TheAltWorld Israel’s war on Lebanon: Western mediators are disconnected from reality
The global call for a ceasefire follows similar failed initiatives on Gaza. Why are we expecting different results?
Since last October, Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in a war of attrition. The Lebanese movement, anticipating massive Israeli retaliation in Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack, pinned Israeli military forces along the border between the two countries in an effort to aid the Palestinians.
This war has been costly for both sides. Israel’s security and intelligence apparatus has been forced into high-alert status, while tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people have been displaced from their homes in the border area.
With the Gaza campaign still inconclusive – the territory has been destroyed, but Hamas has not – Israel this month decided to escalate its war on Lebanon. A weird logic was presented to justify this decision: “de-escalation through escalation”.
According to Israel, extraordinary pressure on Hezbollah could push it to agree on a deal that would allow the return of Israeli citizens to their homes in the north, irrespective of the deadlocked negotiations to establish a ceasefire in Gaza.
This would hinge on severing the connection that Hezbollah established a year ago between ending its war of attrition and achieving a ceasefire in Gaza. It would also require Hezbollah’s units to withdraw by about 10 kilometres from the border.
Such expectations go against all the statements Hezbollah leaders have uttered in the last 12 months.
The recent spectacular (and terroristic) coordinated explosions of pagers and radios across Lebanon was the opening shot of this “de-escalatory escalation”. The war has since intensified through a barrage of Israeli air strikes, resulting in hundreds of Lebanese casualties, and massive – but far less lethal – missile and rocket attacks by Hezbollah.
Sinister message
The pagers operation tried to re-establish one of the main assets Israel has lost over the past year: its deterrent power towards its enemies in the region. It is still too early to conclude whether it achieved this goal, but the operation might also have had a wider deterrent effect, well beyond Israel’s most immediate enemies.
While the Israeli government has not said anything to confirm such a conclusion, all supporters of the Palestinian cause and critics of Israeli policy worldwide cannot help but take notice of the underlying message: Israel can do whatever it wants, everywhere, with impunity.
People’s ordinary lives, including their use of electronic devices, are not only subject to Israel’s eavesdropping, but these devices can also be used to physically harm them if the state decides that is in its interests. In other words, the damage to Israel’s deterrent power post-7 October must now be re-established globally against all potential enemies, whether military or political.
In such an astonishing context – where, incidentally, the entire global digital supply chain could theoretically be at risk, or at least the western one, due to its close (and often blind) cooperation with Israel – the US and France decided to step in.
Through a joint statement that was also endorsed by Australia, Canada, the EU, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the UK, they called “for an immediate 21 day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement”, along with the implementation of a previous UN Security Council resolution requesting a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ideally, such a pause would open further room for negotiations to prevent a wider war in Lebanon, allow displaced civilians to return to their homes on both sides of the border, and renew the chances for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.
But Israel has already rejected the global call for a ceasefire in Lebanon, as it continued its air strikes on Thursday.
Western diplomacy
While the international push to end the fighting in Lebanon is admirable, it is legitimate for us to nurture some doubts about this further attempt at western diplomacy.
Why, after days of bloody escalation, would the peace initiative led by Israeli American diplomat (and former Israeli soldier) Amos Hochstein succeed now, after more than a year of failed attempts to de-escalate the situation along the Israel-Lebanon border? While Hochstein did successfully broker an Israel-Lebanon maritime boundary agreement in 2022, this was in the interests of both parties. The current circumstances are very different.
What is particularly surprising this time around, is the alleged rationale presented to claim that diplomacy will work. According to Axios, quoting a source with direct knowledge of the plans: “If Hamas sees that Hezbollah gives a chance for a diplomatic solution, it could encourage [Hamas] leader Yahya Sinwar to move toward a deal.”
It is worth wondering where – in what kind of alternate reality – those who packaged such a rationale live.
Evidently, those who believed that the main reason for the failure of the Gaza negotiations was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deliberate sabotage – which has been abundantly confirmed by his own negotiating team – had it all wrong. The obstacle all along was Sinwar, who merely needed some convincing.
When negotiations are based on faulty premises and wishful thinking, disconnected from facts on the ground, it cannot be surprising that the result is usually a failure.
Hopefully, it will be different this time around. But we cannot help but remember Albert Einstein’s famous definition for insanity: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israels-war-lebanon-western-mediators-are-disconnected-reality
Al
The real question is why is the zionist butcher netanyahu still alive after he assassinated so many people?
Now, here is the thing:
“Israel” is committing genocide and violating every international laws. They are able to do so not because nobody can’t stop them but because ‘superpowers’ (that is nations with nuclear weapons and sufficient power to stop them) do nothing to stop them.
The UN is not an organization acting for the good of humanity, even though many UN employees are probably genuine humanitarians, the UN like the WHO, the WEF and other globalist organizations and are a vehicle to advance the ‘globalists’ world control agenda, which is also the Jewish world control agenda.
The real problem is not the impotence of the UN, this is on the contrary a good thing otherwise all national sovereignty would be gone, but the inaction of nations like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and other nuclear powers that could force “Israel” to stop the genocide if they wanted to act.
I am not mentioning countries like the USA, UK or France since their puppet governments are under zionist control. The USA, UK and European nations under the yoke of the EU (another ZOG entity) are supporting the genocide, funding it and are censoring and repressing citizens opposing it.
I want to single out the hypocrisy of some western countries like Spain who “recognized” Palestine as a state and sends frigates to bomb Yemen who actually helps Palestine. Why don’t the Spanish socialist regime sends weapons to the Resistance if it really wants to help Palestinians? Same for Norway and Ireland, two ZOG countries.
The US is the main perpetrator of the genocide with ‘israel’, not only because they throw gigantic taxpayer money at their partner in crime but also because they are actively involved in the mass murder of children and women by providing Intel to the zionists, by most likely participating in the bombings (US pilots with US planes who have dual passports are actually killing civilians), by providing the technology behind the massacres (pagers sabotage and satellite surveillance to assassinate leaders in foreign countries while killing civilians).
So, the US is not just the country funding the genocide, but its main enabler and as such Biden and Harris, Blinken, Austin and all the others involved are guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Harris, I repeat for those blind, cynical or stupid enough to vote for her, is guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. she belongs to jail, not to the white house.
THE REAL QUESTION IS WHY DO OTHER POWERFUL NATIONS DO NOTHING TO STOP THE ZIONIST PSYCHOPATHS?
India with Modi is in fact a ZOG country, Modi is one of the worst globalist scumbag on the planet and eats in both US and ‘israel’s hands while pretending to be part of an ‘alternative’ with the BRICS. Modi profits from sanctions to get cheap energy from Russia to sell it at high prices to the West.
Why is Pakistan, India arch enemy, neighbor of Iran and one of the biggest Muslim country in the world not even doing the bare minimum to stop the genocide? Because its government is like the Egyptian one, a US puppet regime?
Which leaves us with Russia and China, and North Korea.
Russia is under aggression from the zionists as well, using their local Jew Zelensky. While Russia certainly provides weapons and help to countries in the region, it is very discreet regarding the genocide.
It is known that Putin is a good friend of zionists and Jewish oligarchs. Russian media like RT are very ‘politically correct’ in their reports about it (echoing Jewish owned western media) while never failing to expose the West’s double standards and criminality, but strangely failing to expose ‘israel’ for same and for being a genocidal regime.
henrymakow.com/putin-is-nwo-pawn.html
China is just complaining about the genocide without really naming it and does nothing to stop it. I am not aware of any help from the Chinese to the region, to Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Palestine or anyone else.
It seems that North Korea helped Hezbollah built their tunnels from where they target the zionist invaders. I don’t know if it’s true but if it is one can only praise North Korea for doing so.
We know the dictum: ” watch what they do, not what they say”.
So far, the most vocal US-zionist hegemony opponents are China and Russia and yet, while they could really weigh on the conflict and end it by applying the right pressure to the zionist occupiers and by heavily helping militarily and financially the Resistance, they do the minimum to show that they disagree but without anything really effective.
It would just be fair if Russia and China were doing to the US what the US are doing to them in East Asia and Ukraine, but they seem content to be only on the defensive and talking sides without applying a logical tit for tat policy.
For this reason, I believe both crises are not what they appear to be and all these superpowers have a common interest in letting the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Palestine/Lebanon continue unabated.
It is even possible that, through central banks for example, China, Russia, Pakistan or India are under zionist control too, leaving us with kabuki theatre in both conflicts.