Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 29-30/2023
The death of Monsignor Joseph Salama, servant of Saint Charbel Parish in the Canadian city of Massissauga
MECHRIC Warns of Christian Persecution by Lebanese Government Dominated by Hezbollah
Austin, Gallant discuss 'Hezbollah destabilizing activities in south Lebanon'
Hezbollah attacks posts and equipment along border with Israel
Hezbollah accuses Israel of hacking Lebanon CCTV cameras
An absolute majority of Israelis support a war against Hezbollah
“Heat” on the southern front... and residents take advantage of the morning calm to inspect their homes
Hezbollah continues its operations... and new targets!
Israeli army artillery targets border towns
"Hezbollah" targets 8 Israeli army sites in southern Lebanon.. video
Group accuses Israel of hacking CCTV cameras to target its fighters
As Gaza war grinds on, border tensions soar between Israel and Hezbollah
Bassil says Hezbollah 'not an ally'
Maintenance and safety: Cable car malfunction raises questions about oversight
Teleferique' oversight: Tourism Minister advocates transfer under careful supervision
Nassar blames Energy Ministry after 25 people stranded and rescued from 'Teleferique'
UN: Lebanon agrees to historic reforms in Social Security and establishes a retirement pension system for the private sector
Lebanon's New Year's extravaganza: 750 parties await
Souaid: Moderates in the Arab world unite
The Biden Admin is Pushing for an Israel-Hezbollah Deal/Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute/December 21, 2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 29-30/2023
Israel strikes south Syria and Damascus
Nearly 200 more Palestinians killed as Israel forges on with Gaza assault
Israel bombs south Gaza as Hamas officials due in Cairo for truce talks
Palestinians stream into Rafah as Israel expands offensive in central Gaza
UN aid agency says Gaza convoy came under Israeli fire
Israel troops ignored pleas for 'help' before hostage killings
The Biden administration once more bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel
Iran executes four accused of sabotage, links to Israel's Mossad
France, Germany, UK and US condemn Iran's increase in uranium enrichment
Turkey to reinforce military bases in N.Iraq after 12 soldiers killed
Biden on Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine: Putin ‘must be stopped’
Argentina pulls out of plans to join Brics bloc
BRICS to Grow as Saudi, Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia Join Ranks
China's $10 trillion hidden debt mountain could be the 'ticking time bomb' that Joe Biden warned of
Brazil shows concern as Venezuela slams UK warship sent to Guyana
Russia fires 122 missiles, 36 drones in what Ukraine calls biggest aerial barrage of war
Jerusalem's Armenians vow to keep up fight against 'settler' project
World population up 75 million this year, standing at 8 billion on Jan. 1

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on December 29-30/2023
Pakistan Deporting Afghans Who Seek Asylum from Taliban/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/December 29, 2023
The Global Empire of Palestine/Lee Smith/The Tablet/December 29, 2023
Christian Homes and Cattle Burn for Building Legalized Church in Egypt/Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/December 29/2023
Is Russia-Ukraine war set for a big freeze?/Dr. Diana Galeeva/Arab News/December 29, 2023
It is in the interest of NATO and Arab states to deepen relations/Luke Coffey/Arab News/December 29, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 29-30/2023
The death of Monsignor Joseph Salama, servant of Saint Charbel Parish in the Canadian city of Massissauga
December 29/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/125602/125602/
Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (01/21)
Yesterday, Thursday, December 28, 2023, Monsignor Joseph Salameh, the pastor of the Maronite parish of Saint Charbel in the Canadian city of Mississauga, Ontario, passed away after a serious illness.
The faithful do not die but transition from death to eternal life.
We pray for the repose of his soul in heavenly abodes, alongside the righteous and saints. We extend our deepest condolences to the parishioners of Saint Charbel, his family, and his beloved ones.
Details of the funeral ceremonies will be provided when announced by the Mar Charbel Church

MECHRIC Warns of Christian Persecution by Lebanese Government Dominated by Hezbollah
المسيحية (مشرق) تدين وتحذر من اضطهاد المسيحيين من قبل الحكومة اللبنانية التي يهيمن عليها حزب الله
December 28, 2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/125595/125595/
The Middle East Christian Committee condemns those in the government of Lebanon who would take legal action against Christian religious leaders for meeting Israel’s President Herzog in the Holy Land on the occasion of the New Year on December 21. The traditional meeting drew the expected criticism from leaders of Hezbollah: “The image provoked me because there cannot be a religious figure worshiping God, believing in justice and right, aligning themselves with Israel, tyranny, and colonialism,” stated Sadek Naboulsi, a religious sheikh close to Hezbollah, who accused anyone meeting an Israeli of “treason.”
The minister of information Ziad Makari stated: “I was bothered by the image of the two bishops with the Israeli president, and I definitely do not agree to it, and I contacted the military court judges which has the texts related to contact with the Israeli enemy.”
Al Ahed, a news site with ties to Hezbollah, reported that a collective of Representatives of Released Prisoners and Detainees submitted a request to the Lebanese judiciary to open an investigation against Archbishops al-Hage and Semaan, accusing them of “having contact with the Zionist [Israeli] enemy,” an offence which can carry a sentence of death.
Radical Islamists seek to separate Christians from their Jewish brethren who follow the original religion of Jesus and even go so far as to claim Jesus was not Jewish at all. In this way, they seek to isolate Israel from the rest of the world.
Representatives of Hamas, who on October 7, carried out the bloody massacre and kidnapping of Israeli civilians – the worst atrocity committed against Jews since the Holocaust – claim to have been “shocked by the photo of Christian dignitaries from the occupied Palestinian territories meeting the president of the Zionist entity on the occasion of Christmas.”
The relentless Muslim persecution of Christians and Jews in the Holy Land continues. Bethlehem, located in Palestinian-controlled territory, has seen a precipitous decline in its Christian population, which was once the majority in the birthplace of Jesus, but now comprises only 12% of the population. Jews, who were once found in substantial numbers across the Middle East were driven out of all the Arab states after the creation of Israel in 1948, and Christians are likewise being “ethnically cleansed” from the Muslim regions. The one exception where the Christian population is growing is in Israel.
Archbishop Hage denied participating in the meeting himself, but also pointed out: “[T]he patriarchs and bishops who took part in this event conveyed a message related to the cause they defend, and they clearly denounced the military actions in Palestine.”
“The US Congress should condition any future aid to the Lebanese government to this issue,” said MECHRIC Director John Hajjar. “It is inhuman to threaten to imprison the Christian clergies in Lebanon who are simply serving their dioceses in Israel and coordinating with the Israeli government on behalf of the Christians of Israel.”
“This is a pattern in Lebanon,” stated MECHRIC Director Tom Harb. “The military court is an instrument used by Hezbollah to silence any criticism of Hezbollah or Iran in Lebanon.”
The Middle East Christian Committee stands with the archbishop and the other Christian leaders seeking peace in the region and applaud their refusal to be intimidated by those pushing for war.
https://americanmideast.com/2023/12/28/mechric-warns-of-christian-persecution-by-lebanese-government-dominated-by-hezbollah/

Austin, Gallant discuss 'Hezbollah destabilizing activities in south Lebanon'
Naharnet/December 29, 2023
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have discussed "threats to regional security, including Hezbollah’s destabilizing activities in southern Lebanon," the Pentagon said in a statement. The two ministers also discussed, in a phone call Thursday, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, preparations for the stabilization phase that will follow, and other attacks by Iran-aligned groups against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and Houthi assaults against international commerce in the Red Sea.

Hezbollah attacks posts and equipment along border with Israel
Naharnet/December 29, 2023
Hezbollah fighters targeted Friday several Israeli posts along the border.The group said it attacked the Hadb Yaroun post twice, al-Marj post, and a crane carrying surveillance equipment in the Dovev Farms, inflicting casualties. The Israeli artillery meanwhile shelled the outskirts of several border towns including Emm el-Tout, al-Jebbayn, Alma al-Shaab, Dhaira, Merwahin, Shihin, and Tayr Harfa, and Israeli drones struck the outskirts of Yaroun and a car in the town of Aitaroun. Israeli warplanes also struck the outskirts of al-Naqoura. On Thursday, Hezbollah accused Israel of hacking into CCTV cameras installed outside homes and shops in southern Lebanon to gain visibility after Hezbollah's cross-border attacks had targeted most of the cameras Israel had installed near the border. Since Oct.8, more than 1,700 rockets have been fired from Lebanon toward Israel, killing 15 Israelis, including nine soldiers, and injuring more than 150 people. Israel has evacuated about 60,000 people from more than 40 northern communities, including the main city of Kiryat Shmona. On the Lebanese side, around 74,500 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the International Organization for Migration. Nearly 160 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and shelling. Most of those were fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but at least 19 civilians have also been killed, including journalists and children.

Hezbollah accuses Israel of hacking Lebanon CCTV cameras
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
Hezbollah has accused Israel of hacking into CCTV cameras installed outside homes and shops in southern Lebanon and urged residents there to take the device offline. The powerful Iran-backed armed group accused Israel of using the footage to target its fighters and urged Lebanese citizens to "disconnect the private cameras... from the Internet". The Israel-Lebanon border has been rocked by escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, raising fears of a broader conflict. Hezbollah said Thursday that Israel had hacked the camera systems to gain visibility after the group's cross-border attacks had "targeted most of the cameras" Israel had installed near the border. "The enemy has recently hacked into civilian cameras connected to the internet and installed in front of homes, shops and institutions in frontline villages," a Hezbollah statement said. 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 including three 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. Exchanges of fire have been largely confined to the border area, although Israel has conducted limited strikes deeper into Lebanese territory. Israel has warned it will step up military action unless Hezbollah militants withdraw further from the border. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack, which it said left about 1,140 people dead. Israel's relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children. Hezbollah, Israel trade missiles as border conflict rages on
Arab News/December 29, 2023

An absolute majority of Israelis support a war against Hezbollah
Al-Modon/December 29/2023
The Israeli newspaper “Maariv” published an opinion poll, the result of which was that “the absolute majority of respondents, i.e. 68%, support military action to remove Hezbollah from the northern border, and only 16% support the continuation of the current state of containment (military response levels), and 18% do not have opinion". In this context, the head of the Upper Galilee Settlement Council, Giora Zaltz, said: “We have arrived at a deceptive (fake) reality, which is that the interests of Hezbollah and Iran are similar to our interests, and that there is a demilitarized zone without significant harm to Hezbollah.” He added, "In such a reality, whoever abandons his capabilities and desire to work abandons deterrence and leaves fear to us." Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper also indicated that "Iran is accelerating the transfer of precision weapons to Hezbollah in preparation for a large-scale conflict in the north." For his part, the military affairs analyst in the newspaper "Haaretz", Amos Harel, spoke about the Israeli army falling into a "dangerous strategic trap" as a result of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation carried out by the Hamas movement in the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip on the seventh of last October. Harel said, "Underestimating the security threats on the border with Gaza allowed most of those who live their daily lives there to feel that the risks were limited, but what happened on October 7 radically changed Israeli daily life." He added, "It is still unclear whether and how it is possible to get out of this trap," while a semi-permanent situation may arise here, in which a long war of attrition is waged along at least two borders, that is, on the northern and southern borders. “There is still a risk that the Lebanese front, which is the most threatening, will also escalate to the level of war, and could be integrated into a broader conflict with Iran and other armed forces, most notably Hezbollah.” Israeli media also consider that Hezbollah has succeeded in deterring Israel. It is unable to open a war with Lebanon, at a time when “100,000 Israelis have left the border area with Lebanon, and their businesses have collapsed,” without anyone in “Israel” setting a time limit for this situation. The former Israeli Minister of Security and member of the Knesset likened ", Avigdor Lieberman, the northern settlements adjacent to the fence in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza, which were destroyed by the Israeli aggression, indicating that the settlements there were destroyed, and the resistance is still destroying more.

“Heat” on the southern front... and residents take advantage of the morning calm to inspect their homes
Hussein Saad/Janubia/December 29, 2023
The escalation remained on the southern front, within the framework of the exchange of bombing operations, between “Hezbollah” on the one hand and the Israeli enemy on the other hand, and no significant military developments were recorded until the evening hours, on both sides of the border, whether in relation to Hezbollah’s operations, which targeted sites on farms. Shebaa and gatherings in Hadab Yaroun, Hadab al-Bustan, Zarbat, Ramia and al-Marj, with missile and artillery weapons, while the Israeli military raids on the south of Naqoura receded, and a car was targeted with a drone, on the main road of Aitaroun, in the Bint Jbeil district, and two people inside were slightly injured, and also targeting Wadi al-Saluki, near the town of Shaqra, with a similar raid, accompanied by artillery shelling on the area and other areas along the border. The approach of the morning hours and the warm and sunny weather helped many people from the border villages go to inspect their homes and livelihoods, and to leave these towns, with the arrival of the night hours, and return to their families in the homes, to which they were displaced, in southern towns, far from the focus of military operations. Or the public shelter centers, in the schools of Tire and the Burj Al-Shamali area, in which about eight hundred people from the towns of Al-Dhahira, Beit Lev, Aita Al-Shaab, Al-Bustan, Ramia, Aitaroun, Blida, and others reside. Qasim Muhammad Al-Darwish, a resident of the border town of Al-Dhahira, took advantage of this calm, heading from his place of displacement in Tyre to Al-Dhahira, with other residents, including his children. He told Janoubia, “Nostalgia for homes and home drives me at every opportunity and calm, to inspect our home and the conditions of our beloved town, which is constantly exposed to Israeli attacks.”

Hezbollah continues its operations... and new targets!
Al Kalema On Line/December 29/2023
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon - Hezbollah, issued a statement in which it said: “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful - Permission has been given to those who fight because they have been wronged, and indeed God has power over their victory - God the Most High, the Great, has spoken the truth.” He added, "In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance targeted, at 03:15 pm on Friday 12/29/2023, a gathering of occupation soldiers at the Ramieh site, with appropriate weapons." He continued, “The Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance targeted at 03:30 in the afternoon on Friday, 12/29/2023, the locations of the Israeli enemy soldiers’ deployment between the Zarit barracks and the Birkat Risha site, with appropriate weapons. He stated, ‘The Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance also targeted At 04:10 pm on Friday 12/29/2023, the Ruwaisat Al-Qarn site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms, with appropriate weapons, and they achieved direct hits.”

Israeli army artillery targets border towns
Al Kalema On Line/December 29/2023
Al-Manar channel correspondent, Ali Shuaib, wrote in a post on his account on the “X” platform: “Israeli army artillery targets the outskirts of the towns of Rashaya Al-Fakhar, Kfarhamam, and Al-Mari in the Hasbaya district in southern Lebanon.”
Israeli media said: 27 launch operations were carried out from Lebanese territory towards the Galilee today, in addition to 4 warnings warning of the entry of drones. The Israeli army indicated that it bombed a group responsible for launching anti-tank missiles in the town of Aitaroun in Lebanon

"Hezbollah" targets 8 Israeli army sites in southern Lebanon.. video
Sputnik Arabic/December 29, 2023
The Lebanese Hezbollah announced that it targeted Israeli army positions and the positions of its soldiers in southern Lebanon yesterday. South Lebanon - Sputnik. Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters carried out an attack on the “Ruwaisat al-Qarn” site in the Shebaa Farms, and bombed the Hadab Yaron site, the Marj site, and the Israeli army artillery positions in Khirbet Maar, with appropriate weapons and achieved direct hits. The party added that it targeted a gathering of Israeli army soldiers at the Ramiya site, bombed the locations of the Israeli army soldiers’ deployment between the Zarit barracks and the Birkat Risha site, and targeted a crane carrying spy supplies and equipment in the Doviv Farms with appropriate weapons. Field sources from southern Lebanon reported to Sputnik that “Israeli warplanes launched two raids on the outskirts of the town of Naqoura, simultaneously with artillery shelling on the same area, and targeted the outskirts of the towns of Rashaya Al-Fakhar, Kafr Hamam, and Al-Mari in the Hasbaya district in southern Lebanon, and bombed the outskirts of the town of Marwahin with mortar shells.” The border between Lebanon and Israel has witnessed tension and intermittent exchange of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 20,000 Palestinian civilians and injured about 50,000 people, most of them women and children. It led to the complete or partial destruction of more than 60 percent of the buildings in the Gaza Strip.

Group accuses Israel of hacking CCTV cameras to target its fighters
BEIRUT: Fighting between Israeli and Hezbollah forces continued along Israel’s volatile northern border with Lebanon on Friday. Hezbollah has so far lost more than 120 fighters, while the Israeli army has reported dozens of deaths and injuries. Israel said its military had struck Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon after reporting rocket fire coming from the area, while an Israeli drone fired a guided missile on the outskirts of the town of Yaroun. In recent days, Hezbollah has increased its shelling of the largest Israeli settlement, Kiryat Shmona, in the Upper Galilee. It said it also scored a direct hit on a “crane carrying spy gear in Doviv farms,” two on Hadab Yaroun and another on a military site in the Zar’it barracks. The Israeli army directed heavy machine gunfire on the outskirts of Boustane from its positions adjacent to Aita Al-Shaab. It also shelled and launched two raids near Naqoura. Israeli warplanes and drones also bombed areas close to Aitaroun and Ramyah, where shelling led to the closure of a road. On Thursday, Hezbollah accused Israel of hacking into CCTV cameras near homes and shops in southern Lebanon and using the footage to target its fighters. Earlier this month, Israel dropped leaflets warning residents in southern Lebanon that Hezbollah members were “hiding” among them and urged them to flee their homes. A statement said Israel “has recently hacked into civilian cameras connected to the internet and installed in front of homes, shops and institutions in front-line villages” and urged citizens to take them offline.   o support its claim it published footage showing how a car passing through a border town was targeted minutes after a camera positioned outside a house and directed toward the road captured the scene. Hezbollah’s military media said Israel had “significantly lost its ability to spy on the resistance fighters to monitor their movements and target them, following the Resistance’s operations of targeting most of its cameras and equipment along the Lebanese-Palestinian border.”Since the first start of hostilities, Hezbollah has targeted surveillance cameras and sensors at Israeli military outposts along the Blue Line.

As Gaza war grinds on, border tensions soar between Israel and Hezbollah
Associated Press/December 29, 2023
Israeli officials are stepping up threats against Hezbollah, warning that Israel is running out of patience as the two sides continue to trade fire along Israel's volatile northern border. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's War Cabinet, said Wednesday that if the international community and the Lebanese government don't restrain Hezbollah, Israel will. Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the military is in a state of high readiness and has approved plans in case it decides to open a second front in the north. The fighting along Israel's northern border broke out when Hezbollah began firing rockets shortly after Israel waged a war on gaza following the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas. While at a lower intensity than the battle in Gaza, the simultaneous fighting has caused destruction, displacement and death on both sides and raised fears of a wider regional war. Here is a look at the battle between Israel and Hezbollah:
WHAT DOES THE FIGHTING INVOLVE?
Hezbollah fighters have been attacking Israeli posts and villages along the border, and the group has launched rockets and drones toward Israeli targets. Israeli tanks, artillery and aircraft have been striking areas on the Lebanese side of the border. The fighting has been mostly brief, but almost daily. The Israeli military says more than 1,700 rockets have been fired from Lebanon toward Israel, killing 15 Israelis, including nine soldiers, and injuring more than 150 people. Israel has evacuated about 60,000 people from more than 40 northern communities, including the main city of Kiryat Shemona, which has 22,000 residents. Israeli media outlets have aired footage of battered homes and barren communities, with Israeli soldiers guarding empty streets. On the Lebanese side, around 74,500 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Nearly 160 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in Lebanon, according to an Associated Press tally. Most of those were fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but at least 19 civilians have also been killed, including journalists and children. Human rights groups and local officials have also accused Israel of hitting Lebanese border areas with shells containing white phosphorus, a controversial incendiary munition. The strikes have burned hundreds of hectares of farm and woodland and injured civilians.
WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah are longtime bitter enemies, dating back to Israel's occupation of parts of south Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
After Hezbollah fighters ambushed an Israeli patrol in 2006 and took two Israeli soldiers hostage, the sides fought a vicious monthlong war that ended in a draw — but not before Israeli bombardment wreaked widespread destruction in southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut. The border area had largely been quiet since that war, aside from sparse skirmishes and sporadic tensions. Israel estimates that Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles in its arsenal, many of which can strike virtually anywhere in Israel, including the economic capital, Tel Aviv. Hezbollah says its attacks aim to ease pressure on the Gaza Strip, where Israel is fighting an unprecedented ground, air and sea offensive meant to topple Hamas and return some 129 people held captive in the territory.
THE IRAN CONNECTION
Although there has been no proof that Iran, Israel's archenemy, ordered the Oct. 7 attack, its fingerprints have been visible throughout the ensuing conflict.
In addition to Iran's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq have launched attacks on Israel and its allies in support of Hamas. In the Red Sea, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against ships they believe to be connected to Israel have disrupted trade and prompted the launch of a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes. Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also launched dozens of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they have said are in retaliation for Washington's support of Israel. And on Monday, Iranian state media blamed Israel for a strike on a Damascus neighborhood that killed a high-ranking Iranian general. Amos Harel, a military commentator for the daily Haaretz newspaper, wrote Wednesday that the general's killing was a message to Iran that it can no longer enjoy immunity while its proxies attack Israel. "It also brings us closer to the possibility of a growing escalation against Hezbollah, and even against the Iranians, on the northern front," he wrote.
WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH'S ROLE?
Hezbollah's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, faces a risky balancing act.
Joining Hamas would risk dragging Lebanon — beset by economic calamity and internal political tensions — into a conflict it can ill afford, fueling domestic opposition to the group. The World Bank has already said the clashes are likely to harm Lebanon's economy. Lebanon is in the fourth year of a crippling economic crisis and is bitterly divided between Hezbollah and its allies and opponents, paralyzing the political system. But staying entirely on the sidelines as Israeli troops battle in the Gaza Strip could compromise Hezbollah's credibility, and a Hamas defeat would be a blow to Iran. Hezbollah has been careful to limit its attacks on Israel, while keeping open the threat of a broader escalation. "If Israel goes too far, we will retaliate twice as much," Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem , said Thursday. "We will not fear either Israeli or American threats or intimidation."
A NEW FRONT FOR ISRAEL?
With its soldiers bogged down in Gaza, Israel has mostly sought to limit the fighting in its north. Hezbollah's military capabilities are far superior to those of Hamas. Still, Israeli officials are increasingly warning that the country is prepared to expand the fighting and that Hezbollah should be prepared to pay a price for the damage it has wrought over the past three months. Israel already has bolstered forces in the north and could well turn its sights on Hezbollah once it scales down or wraps up the war in Gaza. Israel's top ally, the U.S, which has sent military reinforcements to the region, says it prefers to see a negotiated solution to the mounting tensions rather than a second war front. Israel also wants Hezbollah to abide by a 2006 U.N. cease-fire agreement that states the border area in southern Lebanon must be "free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons" other than Lebanese government forces and U.N. peacekeepers. Under the resolution, Hezbollah should not have military presence in the border region. Lebanon, meanwhile, argues that Israel violates the resolution with its air force's frequent entry into Lebanese airspace and by its presence in the occupied Shebaa Farms, a disputed area along the country's border with the Golan Heights, an area seized by Israel in 1967. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Wednesday that Hezbollah must respect the 2006 cease-fire. Otherwise, he warned, Nasrallah "must understand that he's next."

Bassil says Hezbollah 'not an ally'
Naharnet/December 29, 2023
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, who has long bragged about having no allies within the complicated Lebanese political system, still feels proud today for "maintaining his stance" unlike other politicians. Even the FPM's old-ally, Hezbollah, is not an ally, Bassil told Nidaa al-Watan newspaper, in remarks published Friday. "Hezbollah is not an ally and has never been," he said, stressing that there is a difference between an "understanding" and an "alliance." Bassil said he is not surprised that Hezbollah agreed to extend the term of army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun, against the FPM's will. Aoun was set to retire on January 10, 2024, but parliament and government extended his mandate for a year, averting a military power vacuum as the country already faces spillover of the Israel-Hamas war without a president or a fully functioning government. The FPM considered the decision unconstitutional and an infringement on the president's powers. Those who accepted the extension of Aoun's term "either did it out of spite, appeasement, or under foreign pressure," said Bassil, who considers that government which is operating in a caretaker capacity can not take such decisions especially without the approval of the president.
Lebanon has been without a president for more than a year since Michel Aoun's term ended in October last year, with neither of the two main blocs -- Hezbollah and its opponents -- having the majority required to elect one. Bassil said that ex-minister Jihad Azour remains the FPM's presidential candidate, in intersection with the opposition forces, including the Lebanese Forces - the FPM's political rival. "I would accept the election of (Hezbollah and Amal's candidate, Marada leader Suleiman) Franjieh, only if the decentralization and sovereign fund laws are passed," he added.

Maintenance and safety: Cable car malfunction raises questions about oversight
LBCI/December 29, 2023
The story of the cable car began in 1964 when its operations commenced, and it has encountered various technical issues since its inception. Notable instances include problems in 1984 and 1989, along with a power outage in 2007, as reported by Annahar newspaper. However, the most significant and dangerous technical problem occurred on December 28, 2023, when two cabins collided, leading to the stranded confinement of 40 individuals for over six hours. The army, Civil Defense, and the Red Cross mobilized for the rescue operation. LBCI investigated the causes of this technical malfunction, navigating rough terrain to reach Elie Boulos, the cable car's investment director, who was at one of the malfunctioning stations. According to the contract signed with the operating company, the cable car undergoes regular maintenance under the supervision of the Energy Ministry. In a statement, the ministry confirmed that it conducted an inspection less than two months ago and ensured the necessary maintenance had been carried out. LBCI contacted the Energy Ministry to obtain reports confirming their oversight of the maintenance operations. The ministry provided some reports that affirmed the inspection and the adherence to safety standards for the cable car. Whether it is a lapse in maintenance, deliberate sabotage, or an act of nature, will the investigations be able to uncover the truth?

Teleferique' oversight: Tourism Minister advocates transfer under careful supervision
LBCI/December 29, 2023
Caretaker Tourism Minister Walid Nassar expressed his wish to Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati that the first item on the agenda of any upcoming cabinet session be finding possible and available means to urgently and necessarily support the civil defense with the necessary equipment. He called for the appointment of a specialized international consulting office to conduct a comprehensive investigation and accountability regarding the concession company and the General Administration of Investment in the Ministry of Energy overseeing it, along with any relevant party, if it is revealed that they are responsible in any way, and to take appropriate measures against any negligent party. Nassar also urged the transfer of the Teleferique du Liban concession to be under supervision, stating that "it is possible and not impossible" through the submission of a particular law project to the parliament.

Nassar blames Energy Ministry after 25 people stranded and rescued from 'Teleferique'
Naharnet/December 29, 2023
Twenty-five people including women and children were on Thursday stranded mid-air for hours in Jounieh’s cable car system (Teleferique du Liban). The passengers were eventually rescued by troops from the army’s Airborne Regiment and Civil Defense crews in a strenuous operation involving helicopters, ropes and ladders. According to a statement issued by the cable car system’s operator, the automatic safety system shut down the cable car system after two empty cars collided. Inspecting the site, caretaker Tourism Minister Walid Nassar noted that the Teleferique is under the authority of the Energy Ministry and that the authorization had ended in 2022, revealing that he has sent a memo to the Energy Ministry asking why it is in charge of the cable car system and not the Tourism Ministry. Urging accountability, Nassar noted that the cable car system is decades old and that its malfunctions do not resemble those of “cars” but rather those of “planes.” “The Lebanese citizen, the technician, the engineer and the franchise’s owner must understand that it is prohibited to witness any mistake,” Nassar added. The operator, the Lebanese Company for the Development of Tourism and the Telefirque, issued a statement on Friday noting that its franchise expires in 2026 and did not expire in 2022 as announced by Nassar. The incident caused panic among the passengers as some women and children fainted. Father Rabih Choueiri, who was stranded along with his children for several hours, said that “a miracle happened, because the collision took place between two empty compartments, which contributed to avoiding a real disaster.”

UN: Lebanon agrees to historic reforms in Social Security and establishes a retirement pension system for the private sector
LBCI/December 29, 2023
The United Nations has commended the Lebanese Parliament for approving a comprehensive law establishing a unified retirement pension system for private sector workers and restructuring the management of the National Social Security Fund. In a statement, the UN remarked, "Previous attempts spanning three decades to replace Lebanon's end-of-service compensation system with a modern pension scheme had not succeeded.""Until recently, Lebanon was one of two countries in the Arab region without a plan to protect insured workers enjoying long-term benefits upon retirement, death, or disability," the statement noted. "The International Labor Organization (ILO) provided extensive technical support to parliamentary committees, the National Social Security Fund, and labor and employer organizations in Lebanon. The aim was to reach consensus on the plan's design, standards, and the final text of the legislation adopted by the Parliament, ensuring its alignment with international labor standards for social security." Dr. Ruba Jaradat, the ILO Regional Director for Arab States, congratulated all stakeholders in Lebanon on achieving this historic feat. She emphasized the crucial need to reinforce structural reforms when Lebanon faces unprecedented social and economic crises, asserting that such reforms are both possible and unavoidable.

Lebanon's New Year's extravaganza: 750 parties await
LBCI/December 29, 2023
Partying was always created for Lebanon, especially when we talk about enjoyable gatherings and celebrations, and what if the celebration is for New Year's Eve? This year, the security developments in southern Lebanon and Gaza have affected the festive atmosphere before the holidays. This situation has made organizers and artists hesitate before announcing any event, as they are part of a reality they cannot separate from. Until they decided to continue their work every year, especially on the last night of the year, which is a canvas for joy and smiles. Around 750 parties and celebrations, Lebanon is gearing up for them on New Year's Eve.  At Casino du Liban, the celebration spans two nights, starting on the 30th and ending in 2024. On the 30th, bid farewell to the year with Adam and Marwan Khoury. On the 31st, welcome the new year with Melhem Zein and Guy Manoukian. O Beirut kicks off the year-end celebrations from Friday the 29th until January 1st. At Mövenpick Beirut and Le Royal Hotel, bid farewell to 2023 with Fares Karam and Maher Jah. After event organizers and artists chose Lebanon for New Year's Eve, it is your turn to come and celebrate to show the world at the gateway of the new year that Lebanon is strong in us.

Souaid: Moderates in the Arab world unite
LBCI/December 29, 2023
Member of the Saydet el Jabal gathering, Fares Souaid, affirmed that the incident involving the prosecution of Archbishop Moussa al-Hajj is within the framework of the Gaza war and its repercussions on the region. Souaid, in an interview on LBCI's "Nharkom Said" TV show, emphasized that the war has shifted the balance of power across the entire region, creating new influential forces. He pointed out that it is natural for there to be a relationship between the clergy in the occupied territories and the Israeli authority, even if they reject it. He said, "What happened in this case is an accusation by the lawyer Ghassan al-Mawla, affiliated with Hezbollah, against Archbishop al-Hajj, based on a law that states that dealing with the Israeli enemy is a violation of Lebanese law."  He added, "Al-Mawla quickly turned to ecclesiastical arrangements, indicating that Christians have no influence in the region." Souaid saw a trend in the region towards the polarization of two Islamic parties, one Shiite representing Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iran, and the other Sunni representing Hamas. This is in contrast to Jewish extremism represented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He stressed that the slogan that people in this region should carry is "Oh moderates in the Arab world, unite." He warned against the rise of extremism, as it is dangerous to all sects, especially Jewish extremism led by Netanyahu, making minorities marginalized. Souaid considered that Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi wants to "cool relations" with Hezbollah to ensure the success of the spiritual summit that may be held at the Supreme Islamic Shia Council. He said, "The patriarch may believe that we cannot elect a president if we oppose Hezbollah." He pointed out that Christians participate in the battle and defend the Palestinian cause, stating, "How can this region reach Europe and Cyprus if Christians are absent?"He reminded that Lebanon is the only country in the Arab world with a constitution and reforms added to it. "If we abandon this constitution and extremists rule, which constitution will we follow?" He also stated that the Southern Lebanon front is not open despite tensions and shelling due to an Iranian decision. He revealed that Israel is targeting the military infrastructure of Hezbollah. He mentioned that on October 7, Khamenei said they had nothing to do with that. Once again, the Revolutionary Guard came out saying that it responded to the killing of Soleimani, and we did not hear any leader about the liberation of Palestine. He insisted on the need to discuss the issue of Hezbollah's weapons within the parliament because it contradicts the Lebanese constitution. Souaid called on the MPs to urge the Speaker of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, to convene an open session to discuss the feasibility of keeping these weapons. He affirmed that Lebanon has no solution without internal dialogue within the state institutions. He said, "The army commander has a future responsibility and perhaps a mechanism in the coming stage, so his term was extended."
He added, "Insisting on implementing Resolution 1701 at certain levels may not fall in the interest of Iran and Israel. They will try to impose the evacuation of southern Litani from weapons, and this situation either takes place through a deliberate war or negotiation with Iran."

The Biden Admin is Pushing for an Israel-Hezbollah Deal
Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute/December 21, 2023
If there was one lesson to be learned from Oct 7, it's don't negotiate with terrorists. But that's the one lesson no one seems to be willing to learn, as David Wurmser notes at the Center for Security Policy:
"A U.S. plan, spearheaded by the diplomatic efforts of the U.S., and led by Amos Hochstein (who negotiated the Lebanon Maritime Agreement) and the French government, is emerging to diffuse tension along Israel's northern border. The U.S. and France appear to propose a plan with three elements. Hizballah withdraws its forces northward. Israel concedes all the disputed areas along the border. And finally, the area between Israel and Hizballah will be filled by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)." The LAF, despite the money we spend on them, just does whatever Hezbollah tells them. A deal in which Israel concedes more territory to Lebanon in exchange for a proposed Hezbollah withdrawal is less than worthless. Hezbollah can move back whenever it chooses and Israel will be denied the ability to reclaim the territory. The same brilliant minds that thought Hamas could be moderated with money also promised that Hezbollah could be moderated with money by ceding maritime territory to be used for energy harvesting to Lebanon. The insane thing is that these same people are now pushing this. Islamic terror groups don't moderate. They take whatever you give them and use it to go ahead and kill you.
And yet here we are. Israel is trying to pressure Lebanon to push back Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced by Hezbollah attacks can go home. (Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been displaced in total. The media is obviously not covering this.)
Israel is proposing a military solution. The Biden administration and France are proposing a land-for-truce deal that would weaken Israel's ability to respond to future attacks from Hezbollah.
It's as if Oct 7 never happened.
**Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
© 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.

.Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 29-30/2023
Israel strikes south Syria and Damascus
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
Israeli air strikes hit southern Syria, the Syrian defence ministry said, with state media reporting attacks near the capital Damascus. "At approximately 23:05 (20:05 GMT) today, the Israeli enemy carried out air strikes from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting some points in the southern region," the defence ministry said in a statement Thursday, reporting no casualties. Israel rarely comments on strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad's government, to expand its presence in the country. "Our air defences 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. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported Israeli strikes targeting a Syrian air defence position in the country's southern Sweida province, as well as near Damascus international airport. The attack near the airport came "one whole day after the airport resumed flights," said the British-based monitor with a network inside Syria. Damascus international airport had been out of service since Israeli strikes targeted it in late November, just hours after flights resumed following similar attacks the previous month. The airport was not damaged in the latest strike, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbour 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.

Nearly 200 more Palestinians killed as Israel forges on with Gaza assault
Nidal al-Mughrabi and Arafat Barbakh/CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters)/December 29, 2023
Tens of thousands of fleeing Palestinians sought shelter on Friday as Israeli tanks pushed through the central Gaza Strip, with nearly 200 people reported killed in the past 24 hours of air strikes and artillery barrages on the shattered enclave. Israeli warplanes attacking the south of Gaza flattened homes and buried families as they slept, residents said. The new assaults in central and southern Gaza propelled a new exodus of people already driven from other areas in what Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called an essential stage of its mission to destroy its foe Hamas. Twelve weeks after Hamas militants stormed Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, Israeli forces have laid much of the Gaza Strip to waste.
Nearly all its 2.3 million people have fled their homes at least once and many are now on the move again, often reduced to taking shelter in makeshift tents or huddled under tarpaulins and plastic sheets on open ground.
Gaza health authorities said 187 more Palestinians were confirmed killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 21,507 - about 1% of Gaza's population. Thousands more bodies are feared to be buried in the ruins of obliterated neighbourhoods. In Rafa in the south, Reuters journalists at the scene of one air strike that destroyed a building saw the head of a buried toddler sticking out of the rubble. The child screamed as a rescue worker shielded his head with a hand, while another swung a sledgehammer at a chisel, trying to break up a slab of concrete to free him. Neighbour Sanad Abu Tabet said the two-storey house had been crowded with displaced people. After morning broke, relatives came to collect the dead wrapped up in white shrouds. A man peeled away the cloth to stroke the face of a dead child. Tens of thousands of Gazans are fleeing the crowded central districts of Bureij, Maghazi and Nusseirat, ordered out by Israeli forces whose tanks advanced from the north and east. Most have made their way south or west to the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah. "We suffered a lot. We had the whole night without shelter, under rain and it was cold, we were with our kids and elderly women," said Um Hamdi, a woman cooking porridge over an open woodfire surrounded by children. Nearby, Abdel Nasser Awadallah stood inside a wooden frame set up to be wrapped in plastic to make a tent, and spoke of the family he had lost. "I buried my children - a child 16 years old, another one aged 18. Something I really can't believe, I buried my children at 6 am while their bodies were still warm. Also my nephew, he was 2 years old, I buried him. I buried my wife," he said. "I never thought in my life that I will bury my children, I thought they would bury me."Even fleeing did not guarantee safety. Medics and residents said an Israeli air strike also killed two Palestinians in Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
NO SIGN OF SCALING DOWN ISRAELI ASSAULT
Israel says it is doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties, but the high death toll has caused concern even amongst its staunchest allies. The U.S. has called for it to scale down the full-blown war in coming weeks and move to targeted operations against Hamas leaders. So far Israel shows no sign of doing so, mounting a new assault in the final week of the year with intense bombing of central areas. Residents say Israeli forces have fought their way deep into Bureij in the battle in central Gaza in the past two days, with intense fighting still taking place on the eastern outskirts. Bombing has been particularly intense there and in adjacent Nusseirat and Maghazi. Footage filmed by a Palestinian Red Crescent volunteer in Maghazi showed dead and wounded being carried from ruined buildings. Palestinian media reported strikes in Nusseirat had killed at least 35 people overnight. In the south, Israeli forces have been pounding Khan Younis in preparation for an anticipated further advance into the main southern city, swathes of which they captured in early December. Defence Minister Gallant said troops were reaching Hamas command centres and arms depots. "Our operations are essential to achieving the goals of the war. We see the results and the destruction of enemy forces," he said. Gaza is almost entirely reliant on food, fuel and medical supplies from the outside, and Israel has shut off all access apart from at the southern edge. International bodies say supplies being let in through Israeli inspections are a small fraction of the enclave's vast needs. Last week Israel bowed to international pressure to open a second crossing it said would double the number of supply trucks daily to 200, but just 76 were able to enter on Thursday, according to the United Nations, compared to 500 in peacetime. An Israeli government spokesman said on Friday it does not limit humanitarian aid and the problem was with its distribution inside Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which distributes aid, rejected allegations it was responsible for hold-ups in deliveries and said the operation was riddled with logistical hurdles. Bombardments and ground fighting had hampered distribution as well as hold-ups at Israeli checkpoints, it said. A breakdown of law and order also made it hard to secure the convoys, while people were helping themselves to supplies at warehouses. Israel says it will fight on until it annihilates Hamas, which has sworn to destroy Israel. Palestinians say wiping out the militant group is unachievable because of its diffuse structure and deep roots in a territory it has ruled since 2007. Efforts by mediators Egypt and Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire have been fruitless since a week-long truce collapsed at the end of November. Egypt, which hosted the leaders of Hamas and smaller militant group Islamic Jihad in the past week, said on Thursday it was awaiting responses from the warring sides to a proposed peace plan.

Israel bombs south Gaza as Hamas officials due in Cairo for truce talks
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
Egypt is due to host Friday a high-level Hamas delegation for talks aimed at putting an end to the nearly 12-week war with Israel that has devastated the Gaza Strip. The Cairo meeting comes as fighting -- triggered by Hamas's deadly October 7 attack on Israel -- rages in the besieged Palestinian territory's south and centre. Israeli shelling near a southern Gaza hospital has killed 41 people over the past two days, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Thursday. The casualties in repeated Israeli strikes near the Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis include "displaced persons seeking shelter", the Red Crescent said in a statement. The UN humanitarian office said an estimated 100,000 more displaced people had arrived in the already-teeming southern border city of Rafah in recent days following the intensification of fighting around Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis. The Israeli military on Friday said its forces "are extending operation in Khan Yunis" and had "eliminated dozens of terrorists" across Gaza over the past 24 hours. AFPTV footage showed smoke billowing over Rafah, near Egypt, following fresh strikes early Friday. The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Thursday Israeli shelling had killed 20 people, most of them women and children, at the Shaboura camp in Rafah. The Gaza fighting left much of the territory's north in ruins, while the battlefront has shifted ever further to the south and raised tensions across the Middle East. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas -- dubbed a "terrorist" group by the United States and European Union --- in retaliation for the October attack which left about 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Around 250 hostages were also taken during the attack, more than half of whom remain captive.Israel's relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry. The Israeli army says 168 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza. Sources close to Hamas say Egypt's three-stage plan provides for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and ultimately an end to the war.
- Aid corridor -
The Israeli army has said it had deployed an additional brigade to Khan Yunis, hometown of Hamas's Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, and AFP correspondents reported sustained air and artillery strikes. "The missions that our forces are carrying out in Khan Yunis are unprecedented... taking over control rooms and eliminating terrorists," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers on Thursday. Israel has repeatedly said that one of the chief goals of the war is the return of the 129 hostages it says remain in Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli kibbutz community said one of its residents, US-Israeli Judith Weinstein Haggai who was thought to be the oldest woman held captive had in fact died in the October 7 attack and her body held by militants. US President Joe Biden said he was "devastated" by the news of the 70-year-old woman's death, pledging that Washington would "not stop working" with its ally Israel to bring the remaining hostages home. In Gaza, the UN says more than 80 percent of the narrow coastal territory's 2.4 million people have been driven from their homes. Many now live in cramped shelters or makeshift tents around Rafah. Residents in Rafah combed through rubble for survivors on Thursday after an air strike that one witness said left "several casualties". Tayseer Abu al-Eish said he was at home when "all of a sudden we heard a loud explosion and debris started falling on us. The apartment was completely destroyed and my daughters were screaming". An Israeli siege imposed after October 7, following years of crippling blockade, has deprived Gazans of food, water, fuel and medicine. The severe shortages have been only sporadically eased by humanitarian aid convoys entering primarily via Egypt.
Israel said Thursday it had given preliminary approval to the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus for a "maritime lifeline" to ship aid to Gaza.
'Complete withdrawal' -
A Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the delegation in Cairo would "give the response of the Palestinian factions, including several observations" regarding the Egyptian proposal, recently put to officials from Hamas and another Gaza armed group, Islamic Jihad. Hamas would also seek "guarantees for a complete Israeli military withdrawal" from Gaza, the official said. The proposal provides for a Palestinian government of technocrats after talks involving "all Palestinian factions", which would be responsible for governing and rebuilding in post-war Gaza. Diaa Rashwan, who heads Egypt's State Information Services, said the plan was "intended to bring together the views of all parties concerned, with the aim of ending the shedding of Palestinian blood". In Israel, a rally Thursday calling for a ceasefire drew hundreds of protesters to a central square in the coastal city of Tel Aviv. "Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Jews, Christians -- this is everybody's home," said protester Itay Eyal, a 51-year-old teacher. "The only solution is to recognise that both peoples are entitled to life, freedom, sovereignty and dignity." 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. Israel has traded heavy cross-border fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah since the Gaza war erupted, and on Friday said its military had struck "Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon" after reporting rocket fire from there.

Palestinians stream into Rafah as Israel expands offensive in central Gaza
Associated Press/December 29, 2023
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have streamed into the overwhelmed town of Rafah in the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, according to the United Nations, as Israeli forces on Friday continued to blast through dense areas in the center of the strip, killing dozens of people.
Israel's unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave. Israel's widening campaign, which has already flattened much of northern Gaza, is now focused on built-up areas in central Gaza, where Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the urban refugee camps of Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi, leveling buildings, residents said. But fighting is raging across many areas of Gaza. It has not abated in the north, where Hamas is still battling Israeli troops with tough resistance. And the second-largest city of Khan Younis in the south, where Israel believes Hamas' leaders are hiding, is also a smoldering battleground. The war has already killed over 21,300 Palestinians and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has left a quarter of Gaza's population starving. Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas and bring back more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The assault killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israeli officials have brushed off international calls for a cease-fire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas.
A STREAM OF DISPLACEMENT
The U.N. said late Thursday that around 100,000 people have arrived in Rafah, along the border with Egypt, in recent days. The influx crams even more people into one of Gaza's most densely populated areas.
Israel has told residents of central Gaza to evacuate and head toward Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah. But even as the displaced have poured in, Rafah has not been spared from Israeli attacks. A strike Thursday evening destroyed a residential building, killing at least 23 people, according to the media office of the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital. At the hospital, residents rushed in a baby whose face was flecked with dust and who wailed as doctors tore open its Mickey Mouse onesie to check for injuries. Shorouq Abu Oun fled the fighting in northern Gaza a month ago and sheltered at her sister's house, which is located near Thursday's strike
"We were displaced from the north and came here as they (the Israeli military) said it is safe," said Abu Oun, speaking at the hospital where the dead and wounded were taken. "I wish we were martyred there (in northern Gaza) and didn't come here."The displaced arrived in Rafah in trucks, carts and many on foot. Those who haven't found space in the already overwhelmed shelters have built tents on the roadsides, especially near hospitals.
STRIKES IN CENTRAL GAZA
Residents said Friday many houses were hit overnight across Nuseirat and Maghazi. The registration office at the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Gaza's central city of Deir al-Balah said it received the bodies of 40 people, including 28 women, who were killed in Israeli strikes in central Gaza. "They are hitting everywhere," Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian man from Nuseirat, said of the Israeli military. "Families are killed inside their homes and the streets. They are killed everywhere."
Heavy fighting was also reported between Israeli troops and the Palestinian militants in Bureij, according to Rami Abu Mosab, a displaced Palestinian from northern Gaza who was sheltering in Bureij. Israel said this week it was expanding its ground offensive into central Gaza, targeting a belt of crowded neighborhoods across the region that were built to house some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israel says Hamas embeds inside the civilian population and that its forces have uncovered weapons troves and underground tunnel shafts in residential buildings, schools and mosques. But even Israel's closest ally, the United States, has urged it to take more precautions to spare civilians and allow in more aid. Israel says it warns civilians to leave areas that it is targeting in multiple ways and that it has worked to be more precise in its evacuation orders. Civilians are bearing a staggering toll in the fighting. On Sunday, an Israeli strike on the Maghazi camp killed at least 106 people, according to hospital records. In a preliminary review of the incident, the Israeli military said that buildings near the target were also hit during the strikes, which it said "likely caused unintended harm to additional uninvolved civilians." In a statement Thursday, the military said it regretted the harm to civilians and said it would learn from the incident. Israel seldom comments on specific strikes and has rarely acknowledged any fault even when civilians are killed.
Israel's offensive in Gaza has already been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 21,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Another 55,600 have been wounded, it says. Those counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The military says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence, and that 168 of its soldiers have been killed and hundreds wounded since the ground offensive began in late October.

UN aid agency says Gaza convoy came under Israeli fire
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday an aid convoy came under fire by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip without causing any casualties. "Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army -- our international convoy leader and his team were not injured but one vehicle sustained damage," UNRWA's director in Gaza, Tom White, wrote on X.

Israel troops ignored pleas for 'help' before hostage killings
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
Israeli soldiers ignored cries for "help" when they stormed a Gaza building holding three hostages just days before killing them by mistake, said a military investigation published on Thursday. The soldiers also heard "hostages" shouted in Hebrew on December 10, but interpreted that as a "terrorist deception attempt" by Hamas militants to lure them into the building in the Gaza City district of Shejaiya, the probe said. Believing the building was rigged with explosives, the soldiers exited and killed five Hamas militants trying to escape, it added. The hostages then probably fled the building also, and on December 15 Israeli soldiers shot them after mistakenly identifying them as a threat, the investigation said. Two were killed instantly. The third hostage fled and soldiers were ordered to hold fire in order to identify him, the probe said. Hearing cries of "help!" and "they're shooting at me", Israeli commanders asked the surviving hostage to advance towards the soldiers. But two soldiers "who did not hear the order" because of "noise" from a nearby tank shot him dead. The three hostages were all shirtless and one had been carrying a white flag. On December 14, an army drone had identified signs of "SOS" and "help, three hostages" on a building close to where the three hostages were shot. The army "failed in its mission to rescue the hostages in this event," army chief Herzi Halevi said in a statement published along with the report of the investigation. The three fatalities "could have been prevented", he added. Soon after the killings of the hostages were announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it "broke my heart" and "broke the whole nation’s heart". Israel has been mourning the deaths of the hostages identified as Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa. The killings of the three men, all in their twenties, have sparked protests in Tel Aviv, where demonstrators demanded that the authorities come up with a new plan to bring home the remaining 129 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. About 250 people were taken hostage during Hamas's October 7 attacks in Israel. Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Israel launched a massive military offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement that has left much of Gaza in ruins. The war has killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children.

The Biden administration once more bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel
WASHINGTON (AP)/December 29, 2023
For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism. The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, chargers and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function. “Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said. “The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said. The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.
Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9, to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.
Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas. The State Department sought to counter potential criticism of the sale on human rights grounds by saying it was in constant touch with Israel to emphasize the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, which have soared since Israel began its response to the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. “We continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians,” it said. “Hamas hides behind civilians and has embedded itself among the civilian population, but that does not lessen Israel’s responsibility and strategic imperative to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists as it conducts its military operations,” the department said. “This type of campaign can only be won by protecting civilians.”Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that has in the past met resistance from lawmakers, who normally have a period of time to weigh in on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, block them.
In May 2019, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an emergency determination for an $8.1 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan after it became clear that the Trump administration would have trouble overcoming lawmakers’ concerns about the Saudi and UAE-led war in Yemen. Pompeo came under heavy criticism for the move, which some believed may have violated the law because many of the weapons involved had yet to be built and could not be delivered urgently. But he was cleared of any wrongdoing after an internal investigation. At least four administrations have used the authority since 1979. President George H.W. Bush’s administration used it during the Gulf War to get arms quickly to Saudi Arabia.

Iran executes four accused of sabotage, links to Israel's Mossad
(Reuters)/December 29, 2023
Iran executed on Friday four people, including a woman, whom it accused of being "saboteurs" with links to Israel's Mossad intelligence service, the Mizan news agency affiliated to the judiciary said. The executions took to five the number of people put to death this month in a decades-long shadow war that has seen Iran accuse Israel of attacks on its nuclear effort, charges the latter has never confirmed or denied. "Four members of a sabotage team associated with the Zionist regime ... were executed this morning following legal procedures," the news agency said, accusing them of "extensive" actions, guided by Mossad officers, targeting Iran's security. Friday's executions in West Azerbaijan province followed Iran's mid-December execution of a fifth accused Mossad agent in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan. The semi-official Tasnim news agency identified the four executed on Friday as Vafa Hanareh, Aram Omari, and Rahman Parhazo, along with the woman, named Nasim Namazi. They were the principal convicts in a case that involved 10 offenders, it added, but it was not immediately clear if the rest would also face execution. The official IRNA news agency posted a video clip nearly eight minutes in length, that showed the men confessing to their alleged co-operation with a Mossad officer in neighbouring Turkey, who used two names, Tony and Arash. It said their mission entailed kidnappings, threatening and setting fire to vehicles and homes of unnamed targets and stealing their mobile phones.
Iranian intelligence put the group under close surveillance for at least four months, from around January 2022 until their arrest sometime that May, when they were "transferred from a neighbouring country" to Iran, the video clip showed. "They were training us for bigger assignments," an unidentified young man in a blue striped shirt said in the clip. At the time of the arrests, Iranian media said the 10, who were in video communication with Mossad officers, "set fire to cars and homes of people affiliated with the security apparatus and received cash for taking photos they sent to Mossad agents".Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear programme and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations. In August, Iran accused Israel of being behind "one of the largest sabotage plots" targeting its defence industry and the production of missiles. In July, its intelligence ministry said it had arrested a network of agents working for Israel before they were able to carry out sabotage in sensitive locations. In January last year, Israel said it had broken up an Iranian spy ring that recruited Israeli women via the social media platform Facebook to photograph sensitive sites. In April 2021, Tehran blamed an act of "nuclear terrorism" for a disruption of power at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility in the desert in the central province of Isfahan.

France, Germany, UK and US condemn Iran's increase in uranium enrichment
Jonathan Landay/WASHINGTON (Reuters)/December 28, 2023
France, Germany, Britain and the United States on Thursday condemned an increase by Iran in the production rate of highly enriched uranium of up to 60% purity, close to the level used for nuclear weapons fuel. In a joint statement, the allies made no mention of any consequences Iran could face for the production hike but called for its reversal and said they remained "committed to a diplomatic solution" of the feud over Tehran's nuclear program. "The production of high-enriched uranium by Iran has no credible civilian justification," the statement said. "These decisions ... represent reckless behavior in a tense regional context."Since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza's ruling Hamas militants, Iran-backed proxies have increased their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, sharply increasing tensions in the region. Israel launched its operation in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage into Israel. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a report on Tuesday that Iran had reversed a months-long slowdown in the production rate of highly enriched uranium up to 60% purity. "We condemn this action, which adds to the unabated escalation of Iran’s nuclear program," the joint statement said. Iran on Wednesday dismissed the IAEA report as "nothing new" and said it was running its program "according to the rules."Tehran already has enough uranium of 60% purity, if enriched to 90%, to make three nuclear bombs, according to the IAEA's theoretical definition. Iran has denied seeking nuclear weapons. Britain, France and Germany remain parties to the 2015 deal designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Former U.S. President Donald Trump reneged on the accord in 2018, prompting Iran to gradually violate its strictures.

Turkey to reinforce military bases in N.Iraq after 12 soldiers killed
ANKARA (Reuters)/December 29, 2023
Turkey 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 twelve were killed last week in northern Iraq in clashes with the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based there. "In recent years, we have built hundreds of kilometres-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. "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 neighbouring Iraq as part of the country's offensive against PKK militants. Since 2019, Turkey has launched a series of operations in northern Iraq after Erdogan's declaration of "a new security concept in combating terrorism" and plan to "neutralise 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 Turkey, the United States 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 Turkey.

Biden on Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine: Putin ‘must be stopped’
Alex Gangitano/The Hill/December 29, 2023
President Biden on Friday issued a scathing statement against Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine, the largest aerial assault since the war began. “It is a stark reminder to the world that, after nearly two years of this devastating war, Putin’s objective remains unchanged. He seeks to obliterate Ukraine and subjugate its people. He must be stopped,” Biden said. The remarks come after a heavy overnight assault by Russia, and as Congress remains deadlocked over whether to provide further support for Ukraine. Biden has requested aid, but it is now part of a negotiation centered on the border, and its fate is very much in doubt. The rocket and drone attacks across Ukraine early Friday killed at least 24 people, according to The Associated Press. Russia launched its attack days after Ukraine launched a strike in Crimea, which Russia occupies.
Biden noted that the Russians used drones and missiles, including those with hypersonic capability, for the bombardment and the deadly strikes hit a maternity hospital, shopping mall, and residential areas. The president called on Congress to provide more aid for Ukraine, noting Ukraine used air defense systems from the U.S. and other allies to fend off the attack. “The American people can be proud of the lives we have helped to save and the support we have given Ukraine as it defends its people, its freedom, and its independence. But unless Congress takes urgent action in the new year, we will not be able to continue sending the weapons and vital air defense systems Ukraine needs to protect its people. Congress must step up and act without any further delay,” Biden said. Zelensky visited Washington earlier this month to lobby for more help for his war-torn country.

Argentina pulls out of plans to join Brics bloc
Robert Plummer - BBC News/December 29, 2023
In a letter to the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Mr Milei said decisions taken by the preceding government had been revised.
The Brics countries are often seen as a counterweight to the Western-led world.
Argentina had been among a much-vaunted new tranche of six countries poised to join the grouping next month. It would have been admitted to the Brics club on 1 January, alongside Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Its change of heart comes after Mr Milei, a populist right-wing outsider, won a surprise election victory in November with radical pledges to overhaul the South American nation's ailing economy. He succeeded left-wing Peronist Alberto Fernández, whose views were more aligned with those of the bloc's existing members. Mr Milei said in his letter that his government's foreign policy "differs in many ways from that of the previous government". He added that although he did not consider it "appropriate" for Argentina to become a full Brics member, he was still committed to strengthening bilateral ties, particularly with the aim of increasing trade and investment flows. Argentina begins 'shock therapy' by devaluing peso
First protests in Argentina against austerity plan
Although the Brics alliance is often portrayed as promoting a more multipolar world, it is economically dominated by China, which accounts for more than 70% of the bloc's combined GDP. Argentina's bid for membership under Mr Fernández had the support of Beijing, but Mr Milei has strongly criticised China. On the campaign trail, he described the Chinese government as assassins and said he would not work with communists. Argentina's changing attitudes highlight the delicacy of its economic and political position as it struggles to reverse decades of economic mismanagement.
It is battling soaring inflation, with prices rising by about 150% over the last year. It is also struggling with low cash reserves and high government debt, while 40% of the population is living below the poverty line. Mr Milei's administration has already devalued the country's currency by more than 50% as his plans for economic shock therapy begin to take effect. Externally, Brics members Brazil and China are Argentina's two biggest trading partners, but the US is not far behind, making it imperative to preserve good working relations with all three. And as a man who has contemplated replacing the Argentine peso with the US dollar, Mr Milei shows signs of inclining more towards Washington than Beijing in future.

BRICS to Grow as Saudi, Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia Join Ranks
Ana Monteiro/Bloomberg/December 29, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Membership of the BRICS group of emerging-market nations is set to double, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt to join its ranks on Jan. 1, South Africa’s envoy to the bloc said. Current members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in August invited six other nations to become part of their group, pairing some of the planet’s largest energy producers with some of the biggest consumers among developing countries. Only Argentina declined the invitation after President Javier Milei, who took office this month, reversed his predecessor’s membership bid.
The five invitees sent senior-level representatives to a BRICS sherpa meeting in Durban, South Africa, earlier this month and they fully participated in the gathering, “a clear indication that they have accepted the invitation” to join, Anil Sooklal, Pretoria’s ambassador to the bloc, said in an interview Friday.
The new members will also send officials to a sherpa meeting in Moscow on Jan. 30, he said. “BRIC” was coined in 2001 by economist Jim O’Neill, then at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to draw attention to strong economic growth rates in Brazil, Russia, India and China. The term was intended as an optimistic scenario for investors amid market pessimism following the terrorist attacks in the US on Sept. 11 that year. The group held its first leaders’ summit in 2009 and invited South Africa to join a year later, adding another continent and the letter “S.”
About 30 countries want to establish ties with the bloc, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov was cited by news agency Tass as saying this week. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, will seek to become a member of BRICS within the next two years, Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Tuggar said in November. Except for India, the BRICS have underperformed their emerging-market peers over the last five years, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. US-led sanctions have put Russia off limits for many foreign investors, and some sectors in China — especially technology companies — have also been sanctioned or face potential investment bans.

China's $10 trillion hidden debt mountain could be the 'ticking time bomb' that Joe Biden warned of
Joseph Wilkins/Business Insider/December 29, 2023
China has faced many economic problems this year, from deflation and record youth unemployment to a property crisis. But the nation faces another, even more worrisome threat: the colossal hidden debt of its local governments.
Some estimates put the liabilities of China's local financing vehicles close to $10 trillion. For much of this year, global markets were buffeted time and again by gloomy economic news filtering out of China. The world's second-largest economy grappled with a raft of economic troubles in 2023 — ranging from deflation to record youth unemployment, and a deepening property crisis — and its much-anticipated post-pandemic rebound has failed to materialize. China's mounting economic woes prompted US President Joe Biden to call the Asian economy a "ticking time bomb" in August. And more recently, a lesser-known, but no less ominous, economic threat has been rearing its head: China's colossal hidden-debt problem. This mainly refers to a mountain of liabilities accumulated by the country's local governments, mostly to fund regional infrastructure projects such as building roads and bridges. An analysis by the Chinese media outlet Caixin Global estimated the outstanding obligations of the so-called local government financing vehicles, or LGFVs, at close to a staggering $10 trillion. The Chinese government deems such debt a form of off-the-books lending and as such, the market is opaque. Here, Insider demystifies the shadow sector and explains the significance of LGFVs to the wider Chinese economy.
What are China's LGFVs?
These funding bodies were set up by China to facilitate financing for regional infrastructure projects. Originally established to support infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, and energy installations, the LGFVs were designed to provide funding outside of the official government constraints. The notion of "hidden debt" was defined by China's State Council in 2018 as any borrowing that does not form a part of on-budget government spending – in essence, off-the-books financing. The LGFV sector has grown exponentially since the 2008 global financial crisis, when the Chinese government made efforts to ensure that the nation's infrastructure and public services segments expand fast enough to sustain its remarkable economic growth, according to Bloomberg. Figures from Bloomberg and the International Monetary Fund estimate the total value of LGFV debt as more than $9 trillion – not far from the Caixin assessment. The local governments' bonds alone total at about $2 trillion, and any defaults would rock the Asian nation's $60 trillion financial system, according to Bloomberg. In 2023, the LGFVs' hidden debt climbed above 50% of China's GDP for the first time, IMF data show.
Why does this matter?
For months, China's local administrations have struggled to turn their financing vehicles profitable – increasing pressure on the national government to prop up the ailing sector via costly interventions. As risks tied to the sector mount, banks are unwilling to lend more, investors are turning their backs on bonds, and viable projects are harder to come by, according to several anonymous employees interviewed by Bloomberg. As a result, the local governments have been struggling to generate enough income or raise funding to meet the costs of servicing their debt.
"The most important variable impacting China's economic growth over the next two years will be the success or failure of local government debt restructuring," Logan Wright, head of China markets research at Rhodium Group, told Bloomberg.
But Beijing has so far refrained from intervening in the sector, in a bid to encourage self-sufficiency.
Echoes of the property crisis
Although none of the LGFVs have actually defaulted on their debt yet, the mounting stress in the sector echoes the crisis in China's real-estate industry, which began in 2021 and has reverberated around global markets ever since. "A collapse in local government investment would be comparable to the economic impact of the crisis in the property market," Wright told Bloomberg. China's enormous property sector accounts for about 30% of the country's overall output. Headwinds faced by the sector include heavy debt burdens and sluggish demand for new properties. This was a contributing factor in stunting the nation's second-quarter GDP growth, which came in at 6.3%, below forecasts of up to 7.1%. Indeed, any turmoil originating from China's mountainous hidden debt would send shockwaves across the global economy.

Brazil shows concern as Venezuela slams UK warship sent to Guyana
Reuters/December 29, 2023
Brazil expressed concern on Friday after Venezuela complained about the deployment of a British warship off the Guyana coast, raising tensions in a border dispute over the oil-rich Esequibo region of the former British colony.
"The Brazilian government believes that military demonstrations of support for any party must be avoided, so that the ongoing dialogue process can produce results," the Brazilian foreign ministry said in a statement. It urged all parties to "contain themselves" and resume talks. Britain has dispatched the Royal Navy patrol vessel HMS Trent to Guyana, where it was due to arrive on Friday morning. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday slammed the warship's deployment and said it breached the "spirit" of an agreement reached between Venezuelan and Guyanese authorities. Neighbors Venezuela and Guyana agreed earlier this month to avoid using force or increasing tensions in their long-running dispute border dispute over the Esequibo territory. The 160,000-square-km (62,000-square-mile) region is generally recognized as part of Guyana, but in recent years Venezuela has revived its claim to the territory and to offshore areas after major oil and gas discoveries. Western diplomats have urged the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has maintained friendly relations with Maduro, to ease tensions in the Guyana border dispute. Brazil said on Friday the "Argyle Declaration for Dialogue and Peace" signed by Guyana and Venezuela on Dec. 14 was "a milestone in efforts to peacefully address the issue." "The two countries also agreed to cooperate to avoid incidents on the ground and unilateral measures that could lead to an escalation of the situation," Brazil's statement said. The UK defense ministry said this month that HMS Trent would visit Guyana as part of a series of engagements in the region, without referring to Venezuela or the border dispute.

Russia fires 122 missiles, 36 drones in what Ukraine calls biggest aerial barrage of war
Associated Press/December 29, 2023
Russia launched 122 missiles and a score of drones against Ukrainian targets, officials said Friday, killing at least 20 civilians across the country in what an air force official said was the biggest aerial barrage of the war. The Ukrainian air force intercepted most of the ballistic and cruise missiles and the Shahed-type drones overnight, said Ukraine's military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on his official Telegram channel that it was "the most massive aerial attack" since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to the Ukrainian air force, the previous biggest assault was in November 2022 when Russia launched 96 missiles against Ukraine. This year, the biggest was 81 missiles on March 9, air force records show. Western officials and analysts recently warned that Russia had limited its cruise missile strikes in recent months in an apparent effort to build up stockpiles for massive strikes during the winter, hoping to break the Ukrainians' spirit. Fighting along the front line is largely bogged down by winter weather after Ukraine's summer counteroffensive failed to make a significant breakthrough along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) line of contact. Ukrainian officials have urged the country's Western allies to provide it with more air defenses to protect itself against aerial attacks like Friday's one. Their appeals have come as signs of war fatigue strain efforts to keep support in place. At least 88 people were injured and an unknown number were buried under rubble during the roughly 18-hour onslaught, Ukrainian officials said. Among the buildings reported to be damaged across Ukraine were a maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Kremlin's forces used a wide variety of weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles. "Today, Russia used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal," Zelenskyy said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said Russia "apparently launched everything they have," except for submarine-launched Kalibr missiles, in the attack. The aerial attack that began Thursday and continued through the night hit six cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and other areas from east to west and north to south Ukraine, according to authorities.
Reports of deaths and damage came in from across the country. Five people were killed and 20 injured in the eastern city of Dnipro where four maternity hospital patients were rescued from a fire, officials said.
In Odesa, on the southern coast, falling drone wreckage started a fire at a multi-story residential building, according to the regional head, Oleh Kiper. Two people were killed and 15, including two children, were injured in the course of the Odesa attack, he said. The mayor of the western city of Lviv, Andrii Sadovyi, said one person was killed and eight injured and three schools and a kindergarten were damaged in a drone attack in the region. Several dozen missiles were launched towards Kyiv during the night, with more than 30 of them intercepted, said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration. The attack started a fire at a warehouse in the capital's Podil district where five people reportedly were pulled from the rubble. Three people were killed in the capital. In northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was subjected to at least three waves of aerial attacks overnight that included S-300 and Kh-21 missile launches. One person was killed and at least nine injured, officials said.

Jerusalem's Armenians vow to keep up fight against 'settler' project
Agence France Presse/December 29, 2023
Residents of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem's historic Armenian quarter rapidly mobilized when bulldozers rolled in to start work on a luxury hotel, a project they fear threatens the ancient but dwindling community. The real estate deal which gives an Australian-Israeli investor roughly 25 percent of the Old City's Armenian quarter has sparked anger and concern among its residents. "The youth arrived in large numbers and positioned themselves in front of the bulldozers," recalled resident Kegham Balian of the escalation last month.
"The settlers underestimated our community," said the Armenian merchant.
"We are waging a peaceful struggle, and we are not afraid."
Ever since the construction began, Armenians have set up camp, bringing tents, stoves, mattresses and even a TV to a weeks-long sit-in to guard the contested land. Inside a tent, wooden planks patch up the holes left by construction equipment. On Thursday, "over 30 armed provocateurs" attacked members of the Armenian community including clergymen, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement. It accused the real estate developer, Danny Rothman, of being responsible for the "massive and coordinated physical attack" shortly after the patriarchate had taken to the court to annul the controversial land sale. East Jerusalem and the Old City -- divided into Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian quarters -- was seized by Israel in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized by the international community. Land rights are a key point of tension in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, where Israel has built and expanded settlements, considered illegal under international law. Only around 2,000 Armenians remain in the Old City quarter after waves of immigration primarily to the United States and Europe since the 1960s. Like Palestinians in the rest of east Jerusalem, most Armenians do not hold Israeli citizenship but only residency.
'Without consent'
Panic first erupted among the minority community in April, after it was revealed that the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Father Baret Yeretzian, in charge of real estate affairs, struck a deal in 2021 with a Tel Aviv-based company.
The firm, which won a 99-year lease on the land, is Rothman's Xana Gardens Ltd, according to Israeli lawyer and Jerusalem specialist Daniel Seidemann.
"The agreement was reached by the patriarchate without the knowledge and without the consent of the residents of the Armenian quarter or their institutions," Seidemann told AFP, an assertion echoed by community members.
The contract included "11,500 square meters of land, including a parking lot, five residences, and the patriarchate's seminar hall," said Setrag Balian, co-founder of Save the ArQ, a movement by Armenian quarter residents.
Despite the Armenian Patriarchate saying it had subsequently "withdrawn from negotiations" after discovering "problems behind this transaction", many community members still feel betrayed. Yeretzian, the priest behind the contract has been defrocked. The latest escalation came after Nourhan Manougian, the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem, on October 27 sent a letter to Xana Gardens formally notifying the firm of the "cancellation of the agreement". Then, "bulldozers, armed settlers accompanied by dogs, and residents of the Jewish quarter" arrived to the area, said the activist Balian, 27. The takeover attempt "took advantage of the chaos of October 7," he said. "They managed to demolish part of the wall surrounding the parking lot."Rothman's lawyer, Avi Savitzki, declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
- 'We are ready'-
Campaigners say they are trying to preserve the land of the Armenian community, whose presence in Jerusalem dates as far back as 1,500 years. Save the ArQ is also supported by Armenian diaspora communities with legal assistance and media coverage. "Every day, families come to see us and bring us food," said Kegham Balian of the sit-in, where young and old take turns sleeping at the site. They hope the land does not befall the same fate of some Greek Orthodox Church property in Jerusalem. Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim, using front companies, in 2004 acquired leasing rights on three building belonging to the church. After years of legal battles, Israel's top court eventually allowed Ateret Cohanim to take hold of the property. This judicial setback "endangers the Christian presence and the integrity of the Christian quarter," said activist Hagop Djernazian. To Balian, "we know the political stakes" in the divided holy city, a focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It will not be an easy battle, especially since we are not just fighting against a private company but also against settlers," he said. But "we are ready."

World population up 75 million this year, standing at 8 billion on Jan. 1
Associated Press/December 29, 2023
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day it will stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday. The worldwide growth rate in the past year was just under 1%. At the start of 2024, 4.3 births and two deaths are expected worldwide every second, according to the Census Bureau figures. The growth rate for the United States in the past year was 0.53%, about half the worldwide figure. The U.S. added 1.7 million people and will have a population on New Year's Day of 335.8 million people. If the current pace continues through the end of the decade, the 2020s could be the slowest-growing decade in U.S. history, yielding a growth rate of less than 4% over the 10-year-period from 2020 to 2030, said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution. The slowest-growing decade currently was in the aftermath of the Great Depression in the 1930s, when the growth rate was 7.3%. "Of course growth may tick up a bit as we leave the pandemic years. But it would still be difficult to get to 7.3%," Frey said. At the start of 2024, the United States is expected to experience one birth every nine seconds and one death every 9.5 seconds. However, immigration will keep the population from dropping. Net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 28.3 seconds. This combination of births, deaths and net international migration will increase the U.S. population by one person every 24.2 seconds.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 29-30/2023
Pakistan Deporting Afghans Who Seek Asylum from Taliban
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/December 29, 2023
"Those at particular risk are civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, former government officials and security force members, and of course women and girls as a whole, who, as a result of the abhorrent policies currently in place in Afghanistan, are banned from secondary and tertiary education, working in many sectors and other aspects of daily and public life." — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 27, 2023.
"Asad and his family fled Afghanistan in 2021 when his friends and colleagues were murdered after the Taliban came to power. 'I am on several lists maintained by the Taliban and I am certain I will be killed if I go back...'" — Amnesty International, November 10, 2023.
The terrorism that Pakistan complains about comes from the Taliban in Afghanistan -- that Pakistan supported for decades -- not from the Afghan asylum seekers in Pakistan.
What Pakistan has done... is to counter terrorists that challenge its own authority while actively supporting other terrorists who challenge other governments -- particularly in India and the West.
There are no "good jihadist terrorists."
What has caused an increase in terrorism in Pakistan is not Afghan refugees trying to survive there, but Pakistan's own policies that, for decades, have empowered jihadist terrorists both domestically and abroad.
What has caused an increase in terrorism in Pakistan is not Afghan refugees trying to survive there, but Pakistan's own policies that, for decades, have empowered jihadist terrorists both domestically and abroad. Pictured: Afghan refugees, after their expulsion arrival from Pakistan, arrive in Takhta Pul district of Kandahar province, Afghanistan on December 18, 2023. (Photo by Sanaullah Seiam/AFP via Getty Images)
Pakistan has started the mass deportation of "unregistered" Afghans in the country. The move sends back hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Taliban when they took over in 2021 after American troops withdrew, and violates principles of refugee non-refoulement. If forcibly returned, these refugees are at risk of persecution.
Pakistan claims its mass deportations of these Afghans is due to "increased terrorism" in the country -- but it was the government of Pakistan that for decades supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ever since they took over the country in 2021, Afghanistan has just become a safe haven for terrorist groups.
In September, Pakistan's government announced that it would carry out mass deportations of all "unregistered foreign nationals," labeled under Pakistani law as the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan. The plan demands that all such individuals leave the country before November 1, 2023. Police also reportedly warned landlords to avoid renting homes to undocumented refugees and migrants.
The Associated Press reported on November 13 that in recent weeks since Pakistani authorities started arresting and deporting foreign nationals without documentation, after the November 1 deadline for migrants without legal status to leave the country voluntarily, nearly 300,000 Afghans have left Pakistan.
The Crisis Group reported:
"Although the plan purported to apply to all foreigners residing in the country illegally, it appears designed to target Afghans, millions of whom have sought refuge in Pakistan over the years. Pakistan hosts an estimated three to four million Afghan refugees and migrants, including at least 600,000 who have crossed the border since August 2021, when the Taliban seized power for a second time in Afghanistan. Of these, 1.3 million are registered as legal refugees, holding Proof of Registration cards, while an additional 850,000 have received Afghan Citizen Cards from the Pakistani authorities, giving them some protections but not all of those afforded to registered refugees. Some 1.7 million more Afghans are believed to be residing in the country without any documentation at all. This last figure could be a significant underestimate, as people living on the mountainous frontier are accustomed to moving back and forth across the border, often without travel papers from either state."
United Nations officials said in October they were "extremely alarmed by Pakistan's announcement that it plans to deport 'undocumented" foreign nationals' as winter approaches. The UN further expressed concerns over the rights violations of those at risk.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said:
"We believe many of those facing deportation will be at grave risk of human rights violations if returned to Afghanistan, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, cruel and other inhuman treatment.
"Those at particular risk are civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, former government officials and security force members, and of course women and girls as a whole, who, as a result of the abhorrent policies currently in place in Afghanistan, are banned from secondary and tertiary education, working in many sectors and other aspects of daily and public life."
Many Afghans have either been decades-long residents of Pakistan or were born in Pakistan. At least 600,000 left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, according to the UN. These Afghans, especially women and girls, face an uncertain future in Afghanistan under the Taliban's rule.
"The Ministry of Interior has set up 49 holding area points across the country to help these people respectfully cross the border after thorough screening," state-run Radio Pakistan reported.
According to Amnesty International, however,
"Since the expiry of the 1 November deadline imposed by the Government of Pakistan, the police have moved from registering cases under the Foreigners Act, 1946 which among other things criminalizes illegal entry into Pakistan, to directly detaining refugees deemed 'illegal' at deportation centers.
"Amnesty International has concerns about the complete lack of transparency, due process and accountability in the detentions and deportations over the last week. This has been exacerbated by increased incidents of harassment and hostility against Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
"Pakistan gave foreigners without documents or registration until Nov. 1 to leave or face deportation and arrest. The government has set up deportation centers for undocumented migrants, including an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, and anyone found staying in the country without authorization from would be arrested and sent to one of the centers, the interior ministry has said.
"Amnesty International has verified that in at least seven detention centers, no legal rights are extended to detainees such as the right to a lawyer or communication with family members. Such centers are in violation of right to liberty and a fair trial. Also, no information is made public, making it hard for families to trace their loved ones.
"Since the announcement of the deadline, warnings have been communicated through leaflets, loudspeakers at local mosques and statements that anyone found to be providing accommodation to Afghan refugees without documentation will be fined or arrested.
"There are approximately 200 Afghan journalists at risk in Pakistan according to the Pakistan-Afghan International Forum of Journalists. Asad an Afghan journalist hiding in Pakistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021, said: Even though I entered Pakistan on a valid visa and have applied for renewal, I do not have anything to show the authorities if they turn up at my doorstep. I have stopped sending my children to school for the past two weeks...'
"Asad and his family fled Afghanistan in 2021 when his friends and colleagues were murdered after the Taliban came to power. 'I am on several lists maintained by the Taliban and I am certain I will be killed if I go back,' he said."
Meanwhile, Pakistan justifies this decision by citing its dire economic situation and accusing undocumented Afghans of involvement in terrorism and crime.
Pakistan's caretaker prime minister linked the government's move to expel Afghan refugees and asylum seekers from Pakistan to the inability of Afghanistan's Taliban government to stop extremists, which he claims has led to an "increase in terrorism in Pakistan".
Acting Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar said at a news conference on November 8 that in two and half years since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, the number of attacks by Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has increased by 60 percent. The attacks have killed 2,267 people in the country.
Pakistan has shared a list of TTP members with the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as other information, but they have not taken any serious action, he said.
Pakistan's pretext for expelling Afghans due to "increased terrorism" is ironic at best, given Pakistan's decades-long support for the Afghan Taliban.
The government of Pakistan supported the Taliban in Afghanistan from its emergence in the 1990s until its return to power in 2021. The Taliban has turned Afghanistan into a hideout for many Islamist terrorist groups, thereby posing a security risk to the entire region, Pakistan included. The terrorism that Pakistan complains about comes from the Taliban in Afghanistan -- that Pakistan supported for decades -- not from the Afghan asylum seekers in Pakistan.
France24 noted in a 2022 report:
"For decades, Pakistan pursued a policy of supporting the Afghan Taliban while cracking down on the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP). With the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, Islamabad may have won its 'long game'. But its game of chicken may be backfiring with jihadists coming home to roost.
"On August 15, 2021, when the Taliban swept into Kabul and seized power in Afghanistan, there were exultations in neighbouring Pakistan. Afghans had 'broken the shackles of slavery,' said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan a day after the takeover, even as waves of desperate people scrambled to board departing flights at Kabul's international airport in a bid to flee their 'liberty'.
"The Pakistani prime minister – dubbed 'Taliban Khan' by his critics – is known for his anti-West tirades. But the gaffe-prone Khan's position on the Taliban has always been in-synch with the geostrategic objectives of Pakistan's military and vast intelligence network headed by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
"Despite Islamabad's repeated denials, a Taliban victory remained an ISI goal during the 20-year US mission in Afghanistan, making Pakistan a duplicitous ally in Washington's 'war on terror' as the country continued to provide the Islamist group safe havens until the departure of coalition forces.
"The Taliban are separate groups in both countries, but they share a common ideology and allegiances, which the TTP renewed following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Pakistan, though, follows a 'good Taliban-bad Taliban' strategy that seeks a pliant, Islamist power across its western border in Afghanistan as a counterweight to its eastern neighbour and arch enemy, India. The 'bad Taliban' – the TTP, with its stated goal of overthrowing the Pakistani state and establishing Sharia law – is considered a terrorist threat."
According to the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) of Stanford University:
"The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the largest and deadliest militant umbrella organization in Pakistan. The TTP formed under Baitullah Mehsud in 2007. It is a subset of the Pakistani Taliban, which includes most, but not all, of the Pakistani Taliban groups. The organization is closely linked to Al Qaeda, and is also associated with the Afghan Taliban. However, unlike the Afghan Taliban, which focuses on combatting U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, the TTP focuses on combatting Pakistani security forces. The TTP is based in South Waziristan and has three central goals: to enforce Shariah law in Pakistan; to support the Afghan Taliban's control in Kabul after the U.S. withdrawal of forces; and to conduct defensive jihad against Pakistani security forces. Ultimately, the group also seeks to overthrow the Pakistani government and establish an Islamic caliphate in Pakistan."
The group "has seen increased support and stability stemming from the Afghan Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021."
In February 2022, five Pakistani troops were killed when terrorists from across the Afghan border opened fire. Islamabad then condemned the use of Afghan soil for attacks against Pakistan, warning that it "expects that the interim Afghan government will not allow conduct of such activities against Pakistan in the future."
According to France24
"Some experts were quick to note that the Pakistani accusation marked the first time since the Taliban takeover that a country publicly declared Afghan territory was being used for cross-border international terrorism. The irony that Pakistan was the first country to complain was not lost on Afghans who have long accused Islamabad of supporting the Taliban and other jihadist groups."
Meanwhile, a 2022 report by the UN Security Council's monitoring team for al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) group and their affiliates, noted that "Terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there [in Afghanistan] than at any time in recent history." The panel of experts said, "there are no recent signs that the Taliban has taken steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country."
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) notes:
"The Pakistani state itself has also used Islamic extremism as a strategic tool to further its interests in the region... Extremist groups that Pakistan has tolerated or supported in the past include Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Hizb-il-Mujahideen (HM), the Mullah Nazir Group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and the Afghan Taliban and its affiliated Haqqani network. Pakistan has instead focused most of its counterterrorism operations against groups that seek to challenge and overthrow the Pakistani state."
As for Pakistan's relationship with the Afghan Taliban, the Counter Extremism Project adds:
"Regional scholars have noted that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) held considerable sway with the Taliban. In the late 1990s, the ISI even provided the Taliban with a small team of military advisers and facilitated the training of Pakistani volunteers to join the Taliban's ranks. Following the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001, some of the group's leadership sought safe haven in Pakistan. Pakistan's support during the crucial period of 2001 and 2004 allowed the Taliban to reemerge in Afghanistan.
"Pakistan remained a critical benefactor of the Taliban as they waged an insurgency against the U.S. and the former Afghan government. Following the Taliban's second takeover of Kabul in August 2021, relations between the two camps began to sour due to disagreements over the status of the Afghan-Pakistan border as well as increased attacks within Pakistan from the TTP that reportedly operates with impunity in Afghanistan."
In November 2022, the Pakistani Taliban ended a months-long cease-fire with the government of Pakistan, ordering its fighters to resume attacks across the country, where scores of deadly attacks have been blamed on the terror group.
PBS NewsHour reported on November 28, 2022:
"In a statement, the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan said it decided to end the 5-month-old cease-fire after Pakistan's army stepped up operations against them in former northwestern tribal areas and elsewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan."
A 2023 report by the United Nations Security Council said that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has "emboldened" Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, resulting in an increase in cross-border attacks in Pakistan.
The leader of the TTP has reportedly sworn allegiance to the Taliban's so-called emir (leader) and says his group is part of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Political analyst Arjun Sengupta refers to the growth of the Taliban as "a problem that Pakistan created."
"Smarting from the loss of East Pakistan [Bangladesh] in 1971, the Pakistani state became increasingly paranoid about further separatism in the country. Of particular concern was Pashtun nationalism in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan, both bordering Afghanistan. This was not a new phenomenon — the demand for a unified Pashtun nation predated the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
"To counter Pashtun nationalism, the Pakistani state chose to encourage Islamic fundamentalism. It set up numerous Deobandi madrasas, teaching a particularly strict brand of Islam, in Pashtun territories. The Taliban leadership would emerge from these madrasas — 'Taliban' being the Pashto word for 'student'. Pakistan happily supported the rise of Taliban in its neighbouring country, hoping that their hardline Islam would suppress the Pashtun identity, both at home and in neighbouring Afghanistan.
"When the TTP was formed in 2007, the organization claimed to be an extension of the Afghan Taliban, with designs to eventually establish a strict Islamic state, free of American influence, in Pakistan."
As Human Rights Watch reported:
"Pakistan has a history of military support for different factions within Afghanistan, extending at least as far back as the early 1970s. During the 1980s, Pakistan, which was host to more than two million Afghan refugees, was the most significant front-line state serving as a secure base for the mujahidin [jihadists] fighting against the Soviet intervention."
What Pakistan has done for decades is to counter terrorists that challenge its own authority while actively supporting other terrorists who challenge other governments – particularly in India and the West. War against radical Islamism or jihad, however, must be a whole struggle. Pakistan's "selective" approach to terrorists is now backfiring. There are no "good jihadist terrorists." Radical Islam and jihadist terrorism of all sorts needs to be neutralized, not exploited by governments for hegemonic agendas. Jihad always destroys liberty, stability, security and lives.
After supporting the Taliban's militancy in Afghanistan for decades, Pakistan is now inflicting collective punishment on hundreds of thousands of Afghans who took shelter in Pakistan from the Taliban's tyranny.
What has caused an increase in terrorism in Pakistan is not Afghan refugees trying to survive there, but Pakistan's own policies that, for decades, have empowered jihadist terrorists both domestically and abroad.
*Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, a research fellow for the Philos Project, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 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.

The Global Empire of Palestine
Lee Smith/The Tablet/December 29, 2023
Polls showing that Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza continue to celebrate and support Hamas, with nearly 75% backing the Oct. 7 massacre that killed 1,200 in southern Israel, would seem to dash U.S. policymakers’ hopes of gaining momentum toward establishing a Palestinian state.
But for the Palestinians, that’s irrelevant. Why should they bother with arduous negotiations leading to compromise over two noncontiguous plots of land when they already have something far greater and much rarer? Empire.
The ongoing marches around the world to “flood” Western cities, college campuses, and government office buildings, and halt traffic on major arteries and thoroughfares in support of Hamas, are evidence that the Palestinians have managed to create something much loftier than a mere political arrangement of institutions and offices that would make them no different from the 193 members of the United Nations. With Oct. 7 representing the high-water mark of their long campaign against the Jews, and Americans, the Palestinians have called forth from the nations those who are ready to awaken and celebrate the new spirit of the age.
Since Oct. 7, pro-Palestinian protesters—Arab and Muslim immigrants joined by locals—have filled the streets of European and North American cities with crowds of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands in Berlin, Washington, Stockholm, Paris, Toronto, Oslo, Chicago, London, Rome, Los Angeles, and others. In Glasgow last week, they shut down a Zara’s outlet because, according to pro-Palestinian activists, the retail giant’s advertising campaign featuring mannequins wrapped in white cloth resembled dead Gazans. Students at Harvard University can’t study in Widener Library or walk to class without being confronted by mobs calling for Israel to be emptied of Jews “from the river to the sea.” It’s as bad or worse at other elite universities.
By continually ‘revitalizing’ the Palestinians, the stewards of global affairs have engendered something that by definition cannot survive in nature on its own: a society that celebrates death as its highest value.
In New York City, large crowds of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags besieged the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, fought with police, and harassed tourists, then moved down Fifth Avenue and defaced stores with pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, and antisemitic graffiti. At Grand Central station, commuters and tourists are greeted regularly by large mobs masked in black-and-white keffiyehs and draped in other resistance styles enacting their version of “intifada.” Thousands marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and hoisted Palestinian flags a stone’s throw from a mass grave holding the remains of 2,753 people killed by terrorists who claimed the Palestinian cause as their motive for murdering Americans.
With the intifada globalized, and millions from West to East—from the dispossessed of the Southern Hemisphere to privileged Scandinavians—stirred by similar furies, it’s like an end-of-times World Cup parade every day. Supporters cheer their champions, the world’s team, the Goliath that kidnapped, raped, executed, and beheaded children.
The protesters’ goal is hardly a two-state solution or any other dispensation likely to bring peace to both peoples. Rather, the cease-fire they’re calling for is a tactic to strangle Israel’s war effort and thereby empty the Jewish state of Jews. If the Israeli government can’t establish a buffer zone between Gaza and the southern areas attacked on Oct. 7, as well as the northern towns and kibbutzes within Hezbollah’s range, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have relocated to the center of the country cannot return home. With Iran-backed terrorists using Oct. 7 as a precedent to redraw Israel’s borders in cooperation with U.S., EU, and U.N. bureaucrats, the country will be shaved at the edges until all of it becomes uninhabitable.
The Biden administration’s post-Hamas reconstruction plans imagine that, as Vice President Kamala Harris told Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, a “revitalized” PA will take over Gaza. But that will hardly pacify the Palestinians or their impassioned supporters around the globe. In fact, Abbas’ men, manifestly unpopular in Gaza and especially the West Bank, will have to meet the expectations created by their rivals’ Oct. 7 assault if they hope to survive the intra-Palestinian contest for power that is sure to ensue.
The salient fact is that the crushing military defeat suffered by the Palestinians will hardly matter, as long as the world’s one superpower—alongside Europe and the Gulf Arab states—stand ready to rebuild whatever Israel destroys. By continually revitalizing the Palestinians, by giving them new life, the stewards of global affairs have engendered something that by definition cannot survive in nature on its own: a society that celebrates death as its highest value. The Palestinians claim that it is their perseverance and faith, their willingness to suffer great losses, that ensures their ultimate victory. But the source of their steadfastness—their ability to replenish their arsenal and refurnish their tunnels and other military infrastructure—is, in fact, a luxury repeatedly afforded them by the U.S. and its European partners. Had world powers simply allowed Israelis and Palestinians to make war, the party of permanent resistance would have had two choices—change radically or perish entirely.
Instead, having immolated themselves and their children many dozens of times in their efforts to burn down Israel, the Palestinians have again been led back across the river of death. Their escorts past and present—from the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies to Europe and the United States as well as the Gulf States and Iran—have employed them in the way minor actors have typically been used throughout the history of the Levant: as assets in the great game of nations.
But no power had ever thought before to preserve a culture so devoted to death that its highest purpose is to extinguish itself in the service of killing others. No one before had means or the motive to do so.
Now, however, something new has been brought into the world, something monstrous.
All the wretched of the earth have attached their hopes and grievances to the Palestinians not because Hamas and the PA, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and others are indigenous underdogs resisting the colonialist war machine, or stalwart subalterns on a campaign for universal liberty. Rather: Terrorists, criminals, psychopaths, and fantasists from every part of the globe have grafted themselves on to the Palestinian cause because the most basic laws of nature have been revised to accommodate it. The Palestinian cause gives hope to each of these groups—hope that their own nihilistic and murderous ambitions could win world favor as well. And they have.
Under the rules set by great powers to govern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anything is possible. Losing is winning. Crime is justice. Rape is love. Death is life. These are the slogans of the new spirit of the age, the dawning of the Empire of Palestine.
Analysts have compared the Oct. 7 massacre to the 1973 Yom Kippur war, another massive failure of Israeli intelligence to read its enemies’ intentions and capabilities. But the more relevant historical date is Sept. 5, 1972, when Palestinian terrorists raided the dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich games. The Palestinians held 11 Israeli coaches and athletes hostage, then tortured and killed them, and mutilated their corpses.
The Palestinian terror group responsible for these atrocities, Black September, was named after the Jordanian campaign that expelled the Palestinians a year earlier after they failed to overthrow the Hashemite kingdom. Black September was a cutout for Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The false front let Western governments deny PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s involvement in terrorism in order to deal with him because of his involvement in terrorism.
Forced to relocate to Lebanon, Arafat saw that the only way to break out of a doomed cycle of local conflicts was to internationalize his war and turn Palestine into a global cause.
Staging its debut on the front line of the Cold War was a shrewd choice. The Soviets had armed and trained the Palestinians as local proxies for their regional conflicts, but Arafat wasn’t satisfied to be just part of the play within the play of the larger superpower struggle. In Germany, he made the Palestinians stars on live television.
Equally important was the German angle. The Munich Olympics, held in the birthplace of the Nazi Party, marked the country’s return to the society of civilized nations. That Germany was divided underscored its kinship with the Palestinians in one crucial respect—both were losers in big wars they’d forced on their opponents and that consequently shattered their own societies.
Yet conveniently for the Germans, and all of Europe, the Palestinians’ foes were the surviving witnesses to their fathers’ crimes. Arafat couldn’t entirely blot out what the Europeans had done, but he made himself a mirror for their self-pity that allowed them and today their children to recast their legacy in gentler hues. Is it not true that the grays are subtler in a world where the Nazis’ victims victimize the Palestinians? What constitutes a great crime when everyone is a criminal?
Europe was tested. Munich and its aftermath showed that even before a single generation had passed, their vows were hollow, their honor a fraud. You could kill Jews in a live broadcast to hundreds of millions of people, and the great men of Europe would arrange the assassins’ passage to safety.
By promoting the Palestinians’ cause, the Europeans joined them in creating the prototype of “Third World man.” The collaboration served the narcissism of Western elites, and the political ambitions of the Western-educated elites of the decolonized world who weaponized their resentment to extract money and arms from their onetime overlords. A century 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. By attributing to Westerners responsibility for his suffering, Third World man fathoms the reservoir of their once formidable power and hints they may again someday be replenished. Accordingly, the Soviets used the Palestinians for the same reason street gangs employ children to commit felonies: Western elites do not punish those who commit crimes for which they blame themselves.
In March 1973, the Palestinians kidnapped and executed two American diplomats in Sudan, Ambassador Cleo Noel and Deputy Chief of Mission George Curtis Moore. The Nixon administration knew that Arafat had ordered their assassinations, but the president’s top foreign policy aide overlaid U.S. foreign policy with a European perspective in which small neighboring states exchange pieces to obtain a permanent balance of power. Losing two foreign service officers was regrettable, but Henry Kissinger’s priority was moving Egypt from the Soviet column to America’s, and Israel’s victory in October 1973 secured Kissinger’s. And yet with the failure to repay Arafat for killing Americans—Noel and Moore’s State Department colleagues said Kissinger had simply forgotten them—the unraveling began. By acclimating themselves to terror, the Americans incentivized it.
Days after the murders in Khartoum, Arafat’s agents set off three bombs, unsuccessfully, in New York City that had been timed to explode during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. In September 1974, Black September brought down a passenger plane flying from Tel Aviv to New York, with stopovers in Athens and Rome, killing all 88 people aboard, including 37 Americans.
Nonetheless, Arafat was welcome in New York two months later when he carried a gun to the U.N. and threatened more war unless the world appeased his band of stateless brigands. The august body recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians as well as their right to self-determination, national independence, and sovereignty in Palestine. The Palestinians had won entry into the community of nations by killing Jews.
A year later, the Europeans again rewarded the Palestinians for unburdening them of their guilt when the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, designating Zionism as a form of racism. Among all the world’s national independence movements, the nationalism advocated by the survivors of the Holocaust was uniquely racist. It seemed that the U.N.’s only purpose was to consecrate Third World man and condemn the Jews. Thanks to Arafat, the world had turned reason on its head.
“The Americans have to remember that unless Palestinians achieve something,” said Arafat, “they will face the typhoon.” Bill Clinton blamed him for rejecting his proposals for a two-state solution, but the Palestinians saw through his gambit. The sticking point wasn’t the right of return, never mind land swaps and border demarcation. What the Americans had in mind struck at the essence of what the Palestinian cause had come to represent.
Had any nation-state pursued the Palestinians’ decadeslong tactics, they would have been committing themselves to war. But with no capital to seize, no industrial centers to destroy, the Palestinians were accountable to no one. Clinton wanted to change that with statehood, and Arafat fooled those who wanted to be fooled that he wanted the same.
Instead, the Palestinians pocketed the Americans’ money to fund a military aristocracy, a black-velvet painting version of Sparta whose kings were pampered, pot-bellied assassins in off-the-rack Muslim Brotherhood suits. Maybe at one time the Palestinian cause was just to drive the Jews into the sea, but then what? With more than 8,000 square miles of sand where the State of Israel once was, what was the next move?
A state would have required the generalship of hard and cynical men, men whose ambitions were sharply limited by the work it would take to make things function every day. But after so much fantasy, it was too late for that. Besides, the world would continue to pay the Palestinians what they needed to flourish. What was once a political movement became a mode of existence, not a death cult but rather a permanent exhibition of death in life.
The Oct. 7 massacre was savage, like the murder of the Israeli Olympians was savage. But the Palestinians are not savages. They’re not the North Sentinel Islanders, who want no part of civilization and anyone who approaches their shores is met with a hailstorm of deadly arrows. Third World man, by contrast, feeds off civilization. The Palestinians can barely manage to kill anyone besides themselves without the resources donated by foreign powers. One-fifth of Hamas’ homemade rockets misfire and kill Gazan civilians. But more important than arms and technology is Western vanity, the source of Third World man’s magic. With his 1984 masterwork, Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism, the late Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski sought to explain “the general laws of the origin of evil.” The bulk of post-Holocaust historical, clinical, and journalistic research argues there is nothing remarkably evil about those who commit atrocities. Most are just ordinary people caught up in a bureaucratic hierarchy doing what they believe to be their duty, even if they question its rectitude. This interpretation is famously captured by Hannah Arendt’s phrase describing Adolf Eichmann as an embodiment of the “banality of evil.”
Łobaczewski’s conclusion cut against the grain. He argued that what he called macrosocial evil is the function of pathologically evil individuals. They disguise their true ambitions for power, wealth, and notoriety behind ideology, using terms like “social justice” which are vague enough to convey the righting of wrongs, to animate social movements united by grievance. Inside these movements, genuine psychopaths and those who adapt most easily to a pathological order rise to positions of power and influence. Evangelizing on behalf of deviant and destructive causes and desecrating, or criminalizing, what is true, beautiful, and natural, in turn lays waste to social structures, institutions, industries, entire nations. The rise of the Empire of Palestine represents this pathological process on a global scale.
It was only a matter of time before the mutation forged by serial revivals of a pathological society jumped cultures and began to infect those billed for reanimating the Palestinians—Americans. In a recent poll, 51% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 expressed their belief that the Israelis should be forced to abandon their country and give it to Hamas. Fifty-one percent shows that what’s driving the numbers at the pro-Hamas rallies isn’t just the failure of Western officials to close their borders to Middle Eastern populations unwilling to shed the pathological racism and political scapegoating of their homelands. No, their ideas preceded them, and prepared the way for their arrival.
“We regard the U.S. government as the controlling force of neocolonialism, imperialism, and racism, and we have no doubt that the U.S. employs Israel to spearhead its strategy of domination in the Middle East,” said Arafat in the middle of the Cold War, slogans echoed today across the great cities of Europe and North America. Decades later, Barack Obama replayed the same message back through the U.N. to announce that America was switching sides and enlisting its resources to advance the cause of death.
With less than a month left in office, Obama strong-armed U.S. allies to push through U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, holding that Israel illegally occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including historical Jewish religious sites—a position that no American government had ever taken. Critics at the time noted that the resolution signaled the United States had adopted the position of the Arab rejectionist camp. But the real issue was even more serious—after all, the Arabs rejected not only Israel but also reality. The fact that so many European nations seconded Obama’s effort to reverse the outcome of a war decided in 1967 is evidence not of its moral probity but rather that the president had committed America to global leadership of a malignant fantasy. The “great euthanizer” had inverted the historical and moral order.
To the literal-minded, and others who do not yet recognize the character of the pathologies ushered in with the age of the Empire of Palestine, it may seem bewildering, for instance, to see LGBTQ+ organizations demonstrating on behalf of a Hamas triumph. But Queers for Palestine don’t need to be told how Hamas actually deals with queers in Gaza and the West Bank. That’s irrelevant. In the Empire of Palestine all difference is transcended. It’s not a place, it’s a spiritual principle guided by the inversion of reality and governed by the equation 2+2=5.
Few in the climate change movement could have been surprised to hear Greta Thunberg express her desire to “crush Zionism.” In her strident warnings of catastrophic global climate change and the end of humanity, the Empire of Palestine has always been the subtext, a land of chaos and confusion, an inverted Eden in the desert presided over by an unforgiving earth goddess.
The Empire of Palestine is an aesthetic convention. It’s an “open-air prison” and “the Riviera of the Levant.” It’s a forgery. A postcard from the continent of unreason.
Climate millenarianism, the mass replacement of native populations, the government-sanctioned sterilization of children—everywhere you look the mark of civilizational suicide is on the horizon as Western elites assemble under the imperial banner. Flown in European capitals and university campuses, it represents the longings of a powerful faction within the West of those exhausted by life and wanting one last time to feel something like life coursing through their veins as they await the cleansing fire, redemption culminating in the coup de grace.
It was inevitable they, too, would stand against the Jews, who have chosen life over death.
*Lee Smith is the author of The Permanent Coup: How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President (2020).

Christian Homes and Cattle Burn for Building Legalized Church in Egypt
Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/December 29/2023
Once again, Muslim fanatics have risen up in violence and hate—attacking Christians to the cries of Islam’s war cry, “Allahu akbar”—simply because the Copts, Egypt’s most indigenous inhabitants, sought to build themselves a place of worship. The incident began on December 16, 2023, and continued into the evening of December 18, in the village of al-‘Azib (in Samalout, Minya Governorate). For many years prior, the Copts of the village, who numbered some 3,000 souls, did not have a church to pray in, and many of them had to travel great distances to worship in the churches of other regions. They had, of course, applied for a license to build a church and, after years, authorities finally approved it. However, on Saturday, December 16, when the Copts began to dig the church’s foundation, Muslims began to harass them—to the point of torching the home, and some of the cattle, of one of the Christians involved in the digging. Security forces were sent to resume calm, and church building was temporarily halted.
On Monday evening, however, the Christians were, according to a Coptic eyewitness, shocked by the emergence of dozens of extremists, despite the presence of security. They attacked Coptic homes to takbirat [cries of “Allahu akbar”] and chants rejecting the construction of the church—“Long and wide, we will bring the church to the ground” [which rhymes in Arabic]. They hurled rocks at some Coptic homes, and set fire to others…. Police forces present in the village were also attacked, and additional security reinforcements were sent to control the situation, with back-and-forths with the demonstrators. After mentioning the names of Christian homeowners rendered homeless due to the torching of their properties, including with Molotov cocktails, the eyewitness revealed that the violence began a month earlier, once local Muslims learned that the Copts had actually obtained a license to build a church. As a result, another Christian home was torched then.
The Arabic language report adds,
The Coptic witness revealed that the Copts are now living in a state of panic. All of them are [hiding] inside their homes following these attacks, which have created great chaos, even as police forces chase the extremists, with some of the recruits getting injured as a result of the stones hurled at them.
This scenario has played out countless times in Egypt: whenever there is even a rumor that a Coptic church is being built or repaired—local Muslim mobs riot and attack Christians. Authorities frequently respond by appeasing the rioters and permanently sealing up the “offending” churches on the charge that they are “security risks.” Time will tell if this will also be the fate of the still-to-be-built church of al-‘Azib village—or if the authorities will stand firm behind their decision to allow the Christians to have a church. For example, an ominous precedent occurred almost one year ago to the day, on December 24, 2022. Then, Muslims savagely attacked a church and its Christians simply because the authorities had given them permission to fix their church’s collapsed roof, which had fallen on and hurt several worshippers. On the following day, the Muslim governor responded to the violence by rescinding the church’s permit to fix its crumbling roof, telling the Copts to “pray in the rain.” So much hostility for churches can be traced back to Article 2 of Egypt’s Constitution: “Islam is the religion of the State … The principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation.” As it happens, Islamic Sharia is decidedly hostile to non-Muslim places of worship. Strictly interpreted, Sharia forbids the building or renovating of churches in Egypt.
Although that law is not strictly enforced, its “spirit”—which breeds hostility for churches amongst Egypt’s rank and file—is clearly alive and well.

Is Russia-Ukraine war set for a big freeze?
Dr. Diana Galeeva/Arab News/December 29, 2023
On the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine war, the first half of 2023 was a period of buildup toward Ukraine’s Kherson and Kharkiv counteroffensives. But there were no swift resolutions. The summer counteroffensive did not produce the desired results, partly because Kyiv did not receive the necessary weapons from its allies, President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted to the Associated Press. Nonetheless, Ukraine continued with its counteroffensive. On Dec. 1, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that the Ukrainian army had lost more than 125,000 people and 16,000 large-scale weapons since the start of the counteroffensive. “Total mobilization in Ukraine, supplies of Western weapons and the introduction of strategic reserves into battle by the Ukrainian command did not change the situation on the battlefield,” he said.
Given these developments on the ground, how will the 2023 phase of the war be assessed? What were its main challenges and developments? And, looking ahead, what can we expect in 2024?
Zelensky last month stated that Ukraine needs “three victories” — for the US Congress to approve further military assistance, for the EU to continue its support, and for “open dialogue” on Ukraine’s EU accession.
Through NATO, Ukraine’s Western allies have promised €500 million ($539 million) to deal with Kyiv’s critical needs. They are also committed to a multiyear assistance program, in addition to billions of euros of financial aid. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg last month linked these commitments to “our security interests” and urged members of the security alliance to continue backing Ukraine.
At the 2023 Vilnius summit, NATO allies also reasserted that Ukraine would become a member of the alliance once specific conditions are met. This involves a careful balance of declaring unconditional ongoing support, including prioritizing Ukraine’s security as part of “our” security, while still setting conditions before the country can be fully welcomed into the bloc.
Individual NATO members have also shown additional commitments to the Ukrainian cause, but there are already signs of looming challenges in 2024.
The US has provided more than $40 billion in security aid to Ukraine. Germany and the Netherlands also recently increased their aid pledges for Ukraine. However, the future of these commitments risks becoming mired in domestic politics, as a proposed $61 billion US aid package has been held up by Congress. Moreover, the war between Israel and Hamas, which broke out on Oct. 7 is having an effect. The US has reduced its supply of 155mm ammunition by “more than 30 percent,” a senior Ukrainian source told ABC News in November, despite Washington’s assurances that the conflict in the Middle East would not have an impact. With regards to European partners, a proposed €50 billion package from the EU is being opposed by Hungary, delaying its approval. It may also face disruption due to the financial crisis in Germany and the strengthening of the far right in several European countries, such as in the recent Dutch elections. Along with this financial angle, the diplomatic aspect remains an obstacle. Not least is the fact that Ukraine’s membership bid has already divided the union. “Ukraine is in no way ready to negotiate on its ambitions to join the European Union,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said last month. In a Foreign Policy article in 2022, Amanda Coakley had called Orban “Putin’s Trojan horse inside the European Union.”The possibility of peace negotiations taking place is crucial to any analysis of how things will play out.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, commenting on the European Commission’s recommendation that accession negotiations with Kyiv should begin, suggested that Ukraine should not be admitted to the EU until the armed conflict there ends, otherwise it risks spreading throughout Europe. Meanwhile, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu warned that NATO allies need to stand firm in supporting Ukraine or risk right-wing and populist forces in the EU becoming even stronger.
The possibility of peace negotiations taking place is crucial to any analysis of how things will play out, but it is not at all clear that such a stage will be reached in 2024. Firstly, the disagreement between the two conflicting sides remains profound. Ukraine “cannot afford any stalemate,” according to Zelensky. The country previously lived under such conditions from 2014 to 2022 and cannot abide by it again in the future. According to the Ukrainian president, the conflict could end if Russia fulfills the conditions of the “peace formula” he presented. However, Moscow has ruled out negotiations based on the Ukrainian plan and called it unacceptable.
There have also been indications from both sides that they expect further conflict. Putin this month ordered an increase in the number of Russian troops of nearly 170,000, bringing the size of the army to 2.2 million, including 1.32 million troops. As for Ukraine, according to the latest polls, almost half of Ukrainians (44 percent) declared their readiness for compromises in peace negotiations with Russia, but about the same number (48 percent) were in favor of continuing hostilities. The survey was conducted by the one of the biggest nongovernmental and independent research organizations in Ukraine, the Rating group.
At the same time, there are other crucial partners in the war to consider. In November, Stoltenberg said that NATO members are not putting pressure on Ukraine regarding negotiations with Russia. According to him, strengthening Kyiv’s position in future negotiations requires continuing to provide it with military assistance. However, a minority of EU members oppose this view. Hungary’s Szijjarto said: “The propaganda saying that more fighting will create better conditions for signing a peace agreement is false. Today, the conditions for peace talks are far better than any that there will be tomorrow.”
The future course of the war is particularly closely connected with the US position. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder noted in an October interview with Berliner Zeitung that Washington prevented the conflict from being resolved in March 2022. The US, in his opinion, is the only one that can resolve the issue of a settlement. Therefore, the 2024 US presidential election, in addition to the European Parliament elections, might contribute to evolving approaches toward the war and the role of Western countries in it. This would have a direct impact on the possibility of peace negotiations.
Finally, elections are also expected in Ukraine in the spring of 2024. However, they cannot legally be held during a time of martial law, which continues to apply in the country. Zelensky himself has said that it is “not the right time” for elections. Meanwhile, he is acutely concerned about the “Churchill phenomenon,” referring to the electoral defeat of successful British wartime leader Winston Churchill in 1945. Despite uniting his people for this “national struggle,” Zelensky has faced criticism, which might add a domestic challenger to his external struggles.
To sum up, it is clear that Ukraine remains dedicated to its current course, along with its allies. Meanwhile, Russia continues to build its important role among what it terms the “world majority,” i.e., countries in the Global South and the East, which will help it to sustain its economy and war effort. Amid such dynamics, the situation is unlikely to change in 2024, prompting a pessimistic assessment of the possibility of peace. However, the new year will witness fundamental developments, with planned elections in the US, Europe and Ukraine.
It may be that, with many new politicians in power, there will be some shifts in the war. But if the geopolitical situation remains fairly static, there is a possibility that the Ukraine war will become a largely frozen conflict in 2024.
• Dr. Diana Galeeva is an academic visitor to Oxford University. X: @Dr_GaleevaDiana

It is in the interest of NATO and Arab states to deepen relations
Luke Coffey/Arab News/December 29, 2023
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently made an important visit to Saudi Arabia. This was the first such visit by a sitting secretary-general and will hopefully serve as the starting point for closer NATO-Arab relations in the coming years.
During his stop, Stoltenberg met with Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman and GCC Secretary-General Jassem Mohamed Albudaiwi, in addition to other senior officials. He also delivered remarks at the Saudi Armed Forces Command and Staff College.
The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which started in 2004, currently forms the basis of NATO’s relations with Arab states. Although all six members of the GCC were invited to join, only Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE have done so. In 2017, Kuwait became home to the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative Regional Center. The focus of the regional center is to increase the shared understanding of security challenges between NATO and its partners in the region through high-level meetings and educational courses. Saudi Arabia, while not a member of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, has shown interest in improving relations with NATO in recent years. This makes Stoltenberg’s choice of Saudi Arabia for his recent visit to the Middle East particularly significant.
However, little has been done to advance relations between NATO and the countries of the Middle East in recent years. After much enthusiasm in the early days of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, no new member has joined the grouping in years. The Middle East in general, and the Gulf region specifically, is often an afterthought in NATO’s official strategy documents. This is shortsighted. Although NATO’s remit is the transatlantic region, there is plenty of security overlap with the Middle East that requires attention.
Last October, Stoltenberg announced the formation of a team of experts to advise him on the best ways to improve relations between NATO and the countries of the Middle East. They are expected to report their findings and recommendations at the NATO foreign ministerial meeting this coming April. As they undergo their review, there are several things that the group should be considering to advance relations.
Firstly, NATO must focus on practical areas of cooperation with the countries in the Middle East. This includes cooperation on regional maritime security — especially as shipping in the Red Sea becomes more problematic. Also, there should be increased cooperation on improving air defense capabilities. With the proliferation of ballistic missiles across the Middle East and the increasing numbers of drones being used, the topic of air defense should be at the top of the agenda for NATO cooperation in the region. Finally, there is an ongoing and shared concern about counterterrorism. This should be another area of cooperation for NATO and the countries of the Middle East.
The first 20 years of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative have delivered only modest results. It would be in the interest of NATO and Arab states to deepen relations over the next 20 years.
Secondly, NATO should advocate expanding the membership of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The leaders of NATO and Saudi Arabia should build on the success of the secretary-general’s recent visit to Riyadh to formalize a closer relationship between the two sides. Since Saudi Arabia is a leader in the region, NATO cannot have effective engagement in the Middle East without close relations with Riyadh. As the secretary-general told an audience at the Saudi Armed Forces Command and Staff College: “I believe there is huge potential for NATO to do more with Saudi Arabia because we have mutual challenges.”
Thirdly, NATO should use 2024 as an opportunity to highlight the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative by marking the 20th anniversary of its founding. The alliance can do so by holding a special meeting of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative at the heads of state and government level. This is rarely done as they normally meet only at the foreign ministerial level.
Fourthly, as NATO marks this anniversary, it would be a good idea for the alliance to issue a strategy document outlining what NATO’s goals and aspirations are in the region. When NATO published its most recent Strategic Concept, the document meant to prepare the alliance for future threats and challenges, there was barely any attention given to the Middle East. In fact, in a document that is just over 4,200 words, only one paragraph of about 80 words was devoted to the region. Furthermore, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative was not mentioned at all.
Finally, NATO should appoint a special representative for the Middle East and North Africa region, where personal relationships are paramount. It should appoint a highly respected diplomat with knowledge of the region to be an enduring point of contact between the alliance and the region.
NATO has its hands full right now. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will soon enter its second year. The defense and security of eastern Europe is a constant concern for the alliance. The uncertainty of the upcoming presidential election in the US is making many European members of NATO anxious. The alliance is also undergoing a debate about what role, if any, it should have in Asia with the rise of China.
Even so, NATO cannot ignore the Middle East. Recent history has shown that when it comes to geopolitics and security challenges, the transatlantic region and the Middle East are closely linked. There has also been a good track record of security cooperation to build on. For example, a number of Arab states such as the UAE, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain have served as part of NATO-led missions in Libya, the Balkans and Afghanistan over the years.
The first 20 years of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative have delivered only modest results. It would be in the interest of NATO and Arab states to deepen relations over the next 20 years.
• Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. X: @LukeDCoffey