Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 17-18/2024
We must keep our eyes on the plow to honor the fatherhood of Saint John Maroun, our cross, the holiness of the land of Lebanon, and the heritage of freedom and pride/Edmond El-Chidiac/Face book/July 17, 2024
Hezb Attacks Settlements After Consecutive Israeli Raids
Israeli strike kills Syrian refugee children in Lebanon
Nasrallah vows to obliterate all of Israel’s tanks if they enter Lebanon
3 children among 5 dead in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon
Ministry of Finance: Taxing Windfall Profits/Liliane Mokbel/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
Gaza ‘Support Front:’ The Staggering Cost on Lebanon/Joanne Naoum/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
Corm Declares Last-Resort Solution
Lebanese society is split over a potential war with Israel/Rola El-Husseini, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Lund University/ The Conversation/July 17/2024
Hezbollah to hit new areas in Israel if it keeps targeting civilians, Nasrallah says
Shiite Muslims in Lebanon and Iraq commemorate Ashoura, marking the death of Imam Hussein
HSBC names Lebanon-born CFO Elhedery as next chief executive

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 17-18/2024
US military pier for carrying aid to Gaza will be dismantled after weather and security problems
Israel’s Gaza violations in spotlight as Russian foreign minister chairs UN Security Council meeting
Israel pounds central Gaza, sends tanks into north of Rafah
Netanyahu vows to 'increase pressure' on Hamas
Israeli citizen arrested for colluding with Iranian spies
Squeezed by Israel, Palestinian Authority's role fades in West Bank
Daesh ‘trying to reconstitute’ in Iraq, Syria, says US Central Command
Iran rejects accusations it was involved in plots to assassinate Trump
Islamic State attacks on track to double in Iraq and Syria compared to last year, US military says
Joe Biden Says He Originally Intended To Be 'Transitional Candidate'
Biden calls for ban on gun used to shoot Trump
Multiple failures, multiple investigations: Unraveling the attempted assassination of Donald Trump

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on July 17-18/2024
Trump’s foreign-policy platform reflects his first-term achievements/Richard Goldberg/New York Post/July 16, 2024
Today in History: ‘The Battle of the Lord Was Triumphantly Won, by God Alone and through God Alone’/Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/July 16/2024
Xi Jinping and China: Running Out of Time, Ready to Strike/Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute./July 16, 2024
International 'Hostage Diplomacy': Kidnapping for Fun and Profit/Nima Gholam Ali Pour/Gatestone Institute/July 17, 2024
Friend in need is a friend indeed: Vance's Israel support is most welcome/Jerusalem Post/July 17/2024
US election campaign heats up, alarming partners/Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/July 17, 2024
Turkiye will not abandon Syrian opposition for Assad deal/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/July 17, 2024
We are all entitled to an opinion about the race to the White House/Eyad Abu Shakra/Arab News/July 17, 2024
US Presidency: Is the Outcome Predetermined?/Rami Rayess/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 17-18/2024
We must keep our eyes on the plow to honor the fatherhood of Saint John Maroun, our cross, the holiness of the land of Lebanon, and the heritage of freedom and pride.
Edmond El-Chidiac/Face book/July 17, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/07/132145/
What a shame for a country like Lebanon, currently under Iranian occupation.
The days of disgrace, humiliation, surrender, and Dhimmitude have not yet ended.
The vile, the lowly, and the obsequious, against all that is righteous and patriotic, insist on remaining in charge of our affairs.
The Maronites, who kneel only to their almighty Lord, why are they silent? And who is speaking on their behalf at the present time?
As we say in our holy mountains, "Till when shall the goat lead, while the stallion sprays his horn with gel and falls asleep?"
O Lord, grant us your kindness and give us patience, faith, and commitment so that we do not leave the plow and continue cultivating our land with the seeds of freedom and dignity, while resisting by all means domestication, encroachment, and Dhimmitude.
We must keep our eyes on the plow to honor the fatherhood of Saint John Maroun, our cross, the holiness of the land of Lebanon, and the heritage of freedom and pride.
Long live free and independent Lebanon, the Land of the Holy Cedars.

Hezb Attacks Settlements After Consecutive Israeli Raids
This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
Following a violent night on the southern border, Hezbollah claimed responsibility on Wednesday morning for Katyusha missile attacks on the settlements of Saer and Gesher Haziv. On Tuesday night, Israel once again bombed Umm al-Tut, where three Syrian children died early in the evening in a raid. Night raids also targeted Bustan, Wadi el-Zarka (near Tayr Harfa) as well as Aita al-Shaab, Wadi Zebqine and Wadi Hassan (near Majdelzoun). A house in Yarine was also hit by a guided missile.

Israeli strike kills Syrian refugee children in Lebanon
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/July 17, 2024
BEIRUT: Israeli warplanes on Wednesday renewed their raids on the town of Umm Al-Tut, near the town of Marwahin in southern Lebanon, hours after similar raids on the town resulted in the deaths of three children from a Syrian refugee family. The children, who were killed while working on a farm when an Israeli drone struck, were buried in the town of Qasimia in the Tyre region. According to media reports from the south, “Israeli attacks recently hit new villages that were relatively spared for several months, and their residents had not been displaced.”Such attacks last week targeted the outskirts of the towns of Deir Mimas, Jdeidet Marjeyoun, Borj El-Mlouk, Qlayaat, Ebel El-Saqi, Rachaya Al-Foukhar, Rmeish and Kawkaba, which are predominantly Christian villages. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Wednesday to mark Ashura, said: “The enemy has gone too far in targeting civilians in recent days; two civilian martyrs in Kfarkela, three martyrs, a brother and his two sisters in Bint Jbeil, two Syrian civilian martyrs between Arnoun and Kfar Tebnit, three child martyrs in Umm Al-Tut near the border. “The resistance responded to this at night with dozens of rockets, approximately 120 rockets, targeting Kiryat Shmona and many other settlements; six or seven settlements at night. Today, I want to tell the enemy that persistence in targeting civilians will prompt the resistance to launch rockets and target new settlements that have not been targeted before,” Nasrallah said. Alfred Mady, the head of Al-Khayar Al-Akhar, or The Other Choice movement, made a plea to the Maronite authority in Bkerke to “take action to preserve the Christian presence in southern Lebanon.”A security source suggested that “Israel may be adopting a policy of intimidating civilians in villages that have been spared so far, to push them to flee and thus continue pressuring Hezbollah.”Nasrallah warned Israel of the consequences of any invasion of Lebanon, saying Israel would be left without any tanks if a full-blown conflict erupted. “Our front will not stop as long as the aggression continues on Gaza, and the threat of war will not scare us.”He stressed that “in case the aggression stops, the party negotiating on behalf of Lebanon is the Lebanese state, and we informed everyone who contacted us that the party responsible for negotiations and providing answers is the Lebanese state. All rumors about a ready agreement on the situation at the southern borders are incorrect. No agreement has been reached so far. There are drafts, ideas, and proposals. The future of the situation in the south will be decided in light of the results of this battle.”Nasrallah said: “Whatever support the Lebanese state will provide to our people in the villages of the south, we assure our people whose homes were completely or partially demolished that we will work with you. We will reconstruct our homes, and we will rebuild our front villages as they were and more beautiful than they were.” Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib warned of the catastrophic consequences that would arise in the event of any Israeli escalation against Lebanon. He praised the diplomatic efforts of the mediators, emphasizing “Lebanon’s commitment to initiatives and solutions aimed at reducing escalation and enhancing regional security and peace.”

Nasrallah vows to obliterate all of Israel’s tanks if they enter Lebanon
Naharnet/July 17, 2024
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday pledged that his group’s fighters would wipe out the Israeli army’s tanks should they invade Lebanon in any future war.Commenting on the Israeli army’s disclosure that it is suffering from a shortage of tanks due to the war in Gaza and the conflict with Hezbollah, Nasrallah said: “If your tanks come to Lebanon and its south, you will not suffer from a shortage of tanks, because you will no longer have tanks.”As for Israel’s deadly strikes on civilians in south Lebanon, Nasrallah warned Israel: “If you continue to target civilians, the resistance will target settlements that have not been targeted until now.”The Hezbollah leader was speaking in a televised address marking the last day of the Ashoura commemorations. “Our front in Lebanon will not be deactivated as long as the aggression with its various forms continues against Gaza and its people,” he reiterated.
Commenting on media reports concerning the Lebanese front, Nasrallah said: “Everything that is being rumored about a ready agreement for the situation on the Lebanese front is incorrect and the future of the situations in the south will be decided based on the results of the battle, in which the resistance and the supporting fronts will triumph.”“Should there be a ceasefire, the side concerned with the negotiations and giving answers will be the Lebanese state,” not Hezbollah, Nasrallah added. “We will rebuild our frontline villages and they will become more beautiful than they were,” he went on to say. Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed 511 people, mostly fighters but also including at least 104 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, 17 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to authorities. The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, who last went to war in the summer of 2006.

3 children among 5 dead in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon
Agence France Presse/July 17, 2024
Lebanese official media said separate Israeli strikes Tuesday in south Lebanon killed five people including three Syrian children, with Hezbollah announcing rocket fire at Israel in retaliation. "Three Syrian children" were killed "in an enemy raid that targeted farmland in the village of Umm Toot," the National News Agency (NNA) said.It also said an Israeli drone strike had targeted a motorcycle on the Kfar Tebnit road elsewhere in south Lebanon, killing two Syrians. A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP the two Syrians were civilians who worked nearby and had been swimming in the area. The NNA said that "eyewitnesses reported that the motorbike was carrying two people and that when a number of citizens tried to approach the bike... it was subjected to a second strike." Hezbollah said it launched rounds of "Katyusha rockets" at northern Israel in response to the Israeli strikes. The group in separate statements mentioned both "the death of two civilians" in Kfar Tebnit and "the horrible massacre in Umm Toot village" as reasons for the retaliatory fire. The United Nations children's agency said that "more children are at risk as long as the violence continues.""The killing of three more children by an airstrike today as they were reportedly playing in front of their home in south Lebanon is horrific," UNICEF said on social media platform X. Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon were initially identified Tuesday, followed by a further 10 later in the day. The air force launched strikes against parts of south Lebanon where it said there were Hezbollah sites, including a "terrorist cell" in the Yarin area, which is close to Umm Toot. Sirens warning of incoming fire blared overnight in northern Israel, the military said, with no reports of casualties. In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed 511 people, mostly fighters but also including at least 104 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, 17 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to authorities. The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, who last went to war in the summer of 2006.

Ministry of Finance: Taxing Windfall Profits
Liliane Mokbel/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
The Ministry of Finance has directed the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) to notify its members to provide a list of their clients, individuals and entities, including names, addresses and tax registration numbers, who have repaid their debts in bank dollars or lollars. This request is based on provisions of tax procedural law and aims to tax windfall profits realized under exceptional circumstances. In its latest report on Lebanon, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated “windfall profits” realized through the end of 2021 at $15 billion, alongside approximately $32 billion in bank loans repaid early in lollars from October 2019 to the same period in 2021. In this context, it’s notable that the profits earned complied with the prevailing laws at the time and were legitimate. The current focus is simply on taxing these profits. The resulting revenue would go towards funding the Bank Deposit Recovery Fund, currently under review in parliamentary committees. The financial chaos at the onset of the crisis favored borrowers at the expense of depositors. The IMF has highlighted this phenomenon and recommended redistributing wealth between these two groups.
Beneficiaries and Losers
At the onset of the crisis, economic actors were unprepared for its multiple impacts, which caught everyone off guard. Many borrowers from banks repaid their dollar-denominated loans using lollars checks, non-liquid green greenbacks. This further depleted the cash reserves in greenbacks held by banks, which essentially represented clients’ deposits. This process resulted in both losers and beneficiaries alike.
The Three Categories
Businesses and individuals which benefited from this chaotic situation can be classified into three categories. The first includes those who repaid their loans using their own foreign currency bank accounts. The second category comprises economic agents who purchased foreign currency checks at a discounted rate on the market, which they deposited into their bank accounts to settle their debts instead of directly paying in cash. A check at a discounted market rate refers to a foreign currency check exchanged or sold at a price below its face value due to factors like exchange rate fluctuation between foreign currency and the local currency. Lastly, the third category consists of businesses and individuals who repaid their dollar-denominated loans in Lebanese pounds at the official rate of 1,500 pounds per dollar.
The Imperative Need for a Law
The second and third categories should logically be targeted by the tax, as they repaid their loans below their actual value. This tax is currently under consideration in a bill by the Ministry of Finance. While some legal experts argue that implementing this tax requires new legislation, others contend that applying the existing Lebanese tax law, which imposes a 17% tax on profits, is enough. Taxable gains for borrowers would reflect the exchange rate difference between bank rates and those of the parallel market.
Losses for All
The fallout from the chaos has affected not only depositors but also banks. The early repayment of loans has harmed multiple parties, leading banks to lose earnings by depriving them of the interest they would have earned over the loans’ original terms.
That being said, despite facing additional penalties for early repayment, businesses remained undeterred by these fines due to the substantial profits they could gain. Moreover, existing legislation supported their actions, making it difficult for banks to dissuade them. The real estate sector reaped substantial benefits from the early repayment procedure for loans in lollars. This approach allowed indebted individuals to settle their real estate loans using bank checks in bank dollars. Subsequently, real estate developers also used similar checks to repay their loans to the banks.
According to certain experts, this type of tax could generate revenues of between two to three billion dollars for the Deposit Recovery Fund, marking a substantial contribution.

Gaza ‘Support Front:’ The Staggering Cost on Lebanon
Joanne Naoum/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
After the July war in 2006, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah flabbergasted the Lebanese by declaring a “divine victory” against Israel. Lebanon had paid a heavy cost for this so-called “victory” with countless human losses and massive destruction, from which it took years to recover.
Once again, Nasrallah disregarded the sanctity of the state, its constitution and laws by involving Lebanon in a war, presumably, “in support of Gaza.” On Wednesday (July 10), he emphasized, “If a ceasefire agreement is reached in Gaza, our front will stop,” notwithstanding the nine months of a ravaging war at the expense of the Lebanese.
Human, Material, Ecological Losses
The nine-month-long war in South Lebanon inflicted human, material, ecological and psychological losses and damages. However, “it is too early to fully and accurately assess the damages since the war is still ongoing,” according to Information International. There are 17 million square meters of burned agricultural land, according to the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS). In addition, economic losses are incurred due to farmers’ inability to cultivate their lands, especially tobacco and wheat. It is believed that the white phosphorous bombs dropped by Israel on South Lebanon remain active, very toxic and flammable, causing long-term and potentially irreversible damage to the environment, agriculture and economy, and making it uninhabitable. By March 6, 117 phosphoric bombs had been dropped on the South, according to the CNRS. Some called it “an ecological genocide.”
Moreover, 1,880 homes were completely destroyed, 1,500 heavily damaged, and 5,600 slightly damaged, while 220 institutions and businesses incurred big losses and damages. The continuous confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah forced as many as 90,500 people to flee their homes, including 1,300 living in shelters. Some 494 people, including 356 Hezbollah members and 73 civilians, have been killed until July 8.
Billions in Losses
Economic expert Jassem Ajaka pointed out that there are direct and indirect losses resulting from the ongoing war. Direct losses, estimated between $2 billion and $4 billion, result from destruction, crop losses and pollution from phosphorus bombs. “The damage inflicted on arable land is extensive and will lead to long-term indirect losses as it becomes unusable for many years,” Ajaka told This is Beirut.He explained that indirect losses involve missed economic opportunities. A Standard & Poor’s study highlighted three possible scenarios: a conflict lasting 3-6 months, a conflict lasting until mid-2024 and an extended war. In the second scenario, losses include an estimated $1.6 billion in tourism revenue, a 6% loss in foreign reserves and a 9.8% GDP loss. In the third scenario, losses are estimated at $3.7 billion in tourism revenue, 13.9% in foreign reserves and 22.9% in GDP.
Thus far, tourism losses are estimated at $1.6 billion, foreign reserve losses 6%, or $600 million, and GDP losses 9.8%, or $2.25 billion, Ajaka pointed out, adding that “had the war not happened, potential tourism revenues would have been around $7 billion.”
… and Psychological
Psychologist and Psychotherapist Charlotte Khalil highlighted the pervasive sense of insecurity and instability in Lebanon, particularly in the South. “This situation has led to displacement, significant psychological impacts, and reactivation of past traumas for many Lebanese,” she said in an interview with This is Beirut. “People are anxious about the potential spread of conflict, affecting Lebanese at home and abroad. Parents dread having their children come home, while embassy alerts to their nationals increase people’s anxiety, affecting their mental health. The uncertainty forces Lebanese to focus on their day to day, making future planning impossible and undermining psychological stability,” Khalil added. People were panic-stricken by Israeli aircraft which broke the sound barrier all over the Lebanese regions recently, smashing windows in several villages in southern Lebanon. “Anyone heard these loud booms? I’m shaking. I’m told it’s Israeli jets above the north of #Lebanon?” one person tweeted. “The place shook … twice. It was a sound reminiscent of the unforgettable August 4th (Beirut port explosion),” tweeted another.
‘A Divine Victory?’
Lebanese Forces MP Ghada Ayoub lashed out at Hezbollah for making decisions on war and peace without consulting the government, compromising Lebanon’s sovereignty. The government’s decision-making power has been “hijacked,” Ayoub said, calling for the redeployment of the Lebanese army as the sole legitimate force in southern Lebanon and the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, the Taif Agreement and the Lebanese constitution. “Without these measures, we will not achieve true victory… all that is achieved is the breakdown of the state’s value, respect, and existence,” she said, in obvious allusion to Nasrallah’s so-called “divine victory.”Should a ceasefire be reached in Gaza, will Nasrallah announce a “divine victory” on the ruins of a country?

Corm Declares Last-Resort Solution
This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
Caretaker Minister of Telecommunications Johnny Corm asserted on Wednesday that “a general Internet blackout is absolutely forbidden,” revealing that “there is a last-resort solution.”Corm pointed out that although he was being optimistic and reassuring, “the words of Ogero CEO, Imad Kreidiyeh, warning about Internet blackout were true, since our ministry hadn’t yet received the necessary funds for maintenance since the start of this year.”It is noteworthy that the ministry’s 2024 budget is LBP 2 trillion Lebanese.He explained that the problem lies in the mechanism in place whereby funds generated by the telecoms sector are transferred to the Finance Ministry and then spent by the Telecom Ministry budget. “Hence, the money collected from citizens is not in the hands of the Ministry of Telecoms or Ogero, but the Ministry of Finance,” he continued. Moreover, he emphasized that “it is absolutely forbidden to interrupt Internet and communications in Lebanon,” stating that “in the worst-case scenario mobile operators Alfa and Touch would be obliged to cover expenses until the Ministry of Finance disburses the amounts due.”It is worth recalling that many cables needed for network maintenance or development are not available, due to a lack of funds to purchase them. The same applies to machines that are no longer in service. Additionally, all the generators powering the centers are faulty and cannot be replaced. It should be noted that in the event of a breakdown or malfunction on Ogero’s network, Internet services throughout the country will be affected, since the operator supplies data to all access providers. On the other hand, Corm indicated that “the salaries of Alfa and Touch employees are higher than those of Ogero employees because the laws in force have made it possible to increase their salaries.”“That’s why I’m demanding that Ogero become a joint-stock company, so that we can increase employee pay,” he added. “Lebanon is the third country in the world without a telecommunications regulatory authority,” Corm revealed, noting that “this needs to change, because the presence of a regulatory body is very important for drawing up a long-term plan that is not altered with every change of minister.”Regarding the rumor of spying on the submarine cable, he said that the rumor originated with the former CEO of Ogero, Abdel Menhem Youssef, and he asked him for proof, if available.

Lebanese society is split over a potential war with Israel
Rola El-Husseini, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Lund University/ The Conversation/July 17/2024
Hezbollah began launching rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians shortly after the start of the war in Gaza. These attacks prompted skirmishes along the border that have escalated and spread further into the territory of both countries. On July 10, for example, the Israeli military said it had hit a Hezbollah site just 49 miles from the capital, Beirut. The strike came two weeks after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant threatened to take Lebanon “back to the stone age”. After an 18-year lull, a new war between Hezbollah and Israel seems inevitable. Lebanese politics is based on a power-sharing system among the country’s different sectarian groups. Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organisation that emerged in the 1980s, is one of these groups. Hezbollah has near total control over its own community, which it also represents in parliament. Dissenting Shia voices have all but disappeared following the assassination of a Shia public intellectual and vocal Hezbollah critic, Lokman Slim, in 2021. However, the rest of Lebanese society is divided about Hezbollah and the group’s involvement in a war with Israel. The leaders of Lebanon’s two other major communities, the Sunni Muslims and the Christians, and those of the smaller but politically powerful Druze community, have issued statements urging caution and restraint. Yet, some Sunni and Christian groups in particular are sympathetic to Hezbollah’s position.
Sunnis
Lebanon’s Sunnis are split along ideological lines. Since the start of the war, Sunni Islamist groups have begun to side with Hezbollah against Israel. On the other hand, more secular groups and people have called for restraint. The country’s Sunni former prime minister, Fouad Siniora, for example, has accused Hezbollah of taking Lebanon “to the brink of the abyss”. Siniora was in office in 2006 when a cross-border attack by Hezbollah fighters sparked a 34-day conflict with Israel. Many Sunni Islamists in Lebanon have long viewed Hezbollah with distrust. This was, in large part, because the group turned its weapons on Sunni backers of the Lebanese government in May 2008 during a brief spell of intense sectarian violence. But some of the Sunni groups that were apprehensive of Hezbollah have grown closer to the organisation over the past nine months. One of these groups is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaa Islamiya, whose Al-Fajr forces have been fighting Israel in southern Lebanon alongside Hezbollah since late October 2023. The group’s participation in the hostilities has, however, been “largely symbolic and limited”. By May 2024, the group had only lost seven fighters.
Christians
The Lebanese Christian community’s stance towards Hezbollah is mainly divided among three political parties: the Kataeb and the Lebanese Forces (LF) on the anti-Hezbollah side, and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) which has broadly supported the Shia party since 2006.
In recent months, the leaders of both the LF and Kataeb have accused Hezbollah of waging an unnecessary “war of attrition” and provoking Israel into attacks on Lebanon. They appear reluctant to participate in a regional conflict in the hope of protecting Christian areas, and they criticise Hezbollah for taking unilateral decisions in the name of all Lebanese citizens. The FPM’s stance is more complicated. For over a decade, the FPM has provided Hezbollah with cross-sectarian cover. However, the relationship has become increasingly strained since October 2022. The then president Michel Aoun’s term came to an end and Hezbollah refused to support the presidential ambition of the FPM’s leader and Aoun’s son-in-law, Gibran Bassil. In April 2024, Bassil declared that the FPM supports “the Resistance” (Hezbollah’s adopted name), but “rejects Hezbollah’s position to participate in the Gaza war without internal national consensus”. More recently, the FPM took advantage of the spectre of war to warn of state collapse if Lebanon’s presidential vacancy persists. Two other important Christian stakeholders are the patriarch of the Maronite church, Bechara Boutros Rai, and a rightwing private militia in eastern Beirut called Jnoud al-Rab (Soldiers of God). Since November 2023, Patriarch Rai has urged officials to protect Lebanon and has regularly issued statements against Hezbollah’s involvement in the Gaza war. In June, he described Hezbollah’s activities in the south as “terrorist”, which led to a boycott of the Patriarchate’s June spiritual summit by Shia religious leadership.Jnoud al-Rab claims to represent and defend Achrafieh, a Christian neighbourhood in Beirut. The group has unofficial political and religious support, and positions itself as the Christian counterpart to Hezbollah’s concept of “self-security”.
The group has exacerbated sectarian tension within Lebanon. Jnoud al-Rab claims that Hezbollah’s actions are endangering the country and Lebanon’s Christian community. In January 2024, the group hijacked flight screens at Beirut airport and displayed a message warning Hezbollah against engaging in war with Israel.
Druze
The leading Druze politician, Walid Jumblatt, is the weathervane of Lebanese politics. Despite now being retired, he remains an important voice for the Druze (who constitute around 5% of the Lebanese population). In October, he called on Hezbollah “not to be dragged into the war”. He also took to social media to ask Israel’s Druze community not to participate in the war. However, he clearly stated at the beginning of the conflict that he will side with Hezbollah should Israel attack Lebanon. And, since then, Jumblatt has noted that “the rules of engagement have changed”.
Lebanon’s major communities have largely been consistent in urging restraint and would prefer to see Hezbollah avoid a war with Israel. But Hezbollah’s actions have deepened sectarian divides and have complicated Lebanon’s internal politics. Should war break out, however, the sects of Lebanon will probably all rally around Hezbollah, as was the case in 2006.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Rola El-Husseini has received funding from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ)

Hezbollah to hit new areas in Israel if it keeps targeting civilians, Nasrallah says
Reuters/July 17, 2024
BEIRUT (Reuters) -Hezbollah will hit new Israeli targets if Israel keeps targeting civilians in Lebanon, the group's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday, noting a spike in the number of non-combatants killed in Lebanon in recent days.
Five civilians, all Syrians and including three children, were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Tuesday and at least three Lebanese civilians were killed the day before, according to state media and security sources. Israel has said it is striking Hezbollah militants and infrastructure in Lebanon and does not target civilians. "Continuing to target civilians will push the Resistance to launch missiles at settlements that were not previously targeted," Nasrallah said, in comments made during a televised address to mark the Shi'ite holy day Ashoura. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group and the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon, refers to all Israeli population centres as settlements and does not recognise Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since Hezbollah announced a "support front" with Palestinians shortly after its ally Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, triggering Israel's ensuing military offensive in Gaza. Iran-aligned groups in the region, including Shi'ite armed factions in Syria and Iraq and Yemen's Houthis, have also been firing on Israel since shortly after Oct. 7. In Lebanon, the fighting has killed more than 100 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to a Reuters tally, and led to levels of destruction in Lebanese border towns and villages not seen since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Nasrallah promised that totally or partially destroyed homes would be rebuilt "more beautiful than they were before."Nasrallah also played down Israel's ability to fight a full-scale war in Lebanon, saying its military capabilities had been degraded in Gaza and asserting that all of the Israeli army's tanks would face destruction should they enter Lebanon. Fears have grown in recent weeks among international observers that Israel may expand its military operations in Lebanon, risking a wider war.
Israel has said it is undertaking the necessary preparations for a wider operation but no decision has yet been made. Hezbollah has said it does not want war with Israel but is ready for it.

Shiite Muslims in Lebanon and Iraq commemorate Ashoura, marking the death of Imam Hussein
Kareem Chehayeb/The Associated Press/Wed, July 17, 2024
Shiite Muslims Wednesday in Lebanon and Iraq commemorated Ashoura, marking the 7th-century death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, that gave birth to their faith, while paying tribute to Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war entered its 10th month and tensions heightened between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. The rift between Islam's two main sects deepened after Sunnis killed Imam Hussein in battle in the Iraqi city of Karbala, south of Baghdad. It continues to this day to play a key role in shaping the identity of Shiites, who represent over 10% of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims.
In the Shiite community, Ashoura is viewed as a symbol of struggle against injustice and tyranny. Participants usually wear black and set up black funeral tents, a sign of mourning, while carrying red flags that represent Hussein's blood. Clerics recount the story of his death as Shiite Muslims cry and beat their chests.
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, youth scouts held portraits of the militant group's leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric Moussa al-Sadr who has been missing since 1978. Thousands attended the procession which paid tribute to hundreds of Hezbollah militants killed in monthslong clashes with the Israeli military in southern Lebanon, many waving the group’s yellow flags. Nasrallah previously said that Hezbollah wouldn't hold Ashoura processions in southern Lebanon because of the ongoing clashes.
After the outbreak of the war in Gaza on Oct. 7, following Hamas' surprise attack, Hezbollah — an ally of the Palestinian militant group — launched attacks against Israel, killing 17 soldiers and 13 civilians in the last 10 months. Israeli airstrikes on south Lebanon have killed over 450 people. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the tense Lebanon-Israel border have since been displaced. In a televised address to commemorate Ashoura Wednesday, Nasrallah warned the Israeli military against targeting civilians in Lebanon, saying the group will target new Israeli towns and villages otherwise.
“If your tanks came to Lebanon and southern Lebanon ... you won't have any left.”In Iraq, thousands of Shiite Muslim pilgrims commemorated Ashoura in Karbala at Hussein’s shrine, the largest Islamic gathering except for the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Iraqis often chant against rampant corruption, but this year, they also held Palestinian flags in support and chanted in support of Hezbollah.Some beat their backs bloody with chains and knives in ritual bloodletting known as “tatbir,” meant to recreate the blood flowing from the slain Hussein, a practice that has become debated among Shiite clerics in recent decades. The leader of one of the militias, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, said in a statement Hussein’s battle in Karbala is still ongoing to this day as they fight Israel and the United States. Abu Alaa al-Walae said, referred to an alliance of Iran, Hezbollah, and other Tehran-backed groups as “the camp that champions the rights of Hussein."Iraqi security forces were on high alert for potential attacks. Since the war in Gaza erupted, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias, calling themselves the Islamic Resistance, have claimed attacks on U.S. military bases and positions in Iraq and in eastern Syria, demanding an end to the war and for American troops to leave both countries. Ashoura this year also witnessed a rare attack against Shiites commemorating the occasion Monday night in Oman that killed six people and wounded 30. The extremist Islamic State group claimed the attack without providing clear evidence. The group's Aamaq news agency released a video allegedly showing the three attackers opening fire at worshipers at a Shiite mosque in the capital Muscat, a shocking event in the peaceful Sultanate.

HSBC names Lebanon-born CFO Elhedery as next chief executive
Agence France PresseJuly 17, 2024
HSBC on Wednesday named chief financial officer Georges Elhedery as the bank's next chief executive to drive "the next phase of development and growth."The new boss will take the helm on September 2, the bank said, as it looks to push on with a transformation undertaken by current CEO Noel Quinn, who announced his shock retirement in April. "I am delighted to confirm Georges as the next HSBC Group chief executive," group chairman Mark Tucker said in a filing to Hong Kong's stock exchange. "The Board concluded that Georges was the outstanding candidate and we look forward to working together as he leads HSBC through the next phase of development and growth." Elhedery, 50, joined HSBC in 2005 and previously held the role of Co-CEO of Global Banking and Markets before being appointed chief financial officer in January 2023. The Lebanon-born, French-educated banker also led the bank's Middle Eastern, North Africa and Turkey region from July 2016 to February 2019. Before assuming the role of CFO in 2023, Elhedery had a six-month sabbatical that included spending time learning Mandarin, according to Bloomberg News. Elhedery has a "track record of leading through change, driving growth, delivering simplification, containing costs and brings a strong focus on execution," Tucker said. Elhedery said he was "deeply honored by the trust placed in me to lead this great institution into the future.""Working together with our talented team, I look forward to delivering exceptional value to our clients and investors by driving strong performance on a sustainable growth trajectory," he said in the filing. HSBC said it will announce the next chief financial officer in due course. Quinn will work with Elhedery to ensure a "smooth and orderly" handover before stepping down, the bank added. Quinn, 62, oversaw a transformation of the London-headquartered lender and saw record profits during almost five years in charge. Under him, the firm has accelerated a years-long pivot to Asia -- where it generates most of its revenue -- vowing to develop its wealth business and target fast-growing markets. The bank has concluded the sales of its Canadian operations and its retail bank operations in France. It will also sell its Argentina division. Quinn last year led the effort to repel a bid by major shareholder Ping An to spin off its Asia assets, with the proposal eventually voted down by shareholders. The break-up bid highlighted HSBC's precarious position amid U.S.-China tensions, with some observers questioning whether Europe's largest lender can continue to straddle East and West.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 17-18/2024
US military pier for carrying aid to Gaza will be dismantled after weather and security problems
WASHINGTON (AP)/Lolita C. Baldor And Tara Copp/July 17, 2024
The U.S. military-built pier to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza will be dismantled and brought home, ending a mission that has been fraught with repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other supplies could get to starving Palestinians. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation.”As the U.S. military steps away from the sea route for humanitarian aid, questions swirl about Israel’s new plan to use the port at Ashdod as a substitute. There are few details on how it will work and lingering concerns about whether aid groups will have enough viable land crossings to get assistance into the territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas. But Cooper said the Ashdod corridor will be more sustainable.
Critics call the pier a $230 million boondoggle that failed to bring in the level of aid needed to stem a looming famine. The U.S. military, however, has maintained that it served as the best hope as aid only trickled in during a critical time of near-famine in Gaza and that it got close to 20 million pounds (9 million kilograms) of desperately needed supplies to the Palestinians. President Joe Biden, who announced the building of the pier during his State of the Union speech in March, expressed disappointment that it didn’t do as well as hoped. “I’ve been disappointed that some of the things that I put forward have not succeeded as well — like the port we attached from Cyprus,” Biden, a Democrat, said during a news conference last week. “I was hopeful that would be more successful.”
Planned as a temporary fix to get aid to starving Palestinians, the project was panned from the start by aid groups that condemned it as a waste of time and money. While U.S. defense officials acknowledged that the weather was worse than expected and limited the days the pier could operate, they also expressed frustration with humanitarian groups for being unable and unwilling to distribute the aid that got through the system, only to have it pile up onshore. A critical element that neither the aid groups nor the U.S. military could control, however, was the Israeli defense forces whose military operation into Gaza put humanitarian workers in persistent danger and in a number of cases cost them their lives. As a result, the pier operated for fewer than 25 days after its installation May 16, and aid agencies used it only about half that time due to security concerns.
Stuck in the middle were the more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors who largely lived on boats off the Gaza shore and struggled to keep the pier working but spent many days repairing it or detaching it, moving it and reinstalling it due to the bad weather. The tensions played out until the final moments, as senior Biden administration officials signaled the end of the pier project days ago but U.S. Central Command balked, holding out hope the military could reinstall it one last time to move any final pallets of aid ashore. Most would agree that use of the maritime route and what is known as the Army’s Joint Logistics Over the Shore capability, or JLOTS, fell short of early expectations. Even at the start, officials warned of challenges because the sea is shallow, the weather is unpredictable and it was an active war zone.
The U.S. also had to train Israeli troops and others on how to anchor the pier to the shore because no U.S. troops could step foot on Gaza soil, a condition Biden has had since the beginning of the Hamas-Israel conflict in October.
However, enough aid to feed 450,000 people for a month flowed through the pier, according to the United States Agency for International Development, which coordinated with the United Nations and others to get supplies to people in need. As important, humanitarian leaders say, the pier operation laid the groundwork for a coordination system with the Israeli government and military that they can expand on.
The one place where deconfliction with the Israeli military worked well was at the pier, which came online at a time of some of the greatest despair and food shortages, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said. She said Israel and the military have now agreed to extend that coordination plan to “all of Gaza.”Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that a new Pier 28 will soon be established at Israel’s Ashdod port for delivering aid to the Gaza Strip as a replacement for the U.S. military-built pier. He did not say when it would start operating. Other aid groups, however, slammed the U.S. military pier as a distraction, saying the U.S. should have instead pressured Israel to open more land crossings and allow the aid to flow more quickly and efficiently through them. Everyone has agreed all along that land crossings are the most productive way to get aid into Gaza, but the Israeli military routinely has blocked routes and slowed deliveries due to inspections. Aid groups also were terrorized by attacks, from Hamas, gunmen who stripped convoys of supplies and the Israeli military. More than 278 workers have been killed in the conflict, Power said.
As the Pentagon and the Army take stock of how the pier did, questions will loom about whether officials underestimated the persistent weather challenges and security hurdles that hindered the operation.
The system is run by the Army's 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. And it's like a huge LEGO system — an array of 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) pieces of steel that can be locked together to form a pier and causeway. It's unclear if U.S. forces were adequately prepared for the unpredictable and turbulent weather in the Gaza region. Nine days after the pier was installed on the Gaza shore, bad weather broke it, forcing troops to dismantle it and take it to the Israeli port at Ashdod for more than two weeks for repairs.Weather forced troops to detach the pier from the shore two more times and move it to Ashdod. It was detached for the final time on June 28, and poor weather prevented the U.S. from reinstalling it. Aid groups struggled to distribute the supplies from the pier into Gaza, and their efforts came to an abrupt halt after a June 8 Israeli military raid that rescued four hostages but killed hundreds of Palestinians.Troops used an area near the pier to land a helicopter and fly out the hostages. To have even a small part of an Israeli military operation so close to the pier creates problems for aid groups who rely on being independent and separate from troops to remain safe. As a result, the U.N. suspended all World Food Program deliveries while it conducted a review, which has not been released. WFP personnel have not distributed aid from the pier since but hired contractors to move aid that piled up on shore to warehouses so it would not spoil.

Israel’s Gaza violations in spotlight as Russian foreign minister chairs UN Security Council meeting
EPHREM KOSSAIFY/Arab News/July 18, 2024
NEW YORK CITY: Speaking on behalf of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday, his chef de cabinet, Courtenay Rattray, called for the violence in Gaza to end and all parties involved in the conflict to “reach a deal, now.” He said the humanitarian situation in the territory has become “a moral stain on us all,” and added: “Amid continued reports of serious abuses against Palestinians in Israeli custody, I reiterate that all detainees must be treated humanely and those held without lawful cause must be released. And this terrible war must end.” Speaking during a meeting of the Security Council to discuss Palestine, he underscored the importance of “ensuring that governance is restored in Gaza under a single, legitimate Palestinian government,” support for which is “critical.” Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s permanent observer at the UN, accused Israel of killing those people most deserving of protection, “including children, humanitarians, doctors (and) journalists,” and of defying “every nation on earth” and “every organ ever set up to uphold the most fundamental rules.”
He said: “What is happening in Gaza will go down as the most-documented genocide in history. How cruel could you be? How criminal must you be to bomb the same population, over and over and over again? “Israel has manufactured a humanitarian catastrophe with famine as its core, starvation, dehydration and the spread of diseases as ultimate weapons. “(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu does not care about Palestinian lives or even the hostages’ lives. He does not care about international law or human decency. He only cares about his own political survival. So what will you do to ensure this lunatic is not the one calling the shots, continuing this genocidal war against the Palestinian people?” The Palestinian envoy vowed that his people would live “in freedom and dignity on their ancestral land. They will accept nothing less, they will accept nothing else but fulfilling this right.
“Being killed, maimed, oppressed, detained, starved, displaced is not our fate. There is a path to peace and prosperity.” Mansour called on the Security Council to “strengthen those who seek peace rather than arm those who seek extermination; sanction those who colonize rather than allowing them to punish those who oppose the uprooting and displacement of communities; protect the victims rather than the perpetrators; recognize the state of Palestine rather than witness the destruction of the two-state solution.”
In his speech to the council, Israel’s envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, focused solely on Iran, accusing the regime in Tehran of being “obsessed with killing Jews everywhere, not only in Israel.” He said: “Iran has a global reach and it’s exporting its bloodshed and destruction to the four corners of Earth. “If one looks at all of the major conflicts in the Middle East, one finds the nefarious fingers of Iran. The people of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and many others have all suffered because of Iran’s attempts to inflame the region.” Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan shows a poster during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York City on July 17, 2024. (Reuters) Erdan said that since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas last year, Israel has also come under assault from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and that “all of the terrorist groups targeting us have one thing in common: they are directed from Tehran.”
He warned: “If we reach a situation of full-scale war in Lebanon, it is only because Hezbollah has shot thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians with the support and funding of Iran. You cannot say you didn’t know.” Erdan also warned the regime in Tehran that if it continues to threaten the region “it will find that its days are numbered. The proud Iranian people have had enough. The good people of the Middle East have had enough and so have we.” Russia holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month and the meeting was chaired by Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. He said a “frank and honest conversation” is needed about how best to immediately stop the bloodshed in Gaza and move toward the long-term settlement of “both long-standing and relatively new conflicts in the region.”
He added: “From the outset, we have highly valued the constructive potential of the Arab Peace Initiative launched by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2002. At the same time, we respected the decision of a number of Arab states to normalize relations with Israel prior to the resolution of the Palestinian question.”
Lavrov accused the US of becoming a direct accomplice in the conflict in Gaza “by providing diplomatic cover for Israel's actions and supplying (it with) arms and ammunition, just as it has done with the situation in Ukraine.
“If the US were to end its support, the bloodshed would stop but the US is either unwilling or unable to do so. It seems its goal is not saving human lives but various maneuvers that would help to score more points during the election campaign.”
He highlighted the important role the Gulf states can play and said the recent Iranian elections, and initial statements by the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, give “hope for rapprochement among all the countries of the Gulf in the interests of overcoming long-standing differences and mistrust, and joining efforts to determine the parameters of their own mutual security without external interference, and to speak with one voice to realize the aspirations of the Palestinian people and generally build an architecture of stability and good neighbors.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US representative at the UN, said progress is being made on a ceasefire deal. Israel and Hamas have both agreed to the framework for an agreement, which was endorsed by the Security Council in its adoption of Resolution 2735 on June 10, although there are still gaps to be closed, she said as she called on council members to maintain pressure on Hamas to accept the deal and begin implementing it “without delay and without conditions.”
She added: “We’re hopeful that a ceasefire in Gaza would assist diplomacy aimed at deescalating the situation along the blue line, which is necessary to enable displaced people in Israel and Lebanon to return home.” Thomas-Greenfield condemned in “the strongest terms” the significant increase in deadly violence against Palestinian civilians by extremist settlers in the West Bank, and reiterated Washington’s concern about a recent announcement by Israeli authorities of settlement expansion, which she said is “inconsistent with international law and detrimental to the two-state solution.”
Slovenia’s envoy, Samuel Zbogar, said: “There is no moral equality between Israel and Hamas. However, the conduct of both actors against civilians is deplorable and constitutes a crime. “Neither Hamas nor Israel care about civilians. Hamas is hiding among IDPs (internally displaced persons) and thus endangering lives of their fellow Palestinians, while Israel is showing complete disregard for the suffering of civilians, in (its) pursuit of Hamas.”

Israel pounds central Gaza, sends tanks into north of Rafah
Nidal al-Mughrabi/CAIRO (Reuters)/Wed, July 17, 2024
-Israeli forces hit areas in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least nine Palestinians, according to health officials, while Israeli tanks carried out a limited advance further into Rafah in the south.Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes have killed at least 81 Palestinians and wounded 198, the Gaza health ministry said. The ministry does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its casualty count. In one Israeli air strike around midnight on a house in Al-Zawyda in the central Gaza Strip, eight people were killed, the health officials said. In Rafah, where medics said two people were killed in an airstrike, tanks carried out a raid in the north of the city before pulling back, a tactic Israeli forces have used in other areas before mounting deeper incursions. The Israeli military said troops were "continuing precise, intelligence-based operational activity in the Rafah area". It said they had eliminated what it called a terrorist cell and a launcher that had been used to fire at troops. It said airstrikes had struck 25 targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the past day and that troops were continuing to operate in the central area, in part to dismantle structures used to observe the soldiers. Nine months into the war, Palestinian fighters led by the Islamist Hamas group are still able to attack Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, occasionally firing barrages of rockets into Israel. Israel's defence minister said that the military had made significant gains and the pressure was working. "Operations in Gaza have led to the conditions necessary to achieve an agreement for the return of hostages," Defense Minister Gallant said in an overnight call with his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin. Israel vowed to eradicate Hamas after its militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage in an attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies. On Tuesday, the military said it had eliminated half of the leadership of Hamas' military wing and killed or captured about 14,000 fighters since the start of the war, around half the fighting force estimated by the Israeli military.
At least 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory offensive since then, Gaza health authorities say. Israel says 326 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
MEDIATION EFFORTS STALLED
Diplomatic efforts by Arab mediators to halt the hostilities, backed by the United States, appear on hold, though all sides say they are open to more talks, including Israel and Hamas. A deal would aim to end the war and release Israeli hostages in Gaza in return for many Palestinians jailed by Israel. On Wednesday, Israel released 13 Palestinians detained during the offensive in Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement. Many of the hundreds of Palestinians Israel has released in the past months have accused Israeli forces of ill-treatment and torture. The Palestinian Prisoner Association said nearly 20 Palestinians had died in Israeli detention. Israel denies allegations of torture. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, which has repeatedly accused Israel's military of war crimes during its campaign in Gaza, issued a 252-page report on Wednesday on the Oct. 7 attack, accusing Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and at least four other Palestinian armed groups of committing "numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity" during the assault. These included "deliberate and indiscriminate attacks" against civilians, inhumane treatment and wilful killing of captives, sexual and gender-based violence, hostage taking, mutilation of bodies, use of human shields and looting. The findings, based on interviews with survivors, rescue workers and others, echo other accounts and largely match those of a UN inquiry last month, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war. Hamas rejected the report as containing "lies and blatant bias" and demanded Human Rights Watch withdraw it and apologise. "The Human Rights Watch report adopted the entire Israeli narrative," Hamas said in a statement.

Netanyahu vows to 'increase pressure' on Hamas
Agence France Presse/July 17, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to step up pressure on Hamas in war-torn Gaza, after the United States criticized the high civilian death toll in recent attacks. Netanyahu, in remarks during a state commemorative event, defended Israel's approach during the more than nine-month war, saying "Hamas is under pressure.""They are under increasing pressure because we are hurting them, eliminating their top commanders and thousands of terrorists," he said. "They are under pressure because we are remaining firm in our demands, despite all the pressure," he added, in an apparent reference to a chorus of international concern over the toll in the war since Hamas' October 7 attacks. "This is exactly the time to increase the pressure even more, to bring home all the hostages -– the living and the dead –- and to achieve all the war objectives," Netanyahu went on to say. His comments come as Israel has stepped up attacks on the besieged Palestinian territory, with Gazan rescuers saying three air strikes in one hour killed more than 40 people on Tuesday. At the weekend, more than 90 people were killed in a huge Israeli bombing raid on a safe zone, an operation Netanyahu said was targeting the Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif and one of his deputies. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the ceremony that Israel's military pressure "forces the leaders of the terrorist organization still alive to only take care of their own survival. "Without the capacity to command, control and lead, the Hamas organization becomes a group of terrorist gangs without a direction or a future," Gallant said. The Hamas October 7 attacks on Israel allegedly resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. The Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.Israel's military offensive has killed at least 38,713 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli citizen arrested for colluding with Iranian spies
Darryl Coote/United Press International/July 17, 2024
Pictured here is a screen capture of a conversation between suspected Iranian intelligence officers and Elimelech Stern, a 21-year-old Israeli citizen who has been arrested for colluding with the Tehran spies. PoliceImage courtesy of Israel Police/X
July 17 (UPI) -- An Israeli citizen has been arrested on accusations of being an operative for Iranian spies, according to authorities who say they have disrupted a Tehran espionage operation. Elimelech Stern, a 21-year-old Israeli citizen of Beit Shemesh, a city located about 18 miles west of Jerusalem, was indicted Tuesday by the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office with contacting a foreign agent. Israel Police said in a statement that Iranian intelligence agents communicated with Stern via the Telegram social media smartphone application, requesting he set forest fires and leave threatening messages and packages containing the severed heads of animals or dolls alongside a knife on the door steps of Israeli citizens. He was also asked to post advertisements in Tel Aviv and bury money at various locations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. According to screen captures of the conversations between suspected Iranian intelligence officers and Stern that were distributed by Israel Police, the agents offered money in exchange for carrying out tasks they referred to as "missions.""Are you brave. For a lot of money?" they asked. Stern is also accused of recruiting two other Israeli citizens to aid in the operations in exchange for payments in cryptocurrency. Authorities said Stern's two recruits have been questioned by police and released from their custody as they consider next steps in their cases. The three Israelis were arrested during the past two weeks in a joint counter-intelligence operation of the Israel Security Agency, known as Shin Bet, and Lahav 433, an Israeli crime fighting organization within the Israel Police. Israel Police said it has identified "numerous" profiles run by Iranian security agents and were monitoring to gather information about their identities and operations.It's warning members of the public that a known tactic of Iranian agents is to try and contact Israeli citizens through the use of fraudulent social media profiles. "In this complex period, where the digital space is used for intimidation, message transmission or promoting terrorist activities under the guise of innocent actions, we advise the public to be vigilant regarding contacts from unknown sources, avoid sharing personal information and refrain from opening links from unrecognized sources," a senior Israel Police official said in a statement. The arrests come as Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, an Iranian proxy militia that ignited the conflict Oct. 7 when it launched a bloody surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Nearly 39,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed amid the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Squeezed by Israel, Palestinian Authority's role fades in West Bank
Ali Sawafta/Reuters/July 17, 2024
JENIN, West Bank (Reuters) - Roads torn up months ago by Israeli army bulldozers in Jenin refugee camp remain unpassable because the Palestinian Authority can't afford to fix them. Government employees are being paid a fraction of their salaries, and health services are collapsing. These are all signs of a deep financial crisis that has crippled the administration led by President Mahmoud Abbas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, prompting questions over its future even as the United States and other countries are pressing for a "revitalised" PA to run the Gaza Strip when fighting there ends. The PA's finances have been in disarray for years as donor states have cut back funding that once covered nearly a third of its $6 billion annual budget, demanding reforms to tackle corruption and waste.
But Palestinian officials say they worsened sharply after the militant group Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, leading Israel to withhold a chunk of tax revenues it collects on the PA's behalf that are now its main source of financing.
The strains are particularly evident in Jenin, a volatile city in the northern West Bank where Israel has long targeted Palestinian militants and has stepped up operations since October. Nidal Obeidi, the city mayor, said Israeli raids since October have inflicted more damage than in the past on essential infrastructure.
"The water and sewage pipes are hit. Power transformers are shot at, and even water storage tanks on roofs," Obeidi told Reuters. He estimated the repairs would cost $15 million in the refugee camp alone. But with the PA "under siege", he said, resources are scarce. Palestinian officials say the PA is facing one of its gravest crises since it was created under interim peace deals with Israel 30 years ago.
At the time, Palestinians saw the PA as a stepping stone towards their goal of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
But as that goal has remained elusive, the salaries and services provided by the PA have helped keep Abbas and his Fatah faction politically relevant in the face of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and challenges posed by militant rivals such as Hamas, which seized Gaza in 2007.
Ghassan Khatib, a lecturer at Birzeit University in the West Bank who once served as a Palestinian minister, said Israeli policies risked further marginalising the PA "and at a certain point in time might cause its collapse".
"They have the effect of reducing the political weight of factions that support a peaceful settlement with Israel - namely Fatah - in favour of the opposition groups, mainly Hamas," he said. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the PA did not comment on Khatib's remarks. However, Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, told Al Arabiya TV in June that the shortfall in funding meant the PA could not "do its duties towards the Palestinian people", which could lead to the "collapse of the Palestinian Authority".
WARNING OF ANOTHER INTIFADA
The West Bank and East Jerusalem are home to more than 3 million Palestinians and, according to the U.N., some 700,000 Israeli settlers. The Israeli military controls the West Bank, although the PA exercises limited governance of areas where most of the Palestinian population lives. Under a longstanding arrangement between the sides, Israel collects taxes on goods that pass through Israel into the West Bank and makes monthly transfers to authorities in Ramallah. Following the Oct. 7 attack, Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, began withholding a portion of those revenues equal to the amount transferred by the PA to Gaza, where the Abbas-led administration has continued financing services, salaries and pensions since Hamas took over. Smotrich argues the funds would end up in Hamas' hands.
The amount withheld - approximately 300 million shekels ($80 million) a month - added to previous deductions imposed by Israel equivalent to amounts paid by the PA to the families of militants and civilians jailed or killed by Israeli authorities.
In May, Smotrich suspended transfers altogether, accusing the PA of working against Israel after the International Criminal Court prosecutor sought arrest warrants against its prime minister and defence minister, and three European countries recognised a Palestinian state. Smotrich also accused the PA of supporting the Oct. 7 attack, during which Hamas-led gunmen killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Gaza health authorities say the offensive Israel launched in response has killed more than 38,700 people.
"The Palestinian Authority joined Hamas in trying to harm Israel, in Israel and in the world, and we will fight it," Smotrich said at a June 27 cabinet meeting.
Abbas has condemned violence against civilians and criticised Hamas' raid, saying it gave Israel an excuse to attack Gaza.
Israel transferred 435 million shekels ($116 million) to the PA in early July, but Palestinian officials say Israel is still holding 6 billion shekels of its funds.
"What was transferred was not enough to pay 60% of the salaries, and therefore the financial crisis is ongoing," Mohammad Abu al-Rub, a PA spokesperson, told Reuters. "Israel deducts around two-thirds of the revenue, and this puts all the government plans on hold and increases public debt."
Israel's finance ministry said it is prohibited by law and a cabinet decision from transferring funds that would be sent to Gaza and "flow into terrorism." It said the amount withheld was "not even close" to 6 billion shekels, adding in a statement to Reuters, "If the Palestinian Authority does not transfer funds to finance terrorism, there will be no harm" to the economy.
The U.S. says the funds belong to the PA and has urged Israel to release them, while also pressing the PA to implement reforms to prepare it to administer Gaza after the war - an idea Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.
"The viability of the Palestinian Authority is essential to stability in the West Bank, which in turn is essential to Israel's own security interests," Vedant Patel, a U.S. State Department spokesperson, said at a July 2 news conference.
The Israeli military has warned its government that cutting off funds to the PA could push the West Bank into another "intifada" - the name used for two Palestinian uprisings between 1987 and 2005 - according to a June report by public broadcaster Kan radio that was confirmed to Reuters by an Israeli official.
The military referred Reuters at the time to the Shin Bet security service, which declined to comment.
Netanyahu's office did not answer questions for this article.
'NOBODY IS HELPING'
The financial pressure on the PA comes as economic and security conditions in the West Bank have deteriorated sharply, further eroding support for Abbas' administration, which last held parliamentary elections 18 years ago and many Palestinians view as corrupt.
More than 60% of Palestinians now support the PA's dissolution, according to an opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in June, which also found support for armed struggle had risen.
The PA pays salaries or pensions to 150,000 people in Palestinian territories. The last time it paid them in full was in 2022. In March and April, it says, PA employees received 50% of their salaries. In May, they got 60%.
Adding to the economic hardship in the West Bank, Israel has locked out some 200,000 Palestinians who used to commute daily to work in Israel, citing security concerns. Kathem Harb, a 53-year-old father of four who works in the PA's national economy ministry, said he could only afford basics like rice, flour and cooking gas.
"We live on the bare minimum," he said, adding there was no money sometimes for water and electricity bills.
Cuts to PA salaries mean staff at government clinics only show up to work a couple of days each week, according to health worker unions. Around 45% of essential medications are out of stock, the World Health Organization said last month.
Hayat Hamdan, a woman in her fifties, had travelled 10 km (six miles) from the town of Arraba to a government clinic in Jenin in hopes of finding subsidised medication for her wheelchair-bound husband.
But inside, many of the pharmacy shelves were empty.
"We have health insurance, but it is of no use," Hamdan said. "Since the start of the Gaza war until today, we are buying most medicines at our own expense."
Meanwhile, violence has surged across the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians - including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilian bystanders - have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces since October.
Raids by groups of Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages have become commonplace, while attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have killed more than a dozen Israelis.
In Jenin refugee camp - where some 14,000 people live packed into an area of less than half a square kilometre - young men carrying assault rifles patrol streets in open defiance of the PA, underlining the sway militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad still have despite Israeli raids.
Bullet marks on the facade of the nearby PA headquarters offer a reminder of past clashes between PA security forces and militants.
A man in his 20s, who asked to be identified only as Mohammed for safety reasons, said conditions in the camp were bad before Oct. 7 due to the Israeli raids and had gotten a lot worse since. "There are no roads; the infrastructure is destroyed; homes are destroyed; shops are destroyed," he said, expressing frustration with the PA for cracking down on militants while doing little for Palestinian civilians.
"There is no work; the authority isn't paying salaries; the prices are going up. Nobody is helping the people of the camp."

Daesh ‘trying to reconstitute’ in Iraq, Syria, says US Central Command
AFP/July 17, 2024
BAGHDAD: The US Central Command said on Wednesday that the Daesh group is trying “to reconstitute” as the number of attacks in Syria and Iraq is on track to double this year, compared to the year before. Daesh claimed 153 attacks in the two countries in the first six months of 2024, CENTCOM said in a statement.  According to a US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t allowed to speak publicly on the matter, the group was behind 121 attacks in Syria and Iraq in 2023.“The increase in attacks indicates Daesh is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability,” CENTCOM said. In northeastern Syria, Kurdish-led authorities issued a general amnesty on Wednesday that would include hundreds of Syrians who have been held by the main US-backed force over their roles within IS. The US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, are holding over 10,000 captured Daesh fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them. The SDF captured the last sliver of land in Syria from Daesh in March 2019. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria said a life sentence will be reduced to 15 years in jail, while those detainees serving life sentences who have incurable diseases will be set free, as will those who have reached the age of 75. It said the amnesty will not include Daesh officials and members who fought against the SDF, nor those who carried out attacks with explosives that killed people. Legal expert Khaled Jabr said the amnesty will include some 600 Syrian citizens who are held on terrorism charges and links to Daesh, as long as their hands are not tainted with blood or they were detained while fighting SDF members. The announcement comes just after the 10-year mark since the militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria. At its peak, the group ruled an area half the size of the UK where it attempted to enforce its extreme interpretation of Islam, which included attacks on religious minority groups and harsh punishment of Muslims deemed to be apostates.

Iran rejects accusations it was involved in plots to assassinate Trump
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)/Wed, July 17, 2024
Iran has rejected accusations regarding plots to assassinate former U.S. President Donald Trump, while citing legal action for the 2020 assassination of a revered general by U.S. drone, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying Iran “strongly rejects any involvement in the recent armed attack on Trump or claims about Iran’s intention for such an action.”Kanaani added, "The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to pursue legal action against Trump for his direct role in the crime of assassinating Martyr General Qassem Soleimani.” Soleimani was the commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad in January 2020. A threat on Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before Saturday’s campaign rally, but it was unrelated to the assassination attempt on the Republican presidential nominee, two U.S. officials said Tuesday. Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Amir Saeid Iravani, on Tuesday rejected the accusations against Tehran as “baseless” and “politically motivated.”

Islamic State attacks on track to double in Iraq and Syria compared to last year, US military says
Qassim Abdul-zahra And Abby Sewell/BAGHDAD (AP)/July 17, 2024
The U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that the Islamic State group is trying "to reconstitute” as the number of attacks in Syria and Iraq is on track to double those of the previous year. IS has claimed 153 attacks in both countries in the first six months of 2024, CENTCOM said in a statement. According to a U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't allowed to speak publicly on the matter, the group was behind 121 attacks in Syria and Iraq in 2023. “The increase in attacks indicates ISIS is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability,” CENTCOM said. The announcement comes just after the 10-year mark since the militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria. At its peak, the group ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom where it attempted to enforce its extreme interpretation of Islam, which included attacks on religious minority groups and harsh punishment of Muslims deemed to be apostates.Militants also killed thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority and kidnapped thousands of women and children, many of whom were subjected to sexual abuse and human trafficking. A coalition of more than 80 countries, led by the United States, was formed to fight IS, which lost its hold on the territory it controlled in Iraq and 2017 and in Syria in 2019, although sleeper cells remain in both countries and abroad. Iraqi officials say that they can keep the IS threat under control with their own forces and have entered into talks with the U.S. aimed at winding down the mission of the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq. The talks come at a time of increased domestic tensions over the U.S. military presence. From October to February, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched regular drone attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza and were aimed at forcing U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq. Those attacks largely halted after three U.S. soldiers were killed in a strike on a base in Jordan, near the Syrian border in late January, prompting U.S. retaliatory strikes in Iraq. On Tuesday, two Iraqi militia officials said they had launched a new drone attack targeting the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. It was unclear whether the attack had hit its target. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Joe Biden Says He Originally Intended To Be 'Transitional Candidate'
Marita Vlachou/HuffPost/July 17, 2024
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said while he ran as a “transitional candidate” in the 2020 presidential race, the current political climate prompted his decision to run for reelection. Biden’s candidacy has come under scrutiny following his dismal performance at the CNN debate late last month, where he fumbled answers and repeatedly appeared to lose his train of thought. In an interview with BET News’ Ed Gordon, Biden defended his decision to pursue another term in the White House despite calls from about 20 members of his party for him to drop out and back a younger candidate. “When I originally ran, you may remember, Ed, I said I was gonna be a transitional candidate, and I thought that I’d be able to move from this, just pass it on to someone else,” Biden said. “But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided.” Biden said his record shows he knows how to “get things done for the country.”“But there’s more to do, and I’m reluctant to walk away from that,” he added. Biden, 81, said he would reconsider his decision to pursue another term in office if a medical condition emerges. BET News’ “Black America Votes: The Biden Special” is set to air in full Wednesday. Biden had referred to himself as a “bridge” during the 2020 campaign. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said at the time. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”However, the president appears to now be intent on fighting to remain in the White House even as members of his own party have urged him to reconsider in fear that he could drag down downballot candidates. While momentum had been building against Biden’s campaign, the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump Saturday pushed the conversation about Biden’s political future to the side, at least temporarily. The Democratic National Committee is reportedly planning to fast-track Biden’s nomination by the end of this month, giving rise to more unease from members of the party who doubt Biden can secure a win in November. Still, while polls appear to favor Trump following the debate, there hasn’t been a big enough shift in public opinion to convince Biden to step aside. Biden told reporters last week he could change his mind about running if his team told him there was no path to victory. “No one is saying that,” he said Thursday. “No poll says that.”

Biden calls for ban on gun used to shoot Trump
Tom Bennett - BBC News/Wed, July 17, 2024
Joe Biden has renewed a call for Congress to ban assault rifles, including the model that was used in the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet after a gunman shot at him from a nearby rooftop during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. This was the assault weapon that killed so many others, including children. It’s time to outlaw them,” Mr Biden told the audience at a convention in Las Vegas. His demand came as he returned to the campaign trail for the first time since the attack. For several days following the shooting, the Biden campaign had been on pause. Verbal attacks had been halted, television ads pulled and a message of unity was pushed by many prominent Democrats. Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Biden continued in that vein, lamenting how “heated” politics has become. But he went on to roundly criticise Trump throughout the speech at the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), a prominent civil rights group. “Just because our politics are very divided doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth. Who you are, what you’ve done, what you will do - that’s fair game,” he said. "Let me say it again because Trump is lying like hell about it,” he told the conference hall of primarily black voters. “Black unemployment hit a record low under the Biden-Harris administration," the president added. Statistics show that his government reached the record low unemployment rate for Black or African Americans in 2023, at 4.8%. Gun rights are an issue Mr Biden has frequently campaigned on. In 1994, he was instrumental in passing an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. He referenced that legislation during his speech, saying "I've done it before, I'll do it again".In 2022, during his first term as president, Mr Biden signed into law the most significant gun safety legislation in more than two decades, which included enhanced background checks for gun buyers and other protections. But he has repeatedly come up against strong opposition from Republicans to an assault weapons ban. The president's return to the campaign trail came as the Republican National Convention (RNC) closed out its second day on Tuesday, with a line-up of speakers - including former presidential nominee rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis - roundly uniting behind Trump. At a side event hosted by the gun rights group, US Concealed Carry Association, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign said Donald Trump would safeguard gun rights by appointing pro-gun judges if he is elected in November. "We'll see a continuation of supporting and defending the Second Amendment, and really where that comes into play is the judiciary," Chris LaCivita told attendees, according to Reuters news agency. Donald Trump has already said that he would unravel all of Mr Biden’s new gun rules if elected in November, a stance that shows no sign of changing even following Saturday’s attempt on his life. Authorities are yet to land on the motive of gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was able to shoot at Trump after climbing onto the roof of a building 130m (426ft) from where he was speaking. An independent review of the Secret Service’s handling of the shooting is underway and Republican leaders in Congress have also announced an investigation.

Multiple failures, multiple investigations: Unraveling the attempted assassination of Donald Trump
Colleen Long, Mike Balsamo And Michael R. Sisak/BUTLER, Pa. (AP) / July 17, 2024
The young man was pacing around the edges of the Donald Trump campaign rally, shouldering a big backpack and peering into the lens of a rangefinder toward the rooftops behind the stage where the former president would stand. His behavior was so odd, so unlike that of the other rallygoers, that local law enforcement took notice, radioed their concerns and snapped a photo. But then he vanished. The image was circulated by officers stationed outside the security perimeter on that hot, sunny Saturday afternoon. But the man didn't appear again until witnesses saw him climbing up the side of a squat manufacturing building that was within 135 meters (157 yards) from the stage. That's where he opened fire, six minutes after Trump began speaking, in an attempt to assassinate the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. The gunman killed one rallygoer and seriously wounded two others. Trump suffered an ear injury but was not seriously hurt, appearing just days later at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with a small bandage over the wound. Now come the questions, and there are plenty. Multiple investigations have been launched, both into the crime itself and how law enforcement allowed it to happen. It's becoming increasingly clear this was a complicated failure involving multiple missteps and at least nine local and federal law enforcement divisions that were supposed to be working together. Law enforcement has also warned of the potential for copycat attacks and more violence.
This story is based on interviews with eight law enforcement officials, some of whom spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigations into the attempt on Trump's life.
Multiple agencies work together to secure events
The Secret Service always partners with local law enforcement when a president, political candidate or other high-level official comes to town, and Saturday's rally was no different. An advance team comes early to scope out the scene and identify potential areas of concern. They order vehicles moved. They set up barriers. They block off roads. In some larger cities, one or two local agencies may work alongside the federal teams. In more rural areas, one local agency won't have enough manpower so multiple agencies are often involved. On Saturday, the show of force included members of at least six different agencies, including two sheriff's offices, local police, state police and multiple teams within the Secret Service, plus fire and emergency rescue officials. Within those agencies are individual divisions that have different duties. In theory, more manpower is better. But it can often create communication problems, and it's unclear how the information about Thomas Michael Crooks was transmitted. For instance, it's not clear how widely his photo was circulated or whether everyone was equally aware of the potential threat. All the extra officers can be a drain on resources, leaving agencies stretched thin. The Secret Service at any given time is protecting the president, candidates and others, plus running point on major national security events. It's the same for local police, who told the Secret Service they didn't have enough people to station officers outside the building all day. The Secret Service controls the area inside the perimeter, after people pass through metal detectors. Local law enforcement is supposed to handle outside the perimeter.
Reports of someone on the roof
The shooter, later identified as Crooks, disappeared from the crowds of Trump supporters decked out in red, white and blue. The stream of supporters entering through the metal detectors was slowing. Trump was getting ready to go on. The rooftop from which Crooks fired is in a complex of buildings that form AGR International Inc., a supplier of automation equipment for the glass and plastic packaging industry. The building was closed for the day, except to law enforcement.Crooks was spotted again when members of a local SWAT team, stationed inside the building complex, noticed him walking around and looking at the roof. One officer took a photo of Crooks and radioed to others to be on the lookout for a suspicious person looking through a rangefinder — a small device resembling binoculars that hunters use to measure distance from a target. Not long after, witnesses reported seeing him scaling the squat building closest to the stage. He then set up his AR-style rifle and lay on the rooftop, a detonator in his pocket to set off crude explosive devices that were stashed in his car parked nearby. Outside, a local officer climbed up to the roof to investigate. The gunman turned and pointed his rifle at him. The officer did not — or could not — fire a single shot. But Crooks did, firing into the crowd toward the former president and sending panicked spectators ducking for cover as Secret Service agents shielded Trump and pulled him from the stage. Two countersniper teams were stationed on buildings behind Trump, and the team further away from Crooks fired once, killing him.
Many investigations, few answers
“We are speaking of a failure,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN. “We are going to analyze through an independent review how that occurred, why it occurred, and make recommendations and findings to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”House Oversight Committee Republicans have subpoenaed Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would set up a task force to investigate, and some Republicans have called on Cheatle to resign. Security has been stepped up for Trump and President Joe Biden, and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also received a protective detail. Biden has ordered an independent review of the shooting. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general also opened an investigation into the Secret Service’s handling of the shooting. But it's a big task. There were special agents, presidential protective teams, counterassault and countersniper teams all there that day. There were also roughly 50 firefighters and emergency personnel, plus dozens of officers from the Butler Township police, deputies from Beaver County and Butler County and Pennsylvania State Police troopers. It will take weeks — if not months — to interview all the officers involved and determine exactly how Crooks was able to pull off the most serious attempt to kill a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. The shooter had prepared for carnage. Investigators found he brought multiple loaded magazines. He also bought 50 rounds on the day of the shooting. The rifle was purchased legally by his father years earlier.Investigators found a bulletproof vest in his car and another rudimentary explosive device at his home, where over the past few months he had received several packages, including some that had potentially hazardous material. The FBI gained access to Crooks’ cellphone, scoured his computer, home and car, and interviewed more than 100 people so far. But the investigation has failed to lift the mystery surrounding the biggest question: Why did he do it?

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on July 17-18/2024
Trump’s foreign-policy platform reflects his first-term achievements
Richard Goldberg/New York Post/July 16, 2024
President Biden’s foreign-policy failures have set the world on fire — and the conflagration is now the backdrop as Republicans present their very different vision.
Biden has invited multiple conflicts by his projection of American weakness, his open border welcoming drugs and terrorists, an energy policy that attacks American-made resources but promotes our enemies’ products and a defense-industrial base unprepared for war against China (let alone its wider axis).
In contrast, the GOP’s party platform reflects a traditionally conservative if not hawkish national security approach: secure borders, a doctrine of “peace through strength” and a “bigger, better, and stronger” military.
Republicans promise to unleash American energy, counter China, defeat terrorism, stand with Israel and embrace modern military objectives like missile defense, AI and space dominance.
They even pledge to deport foreign pro-Hamas radicals from college campuses.
The agenda is no surprise, of course, since it reflects the way Donald Trump largely governed for four years — often to the chagrin of his party’s neo-isolationists.
But it is policy outcomes where Trump and Biden most radically differ.
Where Trump worked to build a wall along the southern border and dramatically lowered illegal entries, Biden’s reversals of Trump policies led to millions of illegal crossings — including thousands from countries like China, Russia and Iran, and at least hundreds more linked to ISIS.
Trump worked with Congress to increase defense spending. Biden tried to cut it.
Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was a double national-security nightmare — breathing new life into Al Qaeda and ISIS-K, while emboldening America’s top state adversaries to go on offense, starting with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump pushed NATO to increase its defense spending and unhook from Russian energy.
Biden lifted sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, embraced anti-American energy policies, gave Vladimir Putin a five-year extension on a flawed nuclear-weapons treaty and put Moscow in charge of brokering a new Iran deal.
Trump left the White House exerting maximum pressure on Iran and extending maximum support to Israel, a strategy that yielded historic peace agreements.
Biden’s record is one of maximum deference to Iran and pressure on Israel — a strategy that led to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, a seven-front war against Israel and nonstop attacks on Red Sea commerce.
The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism is now on the one-yard line of the nuclear-weapons threshold.
Trump established China as his top national-security priority and withdrew from the China-aligned World Health Organization after it helped hide the origins of COVID-19.
Biden favored accommodation over confrontation with China in hopes of sealing an ineffectual climate-change deal, and our East Asian democratic allies are paying the price.
An already dangerous and unstable world will be far worse four years from now if we maintain open borders, focus on wokism over winning in our military, stifle American energy, expand our debt, degrade our defense industrial base and let Iran acquire nuclear weapons while disinvesting from our own.
Restoring deterrence, however, demands strong leadership.
Deterrence has two pillars: capability and will.
Every American president has capability, thanks to the US military.
The commander-in-chief’s will, however, gets tested.
Trump’s will was tested by Iran, with Qassam Soleimani losing his life as a result.
Biden’s will was tested by the Taliban — and Kabul fell, setting off a chain reaction that led to the invasion of Ukraine and an emboldened China-led axis.
When dictators today hear the American president say “Don’t,” they believe it means “Go.”
That must change quickly.
The old Chinese proverb “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey” may soon come into play — if elected, Trump will likely be tested again.
He will need to act swiftly to reverse any lingering perception of a United States unwilling to act forcefully in its own interests.
But with America’s enemies now staring at a photo of Trump lifting his fist in the air, blood dripping, moments after being shot, they ought not mistake populist rhetoric and political strategy for an unwillingness to fight.
*Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior US Senate aide.

Today in History: ‘The Battle of the Lord Was Triumphantly Won, by God Alone and through God Alone’
Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/July 16/2024
On July 16, 1212, an epic battle — for which the Islamic State still vows vengeance and which recently made the news for inciting Spain’s “right” to reject Islam — took place between Christians and Muslims, five hundred years after Muhammad’s followers first invaded that nation in 711.
From the start, a small pocket of Christian resistance remained in northwest Spain. From this “mustard seed” the Reconquista — the Christian reconquest of Spain from Islam — began. Century after century, the Christians made slow advances southward until they had reclaimed nearly the northern half of Spain.
By the early thirteenth century, the Muslims, under Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nasir, decided enough was enough. They marshalled one of the largest armies ever to march on Spanish soil, intent on extirpating Christianity by fire and sword. In a widely circulated letter attributed to the caliph himself, Muhammad declared that all Christians must “submit to our empire and convert to our [sharia] law.” Otherwise “all those who adore the sign of the cross … will feel our scimitars.”
Alarmed, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade and called on the Christians of Spain to unite and fight “against the enemies of the cross of the Lord who not only aspire to the destruction of the Spains, but also threatened to vent their rage on Christ’s faithful in other lands and, if they can — which God forbid — oppress the Christian name.”
Troubadours everywhere sought to rile Christians: “Saladin took Jerusalem,” they sang in verse, and “now the king of Morocco announces that he will fight against all the kings of the Christians with his treacherous Andalusians and Arabs,” who “in their pride think the world belongs to them.” The religious divide was heightened by a racial one: “Firm in the faith, let us not abandon our heritage to the black dogs from oversea.”
On July 14, the Christian and Muslim armies finally reached and camped at Las Navas de Tolosa, where Spain’s fate would be decided. The army Caliph Muhammad headed “was a very large, heterogeneous force,” writes Darío Fernández-Morera,
made up of Berbers, tough black slave warriors (the imesebelen, who were chained together as an unbreakable guard around the Almohad caliph’s tent), Arabs, Turkic mounted archers, Andalusian Muslim levies . . . mujahidin (volunteer jihadists from all over the Islamic world), and even Christian mercenaries and defectors.
The two forces could not have looked any more different: Most of the approximately twelve thousand Spaniards were heavily armored; knights carried three-foot-long double-sided swords. In comparison, most of the African Muslims were nearly naked, their shields made of hippo hides. But the Muslims’ numbers — thirty thousand — and unbridled ferocity made up for it.
The Christians spent July 15, a Sunday, recuperating and preparing, including spiritually. On their knees, tearful men beat their chests and implored God for strength. Militant clergymen — all of whom were determined “to rip from the hands of the Muslims the land they held to the injury of the Christian name” — roamed the camp, administered the Eucharist, heard the confessions of and exhorted the crusaders to fight with all their might.
Then, as one participant wrote, about midnight, “the voice of exultation and confession sounded in the Christian tents and the voice of the herald summoned all to arm themselves for the Lord’s battle.”
Looking on the enemy hordes arrayed against them, Alfonso VIII of Castile, the supreme leader of the Christian coalition, grew dismal: “Archbishop,” he said to Rodrigo of Toledo, who stood alongside him, “here we will die,” though a “death in such circumstances is not unworthy.”
“If it please God,” Rodrigo responded, “let it not be death, but the crown of victory; but if it should please God otherwise, we are all prepared to die together with you.”
At the crack of dawn on July 16, battle commenced. For long it was a stalemate: “Those lined up in the first ranks discovered that the Moors were ready for battle,” writes an eyewitness:
They attacked, fighting against one another, hand-to-hand, with lances, swords, and battle-axes; there was no room for archers. The Christians pressed on; the Moors repelled them; the crashing and tumult of arms was heard. The battle was joined, but neither side was overcome, although at times they pushed back the enemy, and at other times they were driven back by the enemy.
Determined to penetrate the Muslim host, the Christians, King Alfonso later wrote,
cut down many lines of the enemy who were stationed on the lower eminences. When our men reached the last of their lines, consisting of a huge number of soldiers, among whom was the king of Carthage [Muhammad], there began desperate fighting among the cavalrymen, infantrymen, and archers, our people being in terrible danger and scarcely able to resist any longer.
For every Muslim line the Christians broke through, others instantly formed — so great were the ranks of Islam. “At one point certain wretched Christians who were retreating and fleeing cried out that the Christians were overcome.” When King Alfonso “heard that cry of doom,” he and his knights
hastened quickly up the hill where the force of the battle was. Then we, realizing that the fighting was becoming impossible for them, started a cavalry charge, the cross of the Lord going before [us] and our banner with its image of the holy Virgin and her Son imposed upon our device.
They fought valiantly, but the Africans continued to close in on them. Then something of a miracle happened: “Since we had already resolved to die for the faith of Christ, as soon as we witnessed . . . the Saracens” attacking the cross and icons “with stones and arrows,” the furious crusaders “broke their line with their vast numbers of men, even though the Saracens resisted bravely in the battle, and stood solidly around their lord.”
Christians in the rear saw the cross appear as if miraculously and remain aloft behind enemy lines. Inspired beyond hope, the native sons of Spain broke through the Muslim center, slaughtering “a great multitude of them with the sword of the cross.” Sancho VII, who at nearly seven feet tall was known as “the giant king of Navarre,” followed by his men, was the first to bulldoze through and rout the African slave soldiers chained around the caliph’s tent (as captured in the above painting).
Instantly mounting a horse, Muhammad “turned tail and fled. His men were killed and slaughtered in droves, and the site of the camp and the tents of the Moors became the tombs of the fallen. … In this way the battle of the Lord was triumphantly won, by God alone and through God alone,” concluded the victorious king, Alfonso VIII of Castile.Las Navas de Tolosa was seen as a miracle by pope and peasant alike. Not only was the full might of the previously unbeatable Almohad caliphate decimated, but where tens of thousands of Muslims died, only some two thousand Christians — mostly the warrior-monks of the military orders who were always wherever fighting was fiercest — perished. More importantly, the victory ushered in Spain’s liberation from Islam, as Muslim kingdoms in the southern regions fell one by one to the sword of the Reconquista, so that, by 1248, only the remote kingdom of Granada, at Spain’s southernmost tip, remained Islamic — and it was a tributary of Castile.
Indeed, for centuries thereafter, July 16 was celebrated as the “Triumph of the Holy Cross” in the Spanish calendar, until the Second Vatican abolished it (in keeping with the spirit of the new age of intentional forgetfulness).
But not all Spaniards are forgetting. In a recent report on how Spain’s “far-right” is calling for a stop to Muslim migration (both legal and illegal), a writer referred to the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa “to justify reclaiming Spanish lands from Muslims and expelling them.”
**Raymond Ibrahim is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum. The historic portion of this article was excerpted from Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.

Xi Jinping and China: Running Out of Time, Ready to Strike
Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute./July 16, 2024
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping moving so fast at this time to exert control over peripheral waters? Prominent China analyst Willy Lam wrote last October that China's leader perhaps sees a closing window of opportunity and therefore is in a hurry to annex territory.Whether he goes to war or not, he is getting ready to do so. Both the Financial Times and CNN have reported that businesses have been establishing military units inside their organizations. "Chinese Companies Are Raising Militias Like It's the 1970s," the cable network reported. Xi is engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. In addition, he is purging military officers opposed to war, trying to sanction-proof his regime, stockpiling grain and other commodities, surveying the U.S. for nuclear weapons strikes, and mobilizing civilians for war.
His economic policies emphasize war preparation, and he looks determined to take China into battle, regardless of prospects. "Even if we cannot win, we must fight," Xi is reported to have said to military officers in 2017, in connection with Taiwan.
I believe that Xi wants war — or at least a ramping up of tensions — to prevent senior Chinese leaders from moving against him. He is not looking to rally the Chinese people with provocative actions or even an attack; he wants to defang political opponents in the Communist Party. Xi may not yet have made the decision to go to war, but he has clearly made the decision to risk war. That means he can strike when we least expect it. Chinese President Xi Jinping is engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. In addition, he is purging military officers opposed to war, trying to sanction-proof his regime. Xi may not yet have made the decision to go to war, but he has clearly made the decision to risk war. That means he can strike when we least expect it. Pictured: Sailors and fighter jets on the deck of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning in the sea near Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province on April 23, 2019. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)
In recent weeks, China has surged its naval fleet into both surrounding and far away waters.
Most significantly, the People's Liberation Army Navy sent two strike groups into the South China Sea. The larger, centered on the Shandong aircraft carrier, operated off the main Philippine island of Luzon before transiting into the Western Pacific for blue water flight operations. The other is an Expeditionary Strike Group led by a Type 075 Yushen-class amphibious assault ship, one of China's largest and most advanced. Four of China's Type 055 Renhai-class cruisers, described as "the most lethal surface combatant in the world," escorted the two strike groups.
China's newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, has been on its third set of sea trials.
China and Russia began "Exercise Joint Sea-2024" at the Zhanjiang port in southern Guangdong province, the headquarters of the Chinese navy's South Sea Fleet.
A total of 56 aircraft — the most ever in a single day, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense — flew into Taiwan's air-defense identification zone, some coming as close as 33 nautical miles of the southern tip of the main island of Taiwan. Another 10 Chinese planes flew outside the zone at the same time.Chinese Coast Guard cutter 5901, dubbed "the Monster" because of its 12,000-ton displacement, was spotted near Sabina Shoal of the Philippines, in the South China Sea.
Finally, four Chinese naval combatants transited nearby Alaskan islands, staying out of territorial waters but coming inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the band of water between 12 and 200 nautical miles from the shoreline. As James Fanell, co-author of Embracing Communist China: America's Greatest Strategic Failure, told Gatestone, this is the fifth time since 2015 that China dispatched warships inside the American EEZ.
"In the past couple weeks, the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated to the region—and more importantly to Washington—that the People's Republic of China is the master of the seas in the Indo-Pacific," said Fanell, also a former U.S. Navy captain who served as director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping moving so fast at this time to exert control over peripheral waters? Prominent China analyst Willy Lam wrote last October that China's leader perhaps sees a closing window of opportunity and therefore is in a hurry to annex territory.
At a June conference of military officers in one of China's most famous revolutionary bases, Xi reportedly made dire-sounding statements. "We are here in Yan'an to hold a military meeting, preparing for a civil war," he said, in one version of his talk. The text of his remarks, now widely circulating, remain unconfirmed. Whether he goes to war or not, he is getting ready to do so. Both the Financial Times and CNN have reported that businesses have been establishing military units inside their organizations. "Chinese Companies Are Raising Militias Like It's the 1970s," the cable network reported.
Xi is engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. In addition, he is purging military officers opposed to war, trying to sanction-proof his regime, stockpiling grain and other commodities, surveying the U.S. for nuclear weapons strikes, and mobilizing civilians for war. At the same time, he is reasserting state control over the economy, financial markets, and virtually all other aspects of society. He is, in short, bringing back totalitarian controls to China.
Those controls are, among other things, choking the economy. Beijing on July 15 reported 4.7% year-on-year GDP growth in the second quarter, but that number is hard to reconcile with signs of a stagnating economy. The country, for instance, is flirting with deflation, which is inconsistent with the reported robust expansion. The problem is that Xi refuses to empower consumers so that they can create a consumption-based economy. Why would he reject near-unanimous advice to put money into the hands of ordinary Chinese? Among other reasons, doing so would undercut his efforts to build a wartime economy.
"Xi Jinping's propagandists desperately try to paper over the fact that there is a growing crisis of confidence in his regime to reverse the economic decline caused by the re-imposition of neo-Stalinist Mao-era policies," Charles Burton of the Prague-based think tank Sinopsis told Gatestone. "His repudiation of the progressive 'opening and reform' agenda of Deng Xiaoping and his successors has led to a severe downward spiral. This is matched by increasingly popular dissatisfaction with Xi's repressive personality cult leadership."
Xi has a chance — perhaps his last — to reverse trends. The Communist Party's Third Plenum, which started on July 15, is held once every five years and is traditionally devoted to economic matters. Optimists had hoped that Xi would signal new policies, but now expectations are exceedingly low as it appears he will instead double down on state-led initiatives to bolster manufacturing and infrastructure spending.
His economic policies emphasize war preparation, and he looks determined to take China into battle, regardless of prospects. "Even if we cannot win, we must fight," Xi is reported to have said to military officers in 2017, in connection with Taiwan.
Why would he say something like that? After all, war, especially war on Taiwan "compatriots," would be exceedingly unpopular with China's unhappy people at this moment.
I believe that Xi wants war — or at least a ramping up of tensions — to prevent senior Chinese leaders from moving against him. He is not looking to rally the Chinese people with provocative actions or even an attack; he wants to defang political opponents in the Communist Party.
"If the upcoming Communist Party Third Plenum fails to come up with dramatic measures to restore faith in the Party's ability to turn things around," Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat serving in Beijing, said, "the sole option for Xi to stave off his inevitable removal from office would be to put China on a nationalistic war footing and engage in precipitous action against Taiwan or some other neighbor."
Xi's hero, Mao Zedong, rallied the Chinese people with the Cultural Revolution not to obtain their support but to use them to take down senior leaders who had been plotting to depose him. Xi might adopt this tactic, except this time looking for a quick seizure of territory or maybe just keeping regional tensions high. The situation, however, could get out of hand, triggering conflict around the region — or the world. Xi, unfortunately, could become desperate, and if the situation continues to deteriorate he may not care about the odds.
Xi may not yet have made the decision to go to war, but he has clearly made the decision to risk war. That means he can strike when we least expect it.
**Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
**Follow Gordon G. Chang on X (formerly Twitter)
© 2024 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.

International 'Hostage Diplomacy': Kidnapping for Fun and Profit
Nima Gholam Ali Pour/Gatestone Institute/July 17, 2024
That Iran can, through hostage-taking and extortion, force countries such as the United States, Belgium and Sweden to hand over a convicted criminal who has clearly violated international law shows that gangster methods, used by the Iranian mullahs and others, evidently carry more weight than international law.
This blackmail essentially teaches rogue states that through violence and extortion they can get Western states to make concessions, massive payments, and to de-prioritize and deviate from international law.
If a state takes foreign visitors hostage, and all power then lies with those who kidnap the most, threaten the most and have the largest capacity for violence -- including the imminent probability of nuclear weapons -- then international law will soon mean nothing. Apart from effectively having a public budget to support terrorism, Iran's regime acts as lawlessly as the regimes of Russia or North Korea, and behaves in general as terrorists.
It seems clear that hostage diplomacy is a deliberate strategy for Iran and Russia's current regimes. Why should it not be? It works!
Countries in the West might do well to communicate this situation and disclaim responsibility for anyone who, despite that lawlessness, chooses to travel to Russia, Iran or other such states. Hostage diplomacy must be stopped.
On June 15, Iran and Sweden conducted a prisoner exchange. Two innocent Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi, were exchanged for an Iranian citizen, Hamid Noury, who had been convicted by a Swedish court of the torture and mass execution of political prisoners he had committed in Iran.
On June 15, the Swedish government announced that it had conducted a prisoner exchange with Iran's regime. An Iranian citizen, Hamid Noury, was exchanged for two Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi.
Noury stood convicted by a Swedish court of the torture and mass execution of political prisoners he had committed in Iran's Gohardasht prison in the late 1980s, following a fatwa from Iran's then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In November 2019, Noury was lured to Sweden by some Iranians with promises of luxury trips, parties, and female companionship. At Arlanda Airport, Noury was met by Swedish police, and in July 2022, he was sentenced for his crimes to life imprisonment by the Stockholm District Court
As for the Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus, a European Union official, was arrested on April 17, 2022 while on vacation in Iran, and was accused of spying for Israel and spreading "corruption on earth." The prosecutor demanded that Floderus be sentenced to death.
The other Swedish citizen, Saeed Azizi, who had been diagnosed with cancer four years earlier, travelled to Iran, according to his account, to sell what he had inherited after his mother's death. When he landed in Tehran, he was placed under house arrest. After five weeks, in November 2023, he was formally arrested by the authorities, accused of having connections with the Swedish intelligence services, and sentenced to five years in prison.
The allegations against Floderus and Azizi are evidently baseless. Iran, however, had already shown that it is willing to execute foreign visitors on spurious charges. Another Swedish citizen, Habib Chaab, was abducted by Iranian regime agents in Turkey in 2020, smuggled into Iran, convicted of spreading "corruption on earth" and executed in May 2023. The specific accusations were that Chaab had, in collusion with Israel's Mossad and Swedish intelligence, ostensibly planned terrorist attacks against Iran.
Citizens from other European countries and the United States have also been affected by these arrests, now being called "hostage diplomacy". In September 2023, the US handed over $6 billion in frozen assets to Iran to conduct yet another prisoner exchange. Belgium carried out a similar prisoner exchange by releasing a terrorist back to Iran last year.
The governments of Sweden and other countries that have conducted such prisoner exchanges have found themselves in a dilemma. How can they not prioritize the lives and safety of their citizens -- especially when they are held hostage by a regime that has shown a willingness to execute foreigners? A government must prioritize the safety of its citizens. It is to be expected of all governments. Is a prisoner exchange or some form of agreement to get their citizens out of Iran the only option? The problem, of course, is that prisoner exchanges have serious consequences.
Hamid Noury, handed over to Iran in the prisoner exchange and welcomed in Tehran as a hero, had been convicted with adequate evidence of serious violations of international law: torture and mass executions. That Iran can, through hostage-taking and extortion, force countries such as the United States, Belgium and Sweden to hand over a convicted criminal who has clearly violated international law shows that gangster methods, used by the Iranian mullahs and others, evidently carry more weight than international law.
This blackmail essentially teaches rogue states that through violence and extortion they can get Western states to make concessions, massive payments, and to de-prioritize and deviate from international law.
If a state takes foreign visitors hostage, and all power then lies with those who kidnap the most, threaten the most and have the largest capacity for violence -- including the imminent probability of nuclear weapons -- then international law will soon mean nothing.
If rogue regimes are not held seriously accountable, Iran and similar states will in the future invest even more in hostage-taking, terrorism and other forms of malign behavior. They will see that fabricated prisoner exchanges pay off and lead to Western, democratic countries such as Sweden simply abandoning international law. Violence will be seen as the easy way to overtake rule-based world order.
These are just some of the consequences of Iran's prisoner exchanges with Sweden and other countries. If dictators see that through violent methods they can undermine international law, then why would they not continue to do so?
In the end, some of the blame lies with the "bait": the Swedish and other Western citizens who travel to the lawless countries such as Iran and give those regimes a strong position with which to be able to blackmail the West. Sweden and other democratic countries cannot in any way protect human rights if regimes such as Iran's can capriciously take foreigners hostage and use them for blackmail.
As long as citizens from Western democracies continue to travel to Iran, they put themselves in danger, as well as potentially eroding global security and international law. Iran's Islamist regime, as well as others with similar practices, follow no international laws. Apart from effectively having a public budget to support terrorism, Iran's regime acts as lawlessly as the regimes of Russia or North Korea, and behaves in general as terrorists.
Regarding Iranians with dual citizenship from Sweden or other Western countries, who travel back to Iran, one wonders how they can go back there when many came to the West as refugees. Were they refugees in the first place? If the answer is yes, how can they then travel back to Iran? Have they been forgiven by the regime in Tehran? If so, why?
With people such as Floderus, the problem is probably atrocious judgment. After returning to Sweden, he proposed to his boyfriend. Congratulations, but didn't he know that in Iran they hang homosexuals from cranes (here, here and here)? How can one, as a gay man, go on vacation to Iran when homosexuality is a crime punishable by death there?
Should the Swedish government and other countries protect themselves and their citizens by issuing travel advisories, or warning citizens that if they travel to such countries they are on their own -- their government will not be able to help them? Or should travel to such countries be banned altogether? What is the trade-off for what might be called a violation of their civil liberties?
More Western countries might need to understand that their citizens travelling to countries such as Iran, which engages in hostage diplomacy, is not sustainable. It gives countries that use such blackmail too much of an advantage to exploit the West and possibly even affect foreign policy.
Right now, the European Union is moving towards designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. How many hostages could Iran take to stop this process? It seems clear that hostage diplomacy is a deliberate strategy for Iran and Russia's current regimes. Why should it not be? It works!
Countries in the West might do well to communicate this situation and disclaim responsibility for anyone who, despite that lawlessness, chooses to travel to Russia, Iran or other such states. Hostage diplomacy must be stopped.
**Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a Member of Parliament in the Swedish Riksdag.
**Follow Nima Gholam Ali Pour on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook
© 2024 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.

Friend in need is a friend indeed: Vance's Israel support is most welcome - editorial
Jerusalem Post/July 17/2024
Without taking sides in the US election, we welcome Vance’s nomination, thank him for supporting Israel in its war against terror, and wish him well.
Sen. J. D. Vance, named on Monday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as Donald Trump’s running mate for the November 5 presidential election, is an eloquent and strong supporter of Israel. Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, is also known to be a staunch advocate for a robust US-Israel relationship and an outspoken opponent of antisemitism in America. Whether you support the Republicans or the Democrats or neither, this is good news for Israel and American Jews, who have witnessed an alarming spike in antisemitism since October 7.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post’s then-diplomatic correspondent Lahav Harkov, Vance clarified during his visit to Israel in July 2022 that a solid US-Israeli relationship is based on shared values. “I will be as strong an advocate for the US-Israeli relationship as anyone,” he pledged, saying he believed, inter alia, that “the Iran deal was a disaster, Israel is our most important ally, and Trump was right to move the [embassy] to Jerusalem.”
“I got it intellectually, but emotionally, I didn’t realize,” Vance said after a tour of Jerusalem that included the Old City and the City of David. “[Jerusalem] is the world’s most important cultural heritage site. If Israel didn’t control this land, I would never understand this experience.”
Asked about antisemitism in the US, Vance insisted that “America remains one of the great places to live if you are Jewish. The question now is how to reverse the negative trend of the last years.” His answer was “to aggressively stamp out and prosecute crimes,” adding: “Antisemitism is a particular kind of crime. You have to enforce the law. If you beat up a Jew and don’t face consequences, the attacks will continue and get worse.”
Being only 39, the vice presidential hopeful offers a youthful counterpoint to the candidates at the top of both tickets. Trump turned 78 on June 14, while US President Joe Biden will be 82 on November 20. Born and raised in Ohio, Vance is a former venture capitalist who gained widespread attention after the release of his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which relates how his blue-collar upbringing in the Midwest had shaped his political views.
While he was a harsh critic of Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, Vance has since become a deft defender of the former president, particularly on television. “Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn’t think he would be a good president,” Vance told Fox News in an interview last month. “He was a great president, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”
Focuses of foreign policy
After the assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday, Vance posted on X: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to [former] President Trump’s attempted assassination.”The Biden campaign rejected the claim, with the president urging all Americans to “lower the temperature” of political rhetoric and work together to stop viewing political opponents as enemies. Vice President Kamala Harris contacted Vance “and left a message congratulating him on his selection, welcoming him to the race and expressing her hope that the two can meet in the vice presidential debate.”In explaining his choice on his Truth Social platform, Trump praised Vance’s military service (he fought in the US Marine Corps and served in the Iraq War) and Ivy League pedigree (after graduating from Ohio State University, he earned a law degree at Yale). Acknowledging that he values his running mate’s Midwest strength in an election set to be closely fought in swing states, Trump said Vance would “be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for – the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”Trump’s and Vance’s political views are similar, particularly on trade (supporting across-the-board tariffs), immigration (advocating the deportation of millions of undocumented migrants), and foreign policy (Trump’s America First Agenda states that the US should cut foreign aid, including to Ukraine). In a speech at the Quincy Institute in Washington in May, Vance made a point of distinguishing between US funding for Ukraine and support for Israel. “It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are the same,” he said. “They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets.”
Explaining that “a big part of the reason why Americans care about Israel is that we are still the largest Christian-majority country in the world,” he said, adding that, “The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous.”
Without taking sides in the US election, we welcome Vance’s nomination, thank him for supporting Israel in its war against terror, and wish him well.

US election campaign heats up, alarming partners
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/July 17, 2024
The Republican Convention gave Donald Trump’s campaign a boost on Monday as it endorsed him as expected. The pomp and circumstance of party solidarity was especially enthusiastic coming just days after the attack on the former president.
Saturday’s attempted assassination was the latest sign of the extreme polarization of American politics during this election campaign, bringing the country dangerously close to a serious political crisis.
I witnessed these divisions up close in Washington recently. I was witness to history, not in the most glorious way, on June 27, when the two main contenders, Joe Biden and Trump, debated each other. I had spent days in the US capital prior to the debate and noticed the deep fissures in the way people anticipated the event. The debate was a letdown, to say the least. Having lived in the US for some 24 years and followed its presidential debates for much longer, I had seen many that were below par, but this one was much more so. Some historians have already dubbed it the worst presidential debate ever.
Conservative media outlets relished Biden’s poor showing. The New York Post, for one, led the next day by blaring, “Time to Go, Joe!” on its front page. Other reactions included “it made me weep,” “a total and unmitigated disaster,” and so on.
The pressure piled on as usually pro-Biden media and opinion writers excoriated the president. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for reelection,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the next day. “Biden has been a friend” for decades, Friedman added, but “he should preserve his dignity and leave the stage at the end of this term.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote: “This can’t continue. I am sorry to say this harsh thing, but allowing him to go forward at this point looks like elder abuse.” She called on Democrats to choose a different candidate before it is too late. This idea was supported by others. The Financial Times’ Edward Luce said: “The best that can be said of Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance was that it took place in June.” This idea was echoed by Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic.
Other former Biden supporters chipped in. Actor George Clooney, who had earlier hosted a fundraiser for the president, wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times that was titled, “I love Joe Biden. But we need a new nominee.” He called on Biden to step aside and allow another candidate to lead the party in the November election. Filmmakers Stephen King and Rob Reiner echoed Clooney’s call, as did a slew of Hollywood celebrities who have been ardent supporters of the Democratic Party.
Senior party leaders kept their distance from these public calls, preferring to discuss the matter privately with the president. But there were dozens of members of Congress, fundraisers and activists who supported calls for the president to step aside and for the Democrats to quickly regroup under a different leader. Going into the debate, polls showed that about 70 percent of Americans thought Biden was too old to serve a second term, but Democrats had largely lined up behind him as the most likely nominee to win, dismissing concerns about his frequent gaffes and inarticulate answers. But last month’s 90-minute debate confirmed their worst fears. His performance failed to reassure Democrats that he can retain the White House and avoid a defeat in the congressional elections.
Saturday’s attempted assassination was the latest sign of the extreme polarization of American politics during this election campaign.
Nevertheless, key Democratic leaders maintained a united front, at least publicly, supporting the president’s wish to run for a second term. Some supporters recalled previous times in American history when a nominee was able to recover, citing Ronald Reagan’s comeback to win a second term in 1984 after a disastrous first debate.
However, their hopes of winning the November polls under Biden’s leadership appear to have been dampened after the upsurge in Trump’s support following the attempt on his life on Saturday and the following celebratory Republican Convention, where Trump, bandaged but defiant, accepted his party’s nomination and picked a running mate. While such surges can be transitory, the Trump campaign appears to be seizing the momentum and he now appears to be the most likely winner in November, if the Democrats are unable to reverse Trump’s winning streak.
Trump appears to be on a roll. Besides the debate, in which his opponent stumbled, and the convention, where Trump shone, he garnered genuine sympathy after he was nearly killed by a would-be assassin’s bullet. His courage and defiance in the face of danger were not lost on observers.
In addition, the courts have also helped him stay at the top of his game. There was a low point in May, when a New York court convicted him of 34 felonies for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 presidential election. However, more recently, the courts have been kinder to the former president. On July 1, the US Supreme Court ruled that he cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president, throwing out a lower court’s decision to the contrary. And this week, a federal judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case against Trump, siding with his defense lawyers, who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
While Biden’s adversaries are naturally exaggerating his frequent faux pas, such as introducing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as “President Putin” at the NATO Summit in Washington last week, the question should not be whether the president is lucid or if he has some cognitive challenges, but whether he is the best candidate to lead the US in the next four years. In other words, an incumbent need not get a second term if the voters find someone better to lead the country. In American history, there have been about a dozen one-term presidents.
American elections are largely a domestic affair and the rest of the world will deal with whoever is chosen by US voters. However, the geopolitical repercussions of these elections should not be underestimated. US decisions on global issues are extremely important.
Take the war in Gaza, which the US has failed to stop despite the fact that it is Israel’s main supporter and provider of the arms it uses in conducting the war and, as such, is the only country with the ability to end the war and start the region on the path toward peace. Whether it is fighting terrorism, piracy or maintaining maritime security, the US is a key player. The EU and NATO will be equally concerned if the next president does not share their priorities.
With the unparalleled powers of American presidents, it matters to the world who occupies the White House. It would be wise to start planning for the different scenarios come Jan. 20, 2025, when a new presidential term commences.
• Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the Gulf Cooperation Council assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily represent the GCC.
X: @abuhamad1

Turkiye will not abandon Syrian opposition for Assad deal
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/July 17, 2024
During the course of the NATO Summit in Washington last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had extended an invite to Syrian President Bashar Assad to meet either in Turkiye or a third country. He added that the issue would be followed up by Turkiye’s foreign minister. After previously labeling Assad as “cruel and terrorist” and calling for his prosecution in The Hague, Erdogan is now referring to him as “Mr. Assad.” The important question is what does this mean for the Syrian opposition? Does it mean that Assad has won?
Erdogan is known for his pragmatism. He knows how to change his position when it suits his interests. The Iranians are waiting for the result of the proposed Turkish-Syrian meeting. So far, Assad has not accepted the invitation. Though Turkiye has signaled that it is open to a deal with Assad, it is not offering unconditional normalization. Nor has it shown that it is willing to make any concessions.
According to my sources, the potential meeting will tackle four issues. The first issue is the legitimization of the Turkish presence in the north of Syria. The Turkish involvement in this area dates back to the 1990s. In October 1998, Syria signed the Adana Agreement with Turkiye, under which the former does not allow hostile activities against the latter. The agreement came after Hafez Assad abandoned Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the militant PKK. Assad had been tactically using Ocalan, who was based in Syria, to create nuisance and blackmail its northern neighbor.
In 1997, when the PKK was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US, Ocalan became a liability. In addition to the terrorist designation, Turkiye started threatening military action. To redeem himself, Hafez Assad included in the Adana Agreement a provision whereby the Turkish military could chase PKK fighters up to 5 km into Syrian territory. Hence, in principle, Turkiye has the right to enter Syrian territory to protect its own territory from terrorist attacks.
The coming meeting with Bashar Assad is meant to emphasize the Adana Agreement and to enhance it and expand it. Perhaps it will include a larger swath of land? On the other hand, the more control Ankara has over northern Syria, the more space it has to relocate refugees from Turkiye back to Syria.
Secondly, although Turkiye does not want to give up any of the territory that is under its control, it does want the Assad regime to have more control over Kurdish areas. Ankara felt threatened by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s recent announcement that it would hold municipal elections. The elections were planned according to a new administrative configuration that is different to the one devised by the Syrian state. Hence, this a prelude to autonomy. Autonomy is contagious. The last thing Ankara wants to see is the Kurds seeking autonomy. The Kurdish issue is deemed an existential threat by Turkiye.
The third objective is to seek approval to conduct an operation to separate the PKK from the PYD. In this respect, Turkiye recently launched an operation in the province of Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. However, to create a buffer zone between Iraq and Syria that prevents the movement of the PKK, Ankara needs to have the approval of both Syria and Iraq. It is already in negotiations with Iraq.
The fourth objective is to push the political process. This is why Turkiye keeps mentioning UN Security Council Resolution 2254. The political process is an issue that Assad avoids like plague.
Though Turkiye has signaled that it is open to a deal, it is not offering unconditional normalization.
The open invite to Assad is by no means a signal that Turkiye has abandoned the opposition. On the contrary, the fact that Ankara is open to negotiating with Assad makes it keener on safeguarding the opposition. The opposition is leverage Turkiye can use when negotiating with Assad.
For Assad, his only supposed show of strength is putting some conditions on Turkiye. He conditioned any negotiations on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory. If he gives up on that, what is left for him to claim any sort of legitimacy? Nothing. He already has a weak army. He lives on a lifeline extended by the Iranians and the Russians. If he accepts the Turkish military presence, he has nothing left.
In an interview with Russia Today this week, Assad reiterated that, to have Syria-Turkiye relations return to how they were pre-2011, Ankara would have to give up its support for “terrorism” and respect the sovereignty of Syria. It is inconceivable that Turkiye will withdraw from Syria. With a weak state and the presence of empowered Kurdish separatists, Turkiye’s military presence in Syria is a national security imperative.
Turkiye needs to stay in Syria to make sure it protects its territory. It will not withdraw from the northwest. Additionally, the opposition groups in Idlib are irreconcilable with the regime. Turkiye will not withdraw and allow carnage for which it will be blamed. Also, there is no trust that Assad will be a good neighbor.Ankara hugely distrusts Assad. Moscow, which is a main backer of Assad and has extensive ties with Turkiye, has tried to bring the two parties together before. In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers met in Moscow. Another meeting between officials of the two countries was brokered by the Kremlin the following year. However, no real progress was made.
Assad wants a concession from Turkiye that will boost his legitimacy, but Ankara is unwilling to oblige. Hence, despite the talk of normalization, no breakthrough is expected and Turkiye is unlikely to abandon the Syrian opposition. Assad is reluctant to meet with Erdogan. He knows that such a meeting would be a losing deal for him and a winning deal for Erdogan. The meeting would be a veiled recognition of the Turkish presence in Syria.
Any Turkish-Assad rapprochement will be unlikely to result in a grand deal that would streamline bilateral relations. The differences between the two sides are too great. Assad will not engage in any political process with the opposition that will end the current conflict. Turkiye, on the other hand, will not withdraw from the north and endanger itself, nor will it give up on the opposition.
• Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II.

We are all entitled to an opinion about the race to the White House
Eyad Abu Shakra/Arab News/July 17, 2024
If the president of the US were not a leader who has an impact on all of our lives, the physical and mental well-being of President Joe Biden would not have drawn all the attention it has received, nor would we have heard all this noise or the many comments.
This reminds me of 1982, when Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, with Washington facilitating its mission with a series of vetoes and stances. I had moved to Britain three years earlier.
With great pain and even greater fear for my family’s fate, I followed the scenes of the brutal strikes on Beirut, as well as other regions in south Lebanon. I did not know where my family was, aggravating my anxiety. I was not sure if they were in our winter house in the capital Beirut or if they had managed to reach — despite the danger — our summer house in the mountains.
Indeed, an American friend of mine from university was shocked by the answer I gave as we watched the terrifying coverage on TV. When she asked about my family, I told her: “I don’t know anything about how they are doing because communications are down.”
“We are here studying political science and history, living in a democratic country with an advanced legal and governance system. We value rights, justice, accountability and good governance,” I told her. “You were born and raised in the greatest democracy the world has ever known ... and thanks to its democratic system, you can question your government and hold it accountable, unlike me. Today, look at me, your classmate ... I don’t even know if my kin in Lebanon are alive and I cannot defend them. I cannot defend them by questioning your government ... nor even by questioning my own helpless government.”Much to her astonishment, I then went on to add: “Don’t you agree, then, that genuine, full democracy means allowing anyone to question any authority that directly affects their life? For example, the president of my republic does not affect your life as an American citizen in any way ... whereas your president, Ronald Reagan, affects my life and the lives of all Lebanese people. Accordingly, would it not be fair that we and the other nations of the world be allowed to participate in electing the president of the US?”
With this rhetorical question, the quick conversation ended. We then continued to follow the invasion, the massacres, the political and security changes with regional implications ... all the repercussions whose impact we still feel to this day.
If anyone argues that electing the US president is a ‘sovereign,’ purely American affair, they are speaking nonsense.
Yes, President Biden’s health is very important and everyone has the right to discuss it. The same can be said about the legal status and political discourse of his opponent, former — and possibly future — President Donald Trump. The entire world has paid and will continue to pay the price for the results of American elections, from Palestine and Syria to Ukraine and from Taiwan to sub-Saharan Africa. If anyone argues that electing the US president is a “sovereign,” purely American affair, they are speaking nonsense and are detached from reality.
But how did the political climate in Washington become like this? What are the dynamics that made the octogenarian Biden “indispensable” for the Democratic Party and the realization of the Democratic planners’ “vision?”
Is it conceivable that, in a system as developed as the American political (and electoral) system, no alternative strategy had been drawn up for the event that it became clear the candidate had a major flaw, one that has convinced the party’s base that it is at great risk of losing its bet?
It is strange. In the US, the vice presidency is an important position that requires the same qualifications as the president and is elected on the same ticket. Parties even seek to politically and geographically “balance” the ticket through the vice presidential candidate. Yet, some ignore this option in proposing solutions. Here, I recall that when the Democrats chose Biden — an old white man from an eastern state who was a long-serving senator — as their candidate, many of the things that made her different tipped the scales in favor of Kamala Harris. Among other considerations, she was chosen as his running mate because she is a woman of Afro-Asian descent, relatively young, from a western state and had been a state governor, not a member of Congress. Thus, she balanced with Biden in various ways.
Before the last race, both parties had successfully balanced their tickets through their choice of vice president. For the Democrats, we have the tickets of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (east/southwest), Johnson and Hubert Humphrey (southwest/north), Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale (south/north) and Barack Obama and Joe Biden (north/east). For the Republicans, there were the tickets of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew (west/east), Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (west/northeast then south), Bush and Dan Quayle (northeast then south/north), etc.
The point is that if the interests of the various lobbies (who effectively determine who becomes president and vice president even before the polls) allow it, there is nothing to prevent, for example, an effort to convince Biden to step aside and have Harris lead the ticket, after it is balanced by the right candidate for vice president. Of course, some could raise a variety of arguments and numerous objections to this, some of which might be legal. However, I do not expect President Biden’s plummeting chances of victory to be part of the controversy.
Moreover, considering the depth of the Democrats’ opposition to Trump and their determination to prevent him from returning to the White House, logic dictates that they should think outside the box. That is, the Democrats should consider exceptional solutions for what is an exceptional problem at both the leadership and grassroots levels.
**Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. X: @eyad1949

US Presidency: Is the Outcome Predetermined?
Rami Rayess/This Is Beirut/July 17/2024
In the wake of the presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and his rival, former President Donald Trump, Biden’s lackluster (if not catastrophic, as leading commentators and political analysts have described) performance has fueled expectations that Trump may achieve a decisive victory. Biden’s frequent gaffes and almost daily slips of the tongue have raised serious questions about his cognitive and mental abilities.
Whether or not the Democratic Party decides to withdraw President Joe Biden’s candidacy and replace him with another nominee, indicators of Trump’s rising prospects have significantly increased, especially after the failed assassination attempt on him. Trump capitalized on the moment, instantly transforming his image of defiantly raising his fist into a “media icon.” In stark contrast, Biden is increasingly portrayed as weak, frequently stumbling and lacking the mental sharpness required for the most powerful office in the world, which demands around 18 hours of work daily—something Biden seems unable to sustain.
Even some of President Biden’s staunchest supporters and closest allies have begun to withdraw their support for him. In the past week, there has been a notable stance from globally renowned actor George Clooney and others, including several US MPs and officials, openly calling for Biden’s departure. Meanwhile, others have expressed reservations about the idea of “changing horses” in the final months before the upcoming November election.
Regardless of the outcome, fully analyzing the future paths of US foreign policy in the next presidential term is now complicated by potential changes in the Democratic Party’s nomination. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s options appear decisive and strong, particularly with the formal endorsement of Trump’s candidacy. While both presidents compete to support Israel, a longstanding cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East influenced directly and heavily by the powerful Jewish lobby in Washington—which has maintained significant sway over the years with minimal setbacks—, they may diverge on several critical dossiers. These include the “optimal” approach to the Iranian nuclear dossier. Biden has leaned towards negotiations after Trump imposed sanctions and efforts to freeze the Iranian regime’s funds, alongside direct assassinations targeting key leaders, notably General Qassem Suleimani, dealing a severe blow to Tehran and its regional role.
While Biden proudly suggests that Israel should have been invented if it didn’t exist, Trump was the only US president to fulfill his predecessors’ longstanding threats to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem, officially recognizing it as Israel’s capital. Again, and despite this common ground, there are numerous other points of disagreement between both candidates. While Biden occasionally reiterates his support for a peaceful “two-state solution,” achieving peace remains challenging due to Israeli resistance and Palestinian division. In contrast, Trump largely ignored the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and sought to circumvent the Palestinian cause through the landmark Abraham Accords, which fell short of achieving a comprehensive resolution.
One of those crucial points is the relationship with Russia in light of the Ukraine war, which Trump might resume if re-elected, driven by his adherence to “political realism.” This sharply contrasts with Biden’s “hardline” support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his refusal to “concede” disputed territories. The relationship with China also poses a significant challenge. Despite the absence of confrontation between Washington and Beijing during Biden’s administration, Trump is expected to demonstrate greater political and economic “flexibility,” influenced by his commercial and mercantilist background, which cannot be overlooked in any relationship with China, known for its significant trade competition with the United States.It is clear that foreign policy choices will remain under scrutiny amidst the unprecedented challenges posed by the American presidential elections. However, this does not diminish the complexity of domestic dossiers spanning immigration, employment opportunities, infrastructure, the dynamics among constitutional institutions and the future of democracy in America. The coming weeks will provide the answers to many of these questions.