Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 09-10/2023
Israelis on edge as fears grow of wider Lebanon conflict
Israeli drone strike kills three Hezbollah fighters in Syria
Fresh skirmishes erupt on Lebanon-Israel border
Israeli shelling wounds three Lebanese troops
UN Resolution 1701 implementation: French delegation concludes talks in Beirut amid
Hezbollah targets the Israeli 91st Division headquarters in the Brannit barracks
A soldier for a soldier: The aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on Aita Al-Shaab
Abou Faour to LBCI: What Jumblatt seeks is to find common ground to build on
Director of Revenues and TVA at Finance Ministry to LBCI: Gov's intention to ease burden on citizens
Sami Gemayel Stresses Importance of Implementing UNSC Resolution 1701 During US Visit
Sami Gemayel Concludes US Visit, Denounces Hamas Practices in Lebanon
Wanted person killed during prosecution

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 09-10/2023
EU mulls sanctioning violent Israeli settlers, tougher restrictions on Hamas
Israel presses on with Gaza bombardments, including in areas where it told civilians to flee
Iran warns of 'uncontrollable explosion' after US veto on Gaza ceasefire
Gaza's environmental devastation: The hidden horrors of war
At least 17,700 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing of Gaza Strip: Health Ministry
Once, This Was Iraqi Farmland. Now It’s Controlled by an Iran-Linked Militia
Putin believes Ukraine will fall within just months without new US aid, says Senate Intelligence Chair
Russia has recruited over 100,000 prisoners for its 'human wave' assaults against Ukraine since the war began, reports say
Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling
Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022
Israel bombards Gaza, including evacuation areas for Palestinians
Kataeb Hezbollah militia: Operations against US forces to continue until last American exits Iraq
Children of Iran Nobel Peace Prize winner fear they won’t see her again
Iran says reviving nuclear deal ‘useless’
Turkiye’s Erdogan denounces UN ‘Israel protection council’
Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting
Syria strikes kill 6 civilians in rebel bastion: monitor
Egypt's elections and el-Sisi's grip on power: Economic crisis temporarily overshadowed by Gaza war
Houthi threats: Israel and the UAE explore alternative maritime route

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 09-10/2023
As the Israel-Hamas War Governs the World's Attention, Iran Is Quietly Marching Towards Nuclear Breakout/Jeffrey Sonnenfeld/Time/December0 9, 2023
Stopping the Mullahs vs. Getting Them All Set Up/Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./December 09, 2023
Putin’s strategic patience beginning to pay off/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/December 09, 2023
Collapse of Gaza truce comes with a heavy price/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/December 09, 2023
The IDF’s meticulous targeting of Hamas in Gaza/JNS/December 9, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 09-10/2023
Israelis on edge as fears grow of wider Lebanon conflict
AFP/December 09, 2023
NAHARIYA, Israel: In the seaside haven of Nahariya, the shock still lingers on Daniel Bussidan’s face. A recent rocket attack killed his friend’s father, and now this Israeli beach town, the closest to Lebanon, stands on edge. “I’m scared from the attack,” said the 26-year-old who works in his father’s pastry shop on the Mediterranean resort’s eucalyptus-lined main street. His friend’s father was killed when a rocket struck his farm while he was working, Bussidan told AFP. “He died on the spot,” Bussidan said. In peacetime, visitors flock to the town to enjoy its pleasant climate and good surfing. But for over two months, residents have been living under the threat of near-daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and powerful Lebanese movement Hezbollah. The Iran-backed Shiite group says it entered the fray in support of Hamas on October 8, the day after the Palestinian militants launched their attack in Israel which killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials. Aiming to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a military offensive that the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza says has killed 17,490 people, mostly women and children, and left the Palestinian territory in ruins. In northern Israel, residents fear a wider conflict emerging along the border with Lebanon, which snakes along a hill in the distance from Nahariya. More than 120 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border since October 7, mostly Hezbollah fighters and more than a dozen civilians, according to an AFP tally. Israel says six of its soldiers and four Israeli civilians have been killed in the area, and Lebanon lost its first soldier in the exchanges on Tuesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah that if it “chooses to start a global war, then it will turn Beirut and South Lebanon... into Gaza and Khan Yunis with its own hands.”Business has slumped along the Nahariya seafront, and many more rifles have appeared, slung over people’s shoulders. Resident Nathalie Betito, 44, believes Hezbollah fighters could infiltrate the border. But she made a point of celebrating Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, with around 100 people at the central synagogue this week. She and her husband Arie, 47, immigrated from France five years ago. Nahariya represents an attractive destination, with special tax breaks due to its exposed position. Arie, who now helps new arrivals at the town hall, said residents were nonetheless living in peril. Hezbollah has thousands of “missiles pointed at us,” he said, stressing that he did not believe in escalating the conflict into a “total” war. “The price to pay would be huge,” he said. “Neither side wants that.” But people in Nahariya are preparing for the worst. Efi Dayan, 60, said he “knows there’s going to be a war here.”“We’re getting ready with food, clothes. We’re waiting for it,” he said calmly under the winter sun. But the military job in Gaza needs to be completed first, said Bussidan, a former soldier himself. “We have to finish Hamas and take care of all civilians on both sides,” he said.

Israeli drone strike kills three Hezbollah fighters in Syria
Agence France Presse/December 9, 2023
Three Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian have been killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car in the south of Syria, a war monitor said. "A Syrian and three Lebanese Hezbollah fighters from the surveillance and missile-launching unit were killed in the Israeli drone strike on their rented car" in Madinat al-Baath town in the province of Quneitra, close to the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Later Friday Hezbollah confirmed that three of its fighters had been killed "on the path to Jerusalem," a phrase it uses to refer to fighters killed in the ongoing confrontation with Israel in south Lebanon. It however used the same phrase when it mourned seven fighters killed in an Israeli strike in Syria on November 10. Israel said that strike was in response to a drone attack on the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat. On Thursday, the Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, reported that Israel hit sites close to Damascus with eight missiles, as well as a "regime military post in the province of Quneitra," without causing any casualties. The strikes were a response to the bombardment of Israeli-annexed Golan, the monitor said. On December 2, two Syrian Hezbollah fighters and two officers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in an Israeli air strike on Hezbollah sites close to Damascus, the monitor said. The official news agency of the Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, reported on the same day that two members of the guards had died on an "advisory mission" in its ally Syria, but did not specify where and when they were killed. Israel has undertaken hundreds of air strikes in its neighbor Syria since the start of the country's civil war in 2011, targeting the positions of the Syrian army and groups affiliated with Iran, such as Hezbollah. Those missions have intensified since the start of Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, which was triggered by the Palestinian group's unprecedented attack on Israel's south. On November 8, three Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli strike against the militant group's positions close to Damascus, according to the Observatory.
Israel rarely comments on its operations in Syria, but says it wants to prevent Iran, its sworn enemy, from establishing itself on Israel's doorstep.

Fresh skirmishes erupt on Lebanon-Israel border
Naharnet/December 9, 2023 
Israel on Saturday shelled the outskirts of the southern Lebanese border towns of Naqoura, Kfarshouba, al-Wazzani, Blida, Mhaybib, al-Dhayra, Alma al-Shaab and Tayr Harfa amid reports of Hezbollah attacks on Israel's Misgav Am and a surveillance pole near al-Wazzani. The Israeli army said Saturday that it had fired overnight "toward the source of" unspecified launches from Lebanon towards Israeli territory. Fighter jets also struck targets of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israeli military said. Lebanon's National News Agency said violent airstrikes targeted the southern Lebanese border town of Aita al-Shaab causing injuries. Hezbollah meanwhile said that one of its fighters who hailed from Aita al-Shaab was killed by Israeli fire in south Lebanon. Hezbollah had overnight announced attacking the Ramia Israeli post, saying that the assault caused deaths and injuries. It had announced a series of attacks throughout Friday. Hezbollah says it entered the fray in support of Hamas on October 8, the day after the Palestinian militants launched their unprecedented attack on south Israel. More than 120 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border since October 7, mostly Hezbollah fighters and more than a dozen civilians, according to an AFP tally. Israel says six of its soldiers and four Israeli civilians have been killed in the area, and Lebanon lost its first soldier in the exchanges on Tuesday.

Israeli shelling wounds three Lebanese troops
Agence France Presse/December 9, 2023
Three Lebanese soldiers were lightly injured overnight by Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon, medical sources said, while the Lebanese Army reported no casualties in a second attack on a military hospital. "Israeli artillery fire targeted the vicinity of a Lebanese Army post in Ras el-Naqoura, lightly injuring three soldiers," a medical source told AFP. An AFP photographer at the scene saw the soldiers lying on stretchers, exhibiting signs of breathing difficulties but with no open wounds. On Tuesday, two people, including a Lebanese soldier, were killed in Israeli cross-border shelling -- the first among Lebanese army personnel to be killed since the start of almost daily exchanges of fire on the border between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli army acknowledged the incident and expressed "regret," saying it was targeting a Hezbollah position and not the army. The Lebanese Army, deployed to the border area, reported a second attack on Friday. "On December 8, 2023, the military hospital in the town of Ain Ebel was bombed by the Israeli enemy, causing material damage but no casualties," it said in a statement. Regular cross-border fire began following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, triggered by the Palestinian movement's surprise October 7 attack on Israel. Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, claimed responsibility on Friday for a series of attacks against Israeli troops and positions near the border. Meanwhile, Israel continues to hit border areas in what it says is an attempt to destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure.
Since October 7, border violence has killed at least 120 people in Lebanon, the majority Hezbollah fighters but also 16 civilians, including three journalists, according to an AFP count. On Thursday, a civilian was killed in northern Israel by an anti-tank missile fired from southern Lebanon, bringing the number killed in attacks from Lebanon to at least six Israeli soldiers and four civilians, according to authorities. Hezbollah had claimed responsibility for the anti-tank missile on Thursday, saying it was targeting Israeli military barracks. On the same day, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group, announced the death of two of its fighters, bringing the number of its members killed in southern Lebanon to eight.

UN Resolution 1701 implementation: French delegation concludes talks in Beirut amid
LBCI/December 9, 2023
The political-security mission of the French delegation in Beirut concluded after discussions held on Friday and Saturday, centering on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701. The talks specifically addressed Hezbollah's withdrawal from southern areas below the Litani River, framed as safeguarding Lebanon and preventing escalation along its southern borders. While seemingly beneficial for Lebanon, this move is not excluded from Israel's pressure to secure its northern border, allowing the return of settlers to their northern towns abandoned during the recent confrontations. Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib disclosed to LBCI on Friday that a proposal suggested a reduction in UNIFIL forces in exchange for strengthening the Lebanese army in the south, with international support covering the costs. Coordination between emergency forces and the army would remain a key aspect.
Observers questioned the paradox of seeking stability in the south while simultaneously proposing a reduction in UNIFIL numbers, whose presence serves as a guarantee. Some argue that an increase in the army's numbers, given the retention of UNIFIL, would serve UNIFIL more than Lebanon. However, according to LBCI's sources, the French proposal remains, at this point, a mere verbal proposition without accompanying practical suggestions or specific assurances. Multiple sources who met with the French envoys told LBCI that France's approach might not align with Washington's. Paris seems focused on enforcing the international resolution, regardless of the method. In any case, the primary concern in all propositions, particularly for Hezbollah, is the conviction of preserving Lebanon's stability. However, any attempt to alter agreements mad

Hezbollah targets the Israeli 91st Division headquarters in the Brannit barracks
LBCI/December 9, 2023
Hezbollah confirmed on Saturday targeted attacks on Israeli military locations, employing 'precision weaponry.' The strikes aimed at the Samaqa site in the occupied Shebaa Farms, targeting Israeli soldiers and their deployments in the vicinity with appropriate missile systems. Hezbollah further disclosed successful direct hits on the Baghdadi site, using suitable armaments, resulting in a direct hit. Additionally, the headquarters of the Israeli 91st Division in the Brannit barracks were pinpointed and struck directly using missile capabilities, which resulted in a direct hit.

A soldier for a soldier: The aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on Aita Al-Shaab
LBCI/December 9, 2023
In an incident reminiscent of the destruction witnessed in Gaza, residents of Aita Al-Shaab woke up to the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike. At 1:40 AM on Friday, the Israeli warplane fired a high-explosive shell, similar to those used in Gaza, at a house in Aita Al-Shaab near a gas station. Fortunately, the projectile did not detonate. As a result, Hassan Srour was martyred and mourned by Hezbollah, while others sustained minor injuries, but the material damage was substantial. Search and rescue operations, assisted by military intelligence, continued until dawn. Therefore, the equation is clear: A soldier for a soldier. On Friday afternoon, Hezbollah targeted the Metat military base near Rmeish, directly engaging Aita Al-Shaab, resulting in casualties documented in a video showing settlers transporting the wounded in military ambulances. The strike proved painful on both human and military fronts. The targeted base was the headquarters for the Intelligence Battalion of the 91st Galilee Division, spanning from Naqoura to Shebaa along the border. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of a potential new reality sought by Israel, attempting to create a shift by targeting the center of villages following strikes on Odaisseh and Houla. This aligns with its diplomatic pressure tactics in response to UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

Abou Faour to LBCI: What Jumblatt seeks is to find common ground to build on
LBCI/December 9, 2023
MP Wael Bou Faour said on Saturday that the common factor in the performance of the political forces is the failure to appreciate the seriousness of the current stage and the crises we are experiencing. During the Nharkom Said TV show on LBCI, he added that what former PSP head Walid Jumblatt and current PSP Head Taymour Jumblatt seek through the current political movement is to find common ground to build on and overcome crises. “This includes addressing vacancies in security institutions, the seemingly heated presidential elections, and how to deal with events in the south and their repercussions,” he added. Regarding the meeting with Hezbollah's delegation, Bou Faour said that "the meeting came to maintain a permanent channel of communication. We agree where we agree and differ where we differ, but the main focus is organizing the relationship."

Director of Revenues and TVA at Finance Ministry to LBCI: Gov's intention to ease burden on citizens
LBCI/December 9, 2023
The Director of Revenues and Value Added Tax (TVA) at the Ministry of Finance, Luay Al-Hajj Shehadeh, affirmed that the state budget is a collaborative effort among several administrations and is considered one of the most successful tax administrations in the region. During the program "Nharkom Said" on LBCI, he pointed out that the goal is to secure state revenues to cover sustainable needs, stating, "We are not prepared anymore to resort to the Central Bank of Lebanon to cover the deficit, as previous plans relied on." He explained the objectives that the government sought to achieve through the 2024 budget, emphasizing the government's intention to ease the burden on citizens through proposed laws.

Sami Gemayel Stresses Importance of Implementing UNSC Resolution 1701 During US Visit
Kataeb English News
Kataeb Leader Samy Gemayel attended a dinner on Friday held by the American Lebanese Policy Institute (ALPI) during his visit to the United States. In a speech delivered during the dinner, Gemayel reiterated “the necessity of protecting Lebanon from all conflicts in the region and promoting the implementation of international resolutions, particularly Resolution 1701, to prevent the conflict from spreading to Lebanon.”Gemayel once again denounced “the loss of sovereignty due to Hezbollah’s confiscation of decision-making power, the disruption of institutions, and the functioning of democratic life by blocking the presidential elections.” The dinner was attended by U.S. Congress members Darrell Issa and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Professor Jihad Azour, Mrs. May Rihani, as well as members of the Kataeb Political Bureau Joelle Bou Abboud and Ibrahim Marji. Also present were Head of Kataeb Foreign Affairs Department Marwan Abdallah, Kataeb Representative in Washington D.C. Zahi Abi Younes as well as President of the American Lebanese Policy Institute, Paul Hindi along with the administrative committee. ---

Sami Gemayel Concludes US Visit, Denounces Hamas Practices in Lebanon
Kataeb English News/December 9, 2023
Kataeb Leader Samy Gemayel concluded his visit to the United States with two conferences hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the American Task Force for Lebanon. He highlighted the critical repercussions of the ongoing conflict in the region on Lebanon, which is experiencing a severe loss of state institutions amid comprehensive institutional paralysis and a halt to democratic life. Upon the invitation of the American Task Force for Lebanon, Gemayel delivered a lecture attended by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale, representatives from Western media, and research centers.
He painted a picture of the situation in Lebanon, explaining the risks it may face after the conclusion of military operations, especially with Hezbollah's continued grip on the country. He emphasized the Hezbollah's control over decisions related to peace and war, hindering the implementation of international resolutions that ensure security, particularly UNSC Resolutions 1559 and 1701, and preventing the deployment of the army along the entire Lebanese border to maintain security. The Kataeb Leader denounced Hamas's calls to form the vanguards of the Al-Aqsa flood from Lebanon and its efforts to recruit youth into this new militia. He considered this move as the most significant violation of Lebanon's sovereignty and a blatant challenge to the Lebanese people, evoking memories of the tragedies resulting from "Fatahland" wars, and the subsequent suffering that Lebanese endured at a high cost to stand against these challenges and reclaim their country. He stressed the necessity of confronting and countering these practices in Lebanon with the assistance of friendly countries. Gemayel emphasized that the only way for Lebanon to escape the current situation is through a comprehensive reconstitution of authority, the restoration of institutions, and strengthening the military institution to fulfill its role in protecting the Lebanese people. He also presented the opposition's efforts to unite and stand against the coup that Hezbollah is attempting to execute to keep Lebanon under the influence of its regional sponsor, Iran. --

Wanted person killed during prosecution
NNA/December 9, 2023 
The General Directorate of State Security announced that it had received information from the directorate about the presence of the wanted person (H.M.M.) in Aitait in the south. Several arrest warrants were issued against the wanted person for shooting and throwing grenades at a patrol belonging to one of the security services that tried to arrest him some time ago, and he injured two of its members. After monitoring, the Directorate confirmed information about his preparation for hostilities inside his town of Aitit, and that he had armed himself with military equipment and explosives for this purpose. After the State Security patrol surrounded the detainee, military developments occurred, as a result of which the wanted man was injured and quickly died while being transported to the hospital.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 09-10/2023
EU mulls sanctioning violent Israeli settlers, tougher restrictions on Hamas
Alice Tidey/Euronews/December 9, 2023
Foreign Affairs ministers scheduled to gather in Brussels on Monday are set to discuss proposals by Josep Borrell, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, to issue sanctions on extremist settlers in the West Bank including possible visa bans.
The EU has repeatedly condemned Israeli settlers' attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank but has steered clear of issuing sanctions. A fresh bout of violence by such settlers in the West Bank following the October 7 attacks commandeered by Hamas in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 200 more taken hostage, has however brought the topic to the fore. The "orientation note" issued by Borrell's service, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and seen by Euronews, calls on member states to "explore EU reactions to settler violence in the West Bank".
"This may include visa bans against extremists attacking civilians and the use of the EU human rights sanction regime," it adds. Israeli nationals can currently enter the Schengen Area — which comprises 27 EU and non-EU countries — without a visa for a maximum of 90 days within a 180-day period.
The note also urges the EU to "enforce continued, full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation and bilateral arrangements applicable to settlements products."
Following a 2015 decision, Israeli products made by settlers in the West Bank are meant to be clearly labelled as such and subject to less preferential customs arrangements. But it is widely seen as poorly implemented.
A senior EU diplomat said Friday the plan was pitched to member countries "in the framework of preserving the possibility of a Palestinian state," given that extremist settlers fiercely oppose the so-called two-state solution that the bloc sees as key to a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
"We have shared our idea with the member states that to preserve the integrity of the West Bank, we need to address the problem of violence," the senior diplomat said,
"We have seen that the Israeli army has not taken due action against these illegal acts," he added. In recent weeks, the bloc has hit back against proposals by figures within Netanyahu's cabinet to continue funding for settler communities
The US has already announced it will deny visas to Israeli settlers responsible for undermining peace and security. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also said this week that the country "will work with the US" and that "extremist settlers in the West Bank will be banned from entering Belgium".
The note also calls for tougher sanctions against Hamas, which the EU considers a terrorist organisation, by tightening the screw further on its leadership and financing. It says member states should "consider the possibility of a standalone sanction regime".
"Hamas is an organisation with quite a strong capacity to act. That needs financing, in particular, for its weapons. So it's obvious that being only a terrorist organisation cannot be, apparently, reason enough for dissuading some people to finance Hamas," the senior EU diplomat said. "So we have to focus more on that, on technical issues, how it is financed," he added, stressing that whilst Hamas' financing operations were very different, the bloc's past success in suppressing Daesh's financing instruments sets a positive precedent. A second option, another EU diplomat said on Friday, would be to extend the "Iran (sanction) regime to allow another type of designation."
The Iran regime, the source explained, "concerns the restrictive measures taken within the framework of Iran's support for Russia's aggression against Ukraine, but whose scope could in fact be extended by including the notion of support, or participation from Iran to the regional destabilization."The US government estimates that Tehran funds Hamas to the tune of an estimated $100 million a year. Countries including Qatar and Turkey are also believed to fund Hamas indirectly. EU sanctions have to be approved unanimously by the 27 member states and while new sanctions against Hamas could likely be rolled out before the end of the year, restrictive measures against violent Israeli settlers should prove much more difficult to hash out. The discussions in Brussels on Monday will come just three days after two Hamas militants - Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa, considered the plotters of the October 7 attack and among the most wanted men by Israel - were added to the EU's terrorist list. The individuals' EU-based funds and assets will be frozen, and operators based in the EU will be prohibited from making economic resources available to them.

Israel presses on with Gaza bombardments, including in areas where it told civilians to flee
Associated Press/December 09, 2023
Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip overnight into Saturday in relentless bombardments, including some of the dwindling slivers of land Palestinians had been told to evacuate to in the territory's south. The latest strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, despite it being backed by the vast majority of Security Council members and many other nations. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. "Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said before the vote. Gaza residents "are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival." Guterres told the council that Gaza was at "a breaking point" with the humanitarian support system at risk of total collapse, and that he feared "the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region."Gaza's borders with Israel and with Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving Palestinians with no option other than to try to seek refuge within the territory. The overall death toll in Gaza since the start of the war has surpassed 17,400, the majority of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, accusing the militants of using civilians as human shields, and says it's made considerable efforts with its evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm's way.
On Saturday, Gaza residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the northern part of the strip as well as in the south, including the city of Rafah, which lies near the Egyptian border and where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to evacuate to.
The main hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 71 people killed in bombings in the area over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said Saturday morning. The hospital also received 160 wounded, the ministry said. In the southern city of Khan Younis, the bodies of 62 people and another 99 wounded were taken to Nasser Hospital over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
Israel has been trying to secure the military's hold on northern Gaza, where furious fighting has underscored heavy resistance from the territory's Hamas rulers. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain in the area despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in during the war sparked by Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 raid targeting civilians in Israel. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were allegedly killed in the Hamas raid, and more than 240 people taken hostage. A temporary truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza. More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of the truce, about two-thirds women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to survive and pose a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the rising civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis, but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war, now in its third month.
"We have not given a firm deadline to Israel, not really our role," deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told a security forum a day before the U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council. "That said, we do have influence, even if we don't have ultimate control over what happens on the ground in Gaza."
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant argued a cease-fire would be a victory for Hamas. "A cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza, and signalling terror groups everywhere," he said. "Stand with Israel in our mission - we are fighting for our future, and we are fighting for the free world."A delegation of foreign ministers from Arab nations and Turkey was in Washington to push the Biden administration to drop its objections to an immediate cease-fire. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Friday ahead of a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza is a war crime, and one that is destabilizing the region. As fighting resumed after a brief truce more than a week ago, the U.S. urged Israel to do more to protect civilians and allow more aid to besieged Gaza. The appeals came as Israel expanded its blistering air and ground campaign into southern Gaza, especially the southern city of Khan Younis, sending tens of thousands more fleeing. "It was a night of heavy gunfire and shelling as every night," Taha Abdel-Rahman, a Khan Younis resident, said by phone early Saturday. Gaza's Civil Defense Department said at least one person was killed late Friday in Rafah and others wounded in an airstrike on a family home.
The department posted images showing first responders and residents using flashlights and the light from cell phones to search the rubble of the house for potential survivors. One crane was seen removing the rubble while rescuers cut through iron poles amid collapsed concrete roofs. Airstrikes were reported overnight in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where resident Omar Abu Moghazi said a strike hit a family home, causing casualties. There were also airstrikes and shelling in Gaza City and other northern parts of the strip. "It's a routine," Mohamed Abded, who lives in Gaza City's Zaytoun neighborhood, said of the bombardment. "You have only one option: leave or they will kill you. That's the case across the north." Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren coastline in the south, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians who have headed there portrayed a grim picture of desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and poor hygiene facilities. "We didn't see anything good here at all. We are living here in a tough cold. There are no bathrooms. We are sleeping on the sand," said Soad Qarmoot, a Palestinian woman who was forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
"I am a cancer patient," Qarmoot said late Friday as children circled a wood fire for warmth. "There is no mattress for me to sleep on. I am sleeping on the sand. It's freezing." Imad al-Talateeny, a displaced man from Gaza City, said the area lacks basic services to accommodate the growing number of displaced families. "I lack everything to feel a human," he said, adding that he had a peaceful, comfortable life before the war in Gaza City. "Here I'm not safe," he said. "Here I live in a desert. There is no gas, no water. The water that we drink is polluted water."

Iran warns of 'uncontrollable explosion' after US veto on Gaza ceasefire
Agence France Presse/December 09, 2023
Iran warned Saturday of the threat of an "uncontrollable explosion" of the situation in the Middle East, after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza war. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the top diplomat of the Islamic republic, also appealed for the immediate opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to enable humanitarian aid to be sent into the Gaza Strip. Militants from the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, allegedly killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Israel, whose main ally is the United States, vowed to destroy Hamas in response and unleashed an offensive that the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza says has killed more than 17,400 people in the Palestinian territory, also mostly civilians.
On Friday, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, saying the resolution "would leave Hamas in place able to repeat what it did on October 7." "As long as America supports the crimes of the Zionist regime (Israel) and the continuation of the war... there is a possibility of an uncontrollable explosion in the situation of the region," Amir-Abdollahian told U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a phone call, according to a foreign ministry statement. The Iranian foreign minister praised the U.N. chief's decision to use Article 99 of the U.N. Charter as "brave action to maintain international peace and security." Fighting resumed between Israel and Hamas on December 1 following a one-week truce that Israel says Hamas violated. "The Israeli regime's claim that Hamas has violated the ceasefire is completely false," Amir-Abdollahian told Guterres, adding that U.S. support for Israel "has made it difficult to achieve a lasting ceasefire."

Gaza's environmental devastation: The hidden horrors of war
LBCI/December 09, 2023
Amid the ongoing war in Gaza since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, the environmental landscape is undergoing a crisis not of Palestinian making but, instead, a consequence of Israel's actions. This crisis manifests in an alarming rise in climate pollution within Palestinian territories, fueled by the Israeli military's daily burning of tons of fossil fuels in its war on the Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, Israel employs various internationally prohibited weapons, including phosphorus, contributing to environmental degradation. In Israel's war on Gaza, weaponry is not the sole cause of pollution; the military siege imposed on the Strip has led to a massive waste crisis. Methane emissions from tons of accumulated waste throughout the region pose a serious environmental threat. Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas globally, generates a staggering 1800 tons of solid waste daily, based on 2022 statistics. The environmental and health catastrophe that Gaza is experiencing is unimaginable. The far-reaching ecological consequences of Israel's war on Gaza will become evident in the soil, water, sea, and air. Additionally, the presence of hundreds of bodies under the rubble threatens the spread of diseases and epidemics. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the accumulation of debris and the dust rising from it can lead to asbestos poisoning, causing Gaza's residents to suffer from pulmonary fibrosis and various types of cancer.

At least 17,700 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing of Gaza Strip: Health Ministry
AFP/December 09, 2023
Gaza's Health Ministry announced on Saturday a significant rise in the death toll to at least 17,700 and the number of injuries to 48,780 due to the relentless Israeli airstrikes. Hamas estimates, in control of Gaza since 2007, suggest that the actual figures for casualties are much higher. The ongoing challenge faced by ambulance crews and foreign non-governmental organizations is their inability to reach all the areas targeted, hindering the rescue efforts to extract victims from beneath the rubble.

Once, This Was Iraqi Farmland. Now It’s Controlled by an Iran-Linked Militia
Alissa J. Rubin/The New York Times/December 09, 2023
BAGHDAD — Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green, with lush date palm groves bordering the Euphrates River. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission. A farmer, Ali Hussein, who once lived on that land, said, “We do not dare to even ask if we can go there.” That’s because this stretch of Iraq — more than twice the size of San Francisco — is controlled by an Iraqi militia linked to Iran and designated a terrorist group by the United States. Militia members man checkpoints around the borders. And though sovereign Iraqi territory, the area, known as Jurf al-Nasr, functions as a “forward operating base for Iran,” according to one of the dozens of Western and Iraqi intelligence and military officers, diplomats and others interviewed for this article.
The militia that controls the land, Khataib Hezbollah, uses it to assemble drones and retrofit rockets, with parts largely obtained from Iran, senior military and intelligence officials say. Those weapons have then been distributed for use in attacks by Iranian-linked groups across the Middle East — putting this former farmland at the center of fears that the war in the Gaza Strip could grow into a wider conflict.
Such attacks have increased sharply over the past two months as Khataib Hezbollah and other groups linked to Iran have rallied to show their solidarity with Palestinians. Since Oct. 17, Iraqi groups have launched at least 82 drone and rocket attacks against U.S. military installations just in Iraq and Syria, wounding 66 service members, according to the Pentagon. Many of the attacks used weapons from Jurf al-Nasr, regional intelligence sources say. Responding to the recent attacks, the United States bombed two locations in Jurf al-Nasr, killing at least eight members of Khataib Hezbollah, according to the Pentagon as well as the militant group. “They have rockets, mortars, missiles,” said Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., who retired last year as the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the region. He said he did not know the exact ranges that the weapons might have now but that in 2020 — when he oversaw the last U.S. effort to reduce the arsenal — some could reach targets in Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. For decades, Iran’s Middle East strategy has been to meld informal military power through local armed groups with political influence over government policies. Starting in the 1980s, it helped finance and arm Lebanese Hezbollah. Then it gave expansive military and political support to the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, military aid to the Houthis in northern Yemen, and support for the Al Ashtar Brigades in Bahrain. But Iraq is Iran’s most natural regional partner, even if the countries once fought a long war against each other. They share a 1,000-mile border, many families have relatives on both sides, and economic ties are strong. Also, Iraq, like Iran, has a Shiite Muslim majority, and it is home to some of the most important Shiite shrines.
After Iraq’s 2021 elections, Iranian-linked political parties, most with militia wings, claimed for the first time a large enough share of parliamentary seats to form a governing coalition and select the prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. This tied him politically to parties whose priorities are often shaped as much by Iran’s concerns as by Iraq’s. For the United States, Iran’s political gains in Iraq, and the commandeering of Jurf al-Nasr by a militia allied with Iran, are a startling reversal of fortune. Over the past 20 years, Republican and Democrat governments alike invested $1.79 trillion in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, battling al-Qaida and joining Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State group, all with the aim of creating stability and a reliable ally. Instead, Iran, more than ever, is “the predominant influence in Iraq today,” said Hoshyar Zebari, who was Iraq’s foreign minister for 10 years and finance minister until 2016.
Iran’s interests, he said, affect “every sector of the security forces, the military, the provincial governors.”
How a Militia Took Control
Since the rise of Iran’s theocratic regime in 1979, it has wanted to force the U.S. military out of the Middle East. Sajad Jiyad, an Iraq analyst and nonresident fellow at Century International, a research group, said that when President George W. Bush described Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil,” it sounded as if Washington was saying, “You’re next; Iraq, Iran, North Korea, we’re coming for you.”So Iran focused on creating, training and arming Iraqi Shiite militias to attack U.S. forces on Iraqi soil. The U.S. military said that between 2003 and 2011, Iranian-backed groups were responsible for the deaths of 603 U.S. troops in Iraq. One of those groups was Khataib Hezbollah, which from its inception was closely tied to Iran’s Quds Force, the wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responsible for proxy militias around the region. In 2011, the U.S. military withdrew from Iraq, and in 2014, the Islamic State group invaded. The Iraqi army collapsed, and the government in Baghdad asked its friends — Iran and the United States — for help. Iran responded quickly, sending trainers and weapons and helping recruit a volunteer Iraqi force — eventually known as Popular Mobilization Units — to fight the Islamic State invaders alongside Iranian-linked militias, including Khataib Hezbollah. The United States sent help, too, but several weeks later. Part of the battle took place in Jurf al-Nasr, then known as Jurf al-Sakhar, an Islamic State group staging ground for attacks on nearby Shiite villages and on pilgrims, millions of them Iranians, who traveled through the area on their way to Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq. “Iran always made protection of those shrines a priority,” said Kareem al-Nuri, then a commander in the Badr Corps, another Iranian-linked armed group. Jurf al-Nasr was also strategically located, with roads that led west to Syria, a route to ferry weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. During the fighting, Khataib Hezbollah emptied every Sunni village, telling people they would be able to return once the Islamic State group was gone. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented hundreds of disappearances, primarily of Sunni men, in the area; the 2019 U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report said 1,700 people were held in a secret prison there.
‘A Major Expansion’
When the fighting was done, Jurf al-Nasr remained under the control of Khataib Hezbollah. In 2016, Khataib Hezbollah and other Iranian-linked militias, along with the Popular Mobilization Units, became part of the Iraqi security apparatus, with the Iraq treasury paying salaries for fighters and providing weapons — including for units that have continued to attack U.S. forces. This year, al-Sudani approved a three-year budget with more money for the fighters, who now number more than 150,000, to grow by at least 20% — “a major expansion,” according to Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who follows Iraq’s armed forces and their ties to Iran. Iran denies that it controls the armed Iraqi groups that have attacked U.S. forces, but in a recent interview, its foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said he viewed the United States as complicit in Israel’s war in Gaza, adding that the militias were created to fight terrorism and occupation. Experts say the Iraqi militias with the closest ties to Iran — like Khataib Hezbollah — have “a shared ideological vision” with Iran, as Inna Rudolf, a senior fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London, put it. That vision largely accepts Iran’s theocratic philosophy of governance and the broader goals of forcing U.S. troops out of Iraq and destroying the state of Israel. Today, a reporter visiting near Jurf al-Nasr cannot miss the overwhelming signs of Khataib Hezbollah’s presence. The checkpoints on the roads into the area fly the group’s flag — white with a sketch of a fist gripping a stylized Kalashnikov rising out of a globe, and the words “Party of God” in Arabic calligraphy. The central street in the nearby town of Mussayib, Iraq, outside the checkpoints, is lined with “martyrs flags” imprinted with photos of militia men who lost their lives fighting in Iraq, and with large posters depicting Iran’s celebrated Quds Force leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States in 2020. In interviews in Mussayib and other villages, residents — who refused to give their names — said that they didn’t know what was happening in Jurf al-Nasr but that the only people who traveled through the checkpoints were Khataib Hezbollah operatives and foreigners speaking Arabic with an Iranian or Lebanese accent.
Western and Iraqi diplomats and intelligence officers, however, paint a picture of what goes on there, just 40 miles south of Baghdad. They say Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah trainers teach drone assembly and how to retrofit precision guidance systems onto rockets and surface-to-air missiles. For the rockets, McKenzie said, “upgraded components will come from Iran.” Khataib Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal is mostly composed of shorter-range conventional Katyusha rockets but also includes some longer-range ones, said former and present intelligence and military officials, including McKenzie, and Khataib Hezbollah commanders. Some weapons are shipped into Syria, according to Western and Middle Eastern military and intelligence reports. From there, they can be transported to Russia or Lebanon, an intelligence official in the region said. It is unclear, several people interviewed said, whether the longer-range rockets are entirely under the control of the Iraqi armed groups or if Iran’s Revolutionary Guard supervise closely the use of the most sophisticated weapons. The former farmland also includes storage facilities for weapons, with smaller quantities stored elsewhere in Iraq, according to Western and Iraqi security officials, as well as people close to Khataib Hezbollah. Israel has long worried about Khataib Hezbollah’s growing weapons stockpiles. In 2019, Israeli warplanes hit a large arms depot in Baghdad in an area partly controlled by Khataib Hezbollah. In both 2019 and 2022, Israel struck Khataib Hezbollah camps in Syria, just over the Iraqi border. It has never hit Jurf al-Nasr. In an interview in September, al-Sudani did not respond to questions about military activities in Jurf al-Nasr. In October, he publicly condemned the attacks on U.S. bases and camps, but his words have had little effect. In the September interview, though, he said he hoped that families displaced from Jurf al-Nasr could go back home.For those families, returning seems a receding dream.“We have not heard anything about what happened to our lands, to our homes,” said Abu Arkan, 70, who was displaced in 2014. Then he waved a reporter away. “I do not want to talk about this subject any longer because it depresses me,” he said. “Nobody comes to us to bring us back. No one compensates us for what we have lost. We are like ghosts.”

Putin believes Ukraine will fall within just months without new US aid, says Senate Intelligence Chair
Thibault Spirlet/Business Insider/December 9, 2023
Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner said Putin believes that Ukraine will fall in just months. Warner drew his assessment from US intelligence after senators blocked a $175 million aid package. "Vladimir Putin's hopes for victory rest on the US walking away from Ukraine," he said. Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner said Vladimir Putin believes that Ukraine will fall within just months without renewed US military aid. Sen. Warner asked, "Why, at this moment in time, would we prove Putin right?"Warner made the statement on Wednesday after the Senate failed to hit the 60-vote threshold required to advance a new "crucial" military aid package to Ukraine. "Vladimir Putin's hopes for victory rest on the US walking away from Ukraine," Warner wrote. The $110bn package proposed by President Joe Biden allotted $61bn for Ukraine, as well as funds for Israel and aid for Gaza, was blocked.
Republican senators want the package to include the US border security measures. The Democratic senator from Virginia hailed Ukraine for "decimating the military and morale of one of our chief geopolitical adversaries in Vladimir Putin's Russia without the loss of a single American or NATO soldier."But all Senate Republicans voted against it, alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who raised concerns about funding Israel's "current inhumane military strategy" against Palestinians, per Reuters. In a letter to the Senate Democratic Caucus a day before the vote, Sanders expressed "deep" concerns about providing $10.1 billion for Benyamin Netanyahu's "right-wing extremist" government to "continue their current inhumane military strategy, which has already taken 16,000 Palestinian lives, 70 percent of whom are women and children," he said. Republican senators, for their part, blocked the package because it lacked tougher measures to stem immigration at the US-Mexico border, per Reuters. Following the vote, President Joe Biden echoed Warner's comments: "Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership, not just Ukraine, but beyond that," according to The Hill. The deadlock could directly play into Putin's hands, as the war appears to have reached a violent stalemate along the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Business Insider's Paul Squire reported. Only 0.2% of Ukraine's land changed hands from January 1 to September 25, according to an analysis by The New York Times, based on data from the Institute for the Study of War. And Ukraine's counteroffensive has failed to achieve any significant breakthrough despite six months of hard fighting, Business Insider's Chris Panella reported.
Congress's delay in extending aid to Ukraine will "very likely make it impossible to continue liberating territory and create a high risk of losing the war," Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine's presidential office, said, per The New Voice of Ukraine.

Russia has recruited over 100,000 prisoners for its 'human wave' assaults against Ukraine since the war began, reports say
Alia Shoaib/Business Insider/December 9, 2023
Russia is believed to have recruited more than 100,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine, says Newsweek. The practise of recruiting prisoners was started by the Wagner Group and continued by the Kremlin. Russia's prison population has dropped from around 420,000 before the war to about 266,000 now. Russia is believed to have recruited over 100,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine since the war began, according to various rights advocacy groups. The estimated figures were provided to Newsweek by Russian dissident-in-exile Vladimir Osechkin, who heads the Gulagu.net anti-corruption project, based on sources in Russia's prison system. He said that every week, more than 1,000 of the convict recruits are killed in the war and that, in some cases, older men past retirement age have been recruited to fight. The Washington Post previously reported that the Russian prison population had dropped from 420,000 before the war to a historic low of about 266,000, per Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov. "This is a shocking number," Olga Romanova, the director of the Russia Behind Bars human rights organization, said about Vukolov's revelation, per The Post. Prisoners were first recruited to join the fight in Ukraine last summer by the now-deceased Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin. The firebrand mercenary leader promised prisoners pardons and lured them with financial incentives if they joined up. Rights groups note that Prigozhin recruited about 50,000 prisoners, and it appears that the Russian Defense Ministry has continued with the practice. "This means that the Defense Ministry has likely recruited around 100,000 people for the war there," she Romanova, noting that the numbers far exceed the Wagner recruits. Her group has also documented cases in which defendants were recruited to join the war before their cases even went to trial. There has also been controversy as former convicts finish their service in Ukraine, as two men convicted of murder and cannibalism were recently released after they fought. Russia has been suffering heavy casualties in Ukraine, estimated by the West to be about 300,000. War analysts have noted that the Russian military has often appeared to rely on human wave tactics, throwing poorly trained troops into massive assaults. To combat manpower shortages in Ukraine, Russia has sent in prisoners, called up military reservists, and recruited ethnic minorities to fight. Russia's military appears to be able to reinforce with recruits continuously, the think tank the Institute for the Study of War said. The think tank noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin can keep bringing in recruits as long as he is willing to suffer the domestic consequences.

Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling
Daniel Hannan/The Telegraph/December 9, 2023
We need to talk about Ukraine. While the world’s attention has been focused on the war between Israel and Hamas, grim tremors have been shaking that rich, black soil. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed – or, in Volodymyr Zelensky’s words, “did not achieve the desired results”. As exhausted Ukrainians fall back from Russia’s ramparts and minefields, the initiative is swinging to the invaders. Russia is advancing through the skeletal remains of what used to be Marinka, a city in Donetsk, perhaps of greater psychological than strategic importance. Missiles are again hitting Kyiv. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has taken to the BBC to warn that her country is in “mortal danger”.Now, it is the Ukrainians’ turn to dig in, to try to hold what they have. As in 1914, a fortified line runs the length of the front, from the Dnieper delta to the Russian border. And, as then, military technology favours the defender, so that tiny gains are bought at terrible cost. The First World War eventually ended in part because the Allies had greater manpower. Brutally, they were able, especially after America had fully mobilised by the beginning of 1918, to throw more men at the front lines than the Central Powers.
This time, the demographic advantage is with Russia, whose population is three-and-a-quarter times the size of Ukraine’s. Russia has switched a third of its pre-war civilian production to weapons and ammunition, and may now have the edge when it comes to drones – that modern equivalent of the barbed wire and machine guns that gave the defending side such a lethal advantage in the Flanders mud. The long-term costs to the Russian people of this shift to a wartime economy are dreadful. Vladimir Putin has condemned his long-suffering muzhiks to years of penury and hunger. But, for now, it has done the trick. Russia has made it through to winter without a Ukrainian breakthrough. We are all prone to hindsight bias, and there will no doubt be articles about how it was always going to be tough to unseat entrenched defenders. But this stalemate was far from predictable when the counteroffensive was launched in June.
I was one of those who expected Ukraine to break through to the Sea of Azov, a move that might well have ended the war. During 2022, Ukraine had demonstrated that Russia could not resupply Crimea across the Kerch Strait. Breaking the land bridge would have left the Russian garrison on the peninsula cut off. Ukraine could have turned off its electricity and food, and a negotiating space would have opened. Why did I get it wrong? I had been talking not only to Ukrainians, but to British military observers with direct knowledge of the battlefield. They had watched the extraordinary Ukrainian gains in Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022 – gains that had emboldened the West to offer the kinds of matériel that they had previously held back from sending, lest it fall into enemy hands. Ukraine now had long-range missiles, mine-clearing kit and modern tanks. At the same time, the Prigozhin mutiny had shown how soft Russia was behind the hard shell of its front lines. But the invaders had learnt from their earlier mistakes. While Ukraine rushed to train its men in how to operate their new weapons last spring, Russia seeded mile after mile of landmines, built fortifications, dug trenches and amassed drones.
Putin needs only to hang on for another 12 months. Even if Donald Trump is not elected – the former president makes no secret of his admiration for the Russian tyrant, once going so far as to declare that he trusted Putin before the US security services – Republican congressmen have turned against the war. Last week, they blocked President Biden’s £88 billion aid package to Ukraine.
Their concern is supposedly financial, but a bigger motive may be their partisan dislike of Biden, the same ignoble impulse that led an earlier generation of Republican congressmen to oppose Harry Truman’s war in Korea. For the MAGA wing, there is also a lingering resentment of the cameo role that Ukraine played in the Trump impeachment drama. You can’t have missed the spring in Putin’s step. For a long time, he was too scared to stray beyond Russia’s borders. Quite apart from an international arrest warrant, he had a well-founded fear of assassination. His only foreign ventures were to former Soviet states, and two friendly dictatorships: Iran and China. But, this week, he visited two neutral dictatorships – the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The footage shows beyond doubt that it was the despot in person, not a body double. What gave him confidence to travel to places that have security links with the West? Is it possible that some tentative entente has been reached? Might the Saudis have been asked to sound him out, discretely and deniably, as a possible prelude to peace talks? If so, we risk a Suez-level disaster for the Western democracies. Any deal that rewards Russian aggression will signal to the rest of the world that Nato, with all its collective wealth and weaponry, could not succeed in the minimal goal of rescuing a country that its two most powerful members, the US and the UK, had undertaken to protect. The case for intervention in Ukraine is not that it is a liberal democracy. Sure, it is vastly more liberal than Russia, but it falls well short of our standards. Russophile parties have been banned, and there is a worry that the crackdown might extend to pro-Western opposition politicians, too. This week, I was at a meeting of global Centre-Right parties at which Petro Poroshenko, the former president, was meant to speak. At the last minute, he and two of his MPs were banned from leaving Ukraine – and though Poroshenko patriotically declined to make a fuss, it left me wondering, not for the first time, why Zelensky refuses to draw other parties into a wartime coalition. Then again, Poland was run by an authoritarian government in 1939. That did not alter the fact that it was attacked without provocation after we had guaranteed its independence – just as we guaranteed Ukraine’s independence in 1994 when it surrendered its nuclear arsenal. While we are not ourselves at war this time, we are so invested in the Ukrainian cause that a Russian victory – and absorbing conquered territory is a Russian victory, present it how you will – would mean a catastrophic loss of prestige for the West and the ideas associated with it: personal freedom, democracy and human rights.
Conflicts will spread as regimes that never cared for liberal values in the first place realise that there is no longer a policeman on the corner. Venezuela’s outrageous claims against Commonwealth Guyana are just the start of this process. “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion... but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence,” wrote Samuel Huntington. “Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”But this is not yet over. Ukraine has driven Russia out of the western Black Sea, which is open again to international shipping. We should be on our guard against the tendency that George Orwell observed during the Second World War, whereby intellectuals over-interpret each new military development – a tendency, he believed, not shared by ordinary people. Just as there was excessive pessimism immediately after Russia invaded, and excessive euphoria when Kherson was retaken, so we should not infer too much from this setback. It is still possible to imagine a peace deal that does not overtly reward aggression. Perhaps the eastern oblasts could win autonomy under loose Ukrainian suzerainty; perhaps an internationally supervised referendum might be held in a demilitarised Crimea. But if Russia ends up annexing land by force, it is not just the West that will lose; it is the entire post-1945 international order. The world is getting colder. The nights are drawing in.

Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022
STOCKHOLM (Reuters)/December 9, 2023
An Iranian court has begun the trial of a Swedish national employed by the European Union who was detained last year, Sweden's foreign minister said on Saturday. "I have been informed that the trial of Johan Floderus has begun in Tehran," Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told Swedish news agency TT. "The Swedish charge d'affaires was at the court but was refused the right to participate in the trial. Sweden has ... requested the right to be present when the trial resumes." Floderus was detained in April 2022 while on holiday in Iran for what his family said was alleged spying. Billstrom did not specify what Floderus had been charged with. Floderus' family has said he was detained "without any justifiable cause or due process."Rights groups and Western governments have accused the Islamic Republic of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up. Tehran says such arrests are based on its criminal code and denies holding people for political reasons. Relations between Sweden and Iran have been tense since 2019 when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official for his part in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s. Hamid Noury was sentenced to life in prison last year, prompting Iran to recall its envoy to Sweden in protest. In May, Iran executed a Swedish-Iranian dissident convicted of leading an Arab separatist group Tehran blames for a number of attacks including one on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25 people.

Israel bombards Gaza, including evacuation areas for Palestinians
AP/December 09, 2023
GAZA: Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip in relentless bombardment Saturday, hitting some of the dwindling bits of land it had told Palestinians to evacuate to in the territory’s south. The strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, despite its wide support. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. “Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote. Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival.”Gaza was at a “breaking point” with the humanitarian support system at risk of collapse, and Guterres said he feared “the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region.” Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide. With the war now in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,400, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, whose counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of a total of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday. Israel holds the Hamas militants responsible for civilian casualties, accusing them of using civilians as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 93 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostage.
Hamas said Saturday it continued its rocket fire into Israel.
In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the north and south, including the city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to evacuate to. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children’s tables were strewn with rubble.
“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights,” said Rafah resident Abu Yasser Al-Khatib. “The Palestinian people will not leave and do not want to leave.”Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold on northern Gaza despite heavy resistance from Hamas. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in. The Israeli military said Saturday its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shijaia in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City. It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighborhood where they found an elevator, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from an UN-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza. On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military only confirmed that two soldiers were seriously wounded in an attempted hostage rescue and that no hostages were freed. With no further cease-fire in sight and a trickle of humanitarian aid reaching just a few parts of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages. “I am very hungry,” said Mustafa Al-Najjar, sheltering in a UN-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”While adults can cope with hunger, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because there are hungry and you are not able to do anything,” he said. Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza and signalling terror groups everywhere.”Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and elsewhere as frustration grew with the US stance. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said the US veto of the Security Council resolution showed Washington’s isolation. “From now on, humanity won’t think the USA. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Saturday. Fidan and the Palestinian, Saudi, Qatari, Nigerian, Indonesian, Egyptian and Jordanian ministers met with Blinken to press for an end to the fighting, and the group was to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday. Despite restrictions on demonstrations, protesters at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called for a cease-fire. Israel has expanded its blistering air and ground campaign into southern Gaza, sending tens of thousands fleeing. “It was a night of heavy gunfire and shelling as every night,” Taha Abdel-Rahman, a resident of Khan Younis, said by phone Saturday. Airstrikes were reported overnight in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where resident Omar Abu Moghazi said a family home was hit, causing casualties.
Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren coastline in the south, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians there described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and poor hygiene facilities. “We are living here in a tough cold. There are no bathrooms,” said Soad Qarmoot, who was forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. “I am a cancer patient,” Qarmoot said as children huddled around a wood fire. “There is no mattress for me to sleep on. I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing.”Imad Al-Talateeny, who fled Gaza City, said Muwasi lacks basic services to accommodate the growing number of displaced families. “I lack everything to feel a human,” he said.

Kataeb Hezbollah militia: Operations against US forces to continue until last American exits Iraq
Arab News/December 09, 2023
AL-KUKALLA: Twenty-two humanitarian groups working in Yemen have urged the Iran-backed Houthis and the World Food Programme to resolve their assistance distribution dispute as soon as possible to prevent widespread starvation.
The WFP suspended the distribution of humanitarian aid in areas under Houthi control last week, citing funding shortages and a dispute with the Houthis as the reasons. The Houthis denied a UN proposal to reduce the number of recipients of aid from 9.5 million to 6.5 million, the organization said, following nearly a year of negotiations. The 22 international organizations, which included Islamic Relief, OXFAM, Save the Children, Qatar Charity, and others, expressed “grave” concern about the impact of the food delivery suspension on Yemen’s already dire humanitarian situation in the Houthi-controlled areas.
“After years of conflict and economic decline, food aid is a lifeline for millions of Yemenis and suspending it as the country works toward peace is a catastrophic scenario. We understand the fears and concerns of the affected Yemeni people, and we stand in solidarity with them,” the organizations said in their joint appeal. To avert an impending famine in war-torn Yemen, the organizations proposed that the WFP and the Houthis reach an agreement that would allow humanitarian aid delivery to resume in Sanaa and other Houthi-controlled districts and that international donors quickly mobilize additional funding to reduce the impact of the aid suspension, focusing on food, health, and cash aid. “The sooner an agreement is reached, the more likelihood of averting the risk of famine conditions returning to Yemen,” the statement continued. Yemen’s war, which began in late 2014 after the Houthis seized power militarily, has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Yemenis and has triggered what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The WFP dispute with the Houthis is the latest in a series of incidents in which the militia has harassed humanitarian workers and obstructed the delivery of assistance in Yemen.
In their latest report on Yemen, the UN Panel of Experts said that life-saving humanitarian goods and medicine have expired before reaching their intended recipients due to the Houthis’ obstruction of aid delivery. The panel also accused the Houthis of diverting humanitarian funding to their backers and selling aid items in detention centers, in addition to removing the names of those who oppose their policies from the list of aid recipients.

Children of Iran Nobel Peace Prize winner fear they won’t see her again
Reuters/December 09, 2023
OSLO: The teenage children of jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi fear they will never meet their mother again, but said they were proud of her struggle for women’s rights as they prepared to accept the award on her behalf on Sunday. Mohammadi, 51, who is serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on charges including spreading propaganda, won the award on Oct. 6 in a rebuke to Tehran’s theocratic leaders, prompting the Islamic Republic’s condemnation. Her twin 17-year-old children, Ali and Kiana Rahman, who live in exile in Paris, are due to accept the award at Oslo’s City Hall and give the Nobel Peace Prize lecture on her behalf. In a letter smuggled out of prison and published by Swedish broadcaster SVT this week, Mohammadi said she would continue to fight for human rights even if it led to her death. But she said she missed her children the most.
Kiana Rahman, who last saw her mother eight years ago, said: “When it comes to seeing her again, personally I am very pessimistic.”“Maybe I’ll see her in 30 or 40 years, but I think I won’t see her again,” she told a press conference via a translator. “But that doesn’t matter because my mother will always live on in my heart and with my family.” Mohammadi was awarded the Peace Prize just over a year after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iranian morality police after being detained for allegedly violating the rules of wearing a hijab, an Islamic head scarf. Amini’s death provoked months of nationwide protests that posed the biggest challenge to Shiite clerical rule in years, and was met with a deadly security crackdown costing several hundred lives. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award for Mohammadi also recognized hundreds of thousands who had demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies discriminating and oppressing women. Iran has called the protests Western-led subversion, accusing the Nobel committee of meddling and politicizing human rights. Mohammadi’s son Ali said he had accepted from early childhood that the family would live apart, but said he would stay optimistic he might see her again. “If we don’t see her again we will always be proud of her and go on with our struggle,” he said. Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Rahmani said the award would give her a larger voice even if her own conditions were likely to become more difficult.
“It’s a political prize and therefore there will be more pressure on Narges, but at the same time it is going to create a space for echoing the voice of the people” said Rahmani, who will also attend Sunday’s ceremony. Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the prize, which today is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or around $1 million, and the fifth person to win it while in detention. It is awarded on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

Iran says reviving nuclear deal ‘useless’
AFP/December 09, 2023
TEHRAN: Iran said Saturday that attempting to revive its landmark nuclear deal with world powers that was effectively scrapped by former US president Donald Trump was increasingly “useless.”“Today, the more we advance, the more the JCPOA becomes useless,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a speech to students at the University of Tehran, using the initials of the official name of the nuclear deal. In 2015, Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of sanctions. But while the deal was signed with several world powers — including China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — it was rendered effectively useless when the United States unilaterally withdrew under Trump in 2018. With the US reimposing sanctions, international banks and businesses have stayed away from Iran for fear of falling foul of US regulators. Tentative efforts to revive the deal by Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, have been at a standstill since mid-2022. “Because (Iran’s) red lines have sometimes been ignored by the other side, we are not currently on the path to return to the agreement,” Amir-Abdollahian said. “Of course, this does not mean that we have set the agreement aside. If the agreement serves our interests, (we will accept it) with all its flaws,” he added. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, called in October on the international community not to fail in Iran as it did in North Korea, which now has nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, but since 2021 the UN body has struggled to monitor the development of its capabilities.

Turkiye’s Erdogan denounces UN ‘Israel protection council’
AFP/December 09, 2023
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday denounced the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed a cease-fire resolution for Gaza, describing the international body as the ‘Israel protection council’.
“Since October 7, the security council has become an Israel protection and defense council,” Erdogan said. The United States on Friday vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the intense fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Washington thus dashed a growing clamour for a halt to fighting that had been led by UN chief Antonio Guterres and Arab nations. “Is this justice?” asked Erdogan, adding that “the world is bigger than five,” a reference to the five veto-wielding nations in the UN Security Council. “Another world is possible, but without America,” the Turkish leader said. “The United States stands by Israel with its money and military equipment. Hey, America! How much are you going to pay for that?” he added. “Every day the Declaration of Human Rights is violated in Gaza,” he said, as the world this weekend celebrates the 75th anniversary of the declaration.The UN resolution for a cease-fire was submitted more than two months after the start of the war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s bloody attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which, according to the Israeli authorities, killed 1,200 people. Since then Hamas has put the death toll in Gaza at 17,490, mostly women and children.

Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting
Arab News/December 09, 2023
RIYADH: Foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic nations voiced their objection to the US veto that blocked international calls for the UN Security Council to demand ceasefire in Gaza, Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. During a meeting with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee reiterated calls for the US to assume its responsibilities and take the necessary measures to push Israel towards an immediate ceasefire. The foreign ministers also renewed their unified rejection of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza, reiterating the necessity to end the hostilities, protect civilians and lift the siege hindering the access of humanitarian aid to the war-stricken enclave. They voiced their rejection against attempts to displace Palestinians from Gaza, emphasizing on “creating a real political climate that leads to a two-state solution,” according to SPA statement. Several minsters participated in the meeting, including Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Al-Safadi, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki, and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan.

Syria strikes kill 6 civilians in rebel bastion: monitor
AFP/December 09, 2023
BEIRUT: Six civilians were killed and 25 others wounded on Saturday in Syrian army bombardment of the country’s last major rebel bastion, a war monitor said. “Regime forces directly targeted residential areas of the city of Idlib,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that industrial areas were also hit, as well as “residential areas in the town of Sarmin” nearby. Six civilians, “including two children and a woman,” were killed in Idlib and Sarmin, while 25 others were wounded in the strikes in various areas of Idlib province, added the Britain-based Observatory. Government forces fired “more than 35 missiles” during the bombardment, it added. Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of Idlib province and parts of the neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces. HTS is considered a terrorist group by Damascus, as well as by the United States and the European Union. Parts of the rebel bastion have seen fierce fighting in recent days, according to the Observatory. On Friday, it said 11 pro-government forces and five HTS fighters had been killed after the jihadists launched an attack in neighboring Aleppo province a day earlier. Late last month, Syrian government bombardment killed nine civilians including six children as they harvested olives in Idlib province, reported the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. Civil war erupted in Syria after President Bashar Assad crushed peaceful anti-government protests in 2011. The conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions after spiralling into a devastating war involving foreign armies, militias and jihadists. A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkiye was declared in Idlib after a government offensive in March 2020, but it has been repeatedly violated.

Egypt's elections and el-Sisi's grip on power: Economic crisis temporarily overshadowed by Gaza war
LBCI/December 09, 2023
The recent Israeli offensive on Gaza may have given Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi some breathing room on the financial front, diverting attention away from Egypt's economic challenges, previously a pressing concern for presidential candidates and their campaigns. The war in Gaza has, at least partially, shifted the spotlight away from Egypt's deep-rooted economic issues to account for an issue that Egyptians consider to be a national issue. Speculations have circulated about potential incentives for Egypt, such as financial support or multi-billion-dollar investments, in exchange for accepting the relocation of some Gazan Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula. However, President el-Sisi has rejected this proposal multiple times in recent weeks. Despite facing one of its worst economic crises, marked by record-level inflation, a depreciating local currency, and increasing external debt, Egypt's economic challenges have taken a back seat in the media due to the ongoing war in Gaza. The inevitability of President el-Sisi's victory in the upcoming elections against opposition candidates Farid Zahran, Hazem Omar, and Abdel-Sanad Yamama is believed to be unrelated to their popularity or performance. Instead, it is attributed to el-Sisi's firm control over executive and security institutions, coupled with the perception that having a military figure with leadership experience is preferable for Egypt amid the current precarious regional situation, exacerbated by Israel's aggression and its proposed plans for the transfer of Palestinians to Egypt. According to some experts, the presence of a "strong military figure" at the helm provides Egyptians with a sense of reassurance during these challenging times. While opposition candidates have directly criticized el-Sisi's handling of the war, calling for a review of the peace agreement with Israel and a reduction in diplomatic and economic ties between Cairo and Tel Aviv, the election outcome is widely anticipated to favor el-Sisi. Despite the predetermined nature of the elections, a semblance of democracy is deemed better than a mere endorsement.

Houthi threats: Israel and the UAE explore alternative maritime route
LBCI/December 09, 2023
In response to escalating Houthi threats targeting Israeli ships traversing the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are reportedly working on a strategic alternative route. The move comes as the Bab el Mandeb Strait, controlled by the Houthi rebels to the east, is no longer considered secure for Israeli vessels. According to Israeli newspaper Maariv, the UAE and Israel have agreed to construct a land bridge between the two nations, facilitating the safe transportation of goods from East Asia to Israel and vice versa. The agreement involves docking incoming ships from East and Central Asia at Dubai's port, transporting goods by land through Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and eventually reaching Israel. The route concludes with unloading at Haifa port for goods destined for Israel. Transit cargo shipments are reloaded onto ships heading to Europe or the Americas. The logistics of this operation are managed by Israeli company Tracknet and the UAE-based logistics firm Biotrans in collaboration with Dubai Ports World. Simultaneously, Tracknet is negotiating with a Bahraini logistics company that provides services to the US military to handle tasks similar to the Emirati company but from the port of Manama. The initiative aims to create a secure, alternative route, reducing reliance on the Bab el Mandeb Strait. As this land bridge project unfolds, Washington is reportedly exploring military options through discussions with its Gulf allies regarding possible military action against the Houthis in response to their increasing attacks on ships in the Red Sea. However, according to the agency, the consultations are still preliminary, and all parties prefer a diplomatic and political solution. However, diplomatic and political solutions are still being prioritized by all parties involved in the initial stages of consultations, according to Bloomberg reports.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 09-10/2023
As the Israel-Hamas War Governs the World's Attention, Iran Is Quietly Marching Towards Nuclear Breakout
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld/Time/December0 9, 2023
When Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad invaded Israel on Oct.7, they didn’t just perpetrate the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The Iran-trained and supported terrorists also helped divert the world’s attention away from how Iran is quietly, but quickly, marching towards nuclear breakout. In February, top Biden Administration official Colin Kahl, the then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, admitted that Iran could soon assemble a crude nuclear device in days. Understandably, the U.S. and its allies are now focused on urgent, immediate regional crises—namely the IDF’s military operation to eliminate Hamas from Gaza and dealing with the ever-growing threat of militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. But a nuclear Iran remains the gravest long-term regional security threat facing Israel, the Middle East, and the United States, and it is not too late to stop Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
The diplomatic backdrop has already changed considerably for Iran’s nuclear aspirations. In the weeks and months before the Oct. 7 attack, Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to completing a normalization agreement, building off the Abraham Accords, which were originally conceived by its architect Jared Kushner and which both of us were involved in advising and negotiating. The imminent addition of Saudi Arabia—home of Mecca, the spiritual center of Islam—to the Abraham Accords likely motivated Hamas’ attacks on Israel. Saudi-Israel normalization would have been disastrous for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s terrorist proxies, and the Iranian regime’s stated goal of destroying Israel. The more that the people of the region accept Israel’s existence, the harder it becomes for Tehran to obliterate the Jewish state and assert dominance over the Middle East.
We remain confident Saudi Arabia will eventually recognize Israel’s existence, but not right now. The scenes of Israeli fighters marching through Gaza broadcast throughout the Middle East threaten to inflame a pre-existing hatred of Israel that makes normalization politically untenable at this time, even for Gulf monarchies not beholden to voting publics. We firmly judge this derailment of the next phase of the Abraham Accords as the great geopolitical casualty of the Oct. 7 attack. Even more importantly, the Ayatollah seems to believe the West is now further distracted and perhaps more deterred from confronting Iran over its nuclear program, as full-fledged nuclear weapons creep ever closer to fruition.
The strides Iran has made in its nuclear program over the last few years have flown under the radar. Today, Tehran has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon in only 12 days according to data collected from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran is essentially a nuclear threshold state given their stockpile of uranium, with estimated enrichment levels as high as 84%. For context, 90% is the benchmark for full breakout capability. International sanctions on the regime’s ballistic missile program have also been allowed to expire, giving the regime carte blanche to further develop and proliferate the delivery vehicles necessary for a potential strike with the ability to reach Tel Aviv, Haifa, or even a European capital.
The potential destructive power of an Iranian nuclear weapon is obvious, but even the mere threat of a nuclear Iran is a potent weapon for the Ayatollah right now. He has surely seen how Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats seemingly deterred the U.S. from fully supporting Ukraine, according to experts including former American diplomat John E. Herbst. The Ayatollah may feel emboldened to run the same playbook now, especially if Israel reoccupies Gaza for the long-term or Hezbollah aggression compels the Israeli military to enter Lebanon in the months ahead.
The U.S. has repeatedly backed down from even minor confrontation with Iran in the interests of avoiding a wider regional war, including responding rather timidly to attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by Iran-backed militias in recent weeks. As 60 Minutes detailed in November, the regime’s assassination campaigns on U.S. soil against U.S. officials and dissidents also continue apace.
It seems conceivable that the Ayatollah may continue to scale the escalation ladder with increasingly potent nuclear threats. U.S. and Israeli officials have messaged resolve not to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon, but whether Israel and the U.S. actually have the political will to destroy the Iranian bomb-making program remains to be seen. Even with Iran entrenched as a nuclear threshold state, it is not too late to stop the West Asia country from obtaining nuclear weapons. The U.S. should be galvanized by the current conflict to restore deterrence against Iran—beginning with stronger enforcement of sanctions designed to cut off the regime’s number one source of income: oil revenues. The money generated from its petroleum exports funds Iran’s nuclear program and terrorist proxies alike, with windfall profits from increased oil exports, as we’ve discussed previously.
As Secretary of State in 2016, John Kerry proudly proclaimed that the world was safer thanks to the nuclear deal he engineered, which released $150 billion in sanctions relief to Iran. In hindsight, Kerry’s sheepish admission that some of that money might go towards terrorism has proven sadly prescient, and we should hit pause on this spigot immediately.
Additionally, the U.S. must continue to pressure the IAEA to conduct rigorous inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities and hold the regime accountable when it does not abide by its commitments. An IAEA report released on Sept. 4 stated: “Iran’s decision to remove all of the agency’s equipment previously installed in Iran for JCPOA-related surveillance and monitoring activities has also had detrimental implications for the agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
To deter nuclear escalation, the world must impose new, tougher costs on Iran when it skirts IAEA regulations, stopping the country in its tracks before it progresses any further towards an actual nuclear weapon. Failure to do so makes it increasingly likely that Iran asserts control on the escalation ladder through nuclear threats, whether in the crisis in Israel or with increasing support for its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and beyond. American policy makers are rightly seized with the urgent and important work of supporting Israel’s counter-offensive efforts against terrorists in Gaza. We should not, however, lose sight of the fact that the current crisis is inextricably tied to the strategic imperative of stopping Iran’s march to the bomb. Should we fail to urgently address and counter Iran’s nuclear program, today’s conflicts in the Middle East will likely become far worse.
With research assistance by Steven Tian.
Contact us at letters@time.com.

Stopping the Mullahs vs. Getting Them All Set Up
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./December 09, 2023
Not surprisingly, billions from the West have enabled the Iranian regime to help plan, finance and support, among other aggressions, the invasion of Israel and genocidal massacre of Jews perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Western money gifted to Iran is also helping the regime advance its nuclear weapons program to near-completion by "a few weeks or less, after which they can make as many bombs as they like. The more money the Iranian regime is handed, the more trouble it causes. Compared to the tens of billion the US delivers to Iran, the US government's annual $3.8 billion investment in Israel -- which invariably inspires extensive howling from some quarters -- is proportionately bus fare. It is high-time for the Biden administration to learn from previous administrations -- inconveniently for them, Republican -- that only economic and military pressure work on rogue and predatory regimes such as Iran. Appeasement, regrettably.... just ignites conflict. It is high-time for the Biden administration to learn from previous administrations that only economic and military pressure work on rogue and predatory regimes such as Iran. Appeasement, regrettably, just ignites conflict. The Biden administration's policy towards the expansionist regime of Iran has been anchored in appeasement policies, including handing over billions of dollars in a seeming effort to bribe Iran's mullahs not to cause even further trouble in the Middle East before the US presidential election on November 5, 2024.
Not surprisingly, billions from the West have enabled the Iranian regime to help plan, finance and support, among other aggressions, the invasion of Israel and genocidal massacre of Jews perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Western money gifted to Iran is also helping the regime advance its nuclear weapons program to near-completion by "a few weeks or less, after which they can make as many bombs as they like.
From the Iranian regime's dispiriting record of cheating (such as here, here and here), no "deal" will stop them. The more money the Iranian regime is handed, the more trouble it causes. The Iranian regime prefers to cause trouble by hiding behind their human-shield proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. This system not only enables the mullahs to claim "plausible deniability;" it also enables others to get killed while the mullahs enjoy kebabs in Tehran. Thanks to immense largesse from the West -- business from Europe, and massive payouts -- $150 billion from the Obama administration, and an additional $70 billion from Biden -- have enabled Iran's regime to:
Enrich its uranium to 84%, near the nuclear-bomb level of 90%, and a "few weeks or less" from nuclear capability;
Fund and help plot Hamas's genocidal October 7th invasion and to try to destroy Israel. Estimates are that Iranian funding of Hamas runs to $70 million-$100 million a year; Deliver drones to Russia to help it to destroy Ukraine;
Launch 78 attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq since October 17;
Launch more than 151 attacks on US forces since the Biden presidency, trying to eject the US from the Middle East; meanwhile wounding scores of US service members, at least 20 seriously with traumatic brain injury; and
Step up its plans eventually to confront the US mainland from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Perhaps the Biden administration might try something else?
Compared to the tens of billion the US delivers to Iran, the US government's annual $3.8 billion investment in Israel -- which invariably inspires extensive howling from some quarters -- is proportionately bus fare.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, history has shown that the only policies that have worked against Iran's regime are strong economic and strong military pressure. Remember when Iran attacked a Kuwaiti tanker in 1987 during the Reagan administration? President Ronald Reagan did not hesitate; he immediately ordered the Operation Nimble Archer, in which the US Navy attacked two Iranian oil platforms. After that, for as long as the Reagan administration was in office, Iran did not attack or harass any other tanker in the Persian Gulf.
In the second operation during the Reagan administration, known as Operation Praying Mantis, the US Navy destroyed half of Iran's entire Navy fleet in eight hours, thereby sending such a strong message to the Iranian regime that Tehran stopped mining the Gulf and decided to put an end to the Iran-Iraq war. According to Robert B. Charles:
"Iran mined the Persian Gulf, which ended up blowing a hole in a US Navy ship, mercifully killing no one. Reagan moved swiftly.
"In Operation Praying Mantis, Reagan dispatched the US Navy to halt Iran's belligerence. The US Navy sank an Iranian frigate, gunboat, three speedboats, and two armed platforms, crippling another frigate and a fighter.
"Message received. Iran stopped mining the Gulf, stopped attacking foreign tankers, decided the time was right to end the Iran-Iraq war. Free Gulf passage resumed. These outcomes are directly attributable to Reagan's life-learned lessons, and pre-thought tactical actions by Reagan and the US Navy."
Targeting Iran's oil refineries and platforms would also send a strong message to the regime: Iran's major revenues come from oil and gas exports. Iran possesses the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves. The sale of oil accounts for nearly 60% of the Iranian government's total revenues and more than 80% of their export revenues.
US Senator Lindsay Graham has suggested targeting Iran's oil refineries:
"What I would do is I would bomb Iran's oil infrastructure. The money financing terrorism comes from Iran. It's time for this terrorist state to pay a price for financing and supporting all this chaos."Removing even just one oil refinery might also "send a message" and persuade Iran's ruling mullahs to rethink their plans.Another military deterrent succeeded after the Trump administration killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, and warned Iran that if it were to avenge Soleimani's death, 52 additional targets had been selected. That was the end of Iran acting up. Another policy that worked was enforcing sanctions to the fullest extent, instead of looking the other way. When the Trump administration robustly enforced sanctions on Iran and adopted a policy of "maximum pressure," the sanctions did, in fact, impose significant pressure on Iran, and the country's rulers were forced to cut funding to their allies, militias and terror groups. The Trump administration's enforcement of sanctions caused Iran to cut funds to its proxies in Syria. Seeing the pressure of sanctions on Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran's Lebanese terror proxy, Hezbollah, called on his group's fundraising arm "to provide the opportunity for jihad with money and also to help with this ongoing battle".
Hamas, too, had to introduce "austerity plans". Then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that the Islamic Republic was encountering the worst economic crisis since its establishment in 1979. It is high-time for the Biden administration to learn from previous administrations -- inconveniently for them, Republican -- that only economic and military pressure work on rogue and predatory regimes such as Iran. Appeasement, regrettably -- as we have seen most recently from the Houthis, who were removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in the first weeks of the Biden administration, and are now targeting American assets in the region -- just ignites conflict.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Putin’s strategic patience beginning to pay off
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/December 09, 2023
tilities on Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, the global spotlight has been fixated on this conflict. International media outlets have devoted the lion’s share of their coverage to this confrontation between a recognized terrorist organization and a sovereign nation. Regrettably, this intense focus on the Israel-Hamas conflict has inadvertently cast a shadow over other global crises, particularly the ongoing war in Ukraine. This diversion of attention has afforded Russia a strategic opportunity to advance its expansionist agenda in Ukraine with minimal international scrutiny.
For the first time since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February last year, the Kremlin has successfully cultivated an aura of potential victory. This stark departure from the conflict’s earlier outlook underscores the effectiveness of President Vladimir Putin’s strategies. Among these strategies was placing Russia on a war footing: a move that has consolidated his hold on power within the nation. Furthermore, Putin has adeptly procured military resources and equipment from international sources, significantly bolstering his country’s military capabilities. These actions emphasize not only the Russian president’s unwavering commitment to sustaining the conflict, but also his ability to secure critical assets from global suppliers, often through audacious means. Putin has been waiting for a chance to expand his influence and undermine Western convictions. Beyond military maneuvers, Russian officials have embarked on a calculated campaign to garner support from nations in the Global South. This diplomatic offensive has effectively sown seeds of opposition and discontent against the US, while undermining the international coalition that is critical of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Arguably, the most profound implication of Russia’s recent moves lies in its relentless efforts to undermine prevailing convictions in the Western world. The consensus among Western nations is that Ukraine possesses the potential and the imperative to emerge from the ravages of war as a flourishing European democracy. But Moscow’s actions have cast doubt on this belief, challenging the West’s determination to support Ukraine’s post-conflict transformation and potentially altering the entire narrative of the conflict.
In essence, the dynamic landscape of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has evolved significantly since its inception, with Russia’s recent actions and strategies reshaping the geopolitical and strategic landscape of the region. This, in turn, has had an impact on global perceptions and alliances.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month candidly acknowledged that Russia was “controlling the skies” over Ukraine and urgently requested US-made F-16 warplanes and advanced anti-aircraft defenses to alter the situation. However, questions loom about whether the US would be willing to provide such crucial assistance.
Things have not been easy for the Biden administration. In a letter addressed to Mike Johnson, the new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, and other congressional leaders, White House budget director Shalanda Young expressed concerns about the diminishing resources available to support Ukraine in the ongoing war. She wrote: “I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from US military stocks … There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money — and nearly out of time.” Johnson gave the letter a cold response, expressing concerns about Ukraine’s lack of a clear strategy.
Russian officials have embarked on a calculated campaign to garner support from nations in the Global South.
Congress has previously approved more than $110 billion for Ukraine’s war effort. However, no additional funds have been allocated since the transition of power in the House of Representatives from Democrats to Republicans in January.
Had Ukraine received the comprehensive support it currently enjoys from the onset of the conflict, the war might have taken a substantially different course. During the early stages of the conflict, Ukraine grappled with the challenge of defending its territorial integrity and sovereignty against a well-equipped and formidable adversary. At that time, the level of assistance and resources at Ukraine’s disposal was comparatively limited, making it difficult to counter the military might and strategic prowess of opposing forces.
Unfortunately, the diversion of global attention has played directly into Russia’s hands. With the world’s gaze fixed on the Israel-Hamas conflict, it has seized the opportunity to advance its expansionist ambitions in Ukraine with significantly reduced international scrutiny. Moscow has been able to continue its hostilities and atrocities against Ukrainians with relative impunity as the global spotlight remains diverted, likely giving Putin and his troops a solid boost to continue to ignore the international community.
Meanwhile, concerns are intensifying within the corridors of power in Washington, where apprehensions abound that Putin may be strategically inclined to bide his time until the next presidential election in November 2024. This vote is likely to bear a striking resemblance to the electoral showdown witnessed in 2020 between then-incumbent President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This apprehension is grounded in the recognition that a pending presidential election often dominates the country’s political landscape, drawing substantial attention, resources and decision-making capacity away from international crises.
Shrewd tactician Putin, who is a former KGB officer, might perceive this as an opportune moment to maintain a holding pattern, capitalizing on the potential distraction of the election to further advance his objectives in Ukraine.
With its high stakes and divisive nature, the historical precedent of the 2020 election serves as a poignant reminder of how the domestic political calendar can influence America’s ability to respond decisively to global challenges. Consequently, the forthcoming election year looms large in discussions about the trajectory of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and Putin’s calculated patience.
*Dalia Al-Aqidi is Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. X: @DaliaAlAqidi

Collapse of Gaza truce comes with a heavy price
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/December 09, 2023
The collapse of the truce in Gaza was as regrettable as it was expected, and one of the immediate costs was that it prevented the release of one last group of women and children being held hostage by Hamas, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
So the fighting resumed and the already unbearable death toll among the people of Gaza swiftly began to rise. The focus of the Israel Defense Forces has shifted toward the south of the Strip in pursuit of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, among other senior officials, who are believed most likely to be holed up in the tunnels under the city of Khan Younis or the refugee camp nearby, and this is exacerbating an already intolerable humanitarian crisis.
Few observers expected the week-long pause in the fighting to become a longer-term humanitarian ceasefire, let alone a permanent one. At this point, Israel remains determined to end the war in a position from which it can declare victory; Hamas is unlikely to lay down its arms and surrender of its own accord; and the international community is still unwilling to enforce a ceasefire.
What is not being taken into account with the required sense of urgency is that it is the civilians of Gaza who are literally caught in the crossfire and paying an extremely heavy price, and for this there can be no excuse. In the coming days, perhaps weeks, if the war is allowed to rage on, the death toll and the suffering among ordinary Palestinians is bound to increase as the military campaign is concentrating on areas that are highly populated, not only by long-term residents but by people displaced from northern Gaza who were actively encouraged by Israeli authorities to move south while the military operations focused on the north, and who now have nowhere left to run to escape the hellish situation.
Both Israel and the US blame Hamas for the collapse of the truce, accusing the group of reneging on commitments it made by failing to provide a list of the last group of kidnapped women and children it intended to release, and launching rockets at Israeli territory on the very morning that the release was supposed to take place. Moreover, Hamas negotiators were accused of shifting the goalposts when it came to listing the category of hostages to be released next. The situation was made worse when the militant group claimed responsibility for killing three Israelis, and injuring several more, after two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bus stop in West Jerusalem. But it was always just a matter of time anyway before Israel resumed the war, as it stated it would. It is unclear what the leaders of Hamas were thinking, as they were probably the side that most, even desperately, needed the truce to be extended. Israel’s resumption of hostilities also means risking the lives of more than half of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 who remain in captivity. However, the mood in Israel demands that those responsible for the horrific attack on Israel be punished and so the war will continue until Hamas is defeated, despite warnings from humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza that the situation there is disastrous for Palestinian civilians. Very little can be done in practice to help those caught up in the appalling carnage.
Nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip and 1.2 million of them are sheltering in UNRWA facilities.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — the UN agency tasked with providing development and humanitarian services for Palestinians across the region — despite for years being deprived of adequate resources and the international political support required to fulfill its mission, is now on the verge of total collapse in the Gaza Strip.
At least 130 of its workers have been killed since the current conflict began and the humanitarian window within which they can operate is closing fast. The head of the organization, Commissioner General Phillippe Lazzarini, warned: “The resumption of the military operation and its expansion further in southern Gaza is repeating horrors from past weeks (and) the number of civilians killed is rapidly increasing. Civilians, including men, women, children, older persons, the sick and people with disabilities are the most to suffer.”
Two months into the war, Israel has not yet defined what would constitute accomplishment of its goal of destroying Hamas, or at what point it might change its tactics to continue its war without inflicting the tremendous amount of suffering on civilians. Not only does this situation create unbearable uncertainty for the people of Gaza, it also leaves a timescale for the end of the war open-ended, adding to the fear and stress under which people are living. Many of them say they view every day as their last.Since the end of the pause in fighting, Israel’s bombardment has intensified and people are constantly being ordered to evacuate, most recently from Khan Younis to Rafah. This order created panic, fear and anxiety, and forced 60,000 people to move to already overcrowded UNRWA shelters.
Nearly 1.9 million people — more than 85 percent of the population — have been displaced across the Gaza Strip and 1.2 million of them are sheltering in UNRWA facilities, mostly in the south where much of the fighting is currently taking place. These shelters are inadequate for such huge numbers of people to live and survive in, and they are concentrated in an area that is less than one-third of the total area of the tiny territory. They have little or no access to food, water or shelter, and live in constant fear for their lives.
In the face of such enormous suffering, the silence of the international community is deafening. Israel’s right to wage war on Hamas was dictated by the actions of the militant group on Oct. 7. Not surprisingly, the international community was shocked by the attack and rightly expressed its support for Israel. At some point, however, and sooner rather than later, that same international community, the US first and foremost, must bring the war to an end.
It must realize that fighting Hamas is primarily a battle on behalf of the politically marginalized that will only be won by ensuring a better future that is free from both repression by Hamas and Israel’s oppressive occupation. It is obviously in the interest of Palestinians for the war to come to an end. But it is also in Israel’s best interest because the longer it continues, the deeper the hole the country is digging for itself without any exit strategy, while also losing the moral battle and, with it, international support.
*Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg

The IDF’s meticulous targeting of Hamas in Gaza
JNS/December 9, 2023
In some cases, the IDF chief of staff himself must authorize strikes in sensitive sites.
As it faces an evasive terror army in Gaza that attempts to make itself invisible, embedding itself in civilian areas, the Israel Defense Forces leaves no stone unturned when it comes to the way that it targets Hamas, meticulously following protocol as it fights. The balance it must strike is a complex one: Completing what is known as the sensor-to-shooter cycle efficiently and quickly, and destroying time-sensitive targets, while at the same time ensuring that the target has been cleared for a strike, both in terms of hostiles and in terms of noncombatants in the surrounding area.
As one example, after spending two weeks restoring control in southern Israel following the Hamas massacre, the IDF’s reserve 252 Sinai Division was sent to Beit Hanun in northeastern Gaza, where many of the terrorists who carried out crimes against humanity in Sderot, Kfar Aza and Netiv Ha’asara came from. Terrorists from Beit Hanun were continuing to try and infiltrate Israel, while also firing rockets from there at Israeli cities.
As the division took over the city, which by that point had been mostly cleared of civilians, it moved slowly. At this stage, once an immediate threat either to Israeli forces or the Israeli home front was detected, an advanced protocol kicked into action. The process is called “incrimination” by the IDF, meaning verification that the target is indeed a military enemy entity, poses a direct threat and that engaging it will not entail harming bystanders.
Once a target is incriminated, it goes through an additional verification process during which decisions are made on how to deal with it—how to best deal with the threat, and what the after-effects of that solution will be.
The target data is then transferred to the relevant force for the implementation of the strike. If the Israeli Air Force receives the target, it will begin its own analysis— figuring out what kind of munitions should be used, independently qualifying the target and calculating how immediate the threat.
This entire process, from start to finish, can last between minutes to an hour. After it is complete, if the air force is to be the striking party, the pilot will receive strike orders but must have visual contact with the target and verify that no friendly forces or noncombatants are in the target area. The pilot may not rely on the previous target qualification process, and must verify independently before striking.
The above protocol describes the normal targeting process. In cases where targets are close to hospitals, schools, or mosques, the strike must receive a green light from the IDF commander in the area—and in some cases, even from the IDF chief of staff.
While this may sound like a lengthy process, the IDF is able to streamline targeting because it has multiple teams that can conduct the process in parallel.
In Beit Hanun, where the IDF had to take on small Hamas terror squads, multiple targets had to be engaged simultaneously. This meant that target lifetimes were very short, on the order of minutes, and the targeting process had to occur quickly. IAF jets, unmanned aerial vehicles and in some cases attack helicopters were already in the air, carrying out their part of the process in tandem with ground forces. Having planes in the air significantly reduced response times.
When necessary, IDF legal experts were called in to verify that the target was legitimate according to international law.
The IDF approaches with extreme caution civilian sites used by Hamas as terror bases, such as mosques and schools. In practice, this means that even if Israeli forces are attacked from a school, the military cannot respond without first exercising discretion.
Senior officers, aware of the supreme need to make every effort to avoid harming noncombatants, are in the field supervising younger IDF personnel.
https://www.jns.org/the-idfs-meticulous-targeting-of-hamas-in-gaza/