place.

So they, as a sign of protest of the war against Gaza, decided to boycott all products and services of this company in all of its branches.

They were also aware that the franchised branches play an important role in the local economy in each country. Thousands of young people are hired where unemployment rates are high; they also use subsidiary locally-produced items and so forth. But they had a choice to make. It was a hard one but less painful than acting as if they condone the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

The results of this world wide boycott movement, even in some European countries, proved catastrophic for all branches and especially for the Mother Company, since it’s the one who gets the lion’s share of the pie!

In addition to the symbolic meaning of this initiative which involves national dignity, exercising awareness, it was used as a last resort to fight back and defend their rights and beliefs.

Never take anything for granted, when you go to junk food eatery. Surprises can crawl out from the slices of bread!

*Deliberately depriving the enemy of food is tantamount to a flagrant war crime!

This opinion was especially written for Crossfire Arabia by Saleem Ayoub Quna who is a Jordanian author writing on local, regional and international affairs and has two books published. He has a BA in English Literature from Jordan University, a diploma from Paris and an MA from Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He also speaks French and German

Saleem Ayoub Quna

Opinion

Can Israel Create A Lebanese Buffer Zone?

CrossFireArabia
March 25, 2026

By Imad Rizk

Since last Wednesday, the Israeli army has continued targeting the network of roads and bridges that link Lebanon to its south. In addition to pressuring the Lebanese government to make concessions in Lebanon and possibly beyond, the Israeli army claimed that targeting the Qasmiyeh bridge and other bridges is intended to prevent the transfer of military supplies to southern Lebanon. However, military experts questioned this justification, noting that Israeli aircraft maintain intense air dominance over the routes leading to the south, which undermines the credibility of this claim. Sources believe that targeting infrastructure, especially bridges and roads, aims to isolate the southern region in preparation for occupying it and turning it into a “buffer zone”.

After the 1982 invasion, Israel maintained a buffer zone in southern Lebanon for 15 years. It was meant to prevent attacks but instead created local resistance and required constant military presence, ending with a unilateral Israeli withdrawal in 2000.

Buffer zones as a military solution in the region were tested between 1985 and 2000. In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel avoided re-occupying Lebanon, relying instead on air power and UN peacekeepers (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon). Now, in 2026, Israel is returning to buffer zone thinking. Current discussions of a 10-15 km buffer zone show that Israel is returning to a doctrine it once abandoned as distancing itself from its enemy is more important than before.

Meanwhile, air raids continue to target the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and its southern suburbs. Residential areas and neighborhoods near Beirut and in the coastal city of Sidon are also being targeted under the pretext of assassinating figures and cadres linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

On the southern front, the Israeli army has been facing major difficulties in advancing and consolidating its positions since March 2. Hezbollah in Lebanon targeted Israeli troops at dozens of locations.

Ground combat tactics against the Israeli ground maneuver

Hezbollah carried out strikes against concentrations of soldiers and vehicles in different border villages. These attacks were carried out using rockets and artillery shells.

Operations extended beyond the border line, where Hezbollah support units targeted military positions and fixed barracks, as well as newly established sites in Jabal al-Bat and Nimer al-Jamal. Strikes also repeatedly hit the Avivim barracks, as well as Ramot Naftali, Branit, Hounin, Nahal Gershom base, and the Meron Air Surveillance Base.

Both Hezbollah and the Israeli army also carried out psychological and media operations associated with the ground maneuver, including threats, intimidation, low-altitude aircraft flights, and air raids conducted at night or at dawn. Settlers were also used in messaging to suggest that failure to negotiate would expose Lebanon to destruction similar to Gaza, or to incite Lebanese public opinion against a particular sectarian group and the environment that supports confrontation with Israel.

Overall assessment

In summary, the ongoing confrontation since March 2 reveals a gap between Israeli rhetoric and action. Despite statements about deploying three full military divisions, these forces rely heavily on air strikes to flush out Hezbollah fighters positioned inside villages and in the surrounding wooded terrain.

Hezbollah initially responded by targeting troop concentrations with rockets from outside the area south of the Litani River in the early days, and also struck D-9 bulldozers from areas far from the front line, while its special units advanced and seized forward positions. There was also discussion of advances along the Khiam-Marjayoun axis, with the understanding that the advance aimed to encircle the city of Nabatieh in the south and push through the Sahmar axis toward an unspecified town to reach Lake Qaraoun, similar to what Israel did on the Syrian front when it took control of the Yarmouk basin.

A notable development was the use of explosive drones similar to tactics used in Ukraine. On Friday, armed drones were used to strike a rear-area position on the Israeli side. This was considered the second major tactical surprise to enter the battlefield after the previous confrontation in 2024 during the “66-day battle.”

Israeli attacks on Iran and the entry of Iranian missiles targeting Israeli troop concentrations and fortifications around the town of Khiam suggest that the linkage of fronts — from southern Lebanon to Iraq and Iran — indicates that the Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters in Iran is directing a confrontation against Israeli destabilization and US military presence across a theater stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf.

The author is the director of the Institute for Strategic and Communication Studies in Lebanon (Isticharia-ISCS). Anadolu

Opinion

Hamlet in The White House!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
March 24, 2026

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

There must be something very unusual going on in the head of the 47th President of the US, to the degree that it could be detrimental to himself, to his own people and to the rest of the world, as we know it since the end of WWII; a kind of a personalized erratic approach to reality, based exclusively, on the notion of profit and loss, of take not give, especially in monetary terms.

From his younger age, Mr. Trump was not just any ordinary successful business man who would tolerate a ceiling for his ambitions. He was an over-ambitious entrepreneur with multi-branched interests. As a leading real-estate developer, thriving in a culture built on competition and affluence in all aspects of life, sometimes at the expense of choosing between right and wrong, upholding justice, tolerance versus other ethnic groups, and adherence to basic moral standards, as preached by different schools of philosophy and ideology, Trump ventured into all sorts of domains such as wrestling, movies, TV shows,
casinos, resort hotels and so forth. He was an unstoppable adventurer with strongly-rooted instinct to win every bet he made, until a more challenging idea would click in his mind!

Mr. Trump was lured to politics from the early days of 1980s, but he never made a serious move until four decades or so later. There are some reasons for that long hold of course, but one consideration that must have played a decisive role, had to do with his awareness that working in politics would not make him richer!

But as time goes by, one gets older, wiser and less adventurous! Trump reached this stage during the second decade of the 21st century; He felt he is getting older and that made him boring and bored at the
same time! So one night, his nemesis pays him a sudden call and immediately he bows to it. As a result he puts on his new mantel as the Supreme Commander of the free world for one term (2017-2021) which
ends with a historical unprecedented incursion of the Capitol by his supporters, on the grounds that his winning opponent, Joe Biden, rigged the elections!

Four years later it’s the comeback of the wounded warrior! This time Trump has learned many important lessons of how to be a Supreme Commander, while openly tampering with the idea of a third term in
2028! Trump’s first move was to fortify his newly reclaimed fortress with completely obedient entourage, so he could release all his non-depletable genius and energy reserve.

Now it’s time for closing some old accounts; it’s time to play! Within days in office, Trump expresses his wish to welcome Canada to his empire as its 51 st state. Then he changes the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, because it is more beautiful! Later he targets US monuments such as the Kennedy Center, the International Airport in Virginia and Pennsylvania Station for the same purpose!

Another morning he wakes up to tell the world that the US should take over Greenland, one way or the other. While the ‘Venezuela’ over-night expedition was seen by many, including Trump himself, as a clip from an animated action movie, where the good cops with their IA run sophisticated machinery and technology, apprehends a notorious out-of-law gangster and flies him to jail!

Trump’s latest games which was clumsily suspended last year in June, is the same one, unfolding before our eyes these days with Iran. The latest update on this dangerous game was Trump’s devious
attempt to curb the unexpected financial repercussions in the world oil market and their consequent direct impact on his domestic rating versus the Democrats vying for midterm elections this coming
November.

For Trump this would be a red line that no one is allowed to tamper with. This is one of the bet games which he cannot lose: Who will control the House and the Senate next November? It is that kind of
situation that could make him quote Hamlet the Prince of Denmark, the legendary character portrayed by Shakespeare when he shouted; “To be, or not to be, that is the question”!

Hamlet was addressing a ghost!