Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire: a Dubious Deal
Trump invites Lebanese president and Netanyahu to White House for “peace talks”Everything about the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire talks which concluded with a ten-day agreement, is a sham. There are words on a sheet of paper. Some of them sound reasonable. All of them are a fraud. There is no ceasefire. Israel will not stop slaughtering Lebanese in the south. The video below shows an Israeli missile destroying an entire school and leaving it in a cloud of dust. Sheer mayhem for the sake of mayhem. Only the children suffer, because they must. So says Israel. It displays the sort of brutality Israel will continue raining down there.
It won’t even stop attacks on Beirut if it can call them “defensive.” This passage virtually assures that this truce will be nothing of the sort. It offers Israel carte blanche to do whatever it chooses in Lebanon.
Israel shall preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks. This shall not be impeded by the cessation of hostilities.
What is the difference between “offensive” and “self-defense measures?” The difference is whatever Israel wants “self-defense” to mean. Anything Israel says is self-defense is self-defense. It barely even offers an explanation or defense of such attacks. Yesterday, it obliterated a school in a massive explosion celebrated by Israeli Judeo-Nazi, Yinon Magal, on his Telegram channel. “Defensive?” Sure, why not says Israel. Terrorists hiding there? Hezbollah storing weapons there? That’s surely defensive. Civilians? How unfortunate. Couldn’t be helped. After all, this is war.
This new deal is a vain attempt to disconnect Lebanon from the Iran ceasefire agreement, which guaranteed that all attacks on Iran’s regional allies would also cease. That included Hezbollah and Lebanon. Hezbollah agreed to the a cessation of hostilities and expected the same from Israel. The Pakistani mediators agreed that these were the terms. However, Netanyahu and Trump reneged. The day after the ceasefire, Israel launched a horrifying bombardment of Lebanon that killed nearly 400 people over a ten-minute span of time. The message: we spit on your ceasefire!
The deal worked out in Washington attempts to cut Hezbollah out of the Iran and Lebanon ceasefires. It’s a stratagem rather than a strategy. It won’t work. The Israelis won’t care. They’re prepared to invade Lebanon every few years to mow Hezbollah’s grass. They expect the deal to fail. But then they get to say: we tried. We’re not at fault. They are.
According to this former Israeli diplomat, Netanyahu doesn’t even want the agreement to proceed. He was instead forced into it by Pres. Trump, who wants to burnish his peace credentials with the eighth war he can claim he settled. That Nobel may still be in reach!
The introduction of the agreement confirms Israeli deceit:
…Both nations will work to create conditions conducive to lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity…
“Working” on something is entirely different than doing it. Currently, Israel occupies 14% of Lebanese territory. They have never said they will withdraw from land they invaded over a year ago. Israel will never recognize Lebanese sovereignty. It hasn’t even defined its border with Lebanon, let alone respected it.
This is an agreement between unequal parties. Brokered by a pro-Israel mediator (Trump) with negotiations based in the US capital, and Israel bombing the crap out of its country, the Lebanese delegation was the subservient party. It held virtually no cards in the negotiations. It was at the mercy of far more powerful forces than itself.
This was a betrayal of Lebanese national honor. That’s certainly how Hezbollah will portray it (rightly so). The Lebanese delegation gave up everything and got nothing more than a few nice words on paper. An agreement not worth the paper it’s printed on.
This passage confirms that both Lebanon and Israel have agreed the former will make good on a commitment which both of them know it cannot fulfill:
The Government of Lebanon will take meaningful steps to prevent Hezbollah and all other rogue non-state armed groups in the territory of Lebanon from carrying out any attacks, operations, or hostile activities against Israeli targets.
What is a “meaningful step?” Can Lebanon even mount a step?
All parties recognize Lebanon’s security forces as having exclusive responsibility for Lebanon’s sovereignty and national defense; no other country or group has claim to be the guarantor of Lebanon’s sovereignty.
The country’s army is a paper tiger. It had neither the personnel nor the weaponry to perform this task. It is not responsible for maintaining its sovereignty, nor its defense. Especially in areas under Hezbollah control in the south. It cannot force Hezbollah to comply with ceasefire terms. That’s why the the provision is based on sand. Lebanon has agreed to multiple ceasefires after Israeli invasions in 2006 and 2025. In each one, it undertook to disarm Hezbollah, but never did. Not because it didn’t want to. But because it couldn’t.
In this case, there isn’t a hope in hell Hezbollah will cooperate in any way. After all, the ceasefire portrays it as a foreign body having no connection to Lebanon. It is categorized solely as a terror group, rather than an active participant in Lebanese national politics. In short, you cannot have any agreement concerning Lebanon that does not include it. Any deal based on an assumption Hezbollah can be excluded, is bound to fail.
The Lebanese negotiators had to be aware of this. I assume that they don’t wish to concede that they don’t speak for the country, when they enter into such agreements. So they proceed as if they do. And such arrangements always come to a bad end.
The coup de grace in the proposal is this, which sounds like a concession to Lebanon. But it is a hollow one:
Israel and Lebanon request that the United States facilitate further direct negotiations between the two countries with the objective of resolving all remaining issues, including demarcation of the international land boundary…
What? Israel will agree to demarcate the boundary with Lebanon? In what universe? It has never recognized any boundary. It has invaded the country repeatedly and at will. As I wrote above, it has currently invaded and occupied all of southern Lebanon. Even if it was willing to recognize a border, where would the line be drawn? At the Blue Line? The Litani River? Farther north at the Zahrani River? There isn’t a hope in hell Israel will ever recognize any border that would satisfy Lebanon. Yet another reason why this agreement is null and void. If that isn’t’ apparent now, it will be soon.
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