September 09, 2024
The daily Israeli murder campaign in Gaza continues unabated.
Netranyahoo is blocking (vid) any proposal for a ceasefire by adding new conditions to the already agreed upon details. His latest quest is to get permanent military control of the so called Philadelphia Corridor which designates the borderline between Egypt and Gaza.
There are two international agreements, brokered by the U.S. and agreed upon by Egypt and Israel, which prohibited anything more than a temporary light force in the corridor:
The US had assured Egypt that Israel's actions along the border would comply with both the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding. These agreements place clear limitations on Israel’s military presence near Egypt's borders, allowing only small Israeli units for security purposes, and were designed to ensure stability and avoid prolonged occupation in sensitive areas.
Netanyahoo does not care at all what the White House might have promised to Egypt. Biden's timidity in punishing him lets him ignore all interventions.
Zionist settler pogroms in the West Bank, supported by the government, threaten to turn the situation there into the same as in the Gaza strip. As Haaretz editorializes(archived):
The minister of the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, under Netanyahu's leadership and with the army's participation, are doing everything they can to open another front in addition to the ones that are already aflame.
They will soon get their wish.
Two fronts are not yet enough though. Over the weekend several Israeli voices, including Netanyahoo's, urged an imminent campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon:
Former war cabinet member Benny Gantz on Sunday said Israel should shift its focus toward Hezbollah and the Lebanese border, warning that “we are late on this,” ...
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“The time for [action in] the north has come,” said Gantz on Sunday during the Middle East America Dialogue (MEAD) summit in Washington, DC, adding, “Actually, I think we are late on this.”
Netanyahoo agrees:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged his government on Sunday to prepare for “changing the situation” on the northern front with Lebanon given the ongoing clashes and mounting tensions.Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, he said the situation in the north cannot go on, calling on the army and all security agencies to prepare for change on the front.
The government is committed to returning all residents of the north safely to their homes, he added, while describing Hezbollah in Lebanon as Iran’s “strongest” arm.
Meanwhile, Israeli security sources told local media that the battle with Lebanon is “imminent”, but the timing for it hasn’t been set yet.
Hizbollah is not intimidated as the daily tit for tat at the northern border continues:
“Israel won’t be able to return its settlers back to their homes no matter how loud they cry. The only way they can return is by ending the war on Gaza,” declared Deputy Chief of Hezbollah’s Executive Council Sheikh Ali Daamoush.
Speaking at a funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahieh, he stressed that Hezbollah “will never agree to a change in the rules of engagement and a change in the current equations.” “The more the enemy intensifies its attacks, the more the resistance will increase its deterrence and expand its operations,” he stated.
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On the ground, Hezbollah retaliated on Sunday to Israel’s killing of three civil defense members in a strike on their fire truck a day earlier.The party launched drones and rockets at the Upper and Western Galilee.
The Israeli army announced on Sunday that it launched a series of air raids against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, adding that it also intercepted several projectiles fired from Lebanon overnight.
The military said it struck Hezbollah military facilities in Aitaroun, Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun in the South.
Hezbollah said it fired rockets at Israel’s Kiryat Shmona in response to the killing of the civil defense members.
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Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack as a violation of international law and announced an emergency meeting on Monday with Western ambassadors and international organizations to address the ongoing hostilities.“To date, because of Israel's aggression, 25 paramedics from various ambulance teams have been killed, along with two health workers, and 94 paramedics and health workers have been injured,” the health ministry statement added.
The health ministry also condemned the attack as a “blatant strike” on an official Lebanese state apparatus, marking the second such attack on an emergency team in less than 12 hours.
The intentional targeting of medical personnel is a tactic that Israel is also using in Gaza.
Hizbullah and its friends do not believe that any new Israeli action is yet imminent:
The latest flurry of Israeli threats regarding an imminent military operation in Lebanon are only aimed at “intimidation,” diplomatic sources said.“They are also aimed at blocking the latest Iranian-American rapprochement, whose first signs have appeared in the agreement reached in Iraq, which would not have happened without an Iranian green light,” the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Monday.
Iraq and the United States have agreed on a phased pullout of the U.S.-led anti-jihadist coalition but have yet to sign a final agreement, the Iraqi defense minister said Sunday.
Still, the temperature in region is increasing. Yesterday a retired Jordanian soldier killed three Israelis at the Allenby Crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. Last night Israel bombed several sites in Syria killing at least 16 including 5 civilians.
Reading western media the daily carnage in and around Palestine already seems to become normalized.
But my hunch is that the situation is ready to explode. The tiniest new incident could easily escalate the situation into a wider war which for Israel would soon be existential.
Posted by b on September 9, 2024 at 15:09 UTC |