The cautious optimism that prevailed in the Lebanese Government in the middle of the week about the possibility of a peace agreement that would end Israel’s war in its territory has given way to a disillusionment that the president of Parliament, Nabih Berri, displayed in a interview published this Friday by the international Arab newspaper Al Sharq Al Awsat. The politician who negotiates on behalf of Hezbollah, Israel’s declared enemy, assures that Israel has rejected the roadmap agreed upon by his Government with Amos Hochstein, the special envoy for the region of US President Joe Biden. That hope that is now receding seems even more implausible when both Israel and Iran, the main sponsor of the Lebanese Shiite militia party, do not stop exchanging threats.
This Saturday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene reiterated that his country will respond to the Israeli bombing last weekend. In the midst of this growing tension, the United States has announced a significant reinforcement of its military presence in the Middle East. The Pentagon has announced the deployment of B-52 fighter-bombers, fighter jets, refueling aircraft and Navy destroyers.
Last Wednesday, after meeting by telephone with Hochstein, the acting Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, had even ventured to announce a possible ceasefire within hours — a statement corrected in the official transcript of the interview to “the next few days.” ”—but that, in just one day, was denied.
On Thursday, after meeting in Tel Aviv with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden’s special envoy did not contact the Lebanese authorities again. According to the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Hochstein had promised to inform them of any steps forward towards such a ceasefire.
Israel’s apparent unwillingness to stop the war in Lebanon was evident on Wednesday and Thursday when its army ordered the population of the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek — with about 82,000 inhabitants before the war — and two neighboring towns to evacuate. Bekaa Valley area, which Israel considers a Hezbollah stronghold. At least 150 people have been killed in that region in Israeli attacks so far this week. On Friday, Israel in turn resumed its bombing of southern Beirut.
For the Lebanese negotiator, these “aggressions” confirm “Israel’s rejection of all efforts being made for a ceasefire and the full implementation of the resolution.” [de la ONU] 1701″, he told Al Sharq al Awsat. The president of Lebanon’s Parliament has also confirmed that negotiations for a possible ceasefire have been postponed until after the US elections next Tuesday.
One of the main obstacles facing the end of the war in Lebanon is the Israeli claim that the truce is not based only on the application of the until now unfulfilled by Hezbollah resolution 1701 of the United Nations, which in 2006 allowed the withdrawal of the Israeli troops from Lebanon and the end of that year’s brief war with the Lebanese militia. Its application would entail the withdrawal of both Israeli troops and the Shiite party’s militiamen and weapons from the area surrounding the southern border of the Arab country. But for Israel, this is no longer enough. The Netanyahu Government demands that its troops be able to penetrate southern Lebanon to ensure compliance with Hezbollah’s withdrawal and that its planes also have free access to Lebanese airspace.
These demands, which would represent the partial transfer of Lebanon’s sovereignty over its territory and airspace, have been defined as unacceptable by the Lebanese Government and Berri himself, according to what the country’s press reported these days. This Saturday, it was also learned that an Israeli commando kidnapped a civilian sailor, Imad Amhaz, at dawn, in Batrun, 54 kilometers north of Beirut. The Israeli army, which has confirmed its authorship, according to the newspaper Haaretzmaintains that the man is the head of Hezbollah’s naval operations. This is the first episode of its kind in the war, Lebanese security sources have confirmed to the Lebanese television network LBCI.
war dialectic
While hopes of possible progress towards a ceasefire in Lebanon fade, Iran and Israel maintain a war dialectic in the form of an exchange of threats. This Saturday it was Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who once again took for granted the response to last weekend’s Israeli bombing of military installations, which killed four Iranian soldiers and caused material damage. Several sources from the Islamic Republic of Iran have warned in recent days that they do not rule out that this attack will be carried out before the US presidential elections.
“Enemies, including the United States and the Zionist regime, must know that they will definitely receive a surprising response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front” in the region — alluding to regional allies such as Hezbollah, Hamas or the Houthi guerrillas. of Yemen—, Khamenei said during an event with students, according to the official Irna agency.
Netanyahu had warned, for his part, on Thursday that his main objective with respect to the Islamic Republic is to prevent it from having nuclear weapons. On October 1, Tehran launched the largest ballistic missile attack on Israeli territory ever carried out, in response to the assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on September 27 and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Iranian capital at the end of July.
Meanwhile, the groups that make up the so-called Islamic Resistance of Iraq have claimed responsibility for an attack with several drones on the southern tip of Israel, around the city of Eilat, on the shores of the Red Sea. The army has announced that it has intercepted three unmanned aircraft in that area before they entered Israeli airspace. In northern Israel, the impact of a rocket launched from Lebanese territory on a building in Tira, next to the Israeli wall that isolates the West Bank, caused a dozen injuries. Hezbollah has also continued in recent hours to fire missiles and drones at the city of Haifa and other northern Israeli regions without causing any fatalities. The militia claims to have hit two military bases, although Israel has not acknowledged that damage.
“Apocalypse” in Gaza
The most critical situation remains that of Gaza. There, the humanitarian crisis and the offensive in the north by the Israeli occupation troops, with dozens of deaths every day, have led the United Nations to describe as “apocalyptic” the drama of that Palestinian population, which faces not only the continuous bombings but death from disease or hunger. Meanwhile, Israel’s blockade continues to prevent access to food and other basic supplies, ignoring warnings from the international community. The latest death toll in Israeli attacks in the Strip, released this Saturday by the authorities of the occupied Palestinian territory, amounts to 43,314 and more than 102,019 injured.
The Israeli army has also announced the increase in its troops on the night of Friday to Saturday around the Jabalia refugee camp, where for weeks the military has been fighting with Palestinian armed groups while ordering the civilian population to leaves
A possible truce in Gaza seems even further away than in Lebanon. Hamas does not accept for the moment the proposal for a partial ceasefire that has come to light following the latest contacts with Israel through international mediators in Cairo (Egypt) and Doha (Qatar), as confirmed by the Friday sources from the Palestinian Islamist group to the Al Jazeera network.
However, senior officials from the rival Palestinian factions Fatah, secular and the main force of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and Hamas, of an Islamist nature, are meeting in Cairo to try to bring closer positions on a possible unity government for Gaza after the war, official sources confirmed to a local channel, according to Reuters.
That initiative only aspired to a two-day cessation of hostilities, an increase in humanitarian aid and the release of four of the 101 hostages still in Gaza in exchange for some Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The response of one of the leaders of the Palestinian movement to the Qatari channel has been to recall his demand “for a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal [israelí] of the Strip, the return of the displaced and the lifting of the siege.”
