English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 13/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 25/01-13: “‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 12-13/2024
The martyrs of October 13, 1990 and the betrayal of merchant and Iscariot leaders/Elias Bejjani/October 13/2024
Lebanese Christian Leadership: Subservient, Neutered, and Ignorant of Gratitude/Elias Bejjani / October 12, 2024
Elias Bejjani/Video: The Maarab Conference is Recipe for Definite failure, and Resolution 1701 Was Buried with Nasrallah's Assassination/October 11, 2024
Text & Video: The Treason of Esmail Qaani & His Secretary Exposes the Iranian Regime as the True Enemy of the Lebanese, Arabs, and Global Peace—Not Israel/Elias Bejjani/October 10/2024
Iran parliament speaker visits site of deadliest Israeli strike in central Beirut
Israel orders evacuation of more southern Lebanese towns
Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
Israel’s last war against Hezbollah ended in stalemate. Fierce border clashes suggest a win won’t be easy
As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon's army watches from the sidelines
Hezbollah warns Israelis to stay away from army in residential areas
Macron says ending arms exports for Gaza, Lebanon only way to stop fighting
Israel army warns south Lebanon residents 'not to return to homes'
Hezbollah fires rockets at Haifa as Israel condemned for attacking UNIFIL
2 Lebanese soldiers killed as airstrike hits near their checkpoint
41,000 Displaced Families in Lebanon After 9,666 Attacks
Meerab Gathering Draws 'Rescue Roadmap' to Salvage Lebanon
Calm in Beirut, Chaos in Bekaa and Southern Lebanon
Between the Possible and the Illusion of the Possible

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 12-13/2024
UN warns against ‘catastrophic’ regional conflict
Israeli strikes kill 29 people in Gaza, medics say, as tanks push deeper in the north
Israeli strikes kill 19 people in Gaza, medics say, as tanks push deeper north
Thousands of protesters in Rome and Lisbon call for ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon
After mulling siege plan, Israel ramps up military push in northern Gaza
Iran is threatening to break its fragile truce with Saudi Arabia: reports
US military strikes 'multiple' Islamic State group camps in Syria
UN agencies, NGOS concerned over staff detained by Yemen’s Houthis
Fresh protests in Turkiye over violence against women

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 12-13/2024
Lebanon Must Be Rebuilt From Zero/Yair Ravid (Abu Daoud)/October 12/2024
Betraying the Free World?/Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./October 12, 2024
Would an Israeli attack on Iran’s Kharg Island spark an oil crisis? Maybe not./Dov S. Zakheim, /The Hill/October 12/2024
Is Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to drag the US into war with Iran?/Ray Hanania/Arab News/October 12, 2024
Iran and Israel march into the unknown/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/October 12, 2024
Europe and a possible Trump presidency/Andrew Hammond/Arab News/October 12, 2024
Selective Tweets for October 12/2024

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 12-13/2024
Lebanese Christian Leadership: Subservient, Neutered, and Ignorant of Gratitude
Elias Bejjani / October 13, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135609/
Nothing has destroyed Arab societies, their nations, and Lebanon more than the ignorant and foolish phrase: "No voice is louder than the voice of battle."
This unfortunate and self-destructive slogan has for years concealed the deep existential problems eating away at the Lebanese state, allowing Hezbollah, the armed, sectarian, and terrorist Iranian armed proxy to expand, take control of the country, and turn it into a military base for Iranian arms, a battlefield for its wars, and a launch pad for its destructive expansionist evil project. Hezbollah was left free to roam under the "mafia-militia" equation (the mafia covering corruption, the militia covering weapons and occupation), creating a culture of fear, submission, surrender, and Dhimmitude. It suppressed, through force, assassinations, and fabricated judicial cases, any attempt to confront its terror that has been choking Lebanon and its people for more than 40 years.
In the midst of this ongoing war between Hezbollah and Israel that is burning and destroying our homeland and displacing our people, we must speak honestly and loudly, without fear: Hezbollah is not just a threat to Lebanon; it is a plague that has infiltrated every corner of the Lebanese societies, oppressing our people, particularly Christians, and assassinating Lebanese leaders who stand against it.
Whether we like Israel or not, it is currently the only force capable of facing this enormous challenge, dismantling Hezbollah's leadership, and breaking its terrorist network. No other power in the world has the military capability or strategic interest to accomplish this mission. Yet, many Lebanese Christian leaders, driven by Dhimmitude and foolishness, continue to show vile ingratitude, attacking Israel with empty rhetoric, labeling it  "enemy" "barbaric" and "criminal." etc
These leaders, whether secular or religious, are betraying their own people by failing to recognize the importance of what Israel is doing to liberate Lebanon from Hezbollah’s occupation and threat.
This is not just about regional politics; it is a matter of Lebanon’s survival and existence, especially for the Christians, whom Hezbollah has systematically targeted for decades in an effort to uproot them. Hezbollah's terrorism, arrogance, and depravity have turned Christians into second-class citizens in their own country, forced to live under the threat of violence, coerced into submission, and stripped of their political power in governance.
In 1982, when Bachir Gemayel was assassinated, we, as Christians and Lebanese in general, lost our greatest chance to reclaim Lebanon from the forces that sought its destruction. Now, 42 years later, we are at another critical crossroads in our history.
Instead of seizing this opportunity and aligning with the only force—Israel—that can destroy Hezbollah, Lebanese Christian leaders are once again proving themselves to be neutered and subservient, unable to break free from the mentality and culture of Dhimmitude that has enslaved them. These leaders, in their foolishness, continue to appease Hezbollah, standing idly by while Israel does the hard work of dismantling a terrorist organization that has brought nothing but pain and destruction to Lebanon and its people.
This is not just cowardice; it is a betrayal of the Lebanese people, especially Christians, who deserve to live freely, like other Lebanese, in a sovereign and independent nation.
If these Christian leaders had any dignity or vision, they would stop their pointless and foolish attacks on Israel and start showing gratitude for what is being done to free Lebanon from the grip of the Iranian militia.
History will not forgive those who, at the moment of Hezbollah's fall, chose cowardice over courage, and ingratitude over the duty to acknowledge the favor.
The chance to reclaim Lebanon from the jaws of Iran and its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, is now. Israel is offering us this final opportunity. Let us not repeat the mistake we made in 1982; this may be our last chance to restore our homeland and live in peace.

The martyrs of October 13, 1990 and the betrayal of merchant and Iscariot leaders
Elias Bejjani/October 13/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/123147/
For our fallen heroes who gave themselves in sacrifice at the altar of Lebanon on October 13/1990, we pray and make the pledge of living with our heads high, so that Lebanon remains the homeland of dignity and pride, the message of truth, the cradle of civility and giving, and the crucible of culture and civilizations.
There is no shed of doubt, as we learn from our deeply rooted history, that the Patriotic and faithful Lebanese who has God by his side, whose weapon is the truth, and whose faith is like the rock, shall never be vanquished.
On October 13, 1990, the Barbarian Syrian Army, jointly with evil local armed mercenaries savagely attacked and occupied the Lebanese presidential palace, savagely invaded the last remaining free regions of Lebanon, killed and mutilated hundreds of Lebanese soldiers and innocent citizens in cold blooded murder, kidnapped tens of soldiers, officers, clergymen, politicians and citizens, and erected a subservient and puppet regime fully controlled by its security intelligence headquarters in Damascus.
It is worth mentioning that in year 2005 the Syrian Army was forced to withdraw from Lebanon in accordance with the UNSC Resolution 1559, but sadly since that date, the Iranian proxy, the terrorist Hezbollah armed militia has been occupying Lebanon, and by force controlling fully it governing decision making process.
The terrorist Hezbollah, by crime, wars, terrorism, impoverishment, dismantling all government and private institutions is hindering the Lebanese people from reclaiming their independence, freedom, sovereignty, and turning Lebanon into an Iranian battle field for Iranian evil schemes and wars.. The Terrorist Hezbollah Militia is the Syrian-Iranian spearhead of the axis of evil.
We must never forget that on October 13/1990 the Lebanese presidential Palace in Baabda and all the free regions were desecrated by the horde of Syrian Baathist gangs, Mafiosi, militias, and other corrupt mercenaries of Tamerlane invaders vintage.
The soldiers of our valiant army were tortured and butchered in the cities and villages of Bsous, Aley, Kahale, and other bastions of resistance. Lebanese most precious of possessions, their freedom, was raped in broad daylight, while the free world, and all the Arab countries at that time watched in silence.
Remembering the Massacre won’t pass without wiping the tears of sorrow and pain for those beloved ones, who left this world, and others who emigrated to its far-flung corners. Lifetime of hard work of many citizens was wiped out overnight, villages and towns were destroyed, factories closed, fields made lay fallow and dry and children lost their innocence.
Yet we, the patriotic and faithful Lebanese are a tough and hopeful people, and no matter the sacrifices and the pain, we are today even more determined with our strong faith to redeem our freedom, and bring to justice all those who accepted to be the dirty tools of the conspiracy that has been destroying, humiliating, and tormenting our country since 1976.
Meanwhile the lessons of October 13/1990, are many and they are all glorious. The free of our people, civilians and military, ordinary citizens and leaders, all stood tall and strong in turning back the aggression of the barbarians at the gate. They resisted valiantly and courageously, writing with their own blood long epics that will not be soon forgotten by their children and grandchildren, and other students of history. They refused to sign on an agreement of surrender and oppression, and spoke up against the shame of capitulation.
Today on the commemoration of the Syrian invasion to Lebanon’s free regions, we shall pray for the souls of all those Lebanese comrades who fell in the battles of confrontation, for all our citizens who are still arbitrarily detained in Syria’s notorious jails, for the safe and dignified return of our refugees from Israel, for the return of peace to the homeland, and for the repentance of Lebanon’s leaders and politicians who for personal gains have turned against their own people, negated their declared convictions, downtrodden their freedom and liberation slogans, sided with the Axis of evil (Syria, Iran) and forged an alliance with Hezbollah whose ultimate aim is to replicate the Iranian Mullahs’ regime in Lebanon.
But in spite of the Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon in year 2005, old and new Syrian-made Lebanese puppets continue to trade demagogy and spread incitement, profiting from people’s economic needs and the absence of the state’s law and order. Thanks to the Iranian petro dollars, their consciences are numbed, and their bank accounts and pockets inflated. Sadly, among those is General Michele Aoun who after his return from exile to Lebanon in 2005 has bizarrely transformed from a staunched patriotic Lebanese leader and advocate for freedom and peace, into a Syrian-Iranian allay, and a loud mouthpiece for their axis of evil schemes and conspiracies.
General Aoun like the rest of the pro-Syrian-Iranian Lebanese politicians and leaders care only for his position, family members, personal interests, and greed.
In the eyes of the patriotic Lebanese, Aoun and the rest of those conscienceless creatures are nothing but robots and dirty instruments bent on Lebanon’s destabilization, blocking the return of peace and order to the country, aborting the mission of the international forces, and the UN security council (UNSC) resolutions, in particular resolutions 1559 and 1701.
They are hired by the axis of evil nations and organizations to keep our homeland, the land of the Holy Cedars, an arena and a backyard for “The Wars of the Others”, a base for chaos and a breeding culture for hatred, terrorism, hostility and fundamentalism.
Our martyrs, the living and dead alike, must be rolling in anger in their graves and in the Syrian Baath dungeons, as they witness these leaders today, especially General Michele Aoun, upon whom they laid their hope, fall into the gutter of cheap politics.
General Aoun reversed all his theses and slogans and joined the same powers that invaded the free Lebanon region on October 13, 1990. He selectively had forgotten who he is, and who his people are, and negated everything he advocated and lobbied for.
In this year’s commemoration, we proudly hail and remember the passing and disappearance of hundreds of our people, civilian, military, and religious personnel who gladly sacrificed themselves on Lebanon’s altar in defense of freedom, dignity and identity ... We raise our prayers for the rest of their souls, and for the safe return of all our prisoners held arbitrarily in the dungeons of the Syrian Baath.
We ask for consolation to all their families, hoping that their grand sacrifices were not in vain, now that prominent leaders and politicians of that era changed sides and joined the killers after the liberation of the country. Those Pharisees were in positions of responsibility to safeguard the nation and its dignity, and were entrusted to defend the identity, the homeland and the beliefs.
What truly saddens us is the continuing suffering of our refugees in Israel since 2000, despite all the recent developments. This is due to the stark servitude of those Lebanese Leaders and politicians on whom we held our hopes for a courageous resolution to this humane problem. Instead, they shed their responsibilities and voided the cause from its humane content, and furthermore, in order to satisfy their alliances with fundamentalists and radicals, they betrayed their own people and the cause of Lebanon by agreeing to label our heroic southern refugees as criminals.
Our refugees in Israel are the ultimate Lebanese patriots who did no wrong, but who simply suffered for 30 years trying to defend their land, their homes, their children and their dignity against Syria and the hordes of Islamic fundamentalists, outlaw Palestinian militias, and even renegade battalions of the Lebanese Army itself that seceded from the government to fight alongside the outlaw organizations and militias against Lebanon, the Lebanese State and the Lebanese people.
God Bless the Souls Of Our Martyrs
Long Live Lebanon

Elias Bejjani/Video: The Maarab Conference is Recipe for Definite failure, and Resolution 1701 Was Buried with Nasrallah's Assassination
Lebanon is a Rogue, Failed State—The UN Must Enforce Chapter 7 of its Charter by Force
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiL0rxPVNvM&t=4s
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: The Maarab Conference is Recipe for Definite failure, and Resolution 1701 Was Buried with Nasrallah's Assassination
Lebanon is a Rogue, Failed State—The UN Must Enforce Chapter 7 of its Charter by Force
Elias Bejjani / October 11, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135548/
The upcoming Maarab Conference, called for by Dr. Samir Geagea this Saturday, is nothing more than a theatrical, pointless, and a Recipe for Definate failure. . It is completely detached from the deadly crisis Lebanon is currently facing amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. In fact, this conference is already dead before it even begins, as it’s merely a replica of a previous disastrous conference held in the same location, called for by the same person. That event exposed the self-serving goals of its organizer, Geagea, and ended in utter failure.
Many Christians and Lebanese citizens don't see Samir Geagea as a credible leader, knowing fully well his self-centered agenda and his delusional presidential ambitions, which stand in stark contrast to the true path needed to save Lebanon and restore its sovereignty. Lebanon must be freed from the grip of the Iranian occupation and the stranglehold of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist entity that blasphemously calls itself a political party.
UN Resolution 1701 was effectively buried alongside Hassan Nasrallah's assassination. All attempts to resurrect it are not only futile but demonstrate a dangerous level of ignorance or cowardly submission. The war between Hezbollah and Israel will not end until Hezbollah is completely uprooted, its infrastructure dismantled, and its weapons handed over, as the Israeli Prime Minister has stated.
Lebanon is undeniably a rogue and failed state. Its ruling elite, political factions, and leadership are deeply corrupt, while its political parties have become mere corporate franchises for personal gain. A vast majority of religious leaders are hypocritical Pharisees, speaking of morality while serving their own interests. The nation’s institutions are hollow, and its officials are morally bankrupt, driven by greed and self-interest.
Lebanon urgently needs to be placed under the authority of the United Nations, in accordance with Chapter 7 of its charter. Lebanon meets all the criteria of a failed state, and the international community must act immediately. Any conference—like the one Geagea is convening—that does not demand the full and immediate implementation of all UN resolutions concerning Lebanon through the use of force is doomed to failure. It must call for the country to be put under Chapter 7, for corrupt politicians to be tried and placed under house arrest, and for the Lebanese people to be educated on how to govern themselves properly.
In conclusion, Samir Geagea, like the vast majority of Lebanon’s current leadership have personal and national agendas. While most of the clergy are complicit hypocrites, and the political parties are nothing more than profit-driven enterprises. At the same time a significant portion of the population remains trapped in blind ideological servitude. Lebanon requires a complete overhaul to govern itself.
This is an urgent call for international intervention before it’s too late.

https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135526/
Text & Video: The Treason of Esmail Qaani & His Secretary Exposes the Iranian Regime as the True Enemy of the Lebanese, Arabs, and Global Peace—Not Israel
Elias Bejjani/October 10/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135526/
Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre: Israel hit on Iran nuclear sites would be ‘gift’ to humanity
The recent revelation by Sky News about the treason of Esmail Qaani, leader of Iran’s Quds Force, and his secretary, who secretly provided Israeli Mossad with crucial intelligence leading to the assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and the obliteration of Hezbollah’s leadership, is a striking blow against Iran’s ambitions. The subsequent destruction of Shiite residential areas in South Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Dahiyeh of Beirut, displacing over one and a half million Lebanese Shiites, exposes a devastating truth: the Iranian regime, under its ruthless mullahs, has long manipulated and sacrificed its followers for its imperialist agenda. The Shiites of Lebanon and the Arab world must wake up to this bitter reality—the regime in Tehran has been exploiting their faith, their identity, and their future as cannon fodder for its expansionist dreams.
Iran, through the tool of Hezbollah, has systematically brainwashed generations of Shiites with fanaticism, using the delusional rhetoric of "destroying Israel" and "liberating Palestine" as a cover for its own designs of regional dominance. This revelation—that Iran’s own top commanders betrayed Hezbollah and led to its downfall—should shatter the illusion that Tehran cares about the Lebanese people, especially its Shiite followers. It does not. The regime’s interest is solely in power, no matter the cost, even if it means delivering its loyal allies to their graves.
The exposure of Qaani’s treason may very well be a deliberate Israeli move to weaken Iran's false aura of invincibility and to alert the Arab Shiites that their true enemy is not Israel but the regime in Tehran. It is Iran that has made their lands battlegrounds and their futures uncertain. The question now for the Lebanese Shiites and the broader Arab Shiite community is whether they will continue to be pawns in Iran’s deadly game, or whether they will rise to reclaim their dignity, peace, and homeland.
The winds of change are sweeping across the region, as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, (MBS) recently stated that Israel is a “potential ally.” This declaration is more than a policy shift—it is an invitation to the Middle East to move beyond the politics of hatred and war. We in the Middle East must seize this opportunity to foster peace, stability, and cooperation. The Iranian regime, along with its Sunni and Shiites Islamist proxies and the radical leftist forces that seek to destabilize, are obstacles to this future.
The time has come for the Arab Shiites to break free from the Iranian regime’s chains of manipulation, reject its agenda of death and destruction, and embrace the path of peace. The real enemy is not Israel, but those who use religion to blind and control, those who value power over the well-being of their own people. Iran is that enemy. Let us stand united for a future of peace and prosperity in the Middle East, free from the poisonous grip of the Iranian mullahs.o continue carrying out its mandate. That includes respecting its freedom of movement."

Iran parliament speaker visits site of deadliest Israeli strike in central Beirut
AFP/October 12, 2024
Israeli air raid on Thursday night in the densely populated Basta area killed at least 22 people
Attack targeted the Iran-backed group’s security chief Wafiq Safa, but his fate remains unknown
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Saturday denounced Israel’s “crimes” as he visited the site of the deadliest Israeli strike on central Beirut in recent weeks, an AFP photographer said. A source close to Hezbollah has said that the air raid on Thursday night in the densely populated Basta area, which killed at least 22 people, had targeted the Iran-backed Lebanese group’s security chief Wafiq Safa. But neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah confirmed that he was the target of the strike, nor did they remark on his fate.
Speaking to the press, accompanied by two Hezbollah lawmakers, Ghalibaf denounced what he called Israel’s “crimes.”“International organizations and the UN Security Council have the capability (to stop Israel) but they are unfortunately keeping silent,” he said.
Earlier Saturday, Ghalibaf met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who told him his government’s priority was “to work toward a ceasefire,” Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said. The premier on Friday urged the United Nations to pass a resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Ghalibaf was also expected to meet his Lebanese counterpart Nabih Berri, a powerful Hezbollah ally, before heading to Geneva later the same day, according to Berri’s office and Iran’s state news agency IRNA. When he visited Lebanon on Friday last week, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country backed efforts for a simultaneous ceasefire with Israel in both Gaza and Lebanon.

Israel orders evacuation of more southern Lebanese towns
REUTERS/October 12, 2024
BEIRUT/CAIRO: Israel ordered more evacuations and targeted a new location in northern Lebanon on Saturday, as a third UN peacekeeper was wounded in Israel’s escalating conflict with Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. At least 15 people were killed and 37 wounded in Israeli strikes across three different areas in Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry said. One of the targeted locations was in the town of Deir Billa in northern Lebanon, which had not been struck before. The Israeli military also said Hezbollah had fired nearly 320 projectiles from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday, without giving further details. It declared areas around some towns in north Israel closed to the public. Also on Saturday, Israel’s military ordered residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows from the western Bekaa Valley into the Mediterranean.
HIGHLIGHTS
• At least 15 killed in Israeli strikes, Lebanese ministry says
• Israel military orders evacuation of 23 Lebanese villages
• Third U.N. peacekeeper wounded
• Israel says Hezbollah fires nearly 320 projectiles into Israel
The order, communicated via a military statement, mentioned villages in southern Lebanon that have been recent targets of Israeli attacks, many of which are already almost empty. The Israeli military said evacuations were necessary for the safety of residents due to increased Hezbollah activities, claiming the group is using sites to conceal weapons and launch attacks on Israel. Hezbollah denies concealing weapons among civilians. The Lebanese health ministry said on X that five hospitals sustained damage from the Israeli airstrikes in the eastern city of Baalbek and the Bekaa Valley. The Israeli military had no immediate comment, and Reuters was unable to independently verify the hospital strikes. The Israeli military said on Saturday that Hezbollah was using ambulances to transport fighters and weapons and that it would take any necessary action. Reuters could not independently verify the Israeli accusation. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) last week was forced to close its clinic in a southern suburb of Beirut and temporarily stop its activities in another one in the north, because of heavy airstrikes, the group said in a statement on Thursday.In the last two weeks, Israeli strikes have killed at least 50 paramedics, MSF said, adding the heavy bombardments have severely disrupted access to medical care across the country. The Israeli military also said it had hit around 200 targets in Lebanon with artillery and air strikes and killed around 50 Hezbollah fighters and dismantled dozens of weapons storage sites.
SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE
Another member of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, was struck by gunfire on Friday, the organization said on Saturday, adding that the man was stable after undergoing surgery to remove the bullet. The statement also said UNIFIL’s position in the southern Lebanese town of Ramyah sustained significant damage due to explosions following nearby shelling, but did not specify who was responsible for either attack. Two UN peacekeepers were wounded by an Israeli strike near their watchtower in south Lebanon on Friday, drawing condemnations from the global body and various countries. Hezbollah said that it had attacked the outskirts of Tel Aviv with a swarm of drones on Friday, without giving further details. Israel said there were no casualties reported when its military detected and intercepted two drones from Lebanon. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants erupted one year ago when the Iranian-backed group began launching rockets at northern Israel in support of Hamas, at the start of the Gaza war. It has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel bombing southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, killing many of Hezbollah’s top leaders, and sending ground troops across the border. Hezbollah for its part has fired rockets deeper into Israel. The Israeli campaign has forced approximately 1.2 million people from their homes since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese government. Israel says its Lebanon offensive aims to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people who evacuated northern Israel due to Hezbollah rocket fire. As of Friday the death toll had reached 2,255 since the beginning of hostilities, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Saturday. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Saturday that more Lebanese have now been displaced than during the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, when around 1 million fled their homes.

Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
AP/October 13, 2024
BEIRUT: As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes. Moein Shreif was recently awakened at 3 a.m. by a neighbor calling to alert him that Israel planned to strike a nearby building in his middle-class suburb south of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence. Shreif, his wife and their three children quickly fled their multi-story apartment building and drove away. Within minutes, explosions rang out, he said later that day upon returning to see the smoldering ruins of his building and the one next door. “I didn’t even have time to dress properly, as you can see,” said Shreif, a well-known Lebanese folk and pop singer who was still wearing his pajamas from the night before. “I didn’t take anything out of the house.”Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging strikes nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will fire rockets into Israel until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza; Israel says its fighting to stop those attacks, which have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes. But it wasn’t until late last month, when Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign against Hezbollah, that Lebanese people began receiving regular warnings about upcoming airstrikes. Human rights groups say Israel’s warnings — which aren’t issued before many airstrikes — are inadequate and sometimes misleading. On Sept. 23, Israel made 80,000 calls into Lebanon, according to Imad Kreidieh, head of the country’s telecommunications company – presumably recorded warnings about upcoming airstrikes. The calls caused panic. Schools shut down. People rushed home early from work. It ended up being the deadliest day of airstrikes in Lebanon in decades, with over 500 people killed — roughly one quarter of all those killed in Lebanon the past year, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Women and children make up one quarter of all the deaths, the ministry says. Israel has issued warnings on social media nearly every day since then. On Oct. 1, 27 villages in southern Lebanon were told to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometers (miles) away. “Save your lives,” the instructions said. That is when Salam, a 42-year-old mother of two, fled the village of Ain Ebel. She and her family are now staying with relatives in Beirut. Salam refused to give her full name for fear of reprisals. So far, Ain Ebel – a mostly Christian village – hasn’t been bombarded, although surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Shiite Muslims have been. Salam’s teenage children are terrified of going home, especially since Israel launched a ground invasion.
Salam is still baffled and angry that her village was evacuated.
So far, evacuation notices in Lebanon have been far more limited than in Gaza, but the messages in both places have a common theme. In Gaza, Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants embedded among Gaza’s civilians. In Lebanon, it warns of similar behavior by Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
Most of the Israeli military’s warnings first appear on the social media accounts of its Arabic spokesperson. They are then amplified by the Lebanese media. The warnings instruct people to vacate homes “immediately,” and they are usually followed by a series of overnight strikes that often cause damage in areas beyond those that were warned. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah fighters, weapons or other assets belonging to the group. Warnings are rarely issued before daytime strikes. The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month. Over 800 of some 1,000 shelters are over capacity. One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the UN’s human rights division. “Calling on residents of nearly 30 villages to leave ‘immediately’ is not effective and unlawfully suggests that civilians who do not leave an area will be deemed to be combatants,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Beirut. Kaiss said Israel — which usually issues warnings 30 to 90 minutes ahead of airstrikes — is obligated to protect civilians who refuse to evacuate, or who are physically unable to. Amnesty International is also critical of Israel’s practice of warning entire towns and villages to evacuate. It “raises questions around whether this is intended to create the conditions for mass displacement,” Agnes Callamard, the group’s secretary general said in a statement on Thursday.
The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it makes a significant effort to save civilian lives with its warnings. For almost a year, Israel’s strikes were mostly concentrated in communities along the border, far from the capital and its populous suburbs. But now people who once felt relatively safe in the outskirts of Beirut are increasingly at risk, and their neighborhoods are receiving a small but growing share of airstrike warnings.
In Shreif’s case, he said his neighbor called about five minutes after the Israeli military issued a warning on the social media platform X. Shreif considers himself lucky: If it wasn’t for that wake-up call, his family might not be alive. The AP could not determine whether any people were killed or injured in the strike that destroyed Shreif’s building or the one next door. To the northeast of Beirut, in the Bekaa Valley, Israel recently issued a warning to people to stay at least 1,000 meters (yards) away from their town or village if they are in or a near a home that has weapons belonging to Hezbollah.
Some of the warnings have come in the form of animated videos. One shows an elderly woman in a kitchen, suggesting she is unaware of hidden rooms and compartments in her own house that contain weapons for Hezbollah. “Didn’t you know?” the narrator says in Arabic, as the elderly woman discovers rockets under the couch, behind the shower curtains and elsewhere. The video warns viewers to leave their homes immediately if they – or their neighbors – discover weapons. But in many cases there are no warnings at all. Last month, in Ain el-Delb near the southern city of Sidon, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building, burying about 70 people under the rubble. Achraf Ramadan, 34, and his father were among the lucky one who rescue workers were able to pull out alive. His mother was taken to the hospital alive, but she later died from her wounds. His younger sister Julia, a public relations professional in her late 20s, was found dead. Achraf and Julia together had been leading initiatives to support displaced Lebanese families in and around Sidon. “This is a nice and peaceful neighborhood,” Ramadan said, sounding dejected. “The international community is asleep and not taking initiative. On the contrary, I think it’s giving Israel an excuse for its barbarity on the pretext of self-defense.”

Israel’s last war against Hezbollah ended in stalemate. Fierce border clashes suggest a win won’t be easy
Ivana Kottasová, CNN/October 12, 2024
The Ziv hospital in northern Israel is on high alert. Non-urgent operations are on hold, staff have been asked to consider donating blood when needed, and all patients – including newborns in the maternity unit – have been moved underground. The expectation here is clear: If Israel ends up sending more troops to southern Lebanon, it could get bloody. “We have been in a war situation for the past year, but after the army entered into Lebanon, our services and all of the staff are ready for, unfortunately, the next wave of casualties,” the hospital’s director, Salman Zarka, told CNN. Ziv Medical Center is the only hospital in the area and the closest to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, as well as the occupied Golan Heights. The hospital in Safed has been receiving people injured in cross-border fire for months, including children hurt in the deadly attack on Majdal Shams in July. “When you have combat on the ground, usually you have more wounded and, unfortunately, dead soldiers. I hope it will not happen, (but) we have to be ready,” Zarka, an IDF reservist and a former commander of the IDF’s Medical Services Center, added.
When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground operation against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon last week, its commanders insisted any action across the border would be “limited” in both geographical scope and duration. But the reality on the ground indicates it might be preparing for the possibility of a much bigger war.
The IDF said on Tuesday that units from four divisions are now fighting in southern Lebanon. The force doesn’t disclose its troop numbers, but each division is thought to consist of some 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers. Israel has also broadened evacuation orders to roughly a quarter of Lebanese territory, with more than 1.2 million people now displaced, according to the United Nations.
Daniel Sobelman, an international security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the IDF has remained intentionally vague about the scope of the operation. “Initially, Israel said this is just to make sure that all the (Hezbollah) infrastructure on the other side of the fence is destroyed,” he said. “But the thing that we all know is that this infrastructure doesn’t stop a few hundreds of meters or even a few kilometers in, it stretches out all the way to Beirut, into northern Lebanon, into the Beqaa Valley. If Israel really wants to clean up that area, then we would be looking at a very long-term operation,” he said.
The idea of a major ground invasion causes concern on both sides of the border, where memories of the last war remain raw. The 2006 conflict is known in Israel as the “Second Lebanon War” even though it was the third time Israel publicly said it entered Lebanon’s territory, after invading it in 1978 and 1982. The war ended in a stalemate after 34 days, after some 1,100 Lebanese and about 170 Israelis, including 120 soldiers, were killed. For the Lebanese, the current conflict is already bloodier than the last war. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the country since September 16, when Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah, according to a CNN tally of Lebanese health ministry statements.
Several international organizations have criticized Israel for the escalation. The UN said last month that “while Hezbollah has fired more missiles indiscriminately, forcing thousands of Israelis to leave their homes, Israel has escalated its indiscriminate and large-scale airstrikes across Lebanon,” warning that the increased violence “adds to the instability.”And while the casualties on the Israeli side are much lower and mostly limited to military, they are not insignificant: At least 14 IDF soldiers have been killed. Zarka told CNN there has also been a steady stream of injured soldiers coming to the hospital since the ground operation started – the hospital received well over 100 in just the first few days, he said. Both the IDF and Hezbollah said there had been fierce clashes and several cross-border attacks in the past week. The level of resistance from Hezbollah has surprised many observers given that Israel has recently killed nearly the entire leadership of the Iran-backed group, including its long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah.
At the same time, Hezbollah continues to fire rockets into Israel on a regular basis. And while most of the projectiles are intercepted by Israeli air defense systems, some slip through. On Wednesday, two Israeli civilians were killed when a rocket struck Kiryat Shmona, a town a few miles away from the border. Several Israeli soldiers who are currently fighting in Lebanon told CNN the open, mountainous terrain where their enemy is at home makes the operation difficult.
One soldier, who was deployed to Gaza from October to March and in July and August and who is now fighting in southern Lebanon, said the war along the northern border is very different to what he experienced in Gaza. “The challenge is not that Hezbollah is more equipped by Iran or have more training. The challenge is the switch in the head from months of fighting in an urban territory versus fighting in an open area territory,” he said, adding that even the most basic maneuvers – including the way soldiers move around in a column – are completely different.
Since IDF troops are not allowed to speak to the media without official permission, CNN is not publishing the name of the soldier.
Guerilla warfare
On paper, Israel’s army is far superior to Hezbollah’s militia fighters. It has more advanced and sophisticated weapons, a significantly higher number of troops, better intelligence and stronger allies. But the soldier who spoke with CNN said these advantages don’t count for much in the type of fighting that is going on in the hills of southern Lebanon, where superior weaponry counts for less. Sobelman, the security expert, said Israel had a similar experience in the 2006 war with Hezbollah. “Hezbollah were up against the strongest military in the Middle East, there were literally hundreds of Israeli air raids per day, and artillery, and all the capabilities that a modern, advanced military has to offer. And they were not defeated. They survived. And throughout the entire Israeli offensive, Hezbollah was able to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel every day,” he said.
Sobelman said that after the 2006 fiasco, Israel had spent almost two decades preparing for its next confrontation with Hezbollah. “The assumption has been that the next war is going to be with Hezbollah, not Hamas. No one on Earth probably imagined a scenario along the lines of October 7. Instead, Israel invested almost two decades preparing itself for what we’ve seen over the past several weeks – and in terms of Israel’s intelligence penetration of Hezbollah, it’s astounding.”
But while Israel has managed to kill several of Hezbollah’s top figures and inflicted much damage on the group’s rank-and-file members using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as well as airstrikes that have also claimed civilian lives, the IDF continues to face fierce resistance in southern Lebanon.
Because Hezbollah has been preparing for this war as well.
“The expectation is that Israel will win this war without paying too high a price. But that’s never the case with guerilla warfare,” Sobelman said, adding that Israel is fighting on a territory that Hezbollah knows much better and that its opponent is determined to inflict as many losses on the IDF as possible. “They’re entrenched in underground facilities and they’re playing a defensive game,” he said of Hezbollah’s fighters. “And it doesn’t matter how many of them you kill, still (in a guerilla war) the weaker side ultimately wins by imposing a sustained accumulation of costs.”
He said this is exactly what happened in 2006, when Israel was not able to achieve a decisive victory despite its superior capabilities. While the IDF has not provided any details about how its troops died in Lebanon, Hezbollah has claimed to have successfully ambushed Israeli soldiers on several occasions, saying it killed and injured a number of them.
‘Bring it on’
Despite the challenges, the IDF seems determined to push on. Speaking on Wednesday, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said Israel would “strike Hezbollah with intensity, without allowing them any respite or recovery.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as warning the Lebanese people that they face falling “into the abyss of a long war” because of Hezbollah.
Israeli soldiers on the ground seem prepared for a long war. “I wish we didn’t have to expand the scope of the ground incursion… but if we have to fight so that the children can go to kindergarten and not be afraid of a missile strike, we will do that too,” the soldier who spoke with CNN said, adding that he and his fellow fighters were “stronger than ever, ready and determined.”
This sentiment seemed prevalent among the dozens of Israeli soldiers CNN encountered while reporting from around the border after the IDF announced the ground operation. Most troops appeared in high spirits in the days after the ground operation began. When asked about Hezbollah specifically, one group responded by calling out “Bring it on!”But some in Israeli society are not so sure going into Lebanon is a good idea. Several civilians living in the northern parts of Israel told CNN last week that they fear a ground war could become very deadly. And some, like Itamar Greenberg, are prepared to go to prison in protest against the war. The 18-year-old is a conscientious objector, or “refusenik.” Conscription is mandatory for most Israeli citizens, men and women, and only a few young people dare to refuse on moral basis. A handful end up in prison each year. Greenberg has spent 60 days in prison so far – 30 days after his initial draft rejection and 30 days after he was called up a second time and refused again. CNN spoke to him in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, four days before he was scheduled to go back to prison after refusing to enlist for the third time.
Before the IDF attempted to draft him, Greenberg was an activist campaigning against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and against increasingly violent attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages. Some of these protests turned violent after Israeli security authorities got involved – clearly leaving a mark on Greenberg. When a police car drove past, its sirens on, he flinched and looked around with worry.
Greenberg told CNN he had refused to enlist in the army in protest of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, its war in Gaza and, most recently, its operation in Lebanon. “The war in Lebanon started when I was in jail. I joked that I didn’t even have the time to refuse all their f**king wars,” he noted. He was born in 2006, the year of the Second Lebanon War – a coincidence that is not lost on him. “The first (Israeli) soldiers have now been killed in the Third Lebanon War and the children who will fight in the Fourth Lebanon War are being born now,” he said.
“This war is creating the next war. The children that see their family die will not stop. I am pretty sure, based on the history, they will choose resistance and violence. It’s sad, but it’s the reality.”
CNN’s Zeena Saifi contributed to this report.

As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon's army watches from the sidelines
Abby Sewell/BEIRUT (AP)/October 12, 2024
BEIRUT (AP) — Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines. It's not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander. Lebanon's widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country's sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.
But with an aging arsenal and no air defenses, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel’s. The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, with around 5,000 of them deployed in the south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the militant group’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Its arsenal — built with support from Iran — is also more advanced.
A cautious initial response
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted a major aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a ground invasion that it says aims to push Hezbollah back from the border and allow displaced residents of northern Israel to return. As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 5 kilometers (3 miles) back. So far, Israeli forces have not advanced that far. The only direct clashes between the two national armies were on Oct. 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army position in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier, and on Friday, when two soldiers were killed in an airstrike in the same area. The Lebanese army said it returned fire both times. Lebanon's army declined to comment on how it will react if Israeli ground forces advance farther. Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one.
The army's “natural and automatic mission is to defend Lebanon against any army that may enter Lebanese territory,” said former Lebanese Army Gen. Hassan Jouni. “Of course, if the Israeli enemy enters, it will defend, but within the available capabilities … without going to the point of recklessness or suicide.”
Israeli and Lebanese armies are ‘a total overmatch’ The current Israeli invasion of Lebanon is its fourth into the neighboring country in the past 50 years. In most of the previous invasions, the Lebanese army played a similarly peripheral role. The one exception, said Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, was in 1972, when Israel attempted to create a 20-kilometer (12-mile) buffer zone to push back Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters. At that time, Nerguizian said, the Lebanese army successfully slowed the pace of the Israeli advance and “bought time for political leadership in Beirut to seek the intervention of the international community to pressure Israel for a cease-fire.”
But the internal situation in Lebanon — and the army's capabilities — deteriorated with the outbreak of a 15-year civil war in 1975, during which both Israeli and Syrian forces occupied parts of the country. Hezbollah was the only faction that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war, for the stated goal of resisting Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon — which ended in 2000. By 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a bruising monthlong war, the Lebanese army “had not been able to invest in any real-world post-war modernization, had no ability to deter Israeli air power" and “was left completely exposed,” Nerguizian said. “The few times that the (Lebanese army) and Israeli forces did engage militarily, there was total overmatch.”
International aid has been a mixed blessing
After the 2011 outbreak of civil war in neighboring Syria and the rise of the Islamic State militant group there, the Lebanese army saw a new influx of military aid. It successfully battled against IS on Lebanon’s border in 2017, although not alone — Hezbollah was simultaneously attacking the group on the other side of the border. When Lebanon’s financial system and currency collapsed in 2019, the army took a hit. It had no budget to buy weapons and maintain its existing supplies, vehicles and aircraft. An average soldier’s salary is now worth around $220 per month, and many resorted to working second jobs. At one point, the United States and Qatar both gave a monthly subsidy for soldiers’ salaries. The U.S. had been a primary funder of the Lebanese army before the crisis. It has given some $3 billion in military aid since 2006, according to the State Department, which said in a statement that it aims “to enable the Lebanese military to be a stabilizing force against regional threats" and “strengthen Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure its borders, counter internal threats, and disrupt terrorist facilitation.”
President Joe Biden's administration has also touted the Lebanese army as a key part of any diplomatic solution to the current war, with hopes that an increased deployment of its forces would supplant Hezbollah in the border area. But that support has limits. Aid to the Lebanese army has sometimes been politically controversial within the U.S., with some legislators arguing that it could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, although there is no evidence that has happened.
In Lebanon, many believe that the U.S. has blocked the army from obtaining more advanced weaponry that might allow it to defend against Israel — America’s strongest ally in the region and the recipient of at least $17.9 billion in U.S. military aid in the year since the war in Gaza began.
“It is my personal opinion that the United States does not allow the (Lebanese) military to have advanced air defense equipment, and this matter is related to Israel,” said Walid Aoun, a retired Lebanese army general and military analyst. Nerguizian said the perception is “not some conspiracy or half-truth," noting that the U.S. has enacted a legal requirement to support Israel's qualitative military edge relative to all other militaries in the region

Hezbollah warns Israelis to stay away from army in residential areas
Agence France Presse/October 13/2024
Hezbollah has warned Israelis to stay away from Israeli army sites in residential areas in the north of the country. "The Israeli enemy army uses the homes" of Israelis in north Israel, and has military bases inside residential "neighborhoods in major occupied cities such as Haifa, Tiberias, Acre," it said in a statement in Arabic and Hebrew. It warned Israelis "from being near these military gatherings in order to preserve their lives." After almost a year of cross-border fire, Israel has increased its strikes on what it says are Hezbollah sites since September 23.
In Lebanon, the Israeli escalation has killed more than 1,200 people and displaced around a million from their homes. Hezbollah has repeatedly announced it has fired rockets at areas in northern Israel.

Macron says ending arms exports for Gaza, Lebanon only way to stop fighting
Agence France Presse/October 13/2024
French President Emmanuel Macron said that "stopping the export of weapons" used in Gaza and Lebanon was the only way to end fighting there, and also condemned "deliberate" targeting of U.N. peacekeepers."We all know it. It's the unique lever that would end it," Macron said at a summit of European and Mediterranean leaders in Cyprus, where he also said it was "absolutely unacceptable" that U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon are "deliberately targeted" by Israeli forces.

Israel army warns south Lebanon residents 'not to return to homes'
Agence France Presse/October 13/2024
The Israeli military on Saturday warned residents of south Lebanon "not to return" to their homes as troops continued fighting Hezbollah militants in the area. Israeli forces continue to "target Hezbollah posts in or near your villages," military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. "For your own protection, do not return to your homes until further notice. Do not go south; anyone who goes south may put his life at risk." In a separate post, Adraee reiterated an earlier call for health workers and medical teams in southern Lebanon to avoid using ambulances, claiming they are being used by Hezbollah fighters. "We call on medical teams to avoid contact with Hezbollah members and not to cooperate with them," he said. "The IDF (Israeli military) affirms that the necessary actions will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed individuals, regardless of its type." Israel is engaged in a multi-front war as it continues to battle Palestinian militants in Gaza. In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia. On Saturday, Adraee called on residents of the area around Sheikh Radwan, south of Jabalia refugee camp, to evacuate. "The specified area, including the shelters within it, is considered a dangerous combat zone," Adraee said on X, ordering residents to move to the humanitarian zone in the southern part of the strip.

Hezbollah fires rockets at Haifa as Israel condemned for attacking UNIFIL
Naharnet/October 13/2024
Hezbollah said it launched a salvo of missiles at an Israeli military base on Saturday, as Israeli troops battled militants in Lebanon and Gaza on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Cities around Israel were quiet with markets closed, flights stopped and public transport halted as observant Jews fasted and prayed on the Day of Atonement. But with Israel at war against Hezbollah and Hamas, troops remained engaged in combat on the northern and southern frontiers amid a firestorm of criticism over the wounding of four U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon. Hezbollah, which has lost its leader and a long list of key commanders to Israeli strikes since the start of the war in Lebanon, on Saturday said it struck an army base with missiles to the south of the city of Haifa. Hezbollah fighters were "targeting the explosives factory there with a salvo of... missiles," the group said in a statement.
Air raid sirens sounded on Saturday in northern Israel, with the Israeli military saying it had intercepted a projectile launched from Lebanon. In the hours ahead of Yom Kippur, Israel faced severe diplomatic backlash over what it said was a "hit" on a United Nations peacekeeping position in Lebanon. Two Sri Lankan peacekeepers were hurt in the second such incident in two days, the UNIFIL mission said Friday. The military said Israeli soldiers had responded with fire to "an immediate threat" around 50 meters (yards) from the UNIFIL post. As Israel faced a chorus of condemnation by U.N. chief Antonio Guterres, Western allies and others, the military pledged to carry out a "thorough review."
'Deliberately targeted' -
UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon have found themselves on the frontline of the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures. Four peacekeepers have been injured including two Indonesians who were hurt on Thursday when an Israeli tank shot at their watchtower, according to UNIFIL. Sean Clancy, the Irish military's chief of staff, said he did not believe Israel's explanation of Friday's incident. "So from a military perspective, this is not an accidental act," said Clancy, whose country has troops in UNIFIL. French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed the U.N. peacekeepers had been "deliberately targeted."
Guterres condemned the firing as "intolerable" and "a violation of international humanitarian law," while the British government said it was "appalled".
U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday he was "absolutely" asking Israel to stop firing at U.N. peacekeepers. The incidents came more than two weeks into Israel's war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has seen Israeli warplanes conduct extensive strikes and send ground troops across the border. Diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have so far failed, but caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the U.N. Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a "full and immediate ceasefire."
Lebanon's military said on Friday that an Israeli strike on one of its positions in south Lebanon killed two soldiers.
Iran retaliation -
After the Yom Kippur holiday, attention is likely to turn again to the expected retaliation against Iran, which launched around 200 missiles at Israel on October 1. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed this week that his country's response would be "deadly, precise and surprising" with Biden's administration pushing for a "proportionate" response that would not tip the region into a wider war. Biden has urged Israel to avoid striking Iranian nuclear facilities or energy infrastructure.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel's military campaign immediately after the attack has wrought devastation on Gaza and, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, killed 42,126 people, mostly civilians. Israeli operations in Gaza continue, with the army laying siege to an area around Jabalia in northern Gaza last weekend, causing fresh suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there, according to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees
"The bombardment has not stopped. Every minute there are shells, rockets and fire on the buildings and everything that moves", Areej Nasr, 35, told AFP after fleeing from Jabalia camp to Gaza City Thursday. On Friday, Gaza's civil defense agency reported 30 people killed in Israeli strikes in the area, including on schools being used as shelter by displaced people. An AFP journalist in Gaza reported heavy artillery shelling, explosions and gunfire Saturday further south in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood.

2 Lebanese soldiers killed as airstrike hits near their checkpoint
Associated Press/October 13/2024
Two Lebanese soldiers were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli airstrike that hit a building near a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Kafra, Bint Jbeil province, the Lebanese Army said Friday. Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines. As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 5 km back.On Oct. 3, a Lebanese soldier was killed and another injured in an Israeli strike in Taybeh during rescue operations. On Sept. 30, another Lebanese soldier was killed by an Israeli drone targeting a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Wazzani.

41,000 Displaced Families in Lebanon After 9,666 Attacks
This Is Beirut/October 13/2024
The latest report from Dr. Nasser Yassin, Head of the Government's Emergency Committee and Caretaker Minister of Environment, reveals that a total of 9,666 airstrikes have been launched since the attacks began, including 78 in the last 24 hours alone.
The Ministry of Health has reported 26 additional deaths and 144 more wounded over the past day, bringing the overall casualties to 2,255 killed and 10,524 injured. The health sector has not been spared, with 94 healthcare workers killed and 74 wounded since the hostilities began. The toll on children is especially tragic, with 127 children killed and 890 wounded in the past three weeks. As the humanitarian crisis intensifies, 1,032 shelters have been opened to accommodate internally displaced persons (IDPs). However, 863 of these shelters have reached full capacity, forcing additional families to seek refuge elsewhere. A total of 187,900 IDPs, equivalent to 41,000 families, have registered in these shelters. The Government's Emergency Committee, responsible for handling international aid, has provided food and cash assistance to over 169,000 individuals. A further 146,000 IDPs have been supported in 615 shelters, with meals covering around 70% of shelter residents. Humanitarian organizations like WFP and UNICEF have sent 18 truckloads of food, water, and hygiene supplies to support those on the frontlines in southern Lebanon.
The education system is also feeling the strain, with about 60% of public schools being repurposed as shelters. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE) is working to ensure that learning continues despite the disruption. Meanwhile, healthcare remains a top priority. The World Health Organization (WHO) has delivered 13 trauma and surgical kits to six hospitals, enough to perform 100 surgeries for 50 patients each. Additionally, 763 shelters have been linked to primary healthcare centers to guarantee continuous health services.
In terms of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), 583 shelters housing 115,323 individuals have received 37,600 essential kits, including 27,800 hygiene kits. Furthermore, 791,000 liters of drinking water and 6,800 cubic meters of water for domestic use have been distributed.

Meerab Gathering Draws 'Rescue Roadmap' to Salvage Lebanon
This Is Beirut/October 13/2024
The Leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF), Samir Geagea, chaired a national gathering of opposition forces at the party’s headquarters in Meerab under the title “In Defense of Lebanon” to propose a “rescue roadmap” after the war “that Lebanon was dragged into reached a catastrophic level, amidst the suffering of the Lebanese from death, displacement, destruction and collapse.”Speaking at the end of the gathering on Saturday, Geagea said, “It has become clear to us, as well as to the majority of Lebanese, that Lebanon today is like a sinking ship, with no captain at its helm,” hence the need for “a national stance to stop the tragedies of the Lebanese.”“In light of the killing, displacement and destruction that the Lebanese people are suffering, there must be a national stance today to stop the tragedies of the Lebanese and reverse the cumulative conditions that led to them. The Lebanese people, of all different sects and confessions, deserve to live a dignified and safe life without the constant threat of war looming over them,” Geagea added. The LF chief stressed that at this stage, “the state must be restored” after it has been disintegrated “due to (Hezbollah’s) hegemony, weapons, corruption and the control of external forces over the decision of war in Lebanon and their direct interference, through direct management of military actions in which part of the Lebanese people were either used as combat tools or as human shields.”Geagea then spelled out the main points of the proposed rescue roadmap:
- Electing a president who upholds the constitution and respects the law and who is committed to implementing UN Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701, as well as the provisions of the Taif Agreement.
- Choosing a president who ensures that strategic decisions are made solely by the state, empowering the Lebanese Army with all necessary authorities, and selecting a president known for his integrity and patriotism.
- Conducting binding parliamentary consultations and electing a prime minister to form a government.
Geagea stressed that the proposed roadmap is “necessary to define a path to stop the bleeding and suffering and the urgent need to first reach a ceasefire that puts an end to the catastrophe our people are going through.” Geagea also mentioned that the international and Arab communities are lacking trust in the current ruling system, “which is lurking around the state and doing nothing to help Lebanon through numerous initiatives.” Stressing the need for an approach that offers sustainable solutions, he added, “Accumulating half-solutions will not lead to anything other than what we have already seen, and experience has proven that there can be no stability without building a state.”In conclusion, Geagea denounced Israel’s aggressive policy towards Lebanon, which he said “appears today in its most horrific manifestations” and “requires us not to wait under any circumstances until the last Lebanese are displaced or killed.”

Calm in Beirut, Chaos in Bekaa and Southern Lebanon
This Is Beirut/October 13/2024
In the past 24 hours, Lebanon has witnessed a significant escalation in Israeli airstrikes and military activity, particularly in the south and the Bekaa Valley. While the southern suburbs of Beirut remained relatively quiet, Israeli raids in southern Lebanon have intensified, resulting in casualties and widespread damage.
Israeli Strikes On Multiple Regions in Lebanon
The Israeli army launched a series of airstrikes targeting multiple areas across Lebanon. Notable strikes occurred in Nabatieh between the villages of Duweir and Sharqiya, as well as the vicinity of al-Majadil and Deir Qanun Ras al-Ain. Other towns, including Maaroub and Mahrouna in Tyre district, also suffered from air raids that caused injuries. Qana also experienced further bombardment. The Ministry of Public Health later confirmed that an Israeli airstrike on Baysariya, in the Tyre district, killed five people, including four children, and injured three others.
In Chouf, an Israeli airstrike at the entrance to Barja from Jadra killed four people and injured 14. The town’s mayor, Brigadier General Hassan Saad, denied rumors that the attack targeted a Hezbollah office, confirming that it was a residential area.
Mount Lebanon also saw its share of airstrikes, with a building along the Nahr Ibrahim-Qartaba highway and a house in Al-Maaysra, Keserwan, hit by Israeli warplanes. Casualties from these strikes were transported to hospitals in Jbeil, some in critical condition, and ten were reported killed. In the north, the town of Deirbala in Batroun district was struck by Israeli warplanes. Rescue teams from the Civil Defense and the Lebanese Red Cross worked to retrieve the victims and wounded, who were then transported to hospitals in Tannourine and Koura.
Meanwhile, in the Bekaa region, citizens reported hearing the launch of a long-range missile, and the Israeli Air Force carried out raids on Nabi Sheet and Saraain, targeting an egg warehouse. The Tal Shiha Hospital in Zahle suffered minor material damage from nearby strikes but thankfully reported no injuries. The hospital reaffirmed its commitment to continue providing medical services despite the ongoing war.
Hezbollah’s Counter-Attacks
Hezbollah responded with a series of retaliatory strikes against Israeli military positions. The group claimed to have targeted an Israeli infantry force in Khirbet Zaarit with artillery shells and struck the explosives factory at the 7200 military base south of Haifa. Hezbollah also reported targeting Israeli soldiers near Blida and settlements, including Metulla, Kfrioval, Khirbet Nafha, and Kafr Jalaadi. Further south, Hezbollah launched missiles at the Homa base in the occupied Syrian Golan and initiated an aerial attack with a squadron of drones on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Israeli Warnings and Air Raids
Earlier in the day, Israeli army spokesperson Avichai Adraee warned civilians in several southern Lebanese towns—including Ayta al-Shaab, Ramia, Yatar, Kozah, Beit Leif, and Zibqin—not to approach the border. He cautioned that any movement toward the south could put lives at risk, adding that residents would be informed when it was safe to return. Adraee also accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport weapons and militants, issuing a stern warning that any vehicle transporting militants would be considered a legitimate target, regardless of its type.
In contrast, the Lebanese Red Cross responded by emphasizing its transparency with international organizations. Secretary-General George Kettaneh confirmed that the Red Cross coordinates its movements with both UNIFIL and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to ensure the safety of volunteers, especially when operating near the border.
Rising Tensions in Northern Israel
Following Hezbollah’s attacks, the Israeli army closed off areas around several towns in northern Israel, including Zar'it, Shomera, Shtula, Netanya, and Even Menachem, after evacuating residents earlier in the day. The closures followed a security assessment in light of the heavy bombardment coming from southern Lebanon.

Between the Possible and the Illusion of the Possible
This Is Beirut/October 13/2024
By waging a “low-intensity” war against Israel, Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah made a grave miscalculation, the consequences of which the entire nation of Lebanon is now bearing. The pressing question is how to convince Hezbollah to accept the failure of its war. For the moment, the group remains in denial, even though, as Professor Amine Issa notes, it has lost “its main source of persuasion”—its Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah’s doctrine, elevated to the status of absolute orthodoxy, will continue to haunt Hezbollah members for a long time. However, the reverence they have for him will prevent them from grasping the lessons of what is unfolding and recognizing the difference between what is achievable and the illusion of what could be achieved. It is essential to push Hezbollah to change its mindset and move beyond the ideological immaturity that gave it the illusion that history could be shaped at will. Under Iran’s guidance, it believed it could redraw the region’s geopolitical map and erase a state it deems an “artificial creation” and its “religious duty to destroy,” following direct orders from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
The results of this illusion are now clear for all to see. What is concerning is that Hezbollah may choose to avoid facing reality by pressing forward in a dangerous, irrational direction—shifting from pragmatic actions to messianic beliefs about the return of the Mahdi. Such a course of action would lead the group to pursue goals historian Jean-Pierre Filiu describes as “eschatological opportunism,” a strategy that has consistently failed in the past. Helping Hezbollah recognize its mistakes also requires avoiding any provocation or humiliation of the Shiite community to which it belongs.
Lebanon, for its part, must immediately distance itself from the logic of total war being played out in Gaza, from which it is suffering greatly—even at the risk of being accused of defeatism.
In January 2009, as historian Jean-Pierre Filiu recounts, the 23-day Israeli offensive in Gaza, known as “Operation Cast Lead,” resulted in a devastating toll of 1,417 Palestinians killed (1,166 according to Israeli sources).
Yet, despite this, Hamas, which has ruled Gaza unchallenged since 2007, chose to celebrate a “victory” with the backing of Qatar-based Al Jazeera. The channel followed jubilant Hamas militants through the streets of Gaza, even interviewing an elderly Palestinian woman who stood before the rubble of what once was her home. “Victory? You’re celebrating a victory? One more victory like this, and we won’t even have a tent left to shelter us!” she exclaimed.
This prophecy is unfolding today. It once again demonstrates that a two-state solution remains the only viable path for the peaceful coexistence of both peoples on the same land, and that the world’s diplomatic efforts, beginning with the Arab world, should be directed toward this goal.
(*) Article published in L'Histoire, No. 422, April 2016: Les fanatiques de l’Apocalypse
(https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03460644/document)

.The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 12-13/2024
UN warns against ‘catastrophic’ regional conflict
AFP/October 12, 2024
BEIRUT: UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned Saturday against a “catastrophic” regional conflict as Israeli forces battled Hezbollah and Hamas militants on two fronts, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Israel has faced a fierce diplomatic backlash over incidents in south Lebanon that saw five Blue Helmets wounded. On Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said Israeli air strikes on two villages located near the capital Beirut killed nine people. Israel had earlier told residents of south Lebanon not to return home, as its troops fought Hezbollah militants in a war that has killed more than 1,200 people since September 23, and forced more than a million others to flee their homes. “For your own protection, do not return to your homes until further notice... Do not go south; anyone who goes south may put his life at risk,” Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X. Hezbollah said Saturday it launched missiles across the border into northern Israel, where air raid sirens sounded and the military said it had intercepted a projectile. In an interview with AFP, UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah in south Lebanon could soon spiral out of control “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone.” The UN force said five peacekeepers have been wounded by fighting in south Lebanon in just two days, and Tenenti said “a lot of damage” had been caused to its posts there. Around Israel, markets were closed and public transport halted as observant Jews fasted and prayed on Yom Kippur. After the holiday, attention is likely to turn again to Israel’s expected retaliation against Iran, which launched around 200 missiles at Israel on October 1. Israel began pounding Gaza shortly after suffering its worst ever attacks from Iran-backed Hamas militants on October 7 last year, and it launched a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon on September 30. On Friday, Israel faced criticism from the UN, its Western allies and others over what it said was a “hit” on a UN peacekeeping position in Lebanon.
Two Sri Lankan peacekeepers were hurt in the second such incident in two days, UNIFIL said Friday. Israel’s military said soldiers had responded to “an immediate threat” around 50 meters (yards) from the UNIFIL base in Naqura, and has pledged to carry out a “thorough review.”The Irish military’s chief of staff, Sean Clancy, said it was “not an accidental act,” and French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed the peacekeepers had been “deliberately targeted.”Both countries are major contributors to UNIFIL whose peacekeepers are on the front line of the Israel-Hezbollah war. Efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have so far failed, but Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a “full and immediate ceasefire.”
Lebanon’s military said Friday an Israeli strike on one of its positions in south Lebanon killed two soldiers.

Israeli strikes kill 29 people in Gaza, medics say, as tanks push deeper in the north
REUTERS/October 12, 2024
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes on Gaza on Saturday killed at least 29 Palestinians, medics said, and forces kept pushing deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped. Residents said Israeli forces continued to pound Jabalia, in the north of the enclave, the largest of its historic refugee camps, from the air and ground. Nineteen people were killed in Gaza overnight, and 10 more died on Saturday evening after Israel struck two houses in Jabalia and the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The death toll could rise as many of the wounded are in critical condition, medics said. The Israeli military published new evacuation orders on Saturday to two neighborhoods on the northern edge of Gaza City, which also lies in the north of the enclave, saying the area was a “dangerous combat zone.” In a statement, Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry urged residents not to relocate within northern areas of the enclave and also to avoid heading south “where the occupation is conducting continued bombing and killing every day in the areas it claims to be safe.”The Israeli military said it had been operating against Hamas fighters who had been using civilian buildings and said clear evacuation instructions had been issued over recent days to areas including the Kamal Adwan Hospital. It said an evacuation convoy to take patients from the hospital to Gaza City had arrived on Saturday with a supply of fuel for the facility. In recent days, the military had said that forces operating in Jabalia and nearby areas killed dozens of militants, located weapons and dismantled military infrastructure. On Saturday, it said more than 20 fighters had been killed by tank fire, close range gunfire and airstrikes as forces continued operations throughout the Gaza Strip. The operation in this area began a week ago and the military said then it aimed to fight against militants waging attacks and to prevent Hamas from regrouping. Hamas denies that its fighters deliberately use civilian areas as bases.Palestinian health officials put the number of people killed in Jabalia over the past week at around 150.
SHORTAGES
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. They have also voiced concerns over severe shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies in northern Gaza, and said there is a risk of famine there. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, aimed at eliminating the militant group Hamas, has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians since it began a year ago, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and has laid waste to the enclave. The war began after a Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, on southern Israeli communities in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel’s “massacre against the civilians” aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel’s military failure to defeat the group. Israel has denied it targets civilians. The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire. United Nations officials said on Friday an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week. The territory’s health ministry announced on Saturday that the campaign would begin on Monday in central Gaza Strip areas and would last three days before moving to other territories. Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years. As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza are planned, in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.

Israeli strikes kill 19 people in Gaza, medics say, as tanks push deeper north
Nidal al-Mughrabi/Reuters/October 12, 2024
CAIRO (Reuters) - Israeli military strikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 19 Palestinians, medics said on Saturday, while forces continued to push deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped. Residents said Israeli forces continued to pound Jabalia, which is in the north of the enclave and is the largest of the enclave's historic refugee camps, from the air and ground. There has been no fresh Israeli comment but the military said in past days that forces operating in Jabalia and nearby areas killed dozens of militants, located weapons and dismantled military infrastructure. The operation in this area began a week ago and the military said then it aimed to fight against Hamas militants waging attacks and to prevent Hamas from regrouping. Palestinian health officials put the number of people killed in Jabalia over the past week at around 150. On Friday, Israeli strikes hit four houses in Jabalia, killing around 20 people and wounding dozens, medics said. The Israeli military has sent troops into the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya as well as Jabalia and ordered residents to evacuate their homes and head to safe areas south of the enclave.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. They have also voiced concerns over severe shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies in northern Gaza, and said there is a risk of famine there. The Ministry of Health said Israel's threats to evacuate three hospitals operating there by force put the safety of patients and medical staff at risk. Israel's military campaign in Gaza, aimed at eliminating the militant group Hamas, has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians since it began a year ago, according to Gaza's health ministry, and has laid waste to the enclave.
The war began after a Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, on southern Israeli communities in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel's "massacre against the civilians" aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel's military failure to defeat the group. Israel has denied it targets civilians. The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire.
POLIO VACCINATIONS
United Nations officials said on Friday an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week. The territory's health ministry announced on Saturday that the campaign would begin on Monday in central Gaza Strip areas and would last three days before moving to other territories. Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza are planned, in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.

Thousands of protesters in Rome and Lisbon call for ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon
Euronews/October 12, 2024
Thousands of protesters in Rome and Lisbon call for ceasefires in Gaza, LebanonScroll back up to restore default view. Hundreds of demonstrators have marched through central Rome to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Chanting 'Free, Free Palestine' they also demanded an end to the fighting in Lebanon which has seen an uptick in hostilities in recent weeks. "We as students feel that we must take to the streets to continue to demand a ceasefire and to continue to demand freedom, to demand that our government should protect from not only when UN bases are attacked but when there are women, men and children under the bombs for no real reason but only because of the madness of Netanyahu who pursues a policy of hatred," said one of the demonstrators, Pietro Marchioncini. Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah have traded almost daily fire since the war in Gaza broke out in October, displacing thousands on both sides of the border. Those hostilities have ramped up in recently with both sides striking targets deeper inside each other's countries. On Saturday at a meeting of the MED9 group of southern EU countries, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez joined with Emmanuel Macron to condemn what the French president called Israel's "deliberate targeting" of soldiers belonging to a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL. The feeling is anger and above all sadness for all the pain and suffering and loss that so many innocent people are experiencing. UN sources said that Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday. France, Spain and Italy all contribute troops to UNIFIL. "I can't avoid going back and condemning what happened. It is not acceptable. It violates the provisions of UN Resolution 1701. The Italian government, as you know, has strongly protested to the Israeli authorities," Meloni said. Meanwhile, on 30 September, Israel launched what it called a targeted ground operation in Lebanon, it says to find and eliminate Hezbollah positions. It's believed there could be up to 15,000 Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon.
Protests in Portugal
There were similar scenes in the Portuguese capital Lisbon where thousands marched calling for an end to the hostilities in Gaza and criticising what they say is the complicity of Western governments who sell arms to Israel. People attend a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people in Lisbon, 12 October, 2024. People attend a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people in Lisbon, 12 October, 2024 - Armando Franca/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved. The war in Gaza broke out on 7 October last year after the militant group Hamas launched a lightning incursion into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 250 others back to the Strip as hostages. The Israeli military response was almost immediate and has devastated Gaza. The UN said in August that around 80% of all buildings in the Strip had been destroyed. That's sparked a massive humanitarian catastrophe with tens of thousands of Gazans internally displaced, often living in squalid tent camps with little to no access to food, fresh water and medical facilities. The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 42,000 people have been killed in just over a year of fighting but it doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its tally.

After mulling siege plan, Israel ramps up military push in northern Gaza
Mick Krever, CNN/Sat, October 12, 2024
The Israeli military is carrying out a widespread operation in northern Gaza, issuing evacuation orders and blocking food supplies, just weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to be mulling a plan to besiege the area to starve Hamas and force it to release hostages. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week launched the operation following intelligence that it said showed “the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the area of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, as well as efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities in the area.” In practice, the renewed offensive has been far more widespread than the Jabalya refugee camp.
Four sources have told CNN that the Israeli cabinet has not adopted the siege proposal put forward by retired general Giora Eiland. But the operation currently underway bears resemblance to the plan presented by Eiland in a public video, and in private to the Israeli cabinet and the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. A former senior military official who is aware of the Israeli government and security leadership’s thinking – though not directly involved in decision-making – told CNN that the cabinet had adopted “a version of” Eiland’s proposal, which has come to be known as “The General’s Plan.” Eiland told CNN the claim was “quite true” but said there were significant differences between his proposal and what was being implemented on the ground. The operation comes at a time when the Israeli government is known to be considering several plans to reset the war in Gaza.
Eiland last month proposed forcing all civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, and then cutting off all supplies to the area. The goal, he said, was to force a reset in the war and upend Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s calculus. “The reality today in Gaza is that Sinwar is really not stressed,” he said in a video released at the time. The former military official who spoke to CNN said that “what was adopted [by the government] was the need to do more in Gaza, to change the way Sinwar is thinking. It was adopted without any way that may be conceived a violation of international law.”
Eiland’s proposal had no plan to allow Gazan civilians to return to northern Gaza, Retired Major-General Gershon Hacohen, who was involved in its drafting, told CNN. That situation would seem certain to draw accusations of ethnic cleansing, something that has already been raised by academics like Omer Bartov, an Israeli-born professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University in Rhode Island. Eiland told CNN by text message that the cabinet is “indeed acting on my recommendation with the intention of taking control of the northern Gaza Strip, but I recommended implementing a siege (after evacuating the civilians) and stopping the entry of supplies into this area. None of this is happening.”On Monday, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson ordered all Palestinians in Gaza’s northern-most communities – Beit Hanoun, Jabalya, and Beit Lahia – to leave and relocate to Al Mawasi, an Israel-declared “humanitarian area” in southern Gaza that has nonetheless come under intense aerial bombardment for months. The military on Saturday added additional mandatory evacuation zones, dropping flyers and posting on X, ordering people in the Nazla area and more areas of Jabalya to leave. The military “is operating with great force against terrorist organizations and will continue to do so for an extended period,” Avichay Adraee said on X. “You must evacuate the area immediately via Salah al-Din Street to the humanitarian zone.”
Most intense action
Supplies of food into northern Gaza, already meager, appear to have almost entirely stopped since the Israeli military began its renewed operation there this week. The World Food Programme told CNN on Friday that no food trucks had entered northern Gaza since the start of the month. “Virtually the entire area is under evacuation orders, and thousands of families have been forced to flee amid intense airstrikes and military operations on the ground,” WFP said in a statement on Wednesday. “With the main aid crossings into northern Gaza closed and WFP-partner kitchens forced to shut down, WFP is no longer able to distribute food in any form to families that desperately need it.”
CNN asked the IDF for comment on aid deliveries being blocked.
Netanyahu told a closed-door Knesset committee last month that the Generals’ Plan “makes a lot of sense,” according to national broadcaster Kan, a CNN affiliate. He said that it was one of several ideas being considered to change the course of the war in Gaza, which is now in its second year.
Palestinians in northern Gaza say that this week has brought some of the most intense military action of the war. Many, wary of repeated orders over the past year to move to areas of Gaza that then themselves come under attack, are ignoring the order. “Anyone who wants to leave the north to Gaza wants death,” Jabalya resident Mohammad Ibrahim told CNN by phone this week.
“Even the basic necessities of life for the besieged people are unavailable,” Ibrahim said. “There is no safe drinking water, no adequate or healthy food, no medicine, no treatment, and no hospitals. They are working at minimum capacity and are exhausted. Even the safe places are bombed with shells and rockets.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Saifiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said the facility was informed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Tuesday that medical staff and patients must evacuate the hospital “within 24 hours.” They were not told where to go, he said. Al Awda and the Indonesian hospitals have also been ordered to leave, according to local officials. Hospital officials say Israel’s intense bombardment of the area makes it impossible to leave safely. Meanwhile, seven attempts this week by the World Health Organization to reach northern Gaza were “denied or impeded,” Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. “The team was unable to carry out the medical evacuation of critical patients from Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals to Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa, due to delays of over 10 hours at checkpoints,” he said in a statement on X.
CNN’s Eugenia Yosef, Abeer Salman and Eyad Kourdi contributed to this report.

Iran is threatening to break its fragile truce with Saudi Arabia: reports
Tom Porter/Business Insider/Fri, October 11, 2024
Israel launches new airstrikes on Beirut, weighs retaliation against IranScroll back up to restore default view. Iran has threatened to attack Saudi oil sites if the Gulf state supports an Israeli attack. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi delivered the message to Saudi officials, Reuters said. Regional chaos threatens to upend the truce between the rivals. The fragile truce between longtime regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia could unravel if Gulf states allow Israel to use their airspace to strike Iran. Iranian sources told Reuters that when the country's Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi recently traveled to Riyadh, he warned Saudi officials that Iran would respond if it allowed Israel to use its airspace for attacks on the Islamic Republic. He reportedly told the officials that Iranian-backed militias in Iraq or the Houthi militia in Yemen could be deployed against Saudi Arabia. Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst close to the Saudi royal court, told Reuters: "The Iranians have stated: 'If the Gulf states open up their airspace to Israel, that would be an act of war.'" Separately The Wall Street Journal, citing Arab officials, reported that Iran has warned through covert channels that it could target Gulf states and US allies in the Middle East more broadly if their territories or airspace is used by Israel to target Iran. It named Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, all of which host US military bases, as countries Iran has threatened with reprisals. The reports come at a time when tensions are rapidly escalating in the region. Israel has, in recent weeks, escalated attacks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and Iran retaliated by launching a missile attack on Israel on October 1. Israeli leaders have pledged that they will respond to the Iranian attack, with some, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, calling for Israel to target Iran's nuclear program. Other options include an attack on Iran's oil facilities. Such an attack could trigger an Iranian strike on Gulf states that it sees as having enabled the attack, as well as on Israeli civilian infrastructure.
Arab sources told Reuters that they'd lobbied the US to prevent Israel from striking Iranian oil facilities, and the outlet reported that an Israeli attack using their air space was off the table.
Israel could still strike Iran using routes over Syria or Iraq, but the cooperation of US forces in Gulf states is problematic.
An oil rig in Saudi Arabia.
Any attack on Saudi oil facilities could send prices sharply higher. The kingdom is the world's biggest crude exporter.
An Iranian attack would likely upend the truce brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia by China in 2023 that saw the longtime rivals establish diplomatic contacts. For decades, the states had waged a proxy war against each other, most recently in Yemen where Iran backed Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia waged a campaign in support of government forces in the country's civil war. Amid the hostilities, Iran in 2019 orchestrated strikes on Saudi oil facilities in the east of the country. Saudi Arabia and Gulf states had formed a loosely aligned bloc, backed by the US, to contain Iranian regional influence, an arrangement the US has sought to strengthen in recent years. Among the key agreements underlying the truce was a deal by Iran to stop backing Houthi militants in attacks on Saudi Arabia, while the Saudis agreed to stop backing Sunni militants in Iran. The truce, say analysts, is in part a reflection of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman's desire to stabilize the region and to transform the Saudi economy as part of his Vision 2030 project. Despite the flare-up of violence between Israel and Iran in the wake of the October 7, 2023, terror attacks by Iran-sponsored militia Hamas, the truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran has largely held. This is despite reports that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states may've helped Israel and its allies shoot down Iranian missiles in a previous attack targeting Israel in April. In a recent essay for the European Council for Foreign Relations, analysts stressed that diplomatic engagement between Iran and Saudi Arabia could be essential to resolving flaring regional tensions."While it hasn't led to conflict resolution, this detente has helped contain regional escalation," they noted. Any attack on Saudi oil facilities could send prices sharply higher. The kingdom is the world's biggest crude exporter and plays a significant role as the de facto leader of
Opec, the cartel of oil-producing nations. The price of Brent crude is up 12% over the past month to just under $79 a barrel on Friday. However, it remains considerably lower than the spike that followed Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 when prices rose above $110 a barrel.

US military strikes 'multiple' Islamic State group camps in Syria
(AFP)/October 12, 2024
The US Central Command on Saturday said its forces had conducted air strikes against "multiple known ISIS camps in Syria", adding that the strikes were aimed at disrupting the ability of the group to conduct attacks against the United States and its allies. US forces have conducted air strikes against multiple Islamic State group sites in Syria, the military said Saturday. US forces “conducted a series of airstrikes against multiple known ISIS camps in Syria in the early morning of Oct. 11,” the US Central Command said in a statement on X, using an acronym for the Islamist militant group. “The strikes will disrupt the ability of ISIS to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against the United States, its allies and partners, and civilians throughout the region and beyond.” The US military has around 900 troops in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group. The coalition was established in 2014 to help combat the armed group, which had taken over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. US forces have carried out multiple retaliatory strikes against militant factions in both Iraq and Syria. US Central Command said Saturday that its damage assessments were underway and “do not indicate civilian casualties.”

UN agencies, NGOS concerned over staff detained by Yemen’s Houthis
AFP/October 13, 2024
DUBAI: UN agencies and NGOs expressed “grave concern” Saturday over the referral for criminal prosecution of a large number of their staff who have been “arbitrarily detained” by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and renewed calls for their immediate release. The Iran-backed Houthis have detained dozens of staff from UN and other humanitarian organizations, most of them since June, claiming they are members of a “US-Israeli spy network,” a charge the United Nations denies. “We are extremely concerned about the reported referral to ‘criminal prosecution’ by the Houthi de facto authorities of a significant number of arbitrarily detained colleagues,” said a statement signed by principals of affected UN entities and international NGOs. The Houthi authorities have not issued any announcement in this regard. The signatories of the statement included WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UNESCO head Audrey Azoulay, UN human rights chief Volker Turk and Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar. The Houthis have kidnapped, arbitrarily detained and tortured hundreds of civilians, including UN and NGO workers, since the start of Yemen’s civil war in 2014, according to rights groups. In June, the Houthis detained 13 UN personnel, including six employees of the Human Rights Office, and more than 50 NGO staff plus an embassy staff member. The Houthis claimed they had arrested “an American-Israeli spy network” operating under the cover of humanitarian organizations — allegations emphatically rejected by the UN Human Rights Office. Two other UN human rights staff had already been detained since November 2021 and August 2023 respectively. They are all being held incommunicado. In early August, the Houthis stormed the UNHCR office, forced staff to hand over the keys, and seized documents and property, before returning it later that month. The signatories of the statement Saturday renewed their “urgent appeal for the immediate and unconditional release” of all detained staff. The Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in 2014 and hold most of the country’s main population centers, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to Aden. A Saudi-led coalition intervened to prop up the beleaguered government the following year. The war in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Fighting has significantly decreased since the negotiation of a six-month truce by the UN in April 2022.

Fresh protests in Turkiye over violence against women
AFP/October 13, 2024
ISTANBUL: Hundreds of women protested in Turkiye Saturday against a wave of murders of women, the latest rallies in response to a recent double slaying in Istanbul. A crowd of hundreds in Istanbul chanted slogans denouncing Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted AKP party, an AFP correspondent reported. “You are a government that lets young girls get killed,” one of the rally’s organizers, Gunes Fadime Aksahin, told the crowd. Gulizar Sezer, the mother of a young woman who was murdered, also addressed the rally. Her daughter’s body was found in June after being thrown into the sea wrapped in a carpet. Other protests took place in the capital Ankara and Izmir, another major city, according to photos posted by a women’s rights federation. There have been similar such protests every day for a week across the country, notably on university campuses. A man arrested on suspicion of having killed two young women on the same night took his own life last week, sparking the protests. The suspect and the two women were all aged 19, said Istanbul officials. The women had been killed within 30 minutes of each other, they added. It was not known if they knew their attacker.
Erdogan, having initially blamed alcohol and social media, on Wednesday promised to toughen the justice system and crack down harder on crime. Turkiye has struggled to contain a wave of killings of women. One monitoring group says there have been 299 murders of women this year in the country of 85 million people, with more than 160 “suspect” killings officially classed as suicides or accidents. In 2021, Turkiye withdrew from the Council of Europe convention on preventing violence against women, known as the Istanbul convention. It obliges national authorities to investigate and punish violence against women.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 12-13/2024
Lebanon Must Be Rebuilt From Zero
By Yair Ravid (Abu Daoud)/October 12/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135591/
I am not Lebanese, and Lebanon is not my homeland. However, my deep familiarity with this country stems from decades of service to Israel’s security, during which Lebanon fell under my area of intelligence responsibility. In 1976, I led the Israeli mechanism that established ties between Christian villages in the south and Israel. They sought our help for protection against Palestinian terrorists. After the IDF, (Israeli Defence Forces) with the aid of the SLA, expelled the Palestinians, a new enemy emerged (as is always the case in Lebanon – only the sponsors change, while the citizens continuously suffer). By 1978, during the Christian-Palestinian war in Beirut, I had established connections between Israel and the Kataeb Party. I initially worked closely with Joseph Abu Khalil, a senior Kataeb figure, may his memory be blessed. Later, I forged a relationship with the late Bashir Gemayel.
Subsequently, I was appointed head of the Mossad’s operations branch in Beirut, where I lived for four years. I became intimately familiar with Lebanon—its stunning snow-capped mountains, beautiful beaches (when not littered with plastic), and rich culinary delights. I fell in love with the poetry of Fairuz, Wadih Al-Safi, and Majida El Roumi, among others.
In those days, my relationship with Lebanon was like that of a young boy smitten with the girl next door. Of course, I wasn’t blind to its flaws or betrayals, but these experiences only deepened my understanding of the crowd’s behavior. My words are not a criticism of women’s loyalty to their husbands and families—something I hold in high regard—but rather a reflection of Lebanon’s fluid concepts of loyalty. Shifting allegiances, from Syria to the Palestinians, and then to the Iranians, serve as examples. The only loyalty I encountered in Lebanon that remained unshakable was that of the SLA (South Lebanese Army) members to the State of Israel. Today, the same Maronites who once referred to Israel as “El Am El Hanuna” (the nurturing mother), now see it in a different light.
I write this not out of nostalgia, but to open the eyes of both the disillusioned Lebanese and short-sighted Israelis. After Hezbollah’s inevitable defeat, peace will not come to Lebanon through international powers or Arab countries, all of whom have vested interests in keeping the conflict alive. The worst of all are the Americans, driven largely by ignorance and foolishness. The only real solution for Lebanon will come when Israel demands accountability not only from Hezbollah but from Lebanon as a whole. Only through massive destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure can we create conditions that will prompt a true internal opposition—primarily among the Shiites—who will push to restore Lebanon to its peaceful, quiet past.
I hope to witness this transformation in my lifetime, so I can return to Lebanon one last time for a nostalgic visit.
**Yair Ravid
.**Retired Israeli intelligence officer, former head of the Mossad branch in Beirut, and author of Window to the Backyard, available on Amazon Kindle.

Betraying the Free World?
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute./October 12, 2024
The only country in the Middle East consistently pressured to make concessions "to avoid escalation" was the victim of October 7, Israel.
The rapacity of Iran's regime, which apparently feels free to launch attacks on U.S. troops at will -- especially after enjoying massive amounts of US generosity -- is breathtaking.
The Biden-Harris administration also infused the regime with "closer to $60 billion" -- which most likely funded its militias; its terrorist proxy organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; its expansionist agenda as far away as Venezuela, and its oppressive domestic policies, to which, for decade, the U.S. has turned a blind eye. When widespread protests take place in Iran, citizens bravely rise up against the regime, only to be brutally crushed -- without so much as a glance from the U.S.
Iran, taking its cue from the Biden-Harris administration's road-siding of Israel, proceeded, not surprisingly, to escalate its campaign against it. If there are no serious consequences, why stop?
Israel now finds itself fighting for its survival on multiple fronts. Thanks to the seeming lack of support from the Biden administration, Israel alone must fend off Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the UN, much of Europe, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, professionally whipped-up Western university campuses and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The dangerous reality that unfolds when a once-reliable ally is abandoned, is that enemies can become increasingly aggressive so long as no one stops them.
The message being sent is that allies will be left to fend for themselves, and enemies of freedom and democracy can go ahead and demolish them with impunity.
The Free World, once a beacon of security, is left vulnerable, isolated and under siege.
The rapacity of Iran's regime, which apparently feels free to launch attacks on U.S. troops at will -- especially after enjoying massive amounts of US generosity -- is breathtaking. The Free World, once a beacon of security, is left vulnerable, isolated and under siege. Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on from the dais, as a Fattah ballistic missile is displayed during at a military parade in Tehran on September 21, 2024. Fattah missiles were used in Iran's October 1, 2024 attack on Israel. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
An ally, a true friend, is someone upon whom you can depend in times of crisis, especially when under attack. Throughout history, alliances have been formed on the basis of mutual support and protection. Yet, one could strongly argue that no administration in the history of the United States has left its allies in such a vulnerable position as the Biden-Harris administration.
Iran, no longer content to merely act through its proxies, has taken direct and aggressive action against America's long-term ally, Israel, by attacking not only Israel but, through its proxies and militias, U.S. troops in the region more than 160 times just since October 2023 -- whenever it deems fit. Iran-backed Hamas terrorists murdered 43 Americans in their October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel.
The rapacity of Iran's regime, which apparently feels free to launch attacks on U.S. troops at will -- especially after enjoying massive amounts of US generosity -- is breathtaking.
This turn of events can be traced back to the very beginning of the Biden-Harris administration. The moment this administration took office, it made decisions that signaled weakness and appeasement, particularly toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, China and Iran. The Biden-Harris administration immediately removed Iran's proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, from the U.S. terrorist list, never fully to restore it there. The Houthis demonstrated their gratitude by attacking Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.
The Biden-Harris administration also failed fully to enforce sanctions against Iran, instead allowing the regime to sell oil at the new high prices caused by President Joe Biden's crippling of U.S. oil exploration his first days in office. The Biden-Harris administration also infused the regime with "closer to $60 billion" -- which most likely funded its militias; its terrorist proxy organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; its expansionist agenda as far away as Venezuela, and its oppressive domestic policies, to which, for decade, the U.S. has turned a blind eye. When widespread protests take place in Iran, citizens bravely rise up against the regime, only to be brutally crushed -- without so much as a glance from the U.S.
The Islamist regime of Iran not surprisingly interpreted the lack of any international response as a green light to pursue its regional ambitions without fear of U.S. retaliation. The tragic consequences of this became clear on October 7, 2023, when Hamas, a group openly supported by Qatar and Iran, launched an unprovoked, savage invasion of Israel, murdering 1,200 people, and kidnapping 241 more, including U.S. citizens.
Hamas committed many atrocities — acts which Human Rights Watch has labeled as crimes against humanity. Despite these brazen violations, the Biden-Harris administration's response was always disturbingly muted, offering little more than token condemnations. The only country in the Middle East consistently pressured to make concessions "to avoid escalation" was the victim of October 7, Israel.
The silence of the Biden-Harris administration, and its insistence on toothless "diplomacy," not only emboldened Iran but also encouraged it to activate its other proxies in the region against Israel. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia groups all ramped up their attacks on Israel, operating with the clear understanding that the U.S. would not intervene in any meaningful way. Israel, now under siege on multiple fronts, was left to fend for itself, with only wobbly and conditional support from its most powerful ally. Again, the Biden-Harris administration's cold shoulder to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his visit to Washington in July, can only have been perceived by Iran as yet another green light to continue its aggression. Currently, the Red Sea is blocked, forcing vessels around the continent of Africa.
The Biden-Harris administration then went a step further and began publicly criticizing Israel's defensive actions by laying down conditions, red lines and withholding weapons. As Israel fought to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, the administration's failure to provide necessary military or diplomatic support showed that not only would the U.S. not come to Israel's aid, but it would also question Israel's right to defend itself from terrorist groups and others backed by Iran.
Iran, taking its cue from the Biden-Harris administration's road-siding of Israel, proceeded, not surprisingly, to escalate its campaign against it. If there are no serious consequences, why stop? Emboldened by the absence of any significant pushback, Iran accelerated its long-held objective of wiping Israel off the map. On April 13, in an unprecedented move, Iran directly launched hundreds of its own missiles and attack drones at Israel -- a clear departure from previous engagements, where Iran operated through its proxy forces.
More disconcerting was the Biden-Harris administration's lack of response to these direct attacks. The regime in Tehran had not only launched an assault on Israel, but it had also committed an act of war against a key U.S. ally. Instead of rallying to Israel's defense, the administration took the incomprehensible step of demanding that Israel show restraint. The message was that the U.S. would not intervene, and that Israel was expected to hold back.
This, also not surprisingly, emboldened Iran to launch yet another direct attack on October 1, 2024— this time launching 180 ballistic missiles into Israel. If the Biden-Harris administration continues on its current path, these attacks are certain to escalate.
Israel now finds itself fighting for its survival on multiple fronts. Thanks to the seeming lack of support from the Biden administration, Israel alone must fend off Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the UN, much of Europe, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, professionally whipped-up Western university campuses and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The dangerous reality that unfolds when a once-reliable ally is abandoned, is that enemies can become increasingly aggressive so long as no one stops them.
The surge in attacks against Israel and the U.S. and the growing number of terrorist groups targeting them are direct consequences of weak and indecisive American leadership.
The message being sent is that allies will be left to fend for themselves, and enemies of freedom and democracy can go ahead and demolish them with impunity.
The Free World, once a beacon of security, is left vulnerable, isolated and under siege.
**Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
© 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.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

Opinion - Would an Israeli attack on Iran’s Kharg Island spark an oil crisis? Maybe not.
Dov S. Zakheim, opinion contributor/The Hill/October 12/2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant postponed his trip to Washington this week, where he was to meet his counterpart, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The Israeli Ministry of Defense explained that Gallant is consumed by plans for Israeli retaliation for Iran’s firing nearly 200 ballistic missiles at the Jewish State. Unofficially, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preventing Gallant’s visit until he received a call from President Biden. The root cause for Netanyahu’s demand may have been Biden’s series of profanity-laced quotes about the prime minister that appear in Bob Woodward’s new book, “War.” Biden finally spoke to Netanyahu on Wednesday, though there are as yet no reports that Woodward’s book was discussed.
Whatever the reason for Gallant postponing his trip, Israel will not drop its plans for retaliation against Tehran. It simply cannot do so. Ever since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the ayatollahs have been unequivocal about their determination to extinguish the Jewish State. Iran is a true existential threat for Israel.
How Israel might retaliate has been a matter of intense speculation ever since Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack on Israeli military and civilian targets. In contrast to Jerusalem’s relatively moderate response to Iran’s April 13 missile and drone attack, which involved Israeli air strikes against a limited number of military targets, Jerusalem is expected to launch a major operation that could seriously damage Iran’s nuclear facilities, its economy or both.
Nevertheless, unless Israel can obtain American support for a strike on the Iranian nuclear complex, it is unlikely to attempt one. It cannot easily destroy Iran’s sprawling nuclear complex, which is widely dispersed throughout a country the size of Texas.
Israel is far more likely to attack Iran’s major oil terminal on Kharg Island, or some of its refineries, such as those in Hormozgan province. An attack on the oil terminal would throttle Tehran’s ability to export petroleum, thereby disrupting Iran’s already teetering economy.
The Biden administration fears that such an attack could cause oil prices to spike, with some analysts predicting a rise to at least $100 per barrel. But maybe not.
Iran’s crude oil production has declined markedly from nearly 4 million barrels per day as recently as May to currently under 300,000 barrels per day, due to its fears of an impending Israeli attack. Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could easily make up for that amount, thereby stabilizing world oil process. It is noteworthy that both states have recently been cutting back on their oil production at a combined level greater than Iran’s previous rate of production. Saudi Arabia has reduced its output by 3 million barrels per day, the Emirates by 1.4 million. Together they could more than offset a complete halt to Iranian oil exports. Many analysts fear that should Israel attack the Kharg terminal, Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, the passage that leads from the Persian Gulf to the open sea. Doing so, however, would not only constrain all Iranian exports — thus further throttling Tehran’s already weak economy — but would certainly spur American, allied and even Arab military efforts to prevent such a closure in the first place.
Those efforts would likely succeed in the face of what is still a relatively weak Iranian military. Indeed, both the regular military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may find themselves called upon to confront and control a major new wave of internal unrest sparked by the domestic economic impact of the drop in oil and other exports.
The Biden administration appears to be wringing its hands over the potential for oil price increases, which it fears could affect the outcome of the presidential election. If it worries that the Gulf Arabs will not make up any Iranian shortfall quickly enough, it could release some of the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, which continues to grow and stands at 382.55 million barrels, up from a current level of 361.89 million last week and from 350.98 million one year ago. The reserve could cover any oil shortfall until the Gulf Arabs ramp up their own production rates.
Israel may or may not retaliate by attacking Kharg Island, or for that matter any of the Iranian refineries or Tehran’s nuclear complex. As it demonstrated in response to the April 13 attacks, it still has other options available. But even were Israel to attack the terminal, Washington could coordinate with both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to stabilize oil prices and thereby ensure than an economic crisis does not materialize.
Such an initiative lies squarely in the hand of the White House, if it is only willing to seize it.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
*Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Is Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to drag the US into war with Iran?
Ray Hanania/Arab News/October 12, 2024
CHICAGO: A prominent American academic with decades of expertise in Israeli politics believes the year of violence in Gaza and the expansion of the conflict into Lebanon are designed to pull the US into a direct war with Iran. During a taping of “The Ray Hanania Radio Show” on Thursday, former Ithaca College Professor Jeff Cohen said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intentions have been evident for some time, even suggesting that if Hamas had not attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Netanyahu would have found another pretext to blame Iran, in an effort to draw the US into a broader regional conflict with Israel’s longstanding adversary. “It’s this one-sidedness that empowers the right wing in Israel. We (the US) are not arming Hamas, we are not arming Iran. We arm Israel. And no matter what they do with those weapons, in violation of US law, they just keep getting more weapons and more ammunition and more bombs to kill innocent civilians,” Cohen said. The US has been Israel’s primary military backer in the ongoing conflict, with nearly $23 billion spent in support of its war on Gaza and operations against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, according to a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute. When adjusted for inflation, total economic and military aid to Israel since its founding in 1946 rises to $310 billion. Cohen, who is Jewish, highlighted the deeply entrenched relationship between the US and Israel.
“We have to stop arming Israel. And there needs to be a solution from the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli leadership. There has to be equality on both sides,” Cohen said, adding that “what we’re moving toward” is the opposite of what should be pursued and would eventually lead to the US being dragged into a wider, regional conflict.
On Oct. 7, people around the world held vigils and protests to mark first anniversary of a Hamas-led attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. The Palestinian militant group and its allies killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to then Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed so far and most of the 2.3-million-strong population displaced by Israel’s retaliatory attacks, according to Gaza health authorities.
Cohen argued that Netanyahu, who has repeatedly claimed that Iran funded and coordinated the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7 and Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, has long sought to push the US into a war with Iran.
“He’s very close to succeeding,” he said, noting that Iran is often portrayed as the root of all regional problems. On Friday, the Biden administration announced fresh sanctions targeting Iran’s energy trade following an attack on Oct. 1 launched by the country against Israel, involving nearly 200 ballistic missiles. It was Iran’s second such attack on Israel this year, after it launched about 300 missiles and drones in April, both conducted in response to killings of high-level Iranian, Hamas and Hezbollah officials thought to have been carried out by Israel.
Cohen, the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, argues that “bias” in the mainstream American media has heavily influenced coverage of the conflict, reinforcing US support for Israel regardless of its military actions, while marginalizing Palestinian voices. “My main message as someone who worked in mainstream media and taught journalism at college is we have to, as journalists, understand that all lives matter. That Palestinian lives are as important as Israeli lives,” said Cohen, referencing the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza.
“You don’t get that from the US news media. You get it in a lot of other countries that all lives matter including Palestinians. In our country (the US), it’s just Israeli lives. Israeli suffering. Israeli deaths. Israeli hostages. “There are far more Palestinian detainees who are in many ways ‘hostages.’ They aren’t charged. They’re tortured. They’re abused. There’s thousands and thousands of them, including children.”
Caption
Cohen argued that while violence is often attributed solely to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, with Israeli victims predominantly highlighted by mainstream media, the history of terrorism in the Middle East traces back to Zionist extremists operating before the founding of the State of Israel.
“We have to understand, and any historian of Israel knows, there were Israeli terrorists, before the State of Israel, trying to bring a state into existence. They bombed the King David hotel. They killed civilians. They killed British civilians,” said Cohen, citing Jewish extremist groups from the 1940s led by future Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who opposed Palestinian statehood. “If you’re an oppressed group and you’re a stateless group, there will be people within your community turning to violence. The only way to prevent that is peace and justice for all sides,” he said. Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israeli cities from Lebanon on Oct. 8 last year in solidarity with Palestinian militant groups, and Hamas, which Israel is still fighting in Gaza, are two members of an alliance of Iran-funded militias that also operate in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza erupted last October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that also killed four sailors. Similarly, Iraqi militias vowed since October 7 to support Hamas’s war effort and have launched hundreds of rocket and drone attacks at Israeli cities and US military bases in the region. Indiscriminate violence against civilians, as well as targeted attacks on media workers and medical professionals, have become a central issue in protests and discussions surrounding the conflict. These groups, often viewed as “intentional targets,” are seen as part of a broader strategy to force civilian displacement in both Gaza and Lebanon.
In a separate segment of the “The Ray Hanania Radio Show,” Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the non-profit MedGlobal, which provides medical support to civilians caught up in conflicts in the Middle East, South America, and Ukraine, remarked that the number of medical professionals killed and hospitals destroyed by Israeli bombings has reached “unprecedented levels.” “There are new norms, if we can call it that way, that are now being created, especially in Gaza and now in Lebanon,” said Sahloul. “And we’ve seen that in Syria and a little bit in Ukraine, where you have hospitals, doctors and ambulances targeted intentionally to cause displacement and deprive communities of healthcare.”According to UN statistics, more than 600 medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, and first responders, have been killed in Gaza, while 39 hospitals have been bombed and 97 medics killed in Lebanon over the last two weeks. “You didn’t see these numbers in previous conflicts,” Sahloul said. If Israel is not held to account for violations of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, he said such war crimes would only persist.
“It looks like it’s becoming the norm. There is no accountability. When there is no accountability, murderers tend to repeat the crime,” he said. “These attacks on healthcare in Gaza and Lebanon are not just collateral damage. They are intentional. And they are causing more harm and, of course, displacement of the population.”
Both Article 9 of the Geneva Convention and the statutes of the International Committee of the Red Cross classify the killing of medical personnel as a war crime. Sahloul argued that Israel’s current operations in Gaza, and similar tactics being employed in Lebanon, exceed what is justified, designed to hasten the displacement of civilians.
Israel has denied deliberately targeting medical facilities, but has accused both Hamas and Hezbollah of commandeering civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and residential buildings to coordinate attacks and store weapons, using their occupants as human shields.
The Israeli military has released photos and videos purporting to show these weapons depots as well as underground tunnels since it launched its military operations last year.
Sahloul, who has led numerous medical missions to conflict zones, pointed out the devastating long-term impact of losing key medical professionals.
“It is not normal. And imagine how long it will take to get a doctor, to become a physician. You know, it takes 30 years of education and then specialization. If you remove a surgeon or a head of department in Gaza or in Lebanon, it’s very difficult to replace them. It takes years and generations to replace these doctors.
“And if you bomb their hospitals and universities, that means this will set healthcare in Gaza and other places way, way back.”
He also criticized the mainstream media for its lack of coverage on this aspect of the conflict.
“The media, of course, is not giving justice to this,” he said. “There were bits and pieces, especially at the beginning of the war in Gaza. But after that the media, for some reason, turned away from what’s going on in Gaza. It is inhumane. It is immoral. It’s unethical to ignore this, but for some reason, the media is not paying attention.”
*“The Ray Hanania Radio Show” is broadcast every Thursday on the US Arab Radio Network on WNZK AM 690 Radio in Michigan Thursday at 5 PM EST, and again the following Monday at 5 PM. The show is sponsored by Arab News and is available by podcast at ArabNews.com.rayradioshow or at Facebook.com/ArabNews.

Iran and Israel march into the unknown
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/October 12, 2024
It seems the Middle East is fast approaching the very war that most reasonable observers of the region’s geopolitics have long dreaded: a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel. It might be argued that the direct confrontation has been slowly simmering for almost two decades. But in recent months, the continuing war in Gaza, the spread of hostilities to Lebanon, and a series of clashes between Israel and Iran have made it more likely than ever that the situation will boil over into a direct confrontation.
The question now is whether both sides are too committed to back away from the brink, and are prepared to enter into a full-scale war with the illusory aim of achieving a decisive result. For Israel, a war against Iran would mean facing a more evenly matched foe than in its confrontations with Hamas and Hezbollah.
When enemy nations engage in decades of extremely hostile rhetoric, while building alliances and capabilities to match their mutual perceptions of a total, existential threat, it creates an air of inevitability about the eventual eruption of direct hostilities, even if it is a confrontation that both sides have long threatened to put into practice but pragmatically and sensibly avoided so far.
Several senior Israeli decision-makers seem to have concluded, however, that there is now a window of opportunity to break the “ring of fire” that Tehran has methodically built around Israel, never mind the long-running goal of halting Iran’s march toward nuclear military capability.
After years during which Israel was more or less successful in containing what it refers to as the “tentacles of the octopus,” and resorting to covert operations when it was necessary to target its head now, to extend this popular Israeli metaphor, authorities believe the time is right to attempt to decapitate Iran once and for all and cut it off from its proxies.
Moreover, after the shock of the Oct. 7 attacks, which represented a failure by Israel to foresee and prevent the deadly Hamas incursion, authorities in the country judge that they have regained the military initiative and appear confident they now have the upper hand.
By surprising Iran’s main proxy, Hezbollah, through the use of accurate intelligence and combining unconventional methods with a massive military force, Israel has decimated the Lebanese group’s leadership, eliminated its long-serving and powerful leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and put sustained pressure on the organization’s military capabilities.
The operations in Lebanon are as much a message to Tehran as they are to Hezbollah. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to overthrow Hezbollah, but his call came with the chilling, blatant threat that if they fail to do so, “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza” awaits them.
While the influence of Hezbollah, backed by Tehran, on Lebanese politics and society has been an indisputable, unmitigated disaster for Lebanon, and the organization’s hostility toward Israel has more to do with maintaining its own relevance in domestic politics and retaining Iran’s support than anything else, the Israeli leader’s decision to threaten the Lebanese people with indiscriminate killing and the destruction of their country if they do not rise up against the movement reveals both a lack of judgment and actual criminal intent.
If anyone is capable of limiting Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Iran, it is Washington.
But Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah is no longer confined to those two fronts; it has extended to Iran itself. Tehran knows that as much as it would like to believe (or, more accurately, delude itself) its attack on Israel at the beginning of this month with 181 ballistic missiles was its retaliation to the assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hassan Nasrallah, and therefore the scores are now even, Israeli retaliation for the attack is just a matter of time.
After all, the missile attack caused some damage to Israeli military bases and was also directed at the civilian population. Israel is determined to respond forcefully; whether it can afford a prolonged, direct war with Iran is a different matter.
The message from Iranian officials, political analysts, and media commentators has been repeated warnings that any attack by Israel on critical strategic infrastructure in Iran — such as military bases or gas, oil and desalination facilities, let alone nuclear development sites — would result in a massive military response that would attempt to take advantage of Israel’s vulnerability arising from its lack of physical strategic depth, and a civilian population that is concentrated in a relatively small area.
Self-evidently, the risk of such an escalation, which would threaten the stability of the entire region, has led to intense diplomatic efforts to avert the possibility. The US continues to send public and private messages urging the Israeli government to do more, and quickly, to de-escalate the confrontations it is embroiled in on several fronts, and to avoid any strikes against Iranian energy production facilities or nuclear sites.
Washington considers de-escalation to be as much in its own best interest as Israel’s. An Israeli attack on Iran’s oil and gas installations, for example, would send energy prices soaring and the US economy, which has performed well over the past year, might suffer a serious setback as a result. With just a few weeks to go before a presidential election this is a particularly sensitive issue.
There are also extensive regional efforts, led by Saudi Arabia, to prevent an Iranian-Israeli confrontation from escalating into all-out regional war. Urgent meetings have taken place in Doha between Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, as well as visits by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to Riyadh and other Gulf capitals.
The message is clear: There is a crucial need to prevent any further escalation that could spiral out of control, at the very least by agreeing to a temporary ceasefire. For now, however, merely managing to limit the scale of the conflict seems the more likely outcome.
The role of the Biden administration amid the turmoil remains somewhat enigmatic. If anyone is capable of limiting Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Iran, it is Washington. However, even though Biden and other senior American officials have been highly critical of Netanyahu and the way Israel is using military force with no diplomatic foresight or horizon for peace, they have been doing very little to stop it from happening, or to leverage America’s power over Israel to de-escalate a situation that might prove very costly to the US as well.
It is not only the fact that its credibility in the region is being severely dented, but in the event a full-scale war between Israel and Iran does break out, the US would be compelled to intervene and find itself directly involved in a war it was so keen to prevent. Some might argue that this is exactly what Netanyahu had in mind from the start, to drag the US into the conflict to do what Israel cannot do on its own: destroy Iran’s conventional and, more importantly, nuclear capabilities. If just a few weeks ago this seemed a highly unlikely scenario, we all must acknowledge it is now a much more realistic and perilous one.
*Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg

Europe and a possible Trump presidency
Andrew Hammond/Arab News/October 12, 2024
With the US presidential race too close to call, there remains significant uncertainty over the outcome when Americans go to the polls in November. Though Kamala Harris is marginally ahead in many national polls, much of the world is nonetheless preparing for the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency. It is perhaps Europe, more so than any other single region, that would be at the sharp end of a second Trump term. Disagreements between the traditionally close transatlantic allies were legion between 2017 and 2021, and could be even worse between 2025 and 2029 should Trump return to the White House.
Already it is reported that, on the trade front, the EU has decided the best way to engage Trump would be to try to offer some early deals. The goal would be to reduce a trade deficit in goods that has grown from about €110 billion ($120 billion) when Trump was elected in 2016 to more than €150 billion. If this deal-making approach fails, Brussels is said to be preparing to respond with a tough series of countermeasures to any sanctions Trump might impose on the 27-member club, including a mooted 10 percent minimum tariff that could have a significant, negative impact on EU exports to the US.
There is a precedent for this approach: In 2018, Brussels introduced tariffs totaling about €2.8 billion after Trump imposed €6.4 billion in tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, including those from Europe.
While the EU is by no means dismissing the possibility that Harris will win in November, the discontinuity likely to arise from a Trump victory would be significantly greater. So it is no big surprise that polls, including one published by Pew Global in June, reveal that most European populaces would favor, often by huge margins, a Democratic victory.
While it is possible, then, that Harris will win in November, Europe is increasingly waking up to the possibility she will not by making advance preparations for the prospect of a second Trump term, with all the risks and opportunities this would bring. It is not a time for a “wait and see” approach.
While much of Europe is squeamish about a second Trump presidency, and with good reason, there is also growing recognition that now is the time to deepen engagement with key Republicans around him. The goal is to try to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, should Trump win, especially on issues such as trade, defense, climate action, China, and the Middle East.
Take, for example, the issue of defense spending by European nations, which has been perhaps the biggest single bone of contention for Trump. In this case his arguments have some merit, and Europe has acknowledged this through the limited progress it has made on resolving the issue in recent years, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
During the NATO summit in Washington last month, the leaders of the 32 member states highlighted that progress, with 23 of them on course to meet the target of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. Key exceptions remain Italy, which currently chairs the G7, and Spain, the fourth largest economy in the EU.
Now is the time for Europe to think ahead to the very difficult decisions and trade-offs that could lie ahead.
Welcome though the progress toward meeting this 2 percent target across NATO might be, it is not enough to ensure European defense in an increasingly geopolitically uncertain world. Despite calls for greater strategic autonomy from key figures such as French President Emmanuel Macron, the region remains heavily dependent on US security guarantees. This at a time when, given the possibility of a second Trump term, there has never been less certainty about Washington’s commitment to transatlantic security.
So now is the time for Europe to invest even more in its own security, which would in turn boost transatlantic ties by showing Washington it is not carrying the burden alone. It is already clear from the experience during 2017 and 2021 that a second Trump term would involve a more transactional US commitment to what he has sometimes described as a “delinquent” Europe, and that the future of the transatlantic alliance might rest on key EU and non-EU nations doing more.
Even if Trump fails to win a second term, Europe should pursue this agenda anyway to boost its own capabilities and self-sufficiency. The geopolitical context might grow even more challenging in the next half-decade, especially if Russia becomes increasingly emboldened.
Poland, the biggest single economy in Eastern Europe, is helping to lead the way in this by now spending about 4 percent of its GDP on defense, a proportion that is comparable to that of the US in relative terms, and Warsaw plans to increase it further. Between 2022 and 2023, the Polish defense budget grew in real terms by more than 40 percent, the largest proportional increase on the continent.
States in Western Europe, too, can send a signal that the region is serious about this agenda. In 2023, for example, the UK was the largest military spender in Europe in absolute terms. A strategic review of defense under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to make the case for increasing defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP.
Therefore, as we face the prospect of what might be a return to a much more volatile period in transatlantic ties, now is the time for Europe to think ahead to the very difficult decisions and trade-offs that could lie ahead. That there will be tensions if Trump becomes president again is inevitable; the question is when rather than whether.
The stakes for Europe in the case of a second Trump term would be huge and historic. The continent must therefore aspire to a renewed partnership, from trade relations to defense cooperation, that might hopefully result in significant benefits for both sides at a time of global geopolitical turbulence.
*Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.

Selective Tweets for October 12/2024
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
As Hezbollah looked to have weakened, the Lebanese started voice support for 1559, which demands disbanding of all militias including Hezbollah. The Iran-backed militia mounted a political counter campaign through info-ops in NYT, Reuters and local papers, insisting that 1559 is dead, that the only solution is 1701, which puts decision of disbanding militias in the hands of the Lebanese government. This is why Hezbollah makes sure to always elect friendly politicians, or else keeps presidency vacant for two years.
After Speaker Berri seemed to be going along with 1559, he probably got shouted at from Hezbollah, and has now came out against 1559, saying the State of Lebanon sticks to 1701.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Leader of #Lebanon’s biggest parliamentary bloc Samir Geagea: We should elect a president who commits that weapons in the country will be exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese Army (I.e. Hezbollah must surrender its arms per constitution and UN resolution 1559). A bloc of 31 lawmakers, out of 128 (including Graves’s bloc), last week signed on a petition calling for the same thing.

 Hanin Ghaddar
The Lebanese and the friends of #Lebanon should be prepared for a new post-war reality - a more direct Iranian hegemony over Lebanon, and an IRGC hands-on approach of leading and reorganizing #Hezbollah. It’s already starting with the new Quds Force appointments, and recent visits of Iranian officials.