Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 28-29/2023
Lebanese PM urges UK for ‘maximum pressure’ on Israel
Lebanon Residents Wound UN Peacekeeper, Block Convoy twice
Hezbollah drone intercepted over Haifa area
Israel threatens to attack Hezbollah if world fails to halt attacks from Lebanon
Israel Gaza war: Israeli minister warns Hezbollah over border fighting
Israeli FM says 'Nasrallah is next'
Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
UNIFIL and Southern residents: Incidents spark calls for investigation
UN force in Lebanon urges probe after peacekeeper wounded
Ongoing Israeli artillery shelling strikes multiple towns in south Lebanon
Displaced Israelis urge US to let Israel act against Hezbollah
Australia says investigating Hezbollah's claim that Ali Bazzi was one of its fighters
Australia urges citizens to leave Lebanon as border tensions escalate
Report: 'Surprise' president to be elected before March
Sheikh Naim Qassem: The ongoing resistance efforts are a deterrent against the New Middle East project
Ongoing Israeli artillery shelling strikes multiple towns in south Lebanon
Lebanese-Australian, his wife and Hezbollah brother killed in Israeli air strike -sources
SPECIAL Year in review: Lebanon ends crisis-filled 2023 on the precipice of war/Nadia Al-Faour/Arab News/December 28/2023
Hezbollah fighting a war of attrition on Israel’s terms/BARUCH YEDID/JNS/December 28, 2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 28-29/2023
Video/From Fox/On Wednesday's "National Report," foreign policy analysts Walid Phares and Fred Fleitz criticize the Biden administration's response to Iranian-backed proxy attacks in the wider Middle East.
RGC Retracts its Story about ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ Operation
Iranians mourn Guards' commander killed in Israeli strike
Drone launched by Iraqi militants hits Israel-annexed Golan Heights
Two Israelis wounded in terror stabbing outside Jerusalem
Israel Presses on with Intensified Attacks as Gaza Death Toll Soars
Israeli Tanks Advance Deep Into Gaza Town Amid New Mass Exodus
UN Report Deplores 'Rapid Deterioration' of Rights in West Bank
Netanyahu to Form Team to Look into ‘Voluntary Migration’ of Palestinians
A visible reminder for years: Number of wounded Israeli soldiers mounts
Israel bombs Gaza as UN warns civilians face 'grave peril'
US Targets Flow of Iranian Funds to Houthis
Dynamic Force Employment is the Future of America’s Middle East Presence
Egypt says it is awaiting responses on plan to end Gaza war
What is Egypt's proposal for Gaza?
Türkiye Strikes 71 Targets, Neutralizes 59 Kurdish Fighters in Syria and Northern Iraq
Turkiye to reinforce bases in Iraq after 12 soldiers killed
Qatari court reduces death sentence handed to 8 retired Indian navy officers charged with spying

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on December 28-29/2023
Who Supports Hamas?/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute./December 28, 2023
In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam/The New York Times/Michael Wines/December 28/2023
Realistic goals are key to achieving New Year resolutions/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/December 28, 2023
UK should pivot back to Middle East/Alistair Burt/Arab News/December 28/2023
Palestine’ and the energy of colonization/YISRAEL MEDAD/JNS/December 28, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 28-29/2023
Lebanese PM urges UK for ‘maximum pressure’ on Israel
Arab News/December 28/2023
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has urged the UK to place “maximum pressure” on Israel to end its campaign on Gaza and the Lebanese border.In a meeting with UK Foreign Minister David Cameron on Thursday, Mikati warned that the “Israeli provocations in southern Lebanon could lead to deteriorating conditions and a full-scale war in the region as a whole.”Cameron said that “an escalation of the conflict in Gaza to Lebanon, the Red Sea or across the wider region would add to the extremely high level of danger and insecurity in the world.” In a phone call with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, Mikati expressed concern over “the escalation of the Israeli hostilities in southern Lebanon and the widespread targeting of civilians.”He added that “the persisting attacks could drag Lebanon into a full-scale confrontation that could affect all countries in the region,” demanding pressure on Israel to “stop its persistent violations.”Israel said on Thursday that several drones were launched from Lebanon toward north of Haifa in Israel. In southern Lebanon, confrontations took place between Hezbollah and UNIFIL in border villages, amid increased pressure on Lebanon to implement Resolution 1701. A spokesperson of the Israeli army announced that “air defenses were activated against a drone that infiltrated from Lebanon over north of Haifa,” adding that “sirens sounded in the region.” Social media activists published pictures of people hiding next to sidewalks following the blaring of sirens. Sirens also sounded in other Israeli settlements, including Yiftah, Ramot Naftali, Malkia and Dishon in the Upper Galilee, amid “fears of Lebanese drone infiltration,” according to the Israeli spokesperson.
Israeli media reported that “air defenses had intercepted a drone launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.”
The Israeli army said it was “on high alert in northern Israel amid increased attacks carried out by Hezbollah from Lebanon.”During a field assessment conducted in the Northern Command in Safad, Israeli Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday: “We approved plans for a variety of emergencies, and we should be ready to launch an attack if necessary,” adding that “the preparedness of the Israeli army and the Northern Command is at a high level.”On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen addressed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, warning him that “if he doesn’t want an escalation, he must immediately adhere to the UN Security Council’s resolution 1701,” adding that “Hezbollah must withdraw north of the Litani River.”
He said: “We will opt for the diplomatic option and if it doesn’t work, we will consider every conceivable option. We will not let the residents return to the settlements they fled without ensuring their safety and restoring their sense of security.”The Israeli Army Radio announced on Thursday that “the Israeli Air Force carried out a preemptive attack on southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure.”An Israeli jet on Thursday bombed the outskirts of the Ayta Al-Shaab village. Israeli aircraft also hit the Al-Salhani region, located between Ramyah and Marwahin in the western part of southern Lebanon. Four Israeli artillery shells landed between Debel and Hanine. Tensions escalated in the afternoon as missiles “were launched from Lebanon toward Israeli outposts located in the occupied Kfarchouba Heights.” Israeli shelling targeted the Wadi Mozlem region, between Ramyah and Beit Lif. Hezbollah announced “targeting the Israeli military outpost of Al-Sammaqah in the Lebanese occupied Shebaa Farms.”Hezbollah also targeted “a gathering of the Israeli enemy in the Hounine outpost using appropriate weapons.”Missiles also landed next to the Kiryat Shmona settlement with no sirens activated, making it the region’s second attack in 24 hours. As the exchanged hostilities transgress the rules of engagement and reach deeper into southern Lebanon and northern Israel, UNIFIL forces deployed in the former were subject to two new attacks, threatening the implementation of Resolution 1701. International and local bodies have been calling for the implementation of the resolution, urging Lebanon’s neutrality in the Gaza war.
In a statement, UNIFIL said on Thursday that “a peacekeeper was hurt later Wednesday, after a patrol was attacked by a group of young men in Taybeh, southern Lebanon,” adding that “a vehicle was also damaged.”The force said: “Attacks on men and women serving the cause of peace are not only condemnable, but they are violations of the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and Lebanese law. “Peacekeepers’ freedom of movement is vital as we work to restore security and stability along the Blue Line.”UNIFIL forces called on the Lebanese authorities to conduct a full and quick investigation to bring all perpetrators to justice, stressing that “UNIFIL peacekeepers are still carrying out their tasks, and we will continue our vital work in monitoring and stopping the escalation.”It was also announced that a group of young men from the town of Kafr Kila had intercepted a UNIFIL patrol from the French battalion that was passing by, forcing the vehicle to a stop. Correspondents in the region said: “The issue was addressed after communicating with those concerned, but no injuries were reported in the accident.”UNIFIL’s Media Office Deputy Director Candice Ardell said in a statement: “At approximately 9 a.m., peacekeepers were intercepted for approximately four minutes as they passed through Kafr Kila, while they were on their way to our Sector East Headquarters.”She added: “After a short discussion with the residents of the area, the peacekeepers resumed their way. We continue to stress the importance of UNIFIL’s freedom of movement as we work to restore security and stability in south Lebanon.”Activists on social media defended the move by accusing UNIFIL forces of “helping Israel uncover Hezbollah’s movements in the south.” Lebanese MP Mark Daou described attacks on UNIFIL as attacks on the entire country, adding: “This is a condemnable act, and we demand the launching of an investigation and the immediate arrest of the attackers.”

Lebanon Residents Wound UN Peacekeeper, Block Convoy twice
Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
A UN peacekeeper in southern Lebanon was hurt when a group of young men attacked a patrol and tried to stop it from moving through their village, the UN mission said on Thursday. The incident took place on Wednesday night when residents of the village of Taybeh briefly blocked the peacekeepers' patrol travelling through the area, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement. The man wounded was an Indonesian soldier, a security source said. A vehicle was damaged, UNIFIL said. It called on Lebanese authorities to investigate the attack and bring the perpetrators to justice. Such attacks “are not only condemnable, but they are violations of Resolution 1701 and Lebanese law,” UNIFIL said on X, formerly known as Twitter, referring to a UN Security Council resolution that ended a monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In a second incident on Thursday morning, a peacekeepers' convoy travelling to UNIFIL's eastern headquarters through the border village of Kfar Kila was briefly blocked by residents, who let them go ahead after a brief discussion, UNIFIL spokesperson Kandice Ardiel said. A Lebanese security source said a group of men had hit the UNIFIL vehicles with sticks and rocks. The reason for the actions was not clear but in previous incidents, local people have objected to UNIFIL peacekeepers driving military vehicles through residential areas. The area has been particularly tense since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah has been exchanging cross-border fire with Israel since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that triggered the war. Israel shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle that had crossed into its territory from Lebanon on Thursday, the military said. Air raid sirens had sounded in northern Israel and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Hezbollah drone intercepted over Haifa area
JNS/December 28, 2023
A Hezbollah drone crossed into Israel on Thursday afternoon, setting off sirens in Haifa’s bayside suburbs along the country’s northern coast. Israeli Air Force jets intercepted the unmanned aerial vehicle; amateur video footage shared on social media appears to show the moment that the drone was shot down. Air raid alarms were activated in Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Yam and Acre. Magen David Adom emergency medical services said there were no hits or casualties reported. Following this incident, hostile aircraft intrusion alerts were issued for communities in the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights. The IDF Home Front Command gave the all-clear following the alerts, with no initial reports of falls or injuries. Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah fired barrages totaling around 30 rockets on Wednesday at Kiryat Shmona and the Western Galilee, with a direct hit on an apartment home. Rosh Hanikra, Arab al-Aramshe, Tel Hai and Moshav Margaliot were also targeted. In addition to the building hit in Kiryat Shmona, another rocket struck a street and another near a bomb shelter. There were no reports of injuries. The IDF responded by attacking the sources of the launches.

Israel threatens to attack Hezbollah if world fails to halt attacks from Lebanon
Paul Godfrey/UPI/December 28, 2023
A senior member of Israel's war cabinet threatened military action to take out Hezbollah in southern Lebanon unless the Lebanese government and the international community take action to stop the militant group launching attacks into northern Israel. The prospect of an escalation of Israel's war on Hamas with the opening up of a second front against the Iran-backed militants was raised by Benny Gantz at a news conference Wednesday. The deteriorating security situation on Israel's northern border after months of rocket fire by Hezbollah units meant the opportunity for a peaceful way out was fast evaporating, said Gantz. "The situation on Israel's northern border demands change," the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and former defense minister said. "The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the Lebanese government don't act in order to prevent the firing on Israel's northern residents and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the IDF will do it." Gantz elaborated by saying that the coming phases of the war would be "deep, forceful, and surprising" with the military campaign continuing to widen to "more foci or fronts" as necessary. The IDF is signaling it is poised to act when the order comes with its most senior commander saying on a visit to northern command headquarters in Safed on Wednesday that forces there were "at a very high level of readiness.""Today we approved a variety of plans for the future, and we need to be ready for an offensive, if necessary," said Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi.
However, he stressed that safely returning the tens of thousands of residents of communities near the border with Lebanon who have been evacuated since Oct. 7 took priority, an objective that would take time. "So far, the campaign here has been managed correctly and meticulously, and this is how it should continue. We will not return the residents without security and a sense of security," Halevi said. Regional tensions, which have been steadily on the rise as the Israel-Hamas war has drawn in Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen, also Iran-backed, were further heightened by a Christmas Day Israeli airstrike on Damascus that killed Sardar Seyed Razi Mousavi, a high-ranking member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Israel Gaza war: Israeli minister warns Hezbollah over border fighting
James Gregory - BBC News/December 28, 2023
Israel's military will act to remove Hezbollah from the border with Lebanon if its attacks continue, an Israeli minister has warned. Benny Gantz said Israel Defense Forces would intervene if the world and Lebanese government did not stop militants firing on northern Israel. Time for a diplomatic solution was running out, he added. Cross-border exchanges of fire have been escalating since Hamas's 7 October attacks on Israel. It has led to concerns the conflict in Gaza could become wider across the region. "The situation on Israel's northern border demands change," Mr Gantz told a press conference on Wednesday night. "The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don't act in order to prevent the firing on Israel's northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the IDF will do it." Mr Gantz, an opposition politician and former leader of Israel's military, joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet as minister without portfolio in the wake of the attacks by Hamas. There has been an increase in rocket fire and the use of weaponised drones by Hezbollah this week, with Israeli war planes quick to respond. State media in Lebanon reported on Wednesday that a Hezbollah fighter and two of his relatives had been killed in an Israeli air strike. The attack reportedly hit a house in Bint Jbeil, a town about 2km (1.2 miles) from the border with Israel.
Benny Gantz
Benny Gantz, an opposition figure, agreed to enter into an emergency government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the 7 October attacks
A Hezbollah statement said one of the victims, Ibrahim Bazzi, was an Australian citizen who was visiting his family. More than 100 people have been killed in Lebanon - most of them Hezbollah fighters but civilians, including three journalists, are also among the dead. On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers are known to have died on the Lebanon border since hostilities began. Thousands of civilians living in dozens of communities in the area have been evacuated by the army.
Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organisation, is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League. It was established in the early 1980s by the region's most dominant Shia power, Iran, to oppose Israel at the time when Israeli forces were occupying southern Lebanon during the country's civil war.
What is Hezbollah and will it go to war with Israel?
Its leadership praised the unprecedented cross-border attack launched by Hamas gunmen on southern Israel on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed - most of them civilians - and about 240 others were taken hostage. More than 21,100 people have been killed in Gaza - mostly children and women - during 11 weeks of fighting, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Thousands of Palestinian families in Gaza are trying to find shelter as Israel broadens its ground offensive across the centre and south of the territory.

Israeli FM says 'Nasrallah is next'
Associated Press/December 28/2023
Israel’s foreign minister has said Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah could be Israel’s next target. Eli Cohen spoke a day after a Hezbollah strike wounded 11 people in northern Israel. The Iranian-backed group has fired missiles and rockets into Israel throughout the two-and-a-half month war between Israel and Hamas. Israel has responded dozens of airstrikes and artillery barrages. The daily battles have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes from border communities and raised fears that they could escalate into a region-wide war.
Touring Israel’s border with foreign ambassadors. Cohen said Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, “must understand that he’s next.”"If he doesn't want to be next in line, he should immediately implement the U.N. Security Council's resolution (1701) and keep Hezbollah away from the north of Litani," Cohen said. "We will work to exhaust the political option, and if it does not work, all options are on the table in order to ensure the security of the State of Israel and return the residents of the north to their homes," he added.

Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
Naharnet/December 28/2023
The Israeli army intercepted Thursday a drone that crossed from Lebanon over the Kiryat area. An uneasy calm had settled over the south in the morning before Israeli airstrikes targeted the al-Salhani area - between Ramia and Marwahin - and the outskirts of Aita al-Shaab in south Lebanon. Since the cross-border hostilities began, exchanges of fire have been largely confined to the border area, although Israel has conducted limited strikes deeper into Lebanese territory. More than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah combatants but also more than 20 civilians, three of them journalists. On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military.

UNIFIL and Southern residents: Incidents spark calls for investigation
LBCI/December 28/2023
The relationship between the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the residents of southern Lebanon is one of ebb and flow. While some ties have strengthened, even leading to familial connections, recurring issues have emerged between peacekeeping forces and some residents. Wednesday night witnessed a confrontation in the town of Taybeh between members of the Indonesian battalion and some local youths. According to residents, the late-night arrival of UNIFIL vehicles with filming equipment annoyed some youths, leading to a verbal debate and subsequent fight. The incident resulted in minor injuries on both sides, later resolved on the ground. UNIFIL issued a statement reporting an injured soldier from the Indonesian battalion and urged the Lebanese government to investigate the matter. The following morning, residents of Kfarkela intercepted a patrol from the French battalion of UNIFIL, forcing it to retreat after striking a vehicle with an iron rod. The situation was swiftly resolved with no injuries after communication with relevant parties. UNIFIL, emphasizing the absence of injuries, reiterated its call for the Lebanese state to investigate such incidents. Residents of Taybeh and Kfarkela attribute the tension to what they perceive as suspicious actions. Local political forces affirm that recent Israeli airstrikes in the south heightened residents' anxiety, urging them to report any suspicious activity and maintain calm in interactions with peacekeeping forces. The incidents, deemed isolated by local political forces, remind residents to report any movements they find concerning and exercise restraint to avoid escalating tensions with peacekeeping forces.

UN force in Lebanon urges probe after peacekeeper wounded
Agence France Presse/December 28/2023
The United Nations' peacekeeping mission in Lebanon on Thursday called on authorities to investigate an attack in the country's south that left one of the force's members wounded. Groups of young men in Lebanon's south -- a stronghold of the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group, where the U.N. force had previously suffered attacks -- blocked UNIFIL patrols twice since Wednesday, it said. "A peacekeeper was hurt after a patrol was attacked by a group of young men in Taybeh" near the Israeli border late Wednesday, UNIFIL said in a statement, adding that "a vehicle was also damaged". "We call on the Lebanese authorities to undertake a full and swift investigation, and for all perpetrators to be brought to justice," it said. The U.N. force said such "attacks... are not only condemnable, but they are violations of (U.N. Security Council) Resolution 1701 and Lebanese law". UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack. It was bolstered in Resolution 1701 after Hezbollah and Israel fought a devastating war in 2006, and its roughly 10,000 peacekeepers are tasked with monitoring the ceasefire between the two sides. Thursday's statement said peacekeepers' freedom of movement "is vital as we work to restore security and stability along the Blue Line", the frontier demarcated by the U.N. in 2000 after Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon. Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said Wednesday that unidentified individuals stopped and attacked a patrol of the UN force's Indonesian contingent, breaking car windows and injuring one of the troops. In a separate incident on Thursday, peacekeepers were "blocked for about four minutes as they travelled through" the border village of Kfar Kila, UNIFIL deputy spokeswoman Kandice Ardiel said. The NNA said the Lebanese group of men forced a patrol of the French contingent to retreat after beating their vehicle with an iron stick. Since October 8, the day after the Israel-Hamas conflict started, the frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating cross-border fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which says it is acting in support of Hamas. The U.N. force has itself been hit by fire, without causing any deaths among peacekeepers. Last year, Private Sean Rooney, 23, was killed and three others were wounded after a UNIFIL convoy came under fire in south Lebanon.

Ongoing Israeli artillery shelling strikes multiple towns in south Lebanon
LBCI/December 28/2023
In a series of relentless attacks, Israeli artillery has been targeting the outskirts of several towns in south Lebanon on Thursday, causing heightened tensions in the region. The affected areas include Khiyam, Rashaya Al-Fakhar, Al-Fardis, Kfarchouba hills, the outskirts of Yater, Al-Jebbayn, Chihine, and Majdal Zoun.

Displaced Israelis urge US to let Israel act against Hezbollah
Naharnet/December 28/2023
A group calling itself Lobby 1701, comprised of Israelis evacuated from their settlements near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, have told U.S. officials in a letter that American support in a move against Hezbollah is crucial for their safe return. The organization, representing 60,000 residents of northern Israel who were evacuated from their homes, issued a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and the head of the U.S. National Security Council, demanding that Israel be allowed to ensure the return of the displaced residents to their homes, either through diplomatic means or via a military operation. “We speak in the name of the 60,000 residents of northern Israel who were evacuated from their homes and have been turned into refugees in our own land,” the letter sent on Monday said. “We call on President Biden to give his full support to the government of Israel to act with the necessary force and means to promise our safety and security,” it added. Their appeal comes amid reports that the U.S. government is preventing an Israeli military move on the northern border. Efforts are meanwhile underway in the U.S. to find a diplomatic solution to the border issue. In their letter to senior government and security officials in Washington, the Israeli citizens noted: "We all witnessed the horrific massacre committed on October 7th by Hamas terrorists against innocent civilians in the south of Israel. Since October 7th Hezbollah has put an end to our daily lives here in northern Israel. Because of their daily missiles and UAV attacks that target our homes and communities, and the threat of many more, we were unwillingly forced to evacuate.” “For 17 years we have had to bear witness to how ineffective by UNSCR 1701 is in the face of reality. Hezbollah never acted in accordance with the resolution and openly established military positions on the border -- feet away from our homes. Meanwhile, UNIFIL has been providing a false sense of security, while allowing Hezbollah to rearm, prepare and plan its invasion into Israel. This has proven especially true over the past three years,” the letter added.
Lobby 1701 believes that there is no realistic chance of dealing with Hezbollah’s threat through diplomatic means. "If Lebanon is unable to properly implement UNSCR 1701 to the extent that we deserve and demand, to provide a basic sense of security, we will relentlessly pressure our government to solve this issue through military means, and we request your full support. This is not a threat, nor is it a warning," they emphasizd. "This is an urgent call for action to the international community to prevent the next massacre,” they said. In addition, they write: "No country could accept this current situation, in which a neighboring terrorist organization calls for its destruction and fires towards its citizens. Nor would any father or mother put their children at risk in such a threatening environment. Therefore, we feel certain that you understand why we can't return home to the status quo on October 6th and attempt to live a normal life while enduring this threat. The horrific images of October 7th warn us of the future waiting for us if we do."Since the cross-border hostilities began between Israel and Hezbollah, more than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah combatants but also more than 20 civilians, three of them journalists. On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military. Some 72,437 people in Lebanon are displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration. Israel has been pushing for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, which lies about 30 kilometers north of the border. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, called for the removal of armed personnel south of the Litani, except for U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army and state security forces.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said last week that Lebanon was ready to implement international resolutions that would help end Hezbollah's cross-border attacks if Israel also complies and withdraws from disputed territory.

Australia says investigating Hezbollah's claim that Ali Bazzi was one of its fighters
Associated Press/December 28/2023
Australia is investigating Hezbollah's claim that Ali Bazzi, who was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday in Bint Jbeil, was one of its fighters. Australia's acting foreign minister Mark Dreyfus said that Ali Bazzi and his brother Ibrahim Bazzi are both Australian citizens. Ibrahim Bazzi had arrived in Lebanon recently from Sydney to accompany his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud to Australia, news media reported. Hammoud, who had recently received an Australian visa, was also killed in the attack. Their three coffins were draped in the flag of Hezbollah. "Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organization under Australian law. It's an offense for any Australian to cooperate with, to support, let alone to fight with a listed terrorist organization like Hezbollah," Dreyfus told reporters. Dreyfus said his government had communicated with Israel about the airstrike but declined to disclose what was said.
"In the context of the current conflict, Australia has consistently called for civilian lives to be protected and we have consistently raised our concerns about the risk of this conflict spreading," Dreyfus said. Dreyfus repeated a government warning for Australians not to travel to Lebanon. Australians already in the country should leave while commercial air services are still available. The Australian embassy in Beirut was ready to provide consular assistance to the Bazzi family if required, he said.

Australia urges citizens to leave Lebanon as border tensions escalate
Agence France Presse/December 28/2023
An uneasy calm settled over the south on Thursday morning after a day of heavy exchanges of fire. At a funeral procession in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told the ceremony that "no crime against civilians will pass without the enemy paying the price". Hezbollah later Wednesday said it launched a barrage of 30 Katyusha rockets towards Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel "in response to the enemy's repeated crimes and its targeting of civilian houses in Bint Jbeil". Since the cross-border hostilities began, more than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah combatants but also more than 20 civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military. After two Australian citizens were killed in an airstrike on their house in bint Jbeil, Australia's attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, urged Australians to leave Lebanon while commercial flights were still operating.
Suicide drones -
Exchanges of fire have been largely confined to the border area, although Israel has conducted limited strikes deeper into Lebanese territory. Hezbollah said Wednesday it carried out a series of other attacks on Israeli troops and positions, including one on the contested Shebaa Farms involving "suicide drones", missiles and artillery. The Israeli military said in a statement that "a number of launches were identified crossing from Lebanon toward various areas in northern Israel", adding that the army struck the sources of fire and "additional areas in Lebanon". It also said "fighter jets" struck "terrorist infrastructure, as well as Hezbollah military sites".
- 1701 -
Israel has been pushing for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, which lies about 30 kilometers north of the border. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, called for the removal of armed personnel south of the Litani, except for U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army and state security forces. Prime Minister Najib Mikati said last week that Lebanon was ready to implement international resolutions that would help end Hezbollah's cross-border attacks if Israel also complies and withdraws from disputed territory.

Report: 'Surprise' president to be elected before March
Naharnet/December 28/2023
Senior political officials have expressed optimism that the presidential election might be finalized within a few weeks, a media report said, citing “credible information.” “A senior official has said before some associates that he has information at a high level of seriousness and certainty that make him assert that the chance to elect a president has started looming in the horizon,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Thursday. “This juncture has been put or will be put on the front burner so that a president can be elected by March at the latest,” the official reportedly said.
“He even said that he is willing to bet on that and that the president’s identity will be surprising,” the daily added.

Sheikh Naim Qassem: The ongoing resistance efforts are a deterrent against the New Middle East project
LBCI/December 28/2023
Sheikh Naim Qassem, the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, expressed the critical role of resistance in preventing Lebanon and Syria from becoming part of the New Middle East project. Sheikh Qassem emphasized that without the intervention of the resistance in Lebanon in July 2006, the nation would have succumbed to the designs of the New Middle East. Moreover, he stated that if it weren't for the resistance and the Syrian people from 2011 until now, Syria would have fallen as another casualty of the New Middle East project. He highlighted that the ongoing resistance efforts serve as a deterrent against the realization of this new vision for the Middle East. Qassem underlined the significance of the role played by the resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, alongside the resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, as influential factors in thwarting the New Middle East project. He identified the people's resistance in Palestine as the source of goodness, dignity, and a promising future. Additionally, Qassem noted "the necessity of confronting the United States, Israel, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, and others through resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, and the region, as well as in honorable nations like Iran, Yemen, Iraq, among others."

Ongoing Israeli artillery shelling strikes multiple towns in south Lebanon
LBCI/December 28/2023
In a series of relentless attacks, Israeli artillery has been targeting the outskirts of several towns in south Lebanon on Thursday, causing heightened tensions in the region. The affected areas include Khiyam, Rashaya Al-Fakhar, Al-Fardis, Kfarchouba hills, the outskirts of Yater, Al-Jebbayn, Chihine, and Majdal Zoun.

Lebanese-Australian, his wife and Hezbollah brother killed in Israeli air strike -sources
BEIRUT (Reuters)/December 28/2023
An Israeli air strike on a residence in south Lebanon has killed a Lebanese-Australian man, his wife, and his brother, who was a member of armed group Hezbollah, security and local sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The strike late on Tuesday, part of a flare-up of border area hostilities between Israeli and Hezbollah forces, hit a home in the town of Bint Jbeil, where the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah enjoys widespread support. The Lebanese-Australian civilian man was identified by one of his relatives as Ibrahim Bazzi. His wife, a Lebanese national, also died. Hezbollah then announced the killing of Ali Bazzi, his brother and one of the Shi'ite Muslim group's fighters. Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said one of its jets had struck a Hezbollah military site overnight in Lebanon. Australian media quoted a spokesperson for Australia's foreign ministry as saying it was aware of the report and was seeking confirmation. Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas, has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel across Lebanon's southern frontier sinc the eruption of the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza in early October. Hezbollah launched the most rockets and weaponised drones against Israel on Wednesday that it has in a single day since the spate of daily clashes began, security sources said. The Israeli military said on Wednesday its jets had targeted a number of Hezbollah military sites and other locations. Israeli air strikes and shelling have killed more than 100 Hezbollah fighters and nearly two dozen civilians, including children, elderly and several journalists.

SPECIAL Year in review: Lebanon ends crisis-filled 2023 on the precipice of war
Nadia Al-Faour/Arab News/December 28/2023
BEIRUT: With its economy still in tatters, its government in a state of paralysis, and fears that the war raging in Gaza between Israel and Hamas could soon spill over its borders, Lebanon’s woes have only deepened in 2023.
Economic collapse
With some 80 percent of Lebanon’s citizens now living in poverty, the country has been mired in a crippling economic crisis, which commentators have declared “unprecedented” in modern times, since 2019. In early 2023, inflation hit 190 percent. The IMF said the crisis was being compounded and prolonged by those with vested interests seeking to ensure the reforms did not materialize. (AFP). While the Lebanese government reached an agreement for a program worth $3 billion with the International Monetary Fund, obstacles to the deal’s requisite reforms have seen the bailout trapped in limbo. In response to these delays, the IMF said the crisis was being compounded and prolonged by those with vested interests seeking to ensure the reforms did not materialize. A subsequent report published by the international body stated that without urgent reform, public debt could hit 547 percent of Lebanon’s gross domestic product by 2027.
Political deadlock
Central to pushing ahead with the reforms is the need to resolve the country’s political deadlock. However, Lebanon has been waiting for a new president since Michel Aoun’s presidential term ended on Oct. 31, 2022. Parliamentary elections — the first since 2019 — took place in May 2022 and saw 13 independent self-proclaimed reformists win seats. However, with a caretaker government still in place well over a year later, Lebanon is yet to see any positive change as a result. The failure to challenge this status quo has meant that any serious effort to investigate the cause of, and prosecute those responsible for, the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut Port explosion has continued to face obstruction and little cooperation from the political elite. The blast — the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history — killed at least 218, injured some 7,000, and left 300,000 homeless, when tons of ammonium nitrate improperly stored in a warehouse caught fire. Families of the victims have demanded a UN-mandated, independent fact-finding mission to bring those responsible to justice. However, their calls have not been answered. Moreover, the internal investigation into the blast has been repeatedly suspended after politicians lodged complaints against presiding judges.
Child abuse
In parallel with its economic and political unraveling, Lebanon’s social fabric seems to be fraying. One example of this institutional collapse was the revelation this year of widespread child abuse. It was the case of a six-year-old, who died in August this year after allegedly being raped by her maternal uncle, that highlighted the failure of Lebanon’s authorities and its threadbare social services to prevent such cases. Other crimes exposed involved an employee at a child care center, who reportedly recorded himself striking toddlers and force-feeding them. Another case involved a local NGO, established to care for neglected children, which was shut down after evidence emerged that it was trafficking children for sexual abuse. Child-protection experts who spoke to Arab News this summer said they were aware of numerous abuse cases, but claimed they were too badly resourced to cope with the sheer scale of need. Some analysts believe the spate of child abuse is the result of chronic underfunding for social services and community policing, as well as a rise in criminality and vice in general in light of the country’s economic and social collapse.
Anti-Syrian sentiment
Lebanon’s economic pains have hit its large Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities — who have found themselves increasingly marginalized and even blamed for the country’s ills — particularly hard.
Lebanon hosts nearly 1 million registered Syrian refugees, while the government estimates another 500,000 live within its borders undocumented. Their lack of legal status and residency makes them prone to harassment, detention, arrest, and deportation. And, as the social fabric has frayed, a growing number of Lebanese citizens have started to associate Syrian refugees with immoral behavior and to call for their expulsion from the country. In September, a Syrian refugee died while in the custody of State Security, allegedly after being tortured. While there have been calls for the arrest of the officers involved, the lack of independence in military and judicial courts does not bode well for the family of the deceased.
Camp clashes
Lebanon also hosts more than 175,000 Palestinian refugees who have settled in camps in the years since they were driven out of Israel in 1948. In July and September, armed clashes broke out in the Ain Al-Helweh camp in Saida between supporters of Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Muslim Youth, an extremist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The clashes followed the assassination of Abu Ashraf Al-Armoushi, a high-ranking commander in Fatah, and lasted more than a month. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, while hundreds of families have since opted to leave the camps.
Israel v Hezbollah
Decades since the end of the Lebanese civil war and the disarmament of many of the country’s militia factions, Iran-backed Hezbollah remains the most powerful political force and most heavily armed entity in Lebanon. Since the conflict between the Israeli military and Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October, the Israel Defense Force and Hezbollah fighters sympathetic to Hamas have traded fire over the Lebanon-Israel border, raising fears of a new “front” in the war. In fact, the armed exchanges began in the summer when both sides accused one another of violating UN resolutions governing the boundary established 18 years ago after the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. At the time, both Israel and Hezbollah threatened one another with a level of destruction that would “bring the country back to the stone age.”Matters escalated quickly after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, leading to almost daily exchange of fire between Lebanon-based militants and Israel, which has left at least 150 people dead, including Reuters cameraman Issam Abdullah. Most of the dead are Hezbollah combatants. Although the Lebanese government of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati insists it does not want a confrontation with Israel, the crisis-wracked country has been gearing up for the worst, mindful of the carnage suffered in the 2006 war. Schools, hospitals, and government agencies started preparing for evacuations in October and several ministries have already allocated emergency funds in case a war breaks out. Officials and commentators alike continue to speculate on whether Hezbollah intends to increase its attacks on Israel in support of Hamas — a scenario that would almost certainly drag Lebanon into war.

Hezbollah fighting a war of attrition on Israel’s terms
BARUCH YEDID/JNS/December 28, 2023
IAF strikes in Lebanon are exacting a heavy price from Hezbollah for its rocket fire, forcing the terrorist group into a war of attrition being fought on Israel’s terms. Hezbollah has been firing rockets at northern Israel daily since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 persons near the Gaza border. Concerned about larger barrages and border infiltrations, around 250,000 Israelis have been evacuated from communities near Lebanon and Gaza. Israel’s strikes have destroyed a significant quantity of Hezbollah infrastructure in open areas, forcing the terrorists to carry out even more of their activities in proximity to civilian villages. “Hezbollah’s front line of outposts was hit very hard by the IDF and, among other things, the forces hit terrorist infrastructure, command and control facilities, lookouts and warehouses where weapons were stored,” a source in the Israel Defense Forces said. The fact that Israel is striking Hezbollah targets in towns and villages hasn’t escaped the attention of the Lebanese evacuees. A Shi’ite source in Lebanon said that Israel has targeted Hezbollah facilities located in or very close to 91 villages across Southern Lebanon. Moreover, 23 civilians have been killed in those strikes, and residents blame Hezbollah for putting them in harm’s way. “Recently, [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah has also been hearing criticism from the Shi’ite communities who ask him whether you have pledged to be the defender of Lebanon or have you become the defender of Hamas and ISIS,” the IDF source said. Hezbollah—to Hamas’s anger—has not opened a new front against Israel, and cannot even follow through on an oft-threatened “eye for an eye” deterrence. “The ratio of casualties between the IDF forces and Hezbollah is 1-13,” an Israeli political source said. This source added that the assessment is that Hezbollah will continue its war of attrition despite its inability to match Israel blow for blow. However, Hezbollah still poses a considerable threat to Israel. Hezbollah recently moved additional forces into southern Lebanon from Syria, including 1,500 members of its elite Radwan Unit. This unit’s main mission is to rapidly infiltrate northern Israel, seize control of communities and take hostages, similar to Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7. The Radwan Unit gained considerable experience fighting in the Syrian civil war and is considered more advanced and more disciplined than Hamas. However, monitoring and analysis of Hezbollah’s internal discourse indicates that the Oct. 7 attack took away Radwan Unit’s element of surprise. As a result, Hezbollah’s backers tout the achievement of forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their communities in the Upper Galilee.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 28-29/2023
Video/From Fox/On Wednesday's "National Report," foreign policy analysts Walid Phares and Fred Fleitz criticize the Biden administration's response to Iranian-backed proxy attacks in the wider Middle East.
SOMEBODY is telling Iranians that America will not respond: Walid Phares and Fred Fleitz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iwpT6NFmkE

Israel strikes near Syria's capital: state media
AFP/December 28, 2023
DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported Israeli attacks near the capital Damascus on Thursday. “Our air defense are intercepting hostile targets in the vicinity of Damascus,” official news agency SANA said. “An Israeli attack targeted the vicinity of the capital Damascus,” state television said. Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran, which backs President Bashar Assad’s government, to expand its presence there. Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbor since Syria’s civil war began in 2011, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions. But it has intensified attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, as tensions rise across the Middle East. Damascus international airport has been out of service since Israeli strikes targeted it in late November, just hours after flights resumed following similar attacks the previous month.

RGC Retracts its Story about ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ Operation
London: Adil Al-Salmi/December 28/2023
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) introduced a significant twist to the narrative surrounding the events of the al-Aqsa Flood Operation on Oct. 7 after its spokesman initially claimed the attack was a retaliatory act for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Hamas quickly refuted the comments of spokesperson Ramezan Sharif, prompting the IRGC to later retract the statement. Sharif stated that during the al-Aqsa Flood, more than 200 commanders and a total of 1,500 civilians were killed. He stated that the attacks against Israel were in response to the killing of Soleimani, a former Quds Force commander, the mastermind behind Iran's foreign operations and regional strategy, who was assassinated in a US airstrike in Baghdad in early 2020. Subsequently, the Revolutionary Guard's media outlets distributed a brief statement indicating a partial revision of the spokesperson's statements.
The statement quoted Sharif as saying the al-Aqsa Flood was an "entirely Palestinian operation." The alteration was attributed to a "misunderstanding" of the spokesperson's earlier statements, as reported by the Tasnim agency. Hamas swiftly rejected the spokesperson's statements, emphasizing that all of its actions are "in response to the presence of the occupation and its continued aggression against our people and our sanctities."
"Miscalculations"
Previously, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei denied Iran's involvement in Hamas' attack, characterizing the accusations against Iran as rumors propagated by supporters of the Zionist entity and a "misguided calculation."Hours before Khamenei's speech, the Iranian Foreign Ministry denied a report published by the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that IRGC senior officers were involved in planning Hamas' attack since August. Tehran described the report as "politically motivated." Sources from Hamas and Hezbollah said Iranian officials green-lit the attack on Israel in a meeting held days before the operation.
Khamenei's denial seemed to implicitly confirm a statement of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 8, suggesting there was evidence of Iran's involvement in the attack. Following Khamenei's denial, most Iranian officials' positions revolved around denying Tehran's interference in the armed groups' decisions, namely Hamas.
Hours after Khamenei's speech, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian announced a new chapter for the "Resistance Axis," saying they may carry out "preemptive" measures in response to systematic Israeli attacks. On Oct. 12, Amirabdollahian traveled to Iraq and discussed for the first time the possibility of the war expanding, saying nobody seeks Iran's "permission to open a new front" against Israel. Two weeks later, the Wall Street Journal cited intelligence sources that about 500 members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad had received combat training weeks before the attack. In mid-November, three senior Iranian officials told Reuters that Khamenei asked the political bureau chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, during his unannounced visit to Tehran to silence voices calling for Iranian and Hezbollah intervention in the war. Sources quoted Khamenei as saying that Iran had not participated in the Oct. 7 attack and would not directly intervene in the conflict unless Israel or the US attacked it. However, Iranian leaders wanted to use armed groups to launch missile and drone attacks on Israeli and US targets in the Middle East. Later, Iranian officials and Hamas denied the Reuters report. Following the report, Iranian media outlets shared a message from the commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, addressing the commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif. In it, he pledged that Iran and its allies would do "everything necessary in this historic battle."
- Iran Vows Retribution Against Israel
IRGC spokesman declared that Iran will not back down from confronting the Zionist entity and will pursue this path. He emphasized that the Armed Forces General Staff and the Supreme National Security Council supervise this mission. Sharif accused Israel of attempting to transform the Gaza war into a conflict between Iran and the US, asserting that the Israelis sought to escalate conflict in the region due to their strategic failures. The IRGC spokesperson said the assassination of Reza Mousavi was a response to Israel's "defeats" in the battle against Hamas. "Iran's response will be a combination of a direct step and a step by the resistance front," he noted. Highlighting Mousavi's extensive role in supporting the Resistance Axis for over 25 years, Sharif acknowledged his valuable experience in equipping the resistance and providing significant assistance to Iranian diplomacy in Syria and Lebanon.
Sharif also noted that while Iran has already taken revenge against Israel for previous assassinations, such actions are not allowed to be disclosed in the media. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami affirmed that Mousavi had always been a steadfast supporter of the entire resistance front. Iranian media broadcast that Mousavi's body was taken to Najaf, Iraq, for funeral rites ahead of transferring him to Tazgrish, north of Tehran, for his burial. Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Mohammed al-Sadiq, told AFP that Mousavi's death was the latest of Israel's "enemy's list of crimes." The Iranian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN, Saeed Iravani, issued a stern warning to "Israel," affirming that his country holds legitimate and inherent rights based on international law and the United Nations Charter to provide a decisive response at the appropriate time. Chief of Staff of Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri said the assassination of an IRGC commander in Syria was Israel's strategic mistake that won't go unpunished. Earlier this month, Khamenei called for the disruption of ships heading to Israel and the interruption of its energy supplies. Following Khamenei's speech, the Houthi group launched a series of attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandab Strait. The US accused Iran of launching a drone attack on a vessel carrying chemical cargo linked to Israel and en route to India.

Iranians mourn Guards' commander killed in Israeli strike
Agence France Presse/December 28/2023
Thousands massed Thursday in the Iranian capital for the funeral of senior Revolutionary Guards commander Razi Moussavi, three days after he was killed in what Tehran says was an Israeli strike. The crowd in Tehran's central Imam Hossein square chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America". Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against arch foe Iran and its allies, but Moussavi's killing in Syria came at a time of sharply heightened regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict since early October. Iranian state media says an Israeli missile strike on Monday killed Moussavi, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arms, the Quds Force, near the Syrian capital Damascus. The Israeli army, which has launched hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets in war-torn Syria in recent years, said only that it does not comment on foreign media reports. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier on Thursday met with Moussavi's family and led a prayer over the slain general's body before it was taken to the square. Many of the mourners were waving yellow flags imprinted with the message "I am your opponent", a reference to Israel.
The head of the Guards, Hossein Salami, hailed Moussavi as "one of the most experienced and effective IRGC commanders in the Axis of Resistance" -- Tehran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East.
Salami praised Moussavi for his key role after a former Quds Force commander, the revered Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a 2020 U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. Soleimani had run the Guards' foreign operations for more than a decade. IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif warned on Wednesday that "our response to Moussavi's assassination will be a combination of direct action as well as (from) others led by the Axis of Resistance". Sharif charged that Israel's killing of the general "was likely due to its failures" when Palestinian Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on October 7. Iran, which supports Hamas financially and militarily, has hailed the deadly attacks as a "success" but denied any direct involvement. "'Al-Aqsa Flood' was a completely Palestinian operation," Salami said using Hamas's name for the October 7 attack, a day after remarks by spokesman Sharif seemed to suggest it was in part motivated by revenge for Soleimani's killing. "I say that the revenge for Hajj Qasem is a separate operation," the Guards chief said. Sharif had said that the Oct. 7 attack was “one of the acts of revenge by the resistance front against the U.S. and the Zionists for the assassination of the martyr Soleimani.” Hamas promptly denied the claim, in a rare public spat between the Palestinian militant group and its main sponsor. In a statement Hamas said the Oct. 7 operation was launched in response to threats to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and to the “Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites.”

Drone launched by Iraqi militants hits Israel-annexed Golan Heights
Agence France Presse/December 28/2023
A drone crashed near a village in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, Israel's army said Thursday, after an Iraqi armed group with links to Hamas militants claimed responsibility for an attack in the area. Israeli media reported that a drone probably carrying explosives launched from Syria was shot down late Wednesday evening south of the settlement of Eliad, causing no injuries but some material damage. The Israeli army told AFP that the drone had crashed near Eliad, but gave no further details. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose formation of pro-Iran armed groups, said in a statement it had hit a "vital target" south of Eliad with "appropriate weaponry." Israel has repeatedly vowed to keep up its campaign to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its bloody October 7 attack, which allegedly left about 1,140 people dead. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 21,110 people, mostly women and children. Since the war in Gaza began, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against U.S. and international coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. Washington has counted 103 attacks against its forces in Iraq and Syria since 17 October, according to a U.S. military official. Most of those attacks have been claimed by factions of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that oppose U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas. But the group has so far claimed few direct attacks against Israeli interests. Israel conquered part of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war before annexing the territory in 1981. The annexation is not recognized by the United Nations.

Two Israelis wounded in terror stabbing outside Jerusalem
JNS/December 28, 2023
Two Israelis were wounded on Thursday night in a Palestinian stabbing attack at the Mizmoriya checkpoint near Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, the Israel Police said. Magen David Adom paramedics treated a 20-year-old woman in serious condition and a 25-year-old man in moderate condition at the scene. It evacuated them to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital. The terrorist was reportedly shot and neutralized, and the road to Jerusalem was briefly blocked following the attack. Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster said the terrorist arrived by car from the direction of Jerusalem, got out of the vehicle and stabbed security officers guarding the checkpoint. The victims of a stabbing attack near Bethlehem arrive at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Dec. 28, 2023. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS. “We are fighting a cruel enemy. The enemy is the same in Gaza, in the north and in Judea and Samaria,” said Shlomo Ne’eman, head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council. The attack ended as every encounter with terrorists ought to, Ne’eman added, “with a dead terrorist.” Ne’eman, who also serves as the head of the Yesha Council umbrella group, wished the wounded a quick recovery.
On Nov. 30, terrorists killed three Israelis and wounded six other people in a shooting at the main entrance to Jerusalem. Two weeks earlier, Hamas terrorists shot and killed an Israel Defense Forces soldier and wounded five other members of the security forces near the “tunnel road” checkpoint between Gush Etzion and the capital city. On Nov. 6, an Israel-American Border Police officer was killed in a terrorist stabbing near Herod’s Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City. Another officer was moderately wounded in the attack.

Israel Presses on with Intensified Attacks as Gaza Death Toll Soars
Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
Israeli forces pressed on with intensified attacks in the Gaza Strip's biggest southern city and a central refugee camp, after the territory's Hamas-run health ministry reported more than 21,000 people had been killed in 11 weeks of war.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday that strikes on a central refugee camp in Gaza had entered a third day, and that an additional brigade had been deployed to the southern city of Khan Yunis, the recent focus of heavy urban combat. He also hinted at a possible "expansion of fighting in the north" along the Lebanese border, which has seen repeated exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants since the war in Gaza broke out. Following a visit to the border earlier in the day, army chief Herzi Halevi said the military had "approved plans for a variety of contingencies, and we need to be prepared to strike if required". Israel has repeatedly vowed to keep up its campaign to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its bloody October 7 attack, which left about 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Palestinian fighters also took around 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in captivity, Israel says. Israel's relentless bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 21,110 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. The army announced the deaths of three more soldiers on Thursday morning, bring the total killed in Gaza to 167. Calls for an end to the hostilities continued to mount on Wednesday, with French President Emmanuel Macron emphasizing in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "the need to work towards a lasting ceasefire".
He also expressed his "deepest concern at the very heavy civilian toll" in Gaza, his office said in a statement, adding that France would be working with Jordan to carry out humanitarian operations in the territory "in the coming days".
Since Israel imposed a siege at the outset of the war, Gazans have faced severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed calls for a ceasefire on Wednesday. He pressed the international community to take "urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril facing the population of Gaza and jeopardising the ability of humanitarian workers to help people with terrible injuries, acute hunger, and at severe risk of disease". In the same statement, the WHO said its staff had reported that "hungry people again stopped our convoys today in the hope of finding food".
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, the UN says. One of them, Iman al-Masry, recently gave birth to quadruplets in a hospital in southern Gaza after fleeing her family’s home in the territory's devastated north early in the war. The journey "affected my pregnancy", the 28-year-old said on Wednesday, and she gave birth by C-section on December 18 to two girls and two boys. She was quickly asked to leave the hospital to make room for other patients, but had to leave behind one son who was too fragile to go with them.
"They are very slim," she said of the infants from a cramped schoolroom turned shelter in Deir al-Balah. "Because of the lack of... baby formula, I try to breastfeed them, but there's no nutritious food I can eat to breastfeed the three babies," she added. Not far away, at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, a UN-run school doubling as a shelter was hit by shelling in the night. "They tell you there are green zones and other zones with other colours. All those are rumours, there are no safe zones in Gaza," one man told AFP on Wednesday, without giving his name. The war has raised fears of a broader regional conflict, with the deadly cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as recent attacks on shipping by Houthis in Yemen acting in solidarity with Hamas. All three militant groups are backed by Iran. Israel wants Hezbollah – which says it is acting in support of Hamas – to withdraw further away from the border, and has threatened to achieve that goal by overwhelming force, if necessary. Meanwhile, a drone crashed near a village in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, the Israeli army said Thursday, with an Iraqi faction close to Hamas claiming responsibility for an attack in the area. Violence has also flared across the occupied West Bank, with more than 310 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or settlers since October 7, the health ministry there said. An Israeli operation in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank killed six people Wednesday, the ministry said. The army said it had struck the Nur Shams camp from the air. The army's operations continued overnight into Thursday, notably in Jenin and Ramallah, according to the official news agency Wafa.

Israeli Tanks Advance Deep Into Gaza Town Amid New Mass Exodus
Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
Israeli tanks advanced deep into a town in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday after days of relentless bombardment that forced tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families to flee in a new exodus. A Palestinian journalist posted pictures of Israeli tanks near a mosque in a built-up area of Bureij, the armored contingent having apparently advanced from orchards on the eastern outskirts. Further south, Israeli forces struck the area around a hospital in the heart of Khan Younis, the Gaza Strip's main southern city, where residents feared a new ground push into territory crowded with families made homeless in 12 weeks of war, Reuters reported. Palestinian health authorities said 210 people were confirmed killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, raising the toll of Palestinians killed in the war so far to 21,320 - nearly 1% of Gaza's population. Thousands more dead are feared to be buried or lost in the ruins. The main focus of fighting is now in central areas south of the wetlands that bisect the narrow coastal strip, where Israeli forces have ordered civilians out over the past several days as their tanks close in. Tens of thousands of people fleeing the densely packed Nusseirat, Bureij and Maghazi districts were heading south or west on Thursday into the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast, crowding into hastily built camps of makeshift tents. "Over 150,000 people - young children, women carrying babies, people with disabilities & the elderly - have nowhere to go," the main UN organization operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media post. The eastern part of Bureij was a theater of heavy fighting on Thursday morning, with Israeli tanks thrusting in from the north and east, residents and Hamas fighters said.

UN Report Deplores 'Rapid Deterioration' of Rights in West Bank
Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
A United Nations report published on Thursday deplored what it said was a "rapid deterioration" of human rights in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and urged Israeli authorities to end violence against the Palestinian population there.
The report, published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said 300 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, the day Hamas gunmen went on a deadly rampage in southern Israel and took hostages back to Gaza, Reuters reported. Most of the killings occurred during operations by Israeli security forces or confrontations with them. At least 105 deaths could be attributed to Israeli operations involving airstrikes or other military tactics in refugee camps or other densely-populated areas. At least eight people were killed by Jewish settlers, it said. There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials on the report. Israel has said its operations in the West Bank are preemptive and aimed at curbing security threats. "The use of military tactics means and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said. "I call on Israel to take immediate, clear and effective steps to put an end to settler violence against the Palestinian population, to investigate all incidents of violence by settlers and Israeli Security Forces, to ensure effective protection of Palestinian communities." OHCHR said it had also recorded mass arbitrary detentions, unlawful detentions, and cases of reported torture and other forms of ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees. It said some 4,785 Palestinians had been detained in the West Bank since Oct. 7. "Some were stripped naked, blindfolded and restrained for long hours with handcuffs and with their legs tied, while Israeli soldiers stepped on their heads and backs, were spat at, slammed against walls, threatened, insulted, humiliated and in some cases subjected to sexual and gender-based violence," OHCHR said. The West Bank had already been experiencing the highest levels of unrest in decades during the 18 months preceding the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen but confrontations have risen sharply as Israel have launched a ground invasion of Gaza.

Netanyahu to Form Team to Look into ‘Voluntary Migration’ of Palestinians
Tel Aviv: Nazir Magally/Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to form a team to look into the deportation of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, according to a Likud MK. This announcement was made during a Likud meeting two days ago in response to a call by MK Danny Danon who is chairman of World Likud and former Israeli Ambassador to the UN. The deportation of Palestinians is becoming more popular among the Israeli right-wing parties and to make it more acceptable they suggest that it is a “voluntary migration”. Several Israeli plans have been made public, discussing the deportation of Gazans to Egypt. One was prepared by the Ministry of Intelligence and the second by the Psagot Institute. Likud Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel published an article last month on this matter in The Jerusalem Post. The Israeli Embassy in Washington had to state that the article doesn’t represent the government.
Meanwhile, this suggestion sparked anger in Egypt and Jordan and the Arab countries took a unified stance against it. The US Administration responded to Arab demands and announced absolute rejection of deportation of Palestinians. Danon revealed that he has been contacted by "countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to take refugees from the Gaza Strip." Danon termed this solution as “very humanitarian”. According to the MK, this is "voluntary migration of Palestinians who wish to leave." "It happens in every war, look at what's happening in Syria – one and a half million went to Jordan, three million went to Türkiye and another few million went to Europe," Danon added. "I think the Arab states have a duty to help the Palestinians. They should have the decency to help instead of making inflammatory speeches,” he added. Danon said that a couple of weeks ago MK Ram Ben-Barak published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in the same spirit.

A visible reminder for years: Number of wounded Israeli soldiers mounts
Associated Press/December 28/2023
Igor Tudoran spent just 12 hours inside the Gaza Strip before a missile slammed into his tank, leaving him with a life-altering injury. "Already within the tank, I understood from the condition of my leg that I would lose it. But the question was how much of it will I lose," he said, seated on a bed in the hospital where he has been treated since he was wounded last month. Tudoran, 27, a reservist who volunteered for duty after the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas that triggered the war, lost his right leg beneath the hip. He has kept up a positive attitude — but concedes that his hopes of becoming an electrician may no longer be possible. Tudoran is part of a swelling number of wounded Israeli fighters, yet another sizable and deeply traumatized segment of Israeli society whose struggles are emerging as a hidden cost of the war that will be felt acutely for years to come. Given the large numbers of wounded, advocates worry the country is not prepared to address their needs. "I have never seen a scope like this and an intensity like this," said Edan Kleiman, who heads the nonprofit Disabled Veterans Organization, which advocates for more than 50,000 soldiers wounded in this and earlier conflicts. "We must rehabilitate these people," he said. Israel's Defense Ministry says roughly 3,000 members of the country's security forces have been wounded since Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 240 people hostage. Nearly 900 of those are soldiers wounded since Israel began its ground offensive in late October, in which troops have engaged in close combat with Hamas militants. More than 160 soldiers have been killed since the ground operation began.
"They add up," said Yagil Levy, who teaches civil-military relations at Israel's Open University, of the wounded. "There could be a long-term impact if we see a big rate of people with disabilities that Israel must rehabilitate, which can produce economic issues as well as social issues."The war has also brought unprecedented suffering to Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 21,000 have been killed, close to 55,000 wounded and amputations have become commonplace. Most of the tiny enclave's population has been displaced.
Israelis still largely stand behind the war's objectives and it is mostly seen as an existential battle meant to restore a sense of security lost in Hamas' attacks. The media hardly cover the hardship endured by Palestinians, and their plight barely registers in Israeli public discourse. In a country with compulsory military service for most Jews, the fate of soldiers is a sensitive and emotional topic. The names of fallen soldiers are announced at the top of hourly newscasts. Their funerals are packed with strangers who come to show solidarity. Their families receive generous support from the army. But historically the plight of the wounded, though lauded as heroes, has taken a backseat to the stories of soldiers killed in battle. After the fanfare surrounding tales of their service and survival recedes, the wounded are left to contend with a new reality that can be disorienting, challenging and, for some, lonely. Their numbers have not had significant bearing on public sentiment toward Israel's wars in the way that mounting soldiers' deaths have.
The exceptionally large numbers of wounded in this war, however, will provide a visible reminder of the conflict for years to come. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized their sacrifice during a recent visit to wounded soldiers at Sheba Medical Center, Israel's largest hospital, which has treated and rehabilitated many of the injured. "You are genuine heroes," he said. At Sheba, soldiers and civilians wounded in the war spilled out into the corridors on a recent day and passed the time with their families on an outdoor deck. Soccer paraphernalia adorned the wounded soldiers' hospital beds as did the ubiquitous Israeli flag. One man who had lost a leg after being attacked at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 lay in the sun on the hospital grounds, his wheelchair parked nearby. The Israeli pop diva Rita handed out hugs to some wounded soldiers. A military helicopter carrying more wounded landed nearby.
The Israeli Defense Ministry said it was working at "full capacity" to assist the wounded, and that it was cutting red tape and hiring employees to deal with the influx. Jonathan Ben Hamou, 22, who lost his left leg beneath the knee after a rocket-propelled grenade struck the bulldozer he was using to help clear the way for other troops, is already looking forward to the day when he can use a state-funded prosthetic. Ben Hamou, who mostly uses a wheelchair since the incident in early November, said that he eventually plans to pursue his goal of attending a military commanders' course. "I'm not ashamed of the wound," said Ben Hamou, who filmed the RPG's moment of impact as well as his evacuation to hospital. "I was wounded for the country in a war inside Gaza. I am proud." But Kleiman, who himself was wounded in an operation in the Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, said he thinks Israeli authorities are not grasping the severity of the situation. The disabled veterans group is ramping up efforts to address what he suspects will be the overwhelming needs of a new cadre of wounded soldiers. He said the organization is tripling its manpower, adding therapists and employees to help wounded veterans navigate bureaucracy and upgrade rehab centers. Kleiman said the number of wounded is likely to stretch close to 20,000 once those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder are included. He said if wounded soldiers don't receive the mental and physical care they need, including making their homes or cars accessible, it could stunt their rehabilitation and delay or even prevent their reentry into the workforce. "There are wounded whose lives have been ruined," said Idit Shafran Gittleman, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv research center. "They will have to contend with their wound their entire lives."

Israel bombs Gaza as UN warns civilians face 'grave peril'
Agence France Presse/December 28/2023
Israeli forces on Thursday heavily bombed besieged Gaza as the centre of fierce combat against Hamas moves steadily south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. The war that started with the Hamas attack of October 7 has devastated much of northern Gaza, while air and artillery strikes and house-to-house fighting have been heaviest in the southern city of Khan Younis.The Israeli army has deployed an additional brigade to Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, said army spokesman Daniel Hagari. More than 80 percent's of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been driven from their homes, and many now live in cramped shelters or makeshift tents in the far south, in and around the city of Rafah near Egypt. U.N. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for "urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril" facing Gaza's people, including "terrible injuries, acute hunger and... severe risk of disease". French President Emmanuel Macron in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his "deepest concern at the very heavy civilian toll" and stressed "the need to work towards a lasting ceasefire", Macron's office said. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its bloody October 7 attack, which left about 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. The Hamas gunmen also took around 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in captivity -- a source of intense grief and anxiety for their families who have held protests demanding urgent action to "bring them home". Israel's relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion with troops and tanks have killed at least 21,110 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.The Israeli army says 167 of its soldiers have been killed in the war in Gaza.
Quadruplets born in war
Amid the conflict, an Israeli siege has deprived Gazans of food, water, fuel and medicine -- the severe shortages only sporadically eased by convoys of humanitarian aid trucks. One of the many people displaced, young mother Iman al-Masry, recently gave birth to quadruplets in a hospital in southern Gaza after fleeing her family's home in the devastated north. The arduous journey "affected my pregnancy", the 28-year-old said, recounting that she gave birth by C-section on December 18 to two girls and two boys, one of whom was too fragile to leave hospital. "They are very slim," she said of the three other infants, speaking in a cramped schoolroom turned shelter in Deir al-Balah. "It's cold and windy and there's no bathtub ... I just use wipes.""There's no nutritious food I can eat to breastfeed the three babies."Violence has also flared across the Israel-occupied West Bank, with at least 314 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, according to the territory's health ministry. Israeli forces made a deadly overnight raid into Ramallah, health officials said Thursday as troops raided money exchange shops which the military said had provided funds for armed groups. An AFP journalist saw Palestinians hurl Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces, who killed one man according to the health ministry. Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and regularly carries out raids there, though they are far less common in the territory's institutional heart Ramallah. A United Nations report Thursday said the human rights situation in the West Bank was rapidly deteriorating and urged Israel to "end unlawful killings" against the Palestinian population. "The use of military tactics and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling," UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Mideast tensions flare
The bloodiest ever Gaza war has also sharply heightened tensions between Israel and its long-time arch foe Iran, which supports armed groups across the Middle East in what it dubs the "Axis of Resistance". Iran blamed Israel for a missile strike in Syria on Monday that killed the senior Iranian military commander Razi Moussavi, who was laid to rest at a tearful mass funeral in Tehran on Thursday. The crowd chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led a prayer over the body of Moussavi, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arms the Quds Force. Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif warned on Wednesday that "our response to Moussavi's assassination will be a combination of direct action as well as (from) others led by the Axis of Resistance". Israel has traded heavy cross-border fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since the Gaza war broke out, and warned it will step up military action unless the group's militants withdraw further away from the border. Army spokesman Hagari said Israeli forces had killed 129 Hezbollah militants since early October and that the Shiite movement "is paying a heavy price" for its attacks. Another Iran ally, Yemen's Houthi rebels, has launched repeated drone and missile attacks at Israel, which have been intercepted in the air, and fired at passing cargo ships in the Red Sea, disrupting international trade. A drone also crashed near a village in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, Israel's army said Thursday, after an Iraqi armed group with links to Hamas claimed responsibility for an attack in the area. Israeli media reported that a drone probably carrying explosives launched from Syria was shot down late Wednesday, causing no injuries but some material damage.

US Targets Flow of Iranian Funds to Houthis
Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
The US on Thursday sanctioned an individual and three currency exchange houses it accused of facilitating the flow of Iranian financial assistance to the Houthi militias who have been launching attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the southern Red Sea. Two of the exchange houses are based in Yemen and one is in Türkiye, the US Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the new measures. "Today's action underscores our resolve to restrict the illicit flow of funds to the Houthis, who continue to conduct dangerous attacks on international shipping and risk further destabilizing the region," Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement. Nelsons said the US and its allies “will continue to target the key facilitation networks that enable the destabilizing activities of the Houthis and their backers in Iran.”The sanctions freeze any US assets belonging to the targeted entities and generally prohibit Americans from doing business with them. Earlier this month, the US announced sanctions against 13 people and firms alleged to be providing tens of millions of dollars from the sale and shipment of Iranian commodities to the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis have seized or attacked with drones and missiles a dozen ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since Nov. 19.

Dynamic Force Employment is the Future of America’s Middle East Presence
Bilal Y. Saab/Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
Few things grab the attention of Arab leaders who are friendly to Washington more than America’s military presence in the region. Even the slightest drawdown greatly worries and often drives them to assume the worst about US intentions.
A calm assessment of America’s changing geopolitical priorities, followed by an understanding of how the United States has sought to adjust its military posture in the region, should ease the worries of Arab partners, or at least some of them.
While it is true that the United States has reached fatigue in the Middle East given its costly interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the more powerful driver behind reducing military investments in the region is the US strategic prioritization of the Indo-Pacific and European theaters.
Checking China and countering Russia requires more resources than previously allocated to each respective theater, and given that US resources are limited, they must be brought in from other places. By any objective account, the United States had an oversized presence in the Middle East, which made the region a natural candidate for a reduced US military footprint. The view of US abandonment of the Middle East has needlessly dominated policy and emotions in the region. It remains baseless. So long as the region contains strategic natural resources including high percentages of oil and gas, and so long as the export of those resources is crucial for the wellbeing of the international economy, the United States will care about the region and devote resources to maintain stability in that vital part of the world. The question now is how the United States can preserve its interests, strengthen its partnerships, and commit to its stabilizing mission in the region with fewer resources at its disposal.
There’s no doubt that Washington has struggled with this question at the policy level – the conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest example of the limitations of US Middle East policy. But what’s encouraging is that the US Department of Defense has stepped up and proposed some creative ideas regarding the future of America’s military presence in the region. Enter dynamic force employment. The concept of dynamic force employment was officially introduced in the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Implemented in the Middle East more than anywhere else lately, it seeks to reduce routine deployments to provide flexibility and make peacetime force movements more agile without compromising on combat readiness. Current commander of US Air Forces Central Command, Lt. Gen. Greg Guillot, argued that “dynamic force employment deployments demonstrate the ability to move combat capability into theater just in time for when it is required, not just in case it might be needed.”Dynamic force employment also better protects US forces from Iran’s threat of missiles and unmanned aerial systems. In his posture statement on March 15, 2022, former CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie correctly noted that “distributing forces more broadly outside of the most significant Iranian threat ranges not only enhances survivability but also demonstrates an increased capability to rapidly mass combat effects...”
And that’s precisely what CENTCOM has demonstrated in its approach to the region over the past few weeks and months. We’ve seen the United States deploy additional military assets including aircraft carriers, warships, and fighter aircraft to respond to the rising threat of Iran’s threat network. These resources had to come from other regions including Europe and even from military bases in the United States. Dynamic force employment shouldn’t suggest that the United States has switched to a strategy of offshore balancing or that it is about to gradually give up its forward-deployed military presence in the Middle East. An effective posture that contributes to the missions of deterrence, reassurance, and security cooperation must have an element of forward deployment.
To deter Iran, the United States must have assets in theater to affect the decision-making calculus of the leadership in Tehran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. To be sure, US deterrence against Iran has been contested. But it would be even less effective without immediate and powerful American means of punishment in theater that could prevent Iran from quickly establishing facts on the ground in a crisis. To reassure partners, the United States needs visible and permanent military power in the region. Regional partners feel a lot more reassured by the constant basing of American troops and equipment on their soil because it reflects a certain level of US commitment to their security. Also, to effectively conduct security cooperation, the United States needs troops and trained personnel in the region to advise and assist their counterparts. The entire enterprise of security cooperation is about building trust and personal relationships, and you simply cannot do that remotely. How much forward presence is necessary to effectively pursue all three of these missions is always hard to know. One also has to recognize that when it comes to posture, there is an inherent tension between deterrence, reassurance, and security cooperation. While security cooperation doesn’t need a large US footprint – it needs the right kind of personnel in the right places more than anything else – partners will always prefer a robust and sizable presence. With respect to deterrence, it is virtually impossible to know how much US firepower is enough to be effective because the concept itself is incredibly hard to measure and evaluate (it also depends on several other variables including credibility and consistency) and because Iran consistently operates below the threshold of war. Dynamic force employment is supposed to smartly balance between all three missions by keeping a forward-deployed presence while putting a bigger premium on maintaining access, investing in adaptability, and building resilience. This is particularly challenging because regional partners could decide to reduce US access if they see that Washington is further drawing down its physical presence. Access becomes even more important to the United States as tensions with Iran grow and the likelihood of war increases. The first few moments of a potential confrontation or even military crisis between the United States and Iran require a high degree of US operational flexibility, which can only be enabled by access. In the end, any US discussion of posture, be it in the Middle East or elsewhere, should be informed first and foremost by strategy. Strategy drives posture, not the other way around. There is no point in debating numbers of American troops and capabilities in the Middle East if Washington doesn't have a clear idea of what objectives it wants those troops and capabilities to achieve. But even when that moment of clarity in US Middle East strategy comes, Washington should always remember that the regional partners get a vote. Without their access and permission, the United States can do very little in the Middle East.

Egypt says it is awaiting responses on plan to end Gaza war
CAIRO (Reuters)/December 28, 2023
Egypt confirmed on Thursday that it had put forward a framework proposal to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip that includes three stages ending with a ceasefire, and said it was awaiting responses on the plan. Egypt would give further details of the plan once those responses are received, Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt's State Information Service, said in a statement. The proposal is an attempt "to bring viewpoints between all concerned parties closer, in an effort to stop Palestinian bloodshed and the aggression against the Gaza Strip and restore peace and stability to the region," he said. Egyptian security sources had previously said the proposal included a multi-stage ceasefire involving prisoner releases by Israel and Hamas. One Egyptian source said the idea of a post-war Gaza administration was raised.

What is Egypt's proposal for Gaza?
Nidal al-Mughrabi, Dan Williams and and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan/GAZA (Reuters)/December 28/2023
Egypt has held talks between Hamas and its allied Islamic Jihad to try and broker a permanent ceasefire in Israel's war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed tens of thousands, laid waste to the Hamas-governed territory, and displaced the majority of the 2.3 million Palestinian residents. Here are the various proposals Egypt is presenting:
RELINQUISH POWER
Egypt is proposing that Hamas and Islamic Jihad relinquish power in the Gaza Strip in return for a permanent ceasefire, said two Egyptian security sources. Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials have rejected such a proposal, the Egyptian sources said. Officials of the two groups denied publicly what the sources said.
Leaders of the two groups have repeatedly insisted a post-Gaza war future should be decided by the Palestinians themselves and not according to foreign dictation. Israel has demanded the destruction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying this would entail the dismantling of all of their military and governance capabilities and a deradicalising of the Gaza population. It was not immediate clear if the proposed removal of the militant groups from power would satisfy those demands.
CEASEFIRE STAGES
Egypt is suggesting a multi-stage ceasefire, with an initial temporary ceasefire lasting for a period of one or two weeks, said two Egyptian security sources. The temporary ceasefire could be renewed. According to Palestinian officials, who said it was a three-stage ceasefire, during the first 10-day humanitarian truce Hamas would release all women, children and old men held captive. In return, Israel would release an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners in the same categories, stop all fighting, relocate tanks to outside populated territory, and allow delivery of medical and food aid, fuel and cooking gas. It will also allow the movement of people back to northern Gaza. The second stage would see Hamas freeing all Israeli women soldiers. In return Israel would release another group of jailed Palestinians. The two parties would also swap bodies withheld since Oct 7. The third stage may last one month, and pending negotiations, see the release of all captives in Hamas custody in return for an agreed upon number of Palestinian prisoners. Israel will withdraw tanks from Gaza and both sides will halt all hostile activities.
HAMAS REJECTS TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE
Egyptian sources said that both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have been holding separate talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo, will not stop fighting unless Israeli "aggression" ends. Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official, told reporters in Lebanon during a news conference, when asked about initiatives presented to the movement on a ceasefire: "There are many ideas, that are being presented, and we are dealing with those ideas on the basis that we want a comprehensive end of the aggression and not temporary truces. We are open to ideas that may lead to that," said Hamdan. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad insist a prisoner swap deal should see the release of all Palestinians in Israeli prisons. "All for all" said a senior Islamic Jihad official. Israel has been open to another limited ceasefire, but has rejected the Palestinian militants' demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of forces from Gaza.
FINAL PHASE
One Egyptian source said the idea of a post-war Gaza administration was raised. Palestinian officials said the issue wasn't part or a condition of a ceasefire proposal. Egypt has fostered talks to form a government of technocracts which would handle relief aid and reconstruction of Gaza and hold a legislative election. The final phase of the proposal would see an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and allow the displaced to return.

Türkiye Strikes 71 Targets, Neutralizes 59 Kurdish Fighters in Syria and Northern Iraq
Ankara: Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq Al Awsat/December 28/2023
Türkiye has hit 71 sites linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish (YPG) in Syria and northern Iraq during airstrikes launched this week in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in Iraq. At least 59 Kurdish militants were killed in the strikes as well as in land clashes, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said in a video message to top military officials which was posted on X, formerly Twitter. "As we have consistently emphasized, our fight against terrorism will continue until the last terrorist is neutralized," he noted. Turkish intelligence reported Tuesday that Ankara has destroyed nearly 50 facilities belonging to the PKK in Qamishli, Kobane, and Amuda. Security sources said that the intelligence targets the infrastructure of PKK and SDF. The intelligence operations have contributed to eliminating the threats near the borders and disrupting the operations goals as well as the PKK and SDF capabilities to carry out attacks against Türkiye. During the past two days, the Turkish army has conducted drone raids against more than 20 vital military locations in Qamishli and Amuda. Moreover, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense announced the eradication of four YPG members in an operation conducted by the elite forces in the areas of Operation Peace Spring and Operation Olive Branch in northeastern Syria. They had attempted to destabilize the security in both areas. As part of the retaliation for the killing of 12 Turkish soldiers, Turkish intelligence revealed Wednesday the killing of Zeynep Evri from the Workers’ Party - nicknamed Arin Ari - in an operation in Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq. Security sources told Anadolu Agency that Evri was responsible for “terrorist women activities” on the Iranian-Iraqi borders. Evri was preparing to launch attacks on Turkish military bases in northern Iraq, according to the sources. This is the third operation for the Turkish intelligence in Sulaymaniyah in three days.

Turkiye to reinforce bases in Iraq after 12 soldiers killed
REUTERS/December 28, 2023
ANKARA: Turkiye will reinforce its newly established permanent bases in northern Iraq in the coming months, after 12 Turkish soldiers were killed in the region, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday. The 12 were killed last week in northern Iraq in clashes with the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party based there.“In recent years, we have built hundreds of kilometers-long roads in northern Iraq for our permanent bases. We carry out the same activities in new places we have controlled,” Erdogan told a televised meeting in Ankara.
HIGHLIGHT
Since 2019, Turkiye has launched a series of operations in northern Iraq after Erdogan’s declaration of ‘a new security concept in combating terrorism’ and plan to ‘neutralize terrorism and terrorists at source.’“By the arrival of spring, we will have completed the infrastructure of our newly established bases (in northern Iraq), and make terrorists unable to set foot in the region.”Turkish forces regularly carry out strikes in neighboring Iraq as part of the country’s offensive against PKK militants. Since 2019, Turkiye has launched a series of operations in northern Iraq after Erdogan’s declaration of “a new security concept in combating terrorism” and plan to “neutralize terrorism and terrorists at source.”The PKK, which demands greater Kurdish rights and has large fortifications around northern Iraq, is designated a terrorist group by Turkiye, the US and the European Union. It took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 and over the decades it has conducted many deadly attacks in Turkiye.

Qatari court reduces death sentence handed to 8 retired Indian navy officers charged with spying
Associated Press/December 28, 2023
Qatar's Court of Appeal reduced Thursday the death sentence handed in October to eight retired Indian navy officers on spy charges, the Indian foreign ministry said. Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in a statement the detailed verdict has not been received yet. "We are in close touch with the legal team as well as family members to decide on the next steps," he said. India's ambassador to Qatar and other officials were present in the Qatari court along with the family members and New Delhi will continue providing consular and legal assistance, Bagchi said. "We will also continue to take up the matter with the Qatari authorities," he said. Qatari authorities provided New Delhi consular access to the eight Indian nationals during their trial. Bagchi said no further comment was possible due to the confidential and sensitive nature of the case. The eight were charged with spying while working at Al Dahra, a consulting company in the oil-rich Gulf state that advises the Qatari government on submarine acquisitions, according to Indian media reports. The Qatari government's media office declined to comment on Thursday's ruling. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Qatar's Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai in December. It was unclear whether the two leaders discussed the case. Millions of Indians live and work in the Gulf, a large number of them as semi-skilled or unskilled workers. They constitute an important source of income for India and contribute to the success of Gulf economies.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 28-29/2023
Who Supports Hamas?
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute./December 28, 2023
Many of the protests that now demand a unilateral ceasefire -- including the attempts to shut down Christmas celebrations -- are orchestrated by some of the same radical groups that organized the pro-Hamas demonstrations before Israel went into Gaza.
Demonstrations and protests by groups such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace or the National Lawyers Guild seem anything but spontaneous and grassroots responses to "Israel's military actions in Gaza." They are not demonstrations against what Israel does; they are protests against what Israel is, namely the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people.
Recall that these protests began before Israel counterattacked against Hamas. They were in full bloom on October 8, even while the bodies of 1,200 murdered Israelis, including babies burned alive, were still being gathered and counted, and the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas to Gaza identified.
The protests are exclusively anti-Israel, anti-American, pro-Hamas, and pro-terrorism.
Where are the calls for anything that would actually help the Palestinians or make their lives better: freedom of speech, equal justice under the law, freedom of the press, better job opportunities, and an end to government corruption and abuse?
So when you watch an anti-Israel demonstration on television, please understand who is behind it and what are their ultimate goals, because the next target is American democracy -- and you.
Many of the protests that now demand a unilateral ceasefire -- including the attempts to shut down Christmas celebrations -- are orchestrated by some of the same radical groups that organized the pro-Hamas demonstrations before Israel went into Gaza. Pictured: Demonstrators protest against Israel on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Kena Betankur/AFP via Getty Images)
The main groups that comprise the bulk of organizers and demonstrators who have supported the Hamas barbarism against Israel are:
1) Radical Islamic groups that, like the Islamic Republic of Iran after the 1979 revolution, regard Israel as the "Little Satan" and America as the "Big Satan."
2) American revolutionary groups who used to be affiliated with Communism but now call themselves radical socialists or workers parties. Their goal is to overthrow our government and they attach themselves to every disruptive movement in the hope of garnering support and creating distrust for American democracy.
3) Old-fashioned anti-Semites who hate anything associated with Jews and concoct conspiracy theories that blame "the Jews" for all evils.
4) Useful idiots who have little or no knowledge of the issues but march in lockstep with all "woke," "hard left," and "anti-colonial" causes on the theory that "if it's left, it must be right."
Recall that these protests began before Israel counterattacked against Hamas. They were in full bloom on October 8, even while the bodies of 1,200 murdered Israelis, including babies burned alive, were still being gathered and counted, and the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas to Gaza identified. These demonstrations were not against Israeli military actions in Gaza; they had not begun yet. More joined them after that.
The original responses to the Hamas barbarism in the hours and days following the morning of October 7 set the tone and began the organizational actions that followed. Many of the protests that now demand a unilateral ceasefire -- including the attempts to shut down Christmas celebrations -- are orchestrated by some of the same radical groups that organized the pro-Hamas demonstrations before Israel went into Gaza. Demonstrations and protests by groups such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace or the National Lawyers Guild seem anything but spontaneous and grassroots responses to "Israel's military actions in Gaza." They are not demonstrations against what Israel does; they are protests against what Israel is, namely the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people.
To be sure, Israel's legitimate military efforts to destroy Hamas terrorists and the weapons that they have hidden among civilians, and the resulting civilian deaths, have allowed the anti-Israel organizers to recruit more useful idiots who believe they are protesting only against Israeli actions with the chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Many of these undereducated and over-propagandized students have no idea what bodies of water they are referring to, or that this chant demands the end of Israel and any Jewish presence in the Middle East. The radical organizers, however, know exactly what that chant and others mean: a demand to "clean" the Middle East of "dirty Jews."
The larger point is that the well-organized and externally funded demonstrations are directed as much against the United States and its values as against Israel and its actions. Without the useful idiot students who join any protest they think is directed against the "colonial" and "oppressor" targets of "intersectionality," these demonstrations would be relatively small and limited to long-term professional haters of Jews and America.
But these useful idiots make these well-funded and organized protests larger and allow the media to convey the false impression that they are spontaneous. The media insists on calling these protests "pro-Palestinian." Nothing could be further from the truth. When it sounds indelicate to say "pro-Hamas" -- a terrorist organization -- the signs change to "pro-Palestine." There is nothing to indicate how the Palestinians would actually be helped by the disappearance of Israel and leaving them, like the Iranian people, to the tender mercies of a corrupt, repressive state.
They had voted for Hamas in the first place because they hoped it would be better. Hamas had promised to be better. It was not. Even most of its leaders chose not to live in Gaza: they are now billionaires who, until October 7, had been hiding in five-star hotels in Qatar and Turkey. When they got word that Israel might hold them accountable, they reportedly dispersed.
Where are the calls for anything that would actually help the Palestinians or make their lives better: freedom of speech, equal justice under the law, freedom of the press, better job opportunities, and an end to government corruption and abuse?
The protests are exclusively anti-Israel, anti-American, pro-Hamas, and pro-terrorism. Many of the useful idiots join the protests to support a ceasefire, without realizing that a unilateral ceasefire now would constitute an invitation to Hamas to repeat their barbarism over and over again, as their leaders have promised they would do.
Recall again that the protests against Israel began before there was any fire to cease – that is before Israel responded militarily to the Hamas barbarism. The ceasefire demand was added once Israel counter-attacked, as a way to broaden the base of the protest. The radical anti-Israel protesters, would not be satisfied with a ceasefire. They want to see the destruction of Israel and the victory of Hamas. Indeed, a recent poll suggested that a majority of young Americans would like to see the end of Israel and its replacement by Hamas.
Hamas, of course, would most likely not be satisfied with merely ending Israel. They want to end all non-Muslim democracies. Already Hamas has sent operatives to parts of Europe, where several were recently caught. There are probably Hamas operatives in the United States, as well.
Most importantly, what if the useful idiots who now march for Hamas in favor of Israel's destruction become a fifth column in America and willingly join Hamas terrorists in targeting Jewish and other institutions in our nation. It was only a half-century ago that young Americans joined the Weather Underground and tried to blow up universities, military recruiting centers and army bases. If Hamas is not defeated in the Middle East, it is coming to a theater near you.
So when you watch an anti-Israel demonstration on television, please understand who is behind it and what are their ultimate goals, because the next target is American democracy -- and you.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of "The Dershow" podcast.
© 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.

In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam
The New York Times/Michael Wines/December 28/2023
Richard Flacks remembers the challenges of building a protest movement during the Vietnam War as a pillar of the left-wing political and antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960s.
“The whole idea of S.D.S. began with the idea of, ‘We need a new way of being on the left, a new vocabulary, a new strategy,’” said Mr. Flacks, who helped write the group’s manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, in 1962. “We knew we were right, and I don’t think we were arrogant about it.”
Sixty years later, Iman Abid sees similar challenges in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. “For so long, we couldn’t get Palestine to be that issue for people to care about,” said Ms. Abid, the organizing and advocacy director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which works with pro-Palestinian campus organizations. “But now people care about it because they’re seeing it. They’re watching it on their social media. They’re watching it on the news.”It is too early to know whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will define this generation as opposition to the Vietnam War did for many young people more than a half century ago. But to many who have studied or lived through the Vietnam era, the parallels to the Gaza protests are compelling: a powerful military raining aerial destruction on a small, underdeveloped nonwhite land; a generational divide over the morality of the conflict; a sense that the war represented far broader political and cultural currents; an unswerving confidence — critics might say sanctimony — among students that their cause is righteous.
The differences can be glaring, too, beginning with the terrorist attack by Hamas that set this war in motion, for which there is nothing comparable in Vietnam. The Gaza war is not being fought by the American military, unlike Vietnam, where more than 58,000 Americans died and young men faced a military draft.
Miles Rapoport, a former secretary of state of Connecticut, who joined S.D.S. while studying at Harvard in the 1960s, saw similarities but said the two movements and moments differ in a fundamental way: The United States waded into Vietnam in a show of superpower hubris. Israel, he said, is fighting for its existence after a terrorist attack that killed 1,200 citizens. The current war, he said, “has a lot more moral and philosophical nuance.” That is reflected in pro-Israel marches and demonstrations to a far greater degree now than was common, particularly on campuses, for supporters of the war during the Vietnam era. Still, both movements, Mr. Rapoport said, reflect “a kind of instinctive and initial solidarity with the underdog.” He added: “And related is a sense of solidarity with people who are fighting to have their own country and be freed from a kind of colonial existence.”
American campuses have protested over countless causes since Vietnam, notably to oppose apartheid in South Africa and racial injustice after police killings of Black men and women in 2014 and 2020. But a sustained antiwar protest like the one against the Gaza invasion has not been seen for decades.
Loan Tran, a 28-year-old Vietnamese American who is national director of the leftist advocacy group Rising Majority, draws a straight line between Vietnam and Gaza. Mr. Tran’s grandfather, whom he never met, was an American G.I. during the war; his grandmother’s friends fought for North Vietnam against American forces. “When I hear Palestinians making comparisons to Vietnam and the role of the US and colonialism, it’s really striking for me, and it’s a really poignant connection,” he said. “I feel it in my body, and a lot of people in our Vietnamese community feel it in our bodies, to be resisting war, to be resisting occupation.” To critics of the Gaza protests, the current movement reflects the excesses, not the virtues, of the Vietnam protests, with chants now that to some suggest genocide against the Jewish people, much as some 1960s protests alienated many Americans by backing North Vietnam against US forces. And those critics also accuse the pro-Palestinian demonstrators of hypocrisy — saying that many of the rallies include side issues that would be antithetical to many Palestinians, like women’s issues and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Many supporters of Israel view the movement with a mixture of horror and consternation. Kenneth L. Marcus, the chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a Jewish civil rights institution that is not affiliated with Brandeis University, said the campus demonstrations began even before Israel’s invasion of Gaza occurred. “There may be some people participating in these protests who think they’re supporting Palestinians, but the movement they are advancing is predominantly an antisemitic movement,” he said, adding that it has its genesis in a celebration of violence. Rather than showing moral strength in the face of campus protests, he said, many university administrators “have responded with weakness and cowardice.”
Those protesting the war in Gaza owe their Vietnam-era forerunners for one legacy: the tactics, from die-ins to chants like “How many kids did you kill today?” that energized both movements.
“Students didn’t have much in 1960 to emulate,” said Mr. Flacks, now a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “A lot of the tactics invented at that time became part of the tool kit for activism on campuses.”
Certainly, the logistics of staging protests are much more manageable today than 60 years ago. Cellphones and social media have simplified the tasks of recruiting and deploying advocates for a cause; to cite just one example, a crowd of antiwar demonstrators descended recently on Grand Central Station in New York, flash-mob style, after getting an electronic alert. Universities — and the overall makeup of the protesters — are also vastly changed, as are the political pressures and demands on university presidents.
The Vietnam antiwar movement was overwhelmingly white, like most campuses of the 1960s. But campuses in 2023, particularly urban ones, contain far more students of color, many of whom empathize with Palestinians’ status as an embattled population under the control of a more powerful force. And nonstudents are a bigger part of those protesting now.

Realistic goals are key to achieving New Year resolutions
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/December 28, 2023
People see the start of a new year as an opportunity for a fresh beginning and a chance to make positive changes in their lives. While New Year resolutions can be used as a motivating and constructive way to set goals, it is important to be realistic, and have a plan for implementation, to increase the likelihood of success. These resolutions often center on key aspects of well-being, personal growth, and fulfillment. In this exploration, let us delve into some of the most common New Year resolutions and discuss practical strategies to achieve them.
Without a doubt, health tops the list of resolutions for many people around the world — whether it is shedding a few kilograms, adopting a healthier diet, or committing to regular exercise.
One strategy to achieve this goal is to take a holistic approach by focusing on overall well-being rather than fixating solely on the number on the scale. This requires incorporating mindfulness practices, adequate sleep, and stress management into our routines. One should also set achievable fitness and dietary goals. Many health experts believe that gradual changes are more likely to be sustainable rather than drastic, short-term measures. Joining fitness classes, running groups, or engaging in online communities to foster a sense of accountability and shared motivation, are important as well.
The other issue that often ranks high among New Year resolutions is creating financial stability — the desire to save more, reduce debt, and cultivate sound budgeting habits. Nevertheless, transforming fiscal aspirations into reality requires thoughtful planning and commitment. According to many financial advisers, this requires developing a detailed budget to track income, expenses, and savings goals. Prioritizing building an emergency fund to cushion against unforeseen financial challenges is critical as well.
It is important to point out that even small, consistent contributions can make a significant impact over time. And one should invest wisely. If it is possible, attempt to explore investment opportunities to make your money work for you. One can also seek guidance from financial advisers in order to align investments with long-term goals.
Another New Year resolution is linked to personal development and learning. Many people aspire to acquire new skills, pursue education, or foster personal or spiritual growth. It is worth noting that the journey of lifelong learning is not confined to academic institutions; it is a pursuit that spans careers and personal interests. But one should have clear objectives for personal growth such as defining specific skills or knowledge areas where one wants to develop or improve. This clarity will guide one’s learning journey. This can be followed by dedicating regular time slots to learning and personal growth. It does not have to be hours each day — consistent, focused intervals can yield significant results — and can be achieved by embracing various learning mediums, from online courses and workshops to local classes or mentorship opportunities.
The ambition to progress in one’s career, strike a better work-life balance, or explore new professional horizons frequently finds expression in New Year resolutions. One can clearly outline one’s short- and long-term career goals, and then it is important to break them down into manageable steps to foster a sense of accomplishment. For continuous progress and enhancement, identifying and acquiring skills relevant to one’s field is key. In an era of global connectedness, the evolving nature of industries demands adaptability and a commitment to ongoing learning, cultivating professional connections, attending industry events, and engaging in networking opportunities to broaden one’s career prospects.
New Year resolutions serve as powerful motivators for personal growth and positive change. Another important New Year resolution for many people is to strengthen and work on relationships. As we all know, the resolve to fortify relationships, spend quality time with loved ones, and enhance communication skills underscores the importance of human connections in our lives. When it comes to relationships, many experts believe that prioritizing quality time is vital.
Quality often trumps quantity in fostering strong bonds. This includes dedicated, meaningful interactions with family and friends, developing effective ways to communicate, working on active listening, expressing thoughts and feelings openly, and encouraging dialogue. Engaging in activities or experiences together can ensure shared memories that create lasting connections. In other words, effective communication forms the bedrock of healthy relationships.
As a New Year resolution, many individuals also pledge to manage stress, practice mindfulness, and prioritize psychological well-being by acknowledging the significance of mental health. But according to many psychologists, one should first identify stressors and then create clear boundaries to manage stress effectively through various methods including mindfulness practices, meditation and deep-breathing exercises.
It is also crucial to establish healthy boundaries, that is, striking a balance between work and personal life. Seeking support when needed by reaching out to friends, family, or mental health professionals when one encounters challenges is important as well. One should view seeking help as a sign of strength, not weakness. There are also resolutions to break unhealthy habits including quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake, or overcoming other detrimental behaviors that reflect a commitment to personal well-being and longevity. One can begin by understanding the situations or emotions that trigger unhealthy habits — as this awareness is a critical step toward breaking the cycle. One method is to consider a phased approach to quitting or reducing unhealthy habits. Then, one should acknowledge and celebrate milestones, no matter how small. Positive reinforcement enhances motivation and resilience. Seeking professional support, such as counseling or support groups, can also be immensely beneficial. In a nutshell, New Year resolutions serve as powerful motivators for personal growth and positive change. Whether it is adopting healthier habits, improving finances, personal and spiritual growth, or enhancing relationships, success often hinges on setting realistic goals, developing sustainable routines, and seeking support when needed. As we stand on the cusp of a new year and as many embark on their journeys toward self-improvement, the key lies in embracing the process, learning from setbacks, and celebrating the progress made along the way. May your new year bring not only resolutions, but also the resilience and determination to turn them into lasting achievements.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

UK should pivot back to Middle East
Alistair Burt/Arab News/December 28/2023
Oct. 7, 2023, and the weeks following have sent shock waves around the world, and through European capitals as much as any. In the minds of many in the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, including both the EU and the UK, had shown a steady waning of interest over the past decade or so, coinciding with the presumed retreat of the US, but punctuated by spurts of activity, as over Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Whatever the reality of this perception, what must now be clear is that such a declining interest is no more. The world has changed. There can be no return to Oct. 6.
The EU has been long bedeviled by a sense of relative underperformance in the region, both in terms of ambition and delivery. Despite the bloc’s commitment, through its “Global Strategy” of 2016, to promote “multilateral cooperation” and “foster dialogue and negotiation on regional conflict,” little was seen of any substance, as regular damning surveys on its influence suggested. The impression of a continental Europe too close to US policy, while increasingly disunited, had real substance. Policy differences with the Visegrad Group, not least over Israel, and the very real differences of geographical emphasis between eastern and southern EU states told their own stories.
The UK’s policy toward the Middle East and North Africa has, in recent years, been something of a roller coaster. At the beginning of the last decade, then-Prime Minister David Cameron sought to redress what he considered to be years of a previous governmental neglect of old friends by announcing a “Gulf Initiative.” This resulted in Foreign Secretary William Hague creating a raft of bilateral, high-level policy and strategy groups across the region, all of which have survived and prospered over the years, providing a regular platform for discussions across a range of issues, such as trade, visas, security and investment to mutual benefit. The minister of state designated for this took the title of “Minister for the Middle East and North Africa,” at first with other roles and then, from 2017 to 2019, with a sole focus on the region both at the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The overall impression was that the MENA region mattered to the UK, from finance to defense.
Events from 2011 needed such proper attention. The handling of the various crises related to the Arab uprisings exercised the Foreign and Commonwealth Office — said to be at its busiest since the Second World War — and intensified relationships through the UK’s participation in the various international diplomatic “small groups” set up to tackle the events and consequences throughout the region.
There were successes in respect of Daesh, though at immense costs in human terms, and the significant efforts made by the UK in relation to the Iran nuclear deal, but also setbacks, as with Syria in 2013. However, overall, that the region mattered to the UK could not have been doubted.
Any internal rifts of policy involving the UK were settled as the country left the EU. The Brexit vote, and subsequent exit from the EU, should have mattered least to the region. The EU’s lack of engagement and the UK’s much longer history meant that the loss of London’s EU status had little practical effect and relationships would be little affected in theory. But the years of implementation of Brexit from 2016 onwards coincided with other changes that had an impact on how the UK has been seen.
The ministerial title and singular role was dropped and, for a while, the Middle East was separated from the North Africa portfolio. Relatively small administrative changes in the UK looked different when seen from abroad. The collapse of the Department for International Development into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office came at the same time as the reduction in the UK’s commitment to development from 0.7 percent of gross national income to 0.5 percent, with programs supporting economic projects and refugees in the region being cut.
It is not too late for Europe to step up its game in the region, recognizing current events as the defining issue of our times.
But perhaps the biggest visible change in positioning came with the publication of the UK’s “Integrated Review” of defense, security, development and foreign policy in 2021. The review was designed to recognize growing global turbulence but, with stretched and finite resources, positioning the UK afresh in one sphere came at a cost to others. The tilt to the Indo-Pacific in both economic and security terms matched that of some other states, but the overall sense that the Middle East had been downgraded was hard to miss or explain away.
The “refresh” of the policy this year helped a little, as did the reconstituting of elements of the Middle East minister’s role under the hard-working and engaged Lord Ahmad. But the review so concerned the UK’s House of Commons that it has now commissioned a Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry into MENA policy. The inquiry’s chair, Alicia Kearns MP, has made no secret of her concerns that there had not recently been “sufficient focus” on the region.
The UK played its part in supporting some positive diplomatic and economic initiatives in 2022 and 2023. An end to the region’s conflicts and wider stability is very much in the UK’s interests, not just for trade and energy supplies, but also for the new Middle East that so many long for. That the region has grown more assertive in its foreign policy, as in discussions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE with Iran, without the need to look over shoulders to Washington, is a positive development, though the UK has a keen interest in ensuring that one superpower in the region is not replaced by any others. London welcomed and supported the Abraham Accords, bringing together as they did key Gulf and North African allies with Israel, hinting at a new integrated region, as did the prospect of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But there was a nagging doubt about the marginalization of the Palestinian issue in these discussions and constant warnings of clouds ahead. The UK was not the only state to hope that the slipping down of Israel-Palestine on the diplomatic agenda represented reality rather than wishful thinking, while the expansion of settlements, increased violence in the West Bank and pressures on the holy sites in Jerusalem escalated and bandwidth was consumed by Ukraine.
Now, London and other European capitals are united in dealing with the horrors of the terrorist assault on Oct. 7 and the dreadful humanitarian aftermath being seen daily in Gaza. The human costs in the region, both now and in the future, of a failure to finally resolve issues between Israel and the Palestinian people hardly bear thinking about. But the impact on Europe of conflict, terror and migration is not negligible either and is already having an impact on its streets and its politics — and this ahead of a big election year for Western democracies.
It is not too late for Europe to step up its game in the MENA region, recognizing current events as the defining issue of our times. The issue of Israel and Palestine — after too many years of too many vested interests saying “no” — still has a greater power to disrupt than those which followed 2011. The UK has convening diplomatic power, history and every incentive to urgently work with others on the comprehensive resolution that is now the only plausible way forward, as patching up and pure military options will never secure justice, peace and security for all. It is time
• Alistair Burt is a former UK Member of Parliament who has twice held ministerial positions in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office — as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State from 2010 to 2013 and as Minister of State for the Middle East from 2017 to 2019.
X: @AlistairBurtUK

Palestine’ and the energy of colonization
YISRAEL MEDAD/JNS/December 28, 2023
In what can only be considered as an ironic twist of intention, it has become apparent that not only has the idea of a free Arab state of Palestine become an agenda item of the first degree for the United Nations, human-rights NGOs, and other similar bodies and institutions, but it has become the ideal of these bodies. The slogan “Palestine must be free” has literally colonized the minds of intellectuals, academicians, diplomats and university students, thus assuring, at least for the short term, it being a constant of discussion, debate and involvement.
In what I have termed as the rhetoric of obversity—that is, the orchestration of language to mean not what was originally intended, as well as the expanding of their meaning to include new definitions—the normative definition of settler colonialism has been modified. Settler colonialism is when invaders occupy a territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers so as to enjoy metropolitan living standards and political privileges. It has been applied, wrongly and falsely, to Zionism.
This allows news items, such as one from Dec. 20, “Illegal Israeli Colonizers Raze Land,” to hammer the term into the heads of Jewish youth who should know better as it more easily does into the thinking of others.
Implicit in applying the “settler colonialism” terminology is to suggest that the goals of Zionism were and are the elimination and exploitation of the “native” population. However, that never happened, nor was it the intention of the Zionist enterprise. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Cary Nelson, is his magnificent “Israel Denial” on the faculty campaign against the Jewish state, notes on pages 120-123 how the older claim of Zionism as a colonialist movement has now been linked to the false assertion not only of a supposed Arab Palestinian identity but an Arab Palestinian indigeneity as well, thereby interlocking the core forces that drive the anger and involvement of college student even while this causes a racialization format.
In an academic treatment, Sai Englert quotes Fayez Sayegh who described the core of Zionism’s ideology as one of “racial self-segregation, racial exclusiveness and racial supremacy” on p. 22 in a 1965 PLO booklet. Sayegh, the Syrian-born founder of the Palestine Research Center of Beirut, is held to be a pioneering analyst in the field. Perhaps one of the more illustrative examples of language rape practiced by the proponents of pro-Palestine propaganda is the one used at the March 2011 Seventh Annual Conference of the London’s SOAS Palestine Society. It would have us believe that “[f]or over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society.”
To give but one example of the relative primitiveness of the approach in its early period is to quote from Sayegh writing: “The frenzied ‘Scramble for Africa’ of the 1880s stimulated the beginnings of Zionist colonization in Palestine.” Jews at that time were a permanent feature for centuries in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Leading up to 1740 and in the following decade, thousands immigrated to Eretz Yisrael expecting the Messianic era to evolve, including Rabbi Moses Haim Luzzatto and Kabbalist Rabbi Haim ben Attar.
Indeed, in all the previous centuries, Jews were moving to reside in Eretz Yisrael, including hundreds of rabbis and some of the greatest luminaries of Jewish scholarship. In the mid- to late 18th century, hundreds of Chassidim, many with families, were immigrating to the country. By the early 19th century, the pupils of the Vilna Gaon, too, were making the move. Not antisemitism but religious motivation was the force behind this.
To borrow a phrase from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), how did this theorizing warp the minds of young people?
As can be expected, one of the very first to spread the theme was a Jew, Maxime Rodinson, whose “Israel: A Colonial Settler-State?” (originally appearing in French in early July 1967) did much to take it out of the category of PLO propaganda. He provided a Marxist and even anthropological framework that allowed the idea to settle into academia in tandem with the success of the growth of race theory and the north/south model.
Nevertheless, there was a problem for Zionism is one of the most genuine, and most successful, repatriation movements in history. Jews came from what the world calls “Palestine.” Antisemites throughout the centuries demanded that Jews “go back to Palestine.” Most recently, even an extreme leftist such as Uri Misgav, in Haaretz, has written: “Zionism is not colonialism, despite the efforts of the politics of blame and identity to place it under this heading.”
There is, perhaps, a psychological element working here.
As Lee Smith asserts, in advancing the cause of the Arab Palestinians, the created “the prototype of ‘Third World man’ which “served the narcissism of Western elites.” To what purpose? Lee explains: “Removed from the apex of their strength, and their will to defend a civilization built by better men long depleted, Western elites’ self-image is sustained by Third World man.” Indeed, “Palestine … [is] not a place, it’s a spiritual principle guided by the inversion of reality and governed by the equation 2+2=5.”
A recent example of the progress of Palestine’s colonization process was the attempted protest by Doctors Against Genocide to take place at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It went too far and aroused too much pushback, and was walked back. But the idea was to invade the public representation of the Jewish Holocaust—a quite specific and unique event—rob it of its meaning, harvest its emotional value, and ultimately, to take it over as property of “Palestine.”
As Tafi Mhaka wrote in Al Jazeera this month: “The time is ripe for the end of Western colonization in Palestine.” It should be made clear that the time is overdue to end the colonization by pro-Palestine proponents.