I thought big and powerful countries were more serious about their territorial integrity and sovereignty. But as per your argument, India is the only big and powerful country which has no regards for its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
I thought big and powerful countries were more serious about their territorial integrity and sovereignty. But as per your argument, India is the only big and powerful country which has no regards for its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
We regard our as well as our neighbour's territorial integrity. Have we ever tried to take away BD land since 1971? Have we tried to grab the land of Bhutan? Did we try to capture Maldives? You are saying this because you don't have the experience of a neighbour like China. We always respected our neighbour's territorial integrity and sovereignty.
We regard our as well as our neighbour's territorial integrity. Have we ever tried to take away BD land since 1971? Have we tried to grab the land of Bhutan? Did we try to capture Maldives? You are saying this because you don't have the experience of a neighbour like China. We always respected our neighbour's territorial integrity and sovereignty.
If India didn't want to take its neighbors land, then why did India sponsor insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and in North Eastern part of Sri Lanka to create Tamil Elam by providing arms and training to Tamil Tigers?
If India didn't want to take its neighbors land, then why did India sponsor insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and in North Eastern part of Sri Lanka to create Tamil Elam by providing arms and training to Tamil Tigers?
There is no remedy to false belief. We do not want to push any insurgency. Had we had any such design, we would have done it in 1971 or in few years post that.
So far as Tamil Elam is concern, it was India which helped SL to fight with Talim Elam. We send their peace keeping force because of which our PM assassinated. SL would have never defeated Talim Elam without the help of India. We sacrificed over 800 soldiers defending SL from Tamil Elam. Your country would not have got Independent without the Indian help and sacrifice of 4500 Indian soldier. Inspite of all these helps, our small neighbors have remained thankless. Not only they have remained thankless, but they have tried to act against Indian interest.
Israel's relentless pounding of Beirut raises the critical question of how powerful states in our times as also earlier have with impunity violated the sovereignty of weaker nations. The tragedy at this point is that Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist-dominated government in Tel Aviv are not bein
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Israel & the violation of states' sovereignty
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Published :
Oct 23, 2024 22:01
Updated :
Oct 23, 2024 22:01
Smoke billows following Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon on October 19, 2024 Photo : Xinhua
Israel's relentless pounding of Beirut raises the critical question of how powerful states in our times as also earlier have with impunity violated the sovereignty of weaker nations. The tragedy at this point is that Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist-dominated government in Tel Aviv are not being forcefully persuaded by the world's influential powers into calling a halt to their aggressive acts. The genocide in Gaza goes on; influential leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have systematically been targeted and killed by Israeli forces; not even senior Iranian military figures have been spared.
And now it is Lebanon whose territorial integrity and sovereignty are under assault by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Israel's friends in the West have done little to convince Tel Aviv that its actions have now reached a point where a wider conflagration could be staring the world in the face. Israel now plans an assault on Iran in light of the latter's missile attack on the former earlier this month. Israel goes on bombing busy neighbourhoods in Beirut in search of Hezbollah, who along with Hamas have vowed to carry on with their military campaign against the Netanyahu government. The recent drone attack on Netanyahu's home is a reflection of how conditions are spiralling out of control of all the elements involved in the current crisis.
The brazenness of Israeli actions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are once again a reminder of how nations have historically suffered through the aggressive designs of states that have had no qualms in violating the independence of other states. It is such actions which have belied the pious calls for peace to descend on the world. In real terms, peace has never been part of the global landscape for as long as one can remember. In our times, the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces in December 1979 was an early indication of the chaos that would descend on Kabul and keep it in its grip for decades. The Soviets were compelled to beat a retreat from Afghanistan in Gorbachev times, but that was no hint that the country, by then a state ravaged by war and internecine tribal conflict, would get back to being a normal state.
The entry of the United States (US), Britain and other western powers into Afghanistan in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York pushed Kabul into a new phase of instability and chaos that would last twenty years before President Biden announced a precipitate departure from the country in August 2021. Afghanistan simply fell like a ripe fruit back into the hands of the Taliban. The ramifications are today only too obvious: the Soviet and US-led invasions of Afghanistan have left the country a wasteland over which medieval barbarism rules in the shape of the Taliban. Kabul's sovereignty was crushed in those two invasions. And when one observes Iraq, whose sovereignty was brutally undercut by the US and Britain in 2003 on the basis of a lie about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, it is a broken country riven by sectarian conflict which has not been able to reclaim its self-esteem.
In the course of the Second World War (WW2), Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler together engineered the destruction of the independent state of Poland, an act which reflected the impunity with which leaders of dominant states went into ruining lives in countries they intended to claim for themselves or destroy. Add to that the Nazi invasions of France and other countries in Europe, militarism which would eventually leave a world in ruins. When nations violate the sovereignty of other nations, it is the floodgates to larger disasters that are thrown open. One could speak here of the brutality with which the Soviet Union, in 1956, crushed Imre Nagy's rebellion in Hungary.
Budapest clearly wanted out of the communist system imposed on eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, but Stalin's successors would have none of it. The Soviet action only added to a deepening of the Cold War. In conditions similar to 1956, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact powers sent in tanks and armoured vehicles into Prague to demolish Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring in 1968. Gustav Husak, installed in office by Leonid Brezhnev, would be condemned to presiding over a Soviet vassal state until a movement more successful than Dubcek's, that led by Vaclav Havel, would send communism packing in Czechoslovakia.
There have been invasions that have aroused ridicule among observers of global politics around the world. Ronald Reagan's invasion of Granada, in alliance with six Caribbean countries, in 1983 did little to enhance respect for Washington, which had already paid a price for its policy in Vietnam and its invasion of Cambodia in the Nixon-Kissinger years. Any invasion of a sovereign country often leaves reputations in tatters. Henry Kissinger was never able to outlive the opprobrium associated with the Cambodia invasion in 1970.
The military in Indonesia, led by General Suharto, invaded East Timor in late 1975 and kept the country under brutal occupation till Jakarta was forced to relinquish its hold and have East Timor, today's Timor Leste, emerge once again as an independent state. The occupation of East Timor will be remembered as a dark moment in the history of the Indonesian military, which also must grapple with the record of the serious human rights violations it engaged in following the fall of President Ahmed Sukarno from power.
Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974 effectively destroyed any chance of a resolution of the conflict on the island between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The island remains divided, with two administrations operating in their separate patches of territory. Closer to our times, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has caused a crisis which has affected almost the entire globe. While Moscow and Kyiv fight it out, it is the economies of nations dependent on oil and food imports and exports which take the brunt of the crisis. Vladimir Putin, for all his worries about Nato getting closer to his country's borders, clearly made a mistake when he decided to launch an assault on Ukraine. The crisis is now one where Putin cannot win and a situation where the West will not have Volodymyr Zelenskyy lose.
Israel's battering of Lebanon raises the uncomfortable question: Are invasions and bombardments of sovereign nations by aggressor-states now fast acquiring legitimacy? The next question follows: Is a rules-based international order now obsolete, with entities like the United Nations (UN) as helpless as was the League of Nations prior to 1939?
The Israeli army called on residents of parts of the south Lebanon city of Tyre to evacuate on Wednesday
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Israel army issues new evacuation call for south Lebanon city of Tyre
AFP
Jerusalem
Published: 23 Oct 2024, 12: 06
Smokes rise, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon on 23 September 2024.Reuters
The Israeli army called on residents of parts of the south Lebanon city of Tyre to evacuate on Wednesday ahead of military operations targeting Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The army’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted a map of the affected streets in Tyre on social media platform X, saying: “You must immediately move out of the area marked in red and head north of the Awali River.
Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements, facilities and combat equipment is putting his life in danger.”
There is no remedy to false belief. We do not want to push any insurgency. Had we had any such design, we would have done it in 1971 or in few years post that.
So far as Tamil Elam is concern, it was India which helped SL to fight with Talim Elam. We send their peace keeping force because of which our PM assassinated. SL would have never defeated Talim Elam without the help of India. We sacrificed over 800 soldiers defending SL from Tamil Elam. Your country would not have got Independent without the Indian help and sacrifice of 4500 Indian soldier. Inspite of all these helps, our small neighbors have remained thankless. Not only they have remained thankless, but they have tried to act against Indian interest.
Recently I had an opportunity to listen to a heated debate on the problem of Chittagong Hill Tracts - particularly on the role of Bangladesh Army. The issue was raised in a paper on "State, sub-State Nationalism and sub-Regionalism: A Retrieve from Beyond the Mask," by Dr Amena Mohsin at a seminar on 'South Asian Growth Quadrangle: Bangladesh Perspectives' organised by International Studies Association, Bangladesh. She was critical of 'militarisation' of Chittagong Hill Tracts, and, particularly of a scheme of taking selected...
Tamil Tiger & India (Read the entire article below)
A Paris conference on aid for conflict-stricken Lebanon raised around $1 billion yesterday but saw little diplomatic progress as fighting continues between Israel and Hezbollah.
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PARIS AID CONFERENCE
$1b raised for Lebanon
A Paris conference on aid for conflict-stricken Lebanon raised around $1 billion yesterday but saw little diplomatic progress as fighting continues between Israel and Hezbollah.
"In total, we have jointly gathered $800 million in humanitarian aid," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told participants as the conference closed.
He added that there was a further "$200 million for the security forces," bringing the total to "almost a billion, even more than a billion... with the latest contributions".
The total far outstrips both France's target of 500 million euros and the 400 million originally requested by the UN for Lebanon, where Barrot said over 2,500 people had been killed and "almost one million" displaced in fighting since late September.
Israel launched a ground offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after a year of exchanging fire over the border following Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack.
But while there were repeated calls for a ceasefire, diplomatic progress in Paris was limited by the absence of key players Israel and Iran, while America was represented only by a deputy to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
"We have risen to the occasion" with financial support, Barrot told participants, with major pledges including 100 million euros ($108 million) from France, 95 million from Germany and at least 15 million pounds ($20 million) from Britain.
Nevertheless, "we cannot limit ourselves to a humanitarian and security response... we have to bring about a diplomatic solution," he added.
BACK TO 2006?
France, which has historic ties to Lebanon and hosts a large Lebanese diaspora, is pushing alongside the US for a 21-day ceasefire to give space to find a more lasting truce.
Paris wants a a return to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which sealed the end of the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.
"The war must end as soon as possible, there must be a ceasefire in Lebanon," President Emmanuel Macron said sitting alongside the country's Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
The Lebanese government chief in turn called on "the international community to hold together and support efforts... to implement an immediate ceasefire".
As well as stipulating that the only armed forces on Lebanon's border with Israel should be UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, 1701 says no foreign forces should enter Lebanon without the government's consent.
That was why participants pledged support for Lebanese troops, with Macron saying Paris would "contribute to equipping the Lebanese army".
Speaking remotely, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called on participants to "strengthen their support to (Lebanon's) state institutions, including the Lebanese armed forces".
A ceasefire can only be agreed with involvement from Israel and Hezbollah's backer Iran, neither of whom were invited Thursday.
Hezbollah must "stop its provocations... and indiscriminate strikes" against Israel, Macron said.
Although Israel has eliminated Hezbollah leaders over recent weeks, it "knows from experience that its military successes do not necessarily represent victory in Lebanon," Macron said.
'ACCOUNTABILITY'
"Anything that does not bring about an immediate end to the destruction and killing would make this summit a failure," Bachir Ayoub, aid group Oxfam's Lebanon chief, said before the conference ended.
Oxfam was among over 150 aid groups to denounce on Thursday "flagrant disregard for international law by the international community" over Israel's military actions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
"Without accountability, there will be no red lines," they added.
UN Development Program chief Achim Steiner warned that Lebanon's economy was "beginning to collapse under the pressure of this conflict," predicting a contraction of more than nine percent this year if the war continues.
That could hamper efforts to build up Lebanon's institutions and especially its armed forces, "to preserve the country's unity, stability and sovereignty" as France's Barrot hoped.
"Resolution 1701... remains the cornerstone of stability and security in southern Lebanon," Mikati said, echoing France's view.
Conference participants may offer training, equipment and funding to keep the Lebanese army functioning and allow new recruitment so it is strong enough to do its job.
Israel conducted at least 17 raids overnight that levelled six buildings, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency, sending a huge ball of fire enveloped in a tower of smoke soaring into the night sky.
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Overnight raids rock Beirut
3 Lebanese troops killed; residential complex levelled: Hezbollah fires rockets at north Israel
Israel conducted at least 17 raids overnight that levelled six buildings, according to Lebanon's official National News Agency, sending a huge ball of fire enveloped in a tower of smoke soaring into the night sky.
The Lebanese army said yesterday that three of its soldiers were killed by Israeli fire while carrying out a rescue operation in the south where Israel is fighting Hezbollah.
"The Israeli enemy targeted Lebanese army personnel in the vicinity of Yater village, in the Bint Jbeil area of the south, while carrying out an operation to evacuate wounded, which led to the deaths of three martyrs, including an officer," an army statement said.
Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported an unspecified number of dead in a strike "on a house in Yater". It said paramedics were wounded when the Israeli air force struck a second time as they tried "to rescue the casualties".
The NNA also reported "a new wave of Israeli attacks on villages" in the southern districts of Tyre and Bint Jbeil overnight.
The Israeli military said yesterday it hit Hezbollah weapons production facilities in the group's south Beirut bastion.
In south Lebanon, also a stronghold of Hezbollah, the group said its fighters were clashing at close range with Israeli troops in a border village.
Hezbollah earlier said it launched a "large rocket salvo" at the northern Israeli town of Safed, after vowing to keep firing into Israel until a ceasefire is reached not only in Lebanon but also in Gaza.
Hezbollah is Lebanon's only group that did not disarm following the 1975-1990 civil war.
After nearly a year of war with Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon last month, vowing to secure its northern border under fire from Hezbollah. It ramped up air strikes on the group's strongholds and sent in ground troops.
At least 11 Lebanese soldiers have been killed by Israeli fire since September 23, according to an AFP tally of army announcements.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin expressed "deep concern" over the strikes on the Lebanese army in a call with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant on Wednesday.
He "emphasised the importance of taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security of the Lebanese Armed Forces" and UN peacekeepers, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said.
Thursday's strikes come as a donors' conference opens in Paris seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Lebanon.
The United States does not want Israeli actions in Lebanon to lead to a protracted campaign, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday, more than a month since Israel began a major offensive against Hezbollah in the country.
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Blinken warns Israel against protracted war
Antony Blinken. File photo: Reuters
The United States does not want Israeli actions in Lebanon to lead to a protracted campaign, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday, more than a month since Israel began a major offensive against Hezbollah in the country.
Blinken also said he anticipated negotiators would meet in the coming days for discussions on a Gaza ceasefire deal, signalling a renewed bid to achieve a deal that diplomats have repeatedly failed to secure during more than a year of conflict.
Blinken has been on his first trip to the region since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked conflict across the Middle East. Washington has expressed hope his death can provide an impetus for an end to the fighting.
Israel launched its Lebanon offensive with the declared aim of securing the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated in northern Israel during a year of cross-border rocket fire by Hezbollah.
Over the last month, Israel has pounded southern Lebanon, Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley and sent ground forces into areas near the border. The Israeli campaign has killed more than 2,500 people, displaced more than 1 million people and spawned a humanitarian crisis, Lebanon says.
"As Israel conducts operations to remove the threat to Israel and its people along the border with Lebanon, we have been very clear that this cannot lead, should not lead, to a protracted campaign," Blinken said, speaking in Doha alongside the prime minister of Qatar.
"Israel must take the necessary steps to avoid civilian casualties and not endanger UN peacekeepers or Lebanese armed forces," he added.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike killed three Lebanese soldiers as they were trying to evacuate wounded people from the village of Yater near the border, the Lebanese army said.
Blinken said the United States was "working intensely" on a diplomatic resolution which would allow civilians on both sides on the border to return to their homes.
Hezbollah opened fire on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with its Palestinian allies in Gaza, prompting a conflict that had largely played out in areas at or near the border until Israel launched its major escalation.
Blinken said he anticipated the negotiations on Gaza would concern a return of hostages and a ceasefire. If Hamas cared about people of Gaza it would engage in negotiations and conclude an agreement, he said.
The United States was looking at "different options" that it could pursue when it comes to Gaza ceasefire talks, he added.
Israel's Gaza offensive has killed more than 42,000 people and laid waste to the territory, according to Gaza health authorities. The Hamas-led, Oct. 7 attack which sparked it killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 250 being abducted, according to Israeli tallies.
In Gaza, at least 16 Palestinians were killed, including children, in an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza's Nuseirat camp, Nuseirat's Al-Awda hospital said. It said 32 people were wounded.
The Israeli military said it had hit a Hamas command and control centre on Thursday housed in a compound formerly used as a school in the area of Nuseirat.
Lebanon said Monday it had submitted a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli strike last week that killed three journalists in the country’s south...
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Lebanon complains to UN over Israel strike on journalists
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 28 October, 2024, 22:42
Lebanon said Monday it had submitted a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli strike last week that killed three journalists in the country’s south.
The strike early Friday hit a complex in the Druze-majority town of Hasbaya in south Lebanon where more than a dozen journalists from Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army said Friday that the strike was ‘under review’, maintaining it had targeted Hezbollah militants.
Lebanon submitted ‘a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon, and the Ouzai area’ in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a statement from the foreign ministry said on social media platform X.
‘The repeated Israeli targeting of media crews is a war crime’ and Israel must be ‘held to account and punished’, the statement added.
Cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television, were killed in the strike on the complex in Hasbaya, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints.
Prime minister Najib Mikati said the attack was deliberate and both he and Information Minister Ziad Makary labelled it a war crime.
Days earlier, Al-Mayadeen said an Israeli strike hit an office the broadcaster had vacated near Ouzai in south Beirut.
Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon last month and later launched ground incursions following a year of cross-border clashes with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group over the Gaza war.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
Last November, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups said five more journalists and photographers working for local media had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley overnight killed more than 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor said yesterday, the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of hostilities.
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60 killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley
Israeli strikes on Lebanon's Bekaa Valley overnight killed more than 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor said yesterday, the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of hostilities.
Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble yesterday morning.
Israel has ramped up its air strikes across Lebanon over the last month, saying it is targeting Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Lebanese officials, rights groups and residents of affected towns say the strikes are indiscriminate.
No evacuation orders were given for any of the towns struck overnight. District governor Bachir Khodor said 67 people had been killed and more than 120 wounded and the death toll was expected to rise.
"That's only the people who've been removed from under the rubble and we still don't have the final toll. This is the most violent day for Baalbek in the last year," Khodor told Reuters.
Hezbollah elects Naim Qassem as head to succeed Nasrallah
The toll included nine people killed in Ram, its mayor Nazih Noun said, including a woman and her four children.
"It's quiet now, but we don't know how we can carry on with the funerals given the security situation," Noun told Reuters. Large swathes of the Bekaa Valley are Hezbollah strongholds.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said yesterday it had elected deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on Beirut's southern suburb over a month ago.
The group said in a written statement that its Shura Council had elected Qassem, 71, in accordance with its established mechanism for choosing a secretary general.
A Hezbollah attack on northern Israel’s Metula killed five people including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, Israel’s Channel 12 reported yesterday as Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed six health workers in the country’s south.
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Hezbollah attack kills five in Israel
Six health workers killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s south; US envoys push truce
A Hezbollah attack on northern Israel's Metula killed five people including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, Israel's Channel 12 reported yesterday as Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed six health workers in the country's south.
US envoys and Israeli officials were due to meet in Israel later to discuss efforts towards a ceasefire in both Lebanon, where Israeli forces are battling Iran-backed Hezbollah, and in Gaza, where they are fighting Hamas.
Israel issued an evacuation warning to residents of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon for a second consecutive day. On Wednesday it conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city, which is famed for its Roman temples.
Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after yesterday's warning, with wafts of black smoke still visible emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.
Thousands fleeing the violence have sought shelter in the nearby Christian-majority town Deir al-Ahmar, where local official Jean Fakhry said authorities were struggling to cover even a fraction of needs and some people had spent the night in their cars.
"We cannot continue this way," he said.
The killing of six Lebanese health workers and wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon yesterday brought the total toll of health workers killed and wounded in over a year of Israeli strikes to 178 and 279 respectively, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam yesterday. It marked the fourth straight day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shi'ite communities in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of the town to prevent them detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group's thinking told Reuters.
Hezbollah’s new leader on Wednesday said the beleaguered Lebanese movement could agree to a ceasefire under certain terms, as Israeli forces expand their bombardment of the group’s bastions.
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Hezbollah open to truce with Israel if offer made
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 01 November, 2024, 00:41
Hezbollah’s new leader on Wednesday said the beleaguered Lebanese movement could agree to a ceasefire under certain terms, as Israeli forces expand their bombardment of the group’s bastions.
Naim Qassem’s statement came as Israel’s security cabinet met to discuss a possible truce, but also as Israel attacked the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek and said it had killed another senior Hezbollah commander.
Lebanon’s premier Najib Mikati said he was ‘cautiously optimistic’ about a ceasefire in ‘the coming hours or days’.
Speaking to broadcaster Al-Jadeed, Mikati said US envoy Amos Hochstein had suggested ‘that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth’ of November, when the US election takes place.
Qassem became leader of the Iran-backed armed movement on Tuesday, following the assassination of his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah by Israel in a massive air strike last month.
In his first speech since taking over, he said Hezbollah could continue to resist Israeli air and ground attacks in Lebanon for months.
But he also opened the door to a negotiated truce, if presented with an Israeli offer.
‘If the Israelis decide that they want to stop the aggression, we say we accept, but under the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable,’ he said.
Qassem however added that Hezbollah had not yet received a credible proposition.
Israeli energy minister Eli Cohen said the country’s security cabinet was meeting to discuss what terms it might offer to secure a truce.
‘There are discussions, I think it will still take time,’ Cohen, a former intelligence minister, told Israeli public radio.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met ministers late Tuesday to discuss Israel’s demands in return for a 60-day truce.
These include that Hezbollah withdraw north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres from the Israeli frontier, and that the Lebanese state’s army deploy along the border.
An international intervention mechanism would be established to enforce the truce, but Israel would demand a guarantee that it maintain freedom of action in case of threats.
The US State Department said president Joe Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and Hochstein were headed to Israel Wednesday to seek progress on deals to end both the Gaza and Lebanon wars.
They ‘are travelling to Israel to engage on issues including a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon, as well as how we get to an end to the conflict in Gaza,’ State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
On the ground, explosions rocked Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek shortly after Israel’s military warned residents it would ‘act forcefully against Hezbollah interests within your city and villages’.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 19 people were killed in Israeli strikes on two areas in the Baalbek region.
The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah ‘command and control centres and terrorist infrastructure’ in areas of Baalbek and Nabatiyeh.
Separately, Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were killed and 15 wounded in Israeli strikes on the town of Sohmor in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, said it had fired rockets and drones at three military positions in northern Israel, including near Haifa and Acre.
It later said it fired rockets at a military training camp southeast of Tel Aviv.
The war in Lebanon began late last month, nearly a year after Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border fire into Israel in support of Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The war has killed at least 1,754 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, although the real number is likely to be higher.
Israel’s military says it has lost 37 soldiers in Lebanon since ground operations began on September 30.
In Gaza, there were more deadly strikes Wednesday as international mediators prepared to propose a short-term truce to free hostages and avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
News of a potential breakthrough in truce talks came a day after an Israeli strike on a single Gaza residential block killed nearly 100 people and triggered international revulsion.
US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying to negotiate a truce for months.
Israel’s Mossad spy chief David Barnea, CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani held their latest round of secretive talks on Sunday and Monday in Doha.
On Wednesday, a source close to the talks told AFP on condition of anonymity that the senior officials discussed proposing a ‘short-term’ truce of ‘less than a month’.
The proposal would include the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and an increase in aid to Gaza.
‘US officials believe that if a short-term deal can be reached, it could lead to a more permanent agreement,’ the source said.
A Hamas official said the group would discuss any ideas for a Gaza ceasefire that included an Israeli withdrawal, but had not officially received any comprehensive proposals.
However, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told troops to continue exerting pressure ‘in order to create the conditions necessary to ensure the return of the hostages’.
Tuesday’s strike in the northern Gaza district of Beit Lahia collapsed a building and left at least 93 dead, including many children, according to the territory’s civil defence agency.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was ‘deeply shocked’ by the strike, his spokesman said.
US State Department spokesman Miller meanwhile said Israel was ‘not doing enough to get us the answers that we have requested’ over the strike.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s response has led to the deaths of 43,163 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, figures which the United Nations consider reliable.
Lebanon's health ministry said 52 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Friday in the country's east, attacks for which the Israeli army had not issued evacuation warnings
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Lebanon says 52 killed in Israeli strikes in east
A poster of slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah hangs near the smouldering rubble of a building in the aftermath of overnight Israeli airstrikes that targeted the neighbourhood of Kafaat in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 1, 2024. Photo: AFP
Lebanon's health ministry said 52 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Friday in the country's east, attacks for which the Israeli army had not issued evacuation warnings.
The ministry reported "52 people killed and 72 wounded in an updated toll of today's Israeli enemy strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel region".
Twelve of the victims were killed in the village of Amhaz, it said, while nine others were killed in Yunin and eight in Bednayel.
Lebanese Defense
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