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maandag 6 januari 2025

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, OCL CA #345 - No peace in Lebanon without justice in Palestine (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In 2019, the collapse of the banks plunged Lebanon into a financial

crisis, quickly compounded by a political crisis driven by
anti-corruption movements. These revolts, sources of hope, were
suffocated by the Covid crisis, the explosion in the port of Beirut and
the country's inability to break away from its confessional functioning.
It is in a context of economic, social and health difficulties, without
a government since October 2022 that the war with Israel, which
previously ended in August 2006, will resume. We will try here to recall
the main stages of this conflict, entangled in that of neighboring
Palestine, as well as some of its regional issues.

Chronology of a disaster
Following the deadly attack of October 7, 2023 by the Palestinian Hamas
aimed at terrorizing the Israeli occupier, the response of the State of
Israel was merciless: daily bombing of the Gaza Strip, humanitarian aid
prevented, in one year more than 40,000 Palestinians were killed.
On the other side of Palestine, from October 8, Hezbollah (1) massed its
troops along the blue line (see box 1) in order to relieve the pressure
on the front on Gaza. It also tried to weaken the Iron Dome (2) by
regularly sending missiles into Israeli territory. Iran and Hezbollah
are applying a so-called "low intensity" war in order not to risk
escalation. But, if the losses inflicted were minimal, the effects were
not zero: the Israeli elite corps were requisitioned on the border with
Lebanon and worried about the fate of their nationals and their
settlers, at least 60,000 Israelis were evacuated far from the blue
line. On the other side, 100,000 Lebanese left to seek refuge in the
North of the country.

Then followed months of provocations on the Israeli side: exchanges of
fire, bombings, arson attacks but above all the methodical assassination
of all the leading cadres of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian "Islamic
resistance" and even Fatah. Wherever they were, Iran, Damascus, Beirut,
Rafah, refugee camps (there will be no state sovereignty that holds),
these military leaders (fundamentalists and reactionaries to varying
degrees) will be killed. This series of targeted attacks, which
decimated an entire generation of Islamist resistance fighters born in
the 1960s, impresses with the technological skills of facial and
biometric recognition at play. Drones sometimes target a single occupant
of a car or an apartment in the middle of crowded apartment blocks. For
the Lebanese, this series of attacks brings back memories of past wars
and dark periods of assassinations of politicians.

It is clear that the Israeli intelligence services have been preparing
for years. The culmination of their infiltration work will take place on
September 17 and 19, 2024 with the simultaneous explosion throughout
Lebanon of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies previously booby-trapped
with PETN. The Lebanese authorities' casualty count shows 42 dead and
more than 3,400 injured, including 500 who have permanently lost their
sight and dozens who have had their hands torn off. Lebanon has filed
complaints with various international bodies. Indeed, Hezbollah is also
a political party that owns many infrastructures in Lebanon such as
schools and hospitals, so this attack affected both military and
civilians. Defined as terrorist, it is this attack that announces a
turning point in the war: Israel will no longer target, but, as
announced by its Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, "bring Lebanon back
to the Stone Age".
 From September 23, 2024, intensive bombings begin, on this day alone
500 people were killed and subsequently most of the Shiite villages and
neighborhoods in Lebanon will be completely razed. In addition to the
3,400 dead and 14,500 injured, by destroying infrastructure, the
bombings pose problems for the supply of drinking water in the South of
the country and the WHO indicates that of the 207 medical facilities in
the conflict zone, 100 have been rendered unusable.

After the bombings of southern Lebanon and the capital, Israel began to
target the arms supply to Hezbollah (managed by the so-called unit 4400)
coming from Iran and transiting through Syria. It was therefore the
whole of eastern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, which received evacuation
orders via social networks. Four hours later, the bombings began on the
fuel depots of Douris as well as on Baalbek, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was during an intensive bombing of Beirut on September 27, 2024, that
Israel was able to reach the head of Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah, the
military and religious strategist of the extremist Shiite movement, very
charismatic and even downright messianic since he is supposedly
descended from the prophet, has died. It was under his reign, which
began in 1992, that Hezbollah acquired its reputation as a resister to
Zionism, its power and its military arsenal by getting closer to Iran.
His death, which required pulverizing a neighborhood with more than 80
tons of explosives and assassinating 300 civilians at the same time,
therefore shook the Shiite community as well as all Lebanese people.

After getting rid of Hezbollah's military command and methodically
razing its infrastructure and strategic strongholds (as far as Syria),
on October 1, 2024, Israel launched a land invasion (prudishly called a
"limited incursion"), via villages in the South and East of all
denominations. War objective put forward by the Israelis, to invest
South Lebanon up to the Litani River, an area they occupied from 1982 to
2000. These Lebanese agricultural lands of 850 km² are concerned by
resolution 1701 (box 1) never respected for 18 years. At this stage, it
is too much, the international community, led by Amos Hochstein, special
envoy of the United States, agrees on the importance of enforcing this
resolution and additional blue helmets are deployed along the blue line.

Resolution 1701:
The blue line, established in 2000, is not officially a border but a
"withdrawal line" fixed by the UN and monitored by the United Nations
Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL (created in 1978). Supposed to be
temporary until the return of peace, UNIFIL and the blue line, remain at
the heart of current events. All the more so since UN Resolution 1701
was unanimously adopted on 11 August 2006 and provided for the
conditions for ending the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. With
this resolution, both parties committed to a ceasefire to end their
attacks and respect the sovereignty of the Lebanese government. A 30 km
zone between Israel and the Litani River was to be emptied by both
belligerents. The resolution therefore concerns both the Israeli army
and the armed wing of Hezbollah supported by Iran. The objective is to
protect Lebanese civilians and infrastructure, so that the Lebanese
government and its army can regain control of the country and obviously
to enforce international law. An impossible objective to achieve, since
neither party has ever really respected this resolution, the arbitrator
UNIFIL counts the irregularities. In truth, Israel is constantly flying
over its neighbour and multiplying targeted attacks. As for Hezbollah,
it has never evacuated South Lebanon where its military weight has
continued to grow: the small guerrilla militia of 1982 is today an army
of 100,000 men (Hezbollah figures) whose "light" weaponry supplied by
Iran surpasses that of many state armies... notably that of Lebanon!

The quagmire
It seems difficult to believe that Israel's objective is only to push
Hezbollah back behind the Litani River by annexing South Lebanon
(although its water needs are proven). With the military support of the
United States, a long war has just begun whose aim goes beyond
Hezbollah. In its sights, weakening Iran and its nuclear program and
thus destabilizing the entire Middle East. This is obviously the case
whatever the cost in Lebanese civilian casualties.

The war can last on the Hezbollah-Iran side. Indeed, if the leaders of
the religious and/or resistance parties are eliminated one by one, they
are also replaced one after the other. Thus Nasrallah was replaced by
Naim Qassem who immediately announced that he wanted to continue the
strategy of his predecessor. As for the attacks against Israel, they are
carried out relentlessly and from the entire region: drone attacks (even
against the American Victoria base) by the Islamic resistance of Iraq,
fires started by the Houthi bombings of Yemen, guerrilla warfare in
southern Lebanon and rocket fire by the Lebanese Hezbollah, attack from
Tehran on Tel Aviv on October 1st... Thus, Israel is kept on permanent
alert and cannot intercept everything. There are still victims (70
soldiers and 45 civilians) and destruction... up to Netanyahu's bedroom
hit by a Hezbollah guided missile on October 19, 24. If Iran hesitates
to engage in an open war because it is focused on Western sanctions, its
nuclearization and internal popular uprisings, the mullahs' regime may
end up giving in to Israeli pressure.

On the Israeli side, nothing indicates a denouement. Indeed, as noted in
an article published on October 2 on the Marxist site "sinistra classe
rivoluzione", the personal interests of the far-right leader Netanyahu
coincide with the interests of a colonizing country Israel and its
Zionist ruling class, which coincide with the interests of a great
imperialist power, the United States.
Netanyahu's political survival is compromised, he faces the discontent
of his population, for example on the reform of justice last year or
more recently with the clashes triggered by the dismissal of his defense
minister Gallant. In addition, summoned on December 2nd as part of a
trial for corruption, fraud and breach of trust, if the war stops, the
status of warlord is over, it is prison assured.
The State of Israel currently sees as a possibility of existence only
permanent war through its Zionist expansionist aims in Palestine as in
South Lebanon. This headlong rush is causing the country to lose all
measure, even the release of the hostages of October 7th is no longer a
priority.
Finally, the United States is losing influence in the region: beaten in
Iraq, defeated in Afghanistan, it has not been able to particularly
influence the Arab revolutions, Russia has posted an ally in the region
(Assad in Syria during the civil war), China is even stealing the role
of regional mediator (between Iran and Saudi Arabia or between Fatah and
Hamas). In short, the United States seems to have only one friend left
in the Middle East that it can finance and arm endlessly. This is why,
at the beginning of the year, according to the BBC News of February 8,
2024, they voted $14.1 billion for "security assistance" to Israel and
after the beeper attacks, another $8.7 billion in military aid
(according to Reuters of September 26). They even mobilized additional
troops in the region and just before the November 5 elections, Biden
decided to provide several THAAD batteries, anti-ballistic missiles and
the gunners that go with them.

What is the outcome for the Lebanese?
Shiite cities and neighborhoods have been razed and for everyone, daily
life is disrupted by the arrival of refugees (box 2), this fuels
tensions between communities. By making the entire Lebanese population
pay for Hezbollah's attacks, Israel is seeking to instill fear and
aggravate inter-religious tensions. The ever-increasing number of
refugees threatens to revive sectarian violence in this country where 17
faiths coexist. Tensions are also "ethnic" since Lebanon has 500,000
Palestinian refugees and 2 million Syrian refugees (for 6 million
Lebanese). Extremely numerous, still living in camps (most of them
hoping to return to their land), subject to specific laws, they are
difficult to absorb by the country. All the more so since relations with
Palestinian resistance fighters have not always been tender throughout
Lebanon's history. Finally, since the country's bankruptcy, a final
source of tension has appeared between the middle classes and the
poorest social classes.

Refugees: the main objective of the war?
One of the main direct consequences of this war for the Lebanese is
linked to the impressive number of displaced persons. According to the
Lebanese authorities and the UNHCR (UN refugee agency), "more than 25%
of the country has received an Israeli military evacuation order".
Amnesty International has denounced these evacuation orders designed to
sow panic among the civilian population, which in no way represents a
legitimate military objective. There are now 1.5 million displaced
Lebanese, mainly Shiites, the first to have been targeted by Israel. The
evacuation of cities without military interest and not even located in
the zone claimed for annexation, such as the city of Baalbek, home to
Roman archaeological remains, actually has a political interest for
Israel. By increasing the number of refugees on the roads of Lebanon, it
is a means of pressure on Hezbollah. 1.5 million refugees represent 1/5
of the population of Lebanon, which must be managed. Displacement under
bombardments, accommodation (currently schools and universities are
requisitioned), provision of basic necessities and care. It is the
exhaustion of the Lebanese that is targeted. The repercussions are also
felt in neighboring countries. While a few tens of thousands of Lebanese
have fled to Iraq, 400,000 people have crossed the Syrian border. 70% of
them are Syrian refugees who fled the 2011 war, the rest are Lebanese.
NGOs are warning of the extremely worrying situation, knowing that the
Syrian population is already living in a context of humanitarian crisis.

Lebanese people who remember the 2006 war note that it only lasted a
month, while today the conflict is dragging on. For the moment, the
Lebanese population is united, remaining united despite attempts at
division and showing great solidarity with the wounded and refugees
(providing accommodation, distributing meals, donating blood, etc.).
Obviously in a confessional country, each religious community organizes
its assistance, but as it is clear that Israel is targeting the entire
civilian population and that the Lebanese government is non-existent, we
have to manage as collectively as possible.

Certainly suspicions exist but overall the effect is rather a
strengthening of solidarity, especially among the youngest. Not only do
they not remember the rancor of the civil war (1975/1990) but above all
they were the ones who took to the streets in 2019 against the corrupt
ruling class and the confessional organization of society.
Reading the testimonies and interviews of these young people, one cannot
help but notice that what they oppose to religious sectarianism is a
kind of patriotism, a national belonging. This is understandable in
these times of war, but as communists, we always hope that if the
Lebanese get rid of their confessional system, it will be to pour into
solidarity between peoples and workers rather than nationalism. Whatever
the case for the moment, we can only welcome the real solidarity with
the displaced, the assistance of the diaspora and hope that the hope and
determination of the Lebanese will not be recovered by religious people
of all stripes or by foreign interference (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.).
The Lebanese are aware that, unfortunately, it will be necessary to
rebuild their country, let us hope that this can also be done without
their corrupt ruling classes!

And what about the media?

Journalists in Lebanon are, as in Palestine, privileged targets for
Israel, 12 members of the press have already been killed, including
three, on October 26 by a strike against a journalists' camp. The
Lebanese authorities have filed a complaint with the UN Security
Council. At the same time, Israeli journalists must now not only spread
colonial propaganda but also participate in the war effort, as we saw
with Dany Kushmaro staged by Canal 12 to personally dynamite a village
in southern Lebanon (see the video of Le Parisien available on Youtube).

Always with the aim of hiding its crimes, Israel attacks UN observers:
it does not want them in Gaza and it does not want them in Lebanon
either. Thus, a dozen "direct and apparently intentional" attacks by the
Israeli army against UNIFIL have been counted: bulldozing of an
observation tower, 2 peacekeepers injured on October 10, Israeli tanks
entering a base on October 13, 5 peacekeepers injured on November 7 in
Sidon, etc. On October 13, Netanyahu simply asked UNIFIL to get off the
blue line (for their safety, of course). L'Orient le Jour suggests that
these attacks are premeditated in order to get rid of the inconvenient
witnesses of the violent offensives in Lebanon.

The Western media, some of which have been practicing pro-Israeli
propaganda for over a year, underestimating the massacres of the Gazans,
suddenly show great emotion for the attacks of the UNIFIL (or worse when
2 French gendarmes are jostled!). These are obviously condemnable but
one wonders what could have suggested that Israel would respect the blue
helmets more than international law? We are talking about a country led
by a man threatened with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal
Court. We are talking about an army that has been confirmed by Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch to have used white phosphorus (3)
in bombings in southern Lebanon in at least 17 municipalities including
the city of Dhaya since October 2023. We are talking about a country
where the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has been declared
persona non grata. It therefore seems absurd to be surprised by Israel's
assaults on the peacekeepers after the impunity that Netanyahu has been
able to benefit from. The remark also applies to the international
community, whose leaders have fairly unanimously taken up the term "war
crime", while most of them have had so much trouble condemning the
massacres of Palestinians.

The media coverage and statements here reflect a revolting double
standard. A right of defense is invoked to justify massacres of the
population in Palestine and concerning Lebanon, it is understood that
the war is being waged there for the good of the Lebanese who will be
able to get rid of Hezbollah. By what sleight of hand, thousands of
dead, millions of displaced people, razed cities, an instability that
will last for decades become beneficial while a few wounded UNIFIL
soldiers become "irresponsible, unacceptable and unjustifiable" war crimes?

And on the international scene, what are we playing?
Faced with the catastrophic situation, NGOs are calling for an
unconditional ceasefire. With 1/4 of the population displaced, the UN
estimated that Lebanon needed $400 million in humanitarian aid to manage
its refugees. In this context, on October 24, the "international
conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon" was held
in Paris. It brought together about 80 countries, Israel and Iran were
not part of it and the US representative was excused. If we were
cynical, we would say that 80 countries met to convince each other that
their hands were tied and that only the United States could resolve the
situation and influence Netanyahu. Faced with their powerlessness to
stop the conflict, everyone then took out their checkbook for
humanitarian aid. The outcome of this great charity gala announced by
Jean-Noël Barrot, our Minister of Foreign Affairs: "the challenge was
met" with $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million in military
aid. On France Inter, Pierre Haski noted that humanitarian aid is
obviously essential to the reconstruction of Lebanon, but that what will
have a cost is also the strengthening of the military capabilities of
the Lebanese state and this is what is implied by the term "sovereignty"
mentioned in the title of the conference.

At the same time, on November 11, the leaders of the 57 member countries
of the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation met in
Riyadh, united as one man... even Mohammed Bin Salman called Iran a
"sister republic"! The result was a declaration calling for "a just
peace" through the withdrawal of Israel from the territories occupied
since 1967 (West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan in Syria) and
"firmly" condemning the "genocide in the Gaza Strip". On these points
they are not wrong, the origin of the conflict remains the injustice
committed against the Palestinian people. Now... for the establishment
of a just peace for the oppressed in the region, a large part of the
reactionary regimes of these 57 countries will certainly also have to be
overthrown!

Finally, they too are relying on the United States, with Iranian Vice
President Mohammad Reza Aref having declared: "the world is waiting for
the future Trump administration to end the war in the Gaza Strip and
Lebanon".

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz immediately responded that "there
will be no ceasefire, no pause in Lebanon"[...]"until the war objectives
are achieved". For Katz, the objective is certainly the creation of a
greater Israel, in Palestine as in Lebanon (we recall that it was he who
had proposed the creation of an artificial island in the sea to put the
Palestinians there). Recently, after the re-election of Donald Trump, a
fervent supporter of Israel, the new Foreign Minister Gideon Saar was
able to speak of "progress" for the ceasefire in Lebanon.

To be continued. A ceasefire is always desirable for civilian
populations, but a peace negotiated with Trump's support will certainly
be in favor of Israel and not the Palestinians or the Lebanese. And
therefore temporary as long as the oppression of the Palestinian people
has not ceased.

Elsa
November 17, 2024

Notes
(1) Shiite movement created in Lebanon in the 1980s to fight the Israeli
invader and support the Palestinian resistance. Since then, with the
support of Iran, it has become a political and military power, its armed
branch is recognized as terrorist.

(2) Israeli mobile air defense system that has been intercepting rockets
and missiles since 2010.

(3) Incendiary and generating thick smoke, white phosphorus causes
respiratory damage, organ failure and severe burns leading to necrosis.
Its use is therefore illegal in residential areas and is regulated by
Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) ...
to which Israel has not adhered.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4310
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