Urooba
Jamal and Mersiha Gadzo
- At least 19 Palestinians have been killed and 72 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
- According to our team on the ground, three aid workers of World Central Kitchen have been killed since dawn in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis.
- As the ceasefire in Lebanon enters a fourth day, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem declared a “divine victory” in his movement’s war with Israel.
- Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 44,382 Palestinians and wounded 105,142 since October 7, 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day, and more than 200 were taken captive.
- In Lebanon, at least 3,961 people have been killed and 16,520 wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began.
Martin Jay
The recent news of a ceasefire
between Hezbollah and Israel should be welcomed, if it is real and the parties
are sincere about their statements and intentions. But how much can we trust
western media to guide us through the maize of the deal, even its minutia, when
we have seen their absolute allegiance to Israel? A recent ‘explainer’ by the
BBC laid out all the points. Israel and the Lebanese state will enforce the UN
article 1701 for the first time since 2006. In a nutshell, it requires all
Hezbollah fighters and their equipment to be shipped north of the Litani river,
thus creating a 20 km buffer zone on Israel’s border. Lebanese armed forced are
expected to move into this area and to ensure that no Hezbollah presence is
ever there and to play the role of some sort of peacekeeper, western police
force. You know the kind of thing.
But just how serious is this plan
and is it intended to last and be what Biden claims is a permanent ceasefire?
Shouldn’t both the Lebanese state and the Shias who have left their bombed
homes in the south be skeptical?
The first thing which should set
alarm bells ringing is how the plan has been presented to the press. Outlets
like BBC, who have an atrocious reputation for being stenographers for Israel’s
propaganda, along with Sky News, have presented the details of the plan in
great detail. Should western media be trusted as conduits to the whole deal
when it is written up as though in bullet points with no journalist’s name and
most of the material completely unattributed?
“The ceasefire agreement says
Israeli forces will move south of the Blue Line “in a phased manner” within 60
days” claims the piece. “The Lebanese army’s troops will deploy “in parallel”
to the positions”.
And then, it is explained, what is
required from the Lebanese army gets cranked up to an almost preposterous
level.
“Without mentioning Hezbollah, the
agreement says the Lebanese army will “dismantle all infrastructure, and
military positions, and confiscate all unauthorised arms” in what it calls the
Southern Litani Area, as well as stop the unauthorised entry of weapons into
Lebanon and dismantle any unauthorised weapons production facilities.
“The agreement also says that
“Lebanon’s official military and security forces, infrastructure and weaponry
will be the only armed groups, arms, and related material deployed” in the
Southern Litani Area. The only exception is the UN peacekeeping mission in
southern Lebanon, Unifil, which has about 10,000 troops”.
And so Biden’s plans are to give a
whole new level of power and responsibility to the Lebanese army, which until
now, has been a very much poorer organization than Hezbollah, both in caliber
of soldier and even equipment. Lebanon does receive considerable military aid
but much of what the army has is outdated hand-me-downs from Uncle Sam. For
example, most Lebanese army soldiers today still carry U.S.-made M16 rifles
from the Vietnam era. Much of the hardware, although functioning is old.
But it’s not about the kit that the
LAF has. It’s much more about the soldiers themselves and the real powers
behind the army, which draws deep skepticism over this plan.
There are just too many ‘ifs’
attached to it, to make it work. If the LAF gets a total rebranding with
equipment and training and if its officers can be allowed to carry out this
operation which keeps Hezbollah on the northern side of the Litani it has legs.
But there is also a bigger ‘if’ which perhaps the Americans haven’t thought of,
true to tradition in dealing with all calamities in Lebanon. The LAF has many
senior Sunni officers who are on the Hezbollah payroll, surreptitiously
receiving a hefty pay check each month. The same goes for the security services
which angers many western-aligned Christian officers who struggle to carry out
their work and are exhausted by the internal corruption at play. How does the
American blueprint take this into account, one has to wonder?
For it to work and to hold, the
number allotted of 10,000 soldiers is not at all serious. The south of Lebanon
is quite huge and Hezbollah will have no trouble at all sneaking back in and
rebuilding their bunkers and tunnels, albeit over many years. But the idea that
the LAF arrest Hezbollah fighters will give many Lebanese a laugh, during these
few days where many have sought solace in the deal and are moving back south to
the area to their bombed out homes.
One reason which might explain the
deal being done is that it is simply a trap, orchestrated by the Israelis. Its
own army has suffered many defeats and a 2-month hiatus will serve many
purposes as it never came close to succeeding in its tasks. Even low in numbers
and much of it senior level of commanders wiped out, Hezbollah fighters
destroyed many IDF tanks and killed many of its infantry. A small number of
well-placed sources in Lebanon believe this. They claim that Israel is planning
on a second wave of attacks and has trapped the Lebanese Shias into moving back
into the region, ready for the moment that Trump takes power. Geopolitics also
plays a big role in that Biden has been threatening Israel, pushing it to end
its campaign in Lebanon, while it also negotiates with France so that Paris
would pull out of the ICC and its cases against Netanyahu. And of course the
number of days of the ceasefire is almost exactly the same number as Biden’s
days left in the Oval office.
“How can you tell all this is true?”
one leading figure in Lebanon, who has close contacts with Israel and U.S.
intelligence, says. “Netanyahu in his statement openly said that if the
agreement is violated, they will go back in, and that the goal in the north is
the return of the residents – and he didn’t call for them to go home yet. The
durability of the ceasefire is completely dependent on Hezbollah and Lebanon
abiding by it. If they don’t, and January 20 comes, Israel will do what it
must,” he explains.
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