English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 19/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the
lccc Site
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2024/english.october19.24.htm
News Bulletin Achieves
Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006
Click On
The Below Link To Join Eliasbejjaninews whatsapp group
https://chat.whatsapp.com/FPF0N7lE5S484LNaSm0MjW
اضغط
على الرابط في
أعلى للإنضمام
لكروب
Eliasbejjaninews whatsapp group
Elias Bejjani/Click
on the below link to subscribe to my youtube channel
الياس
بجاني/اضغط
على الرابط في
أسفل للإشتراك في
موقعي ع اليوتيوب
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOOSioLh1GE3C1hp63Camw
Bible Quotations For today
The Parable of the king who gave a wedding banquet for his son, but those he
invited did not come...For many are called, but few are chosen.
Matthew 22/01-14: "Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:
‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for
his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding
banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, "Tell
those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat
calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding
banquet." But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to
his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed
them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and
burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, "The wedding is ready, but those
invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone
you find to the wedding banquet." Those slaves went out into the streets and
gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled
with guests. ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man
there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, "Friend, how did
you get in here without a wedding robe?" And he was speechless. Then the king
said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer
darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." For many are
called, but few are chosen.
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on October 18-19/2024
Elias Bejjani/Text and Video/The Lebanese Zajal Troupe’s Echo: Come,
Let’s Congratulate Mikati/ Remember That Mikati is an Assad-made puppet, full of
empty rhetoric, & brought in as PM by Hezbollah.
Elias Bejjani / Text and Video: A Spiritual Summit of Hypocrisy, Lacking
Lebanon’s Spirit, and Its Statement a Replica of Hezbollah’s Declarations
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: The Epic Failure of Maarab Conference No. 2—Maronite
Misery Defined by Geagea and Aoun
How Similar the Fate of Constantinople’s Fall is to the Tragic Fate Awaiting
Lebanon Under Judas-like Leaders/Edmond El-Chidiac/October 18/2024
IDF kills Hezbollah Taybeh Brigade chief in southern Lebanon, strikes Hamas in
Gaza
Lebanon PM slams Iran speaker’s remarks as ‘blatant interference’
UNIFIL condemns ‘deliberate’ Israeli attacks, says destruction in Lebanese
villages is shocking
Lebanon issues rare rebuke to Iran over 'interference'
UN peacekeepers stick to positions in south despite 'repeated Israeli targetings'
Lebanese PM rejects Iran’s attempt to impose ‘guardianship’ over Lebanon
Kremlin concerned about 'human catastrophe' in Gaza, Lebanon after Sinwar
killing
Hezbollah targets Israel after announcing new 'escalatory phase'
Israel army says five soldiers killed in Lebanon combat
Report: Egypt pressing for Israel to stop targeting buildings outside south
Italian PM Meloni visits Lebanon after UNIFIL, meets Mikati
Lebanon crowd-funded ambulances under fire in Israel-Hezbollah war/Hashem
Osseiran/The Arab Weekly/October 18/2024
Bassil calls for unity, ceasefire, and presidential consensus
Geagea says Hezbollah fully led by Iran after Nasrallah's killing
When Will Lebanese Shiites Expel the “Temple Traders”?/Hussein Ataya /Janoubia/October
17/2024
Events in Gaza, Lebanon may bring Egypt and Iran closer/Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy/Arab
News/October 18, 2024
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on October 18-19/2024
Israel’s killing of Sinwar a ‘game changer’ but no quick end to war in
Gaza is foreseen
Gaza civil defense agency says Israeli strike kills 33 in Jabalia
This is how a hero dies,’ say Gazans of Sinwar’s battlefield death
What’s next for Hamas after its leader Yahya Sinwar’s death?
Hamas mourns Sinwar, vows no hostage release until war ends
Biden: it’s time for Gaza war to end, Blinken to visit Israel
Biden says it may be easier to reach a cease-fire in Lebanon than Gaza
Hamas confirms IDF eliminated its top leader, Yahya Sinwar
UN denounces Israel's use of 'war-like' tactics in West Bank
Israeli military says it killed two attackers crossing from Jordan's Dead Sea
area
Israel sends more troops into north Gaza, deepens raid
'Worst-case' famine possible in Gaza as 1.84 million acutely malnourished,
report says
South Korean intelligence says North has sent troops to aid Russia's war in
Ukraine
Putin says BRICS will generate most of global economic growth
Trial of Salman Rushdie’s assailant will remain in the New York county where the
stabbing happened
Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous
sources
on October 18-19/2024
‘He’s still alive' vs. 'died courageously': The battle for Sinwar's death
narrative begins/Ohad Merlin/Jerusalem Post/October 18/2024
Mutual fear and mistrust denying Palestinians a state/Ross Anderson/Arab
News/October 18, 2024
Disarming the militias is Iraq’s only solution/Farouk Youssef/The Arab
Weekly/October 18, 2024
Saudi Arabia is ‘sincere’ and an ‘acceptable’ venue for potential Ukraine peace
talks, Putin says/FAISAL J. ABBAS/Arab News/October 18, 2024
How Sinwar’s Death Could Change the War/Ghaith al-Omari, Neomi Neumann/The
Washington Institute/October 18/2024
The Real Purpose of a U.S.-Saudi Security Agreement/A Deal Could Reduce Direct
American Intervention in the Middle East/Michael Singh/Foreign Affairs/October
18/ 2024
Pure Genocide': Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria
and the Great Press Cover-Up/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./October 18,
2024
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News &
Editorials published
on October 18-19/2024
Elias Bejjani/Text and Video/The
Lebanese Zajal Troupe’s Echo: Come, Let’s Congratulate Mikati/ Remember That
Mikati is an Assad-made puppet, full of empty rhetoric, & brought in as PM by
Hezbollah.
Elias Bejjani/October 18, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135843/
In the spirit of the “Let’s congrtulate Mikati” culture, today a large number of
politicians, journalists, and activists from the Lebanese Zajal troupes suffered
from verbal diarrhea and a state of “hypocrisy and babble.” They expressed, in
their poetic fashion tweets and statements, their amazement at Mikati’s
so-called courage, claiming that he “drank lion’s milk” for denouncing a
statement by Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, which insulted
Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence. Ghalibaf reportedly told a French
newspaper that Tehran was ready to negotiate with France regarding the
implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
It’s both strange and amusing how these hypocritical “echoes” drown in their own
sycophancy. Where was Mikati during the Beirut port explosion, when Iran’s
ambassador to Lebanon literally controlled the situation? Where was his
so-called “lion’s milk” when the Iranian Foreign Minister came to Lebanon and
prevented Mikati and Berri from acting on what they had agreed with Jumblatt,
namely the demand to implement international Resolution 1701 and call for a
ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist militia? And where
were all these mouthpieces when Mikati cowardly, sycophantically, and brazenly
declared that the decision of war and peace does not rest in the hands of the
Lebanese government, saying, “We did not declare war, so we cannot end it”?
Because these hypocrites have the memory of a fish, let’s remind them—though
they surely know better—that Mikati is a product of the criminal Assad regime.
He is corrupt and a thief, having amassed his wealth from the pockets of the
Lebanese people. It was the Assad regime that inserted him into Lebanese
politics, and Hezbollah that appointed him as head of the current government,
which is 100% a Hezbollah government. He is nothing more than a mouthpiece and a
puppet, just like all his ministers and, with them, Speaker of the Parliament
Nabih Berri, who has been tamed, stripped of his authority, and had his freedom
confiscated since the battles of Iqlim al-Tuffah.
Therefore, there is no value or weight to their false claims of a Mikati
“uprising,” for the man is, in reality, merely a tool—nothing more than a
tool—in the hands of Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist militia. End of story.
Elias Bejjani / Text and Video: A Spiritual
Summit of Hypocrisy, Lacking Lebanon’s Spirit, and Its Statement a Replica of
Hezbollah’s Declarations; All It Lacked Was Praise for the Shameless Slogan of
"Army, People, and Resistance"
A Time of Decay, Misery, and Dwarfs Alienated from Lebanon's Identity, Mission,
and History
Elias Bejjani/ctober 16/ 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135763/
To start, anyone who cannot speak the truth in this critical moment—while the
war between Israel and Hezbollah rages, leaving behind casualties, destruction,
and displacement—anyone who lacks the courage to call things by their true
names, to testify without distortion, cowardice, or selfish motives, no matter
their position, be it clergyman, politician, party leader, media personality, or
even an ordinary citizen—it is a thousand times better for them to remain
silent! They should tie their tongues and cease their hollow, useless talk. They
should stay at home and stop burdening the Lebanese with their nonsense and
lies. Silence is far more merciful than the deceitful drivel of those who pander
and speak out of cowardice. Especially if all they are going to offer is the
pinnacle of hypocrisy, deceit, and denial of reality, hiding behind misleading
words that deceive themselves and others.
In this context, Patriarch Al-Rahi has utterly failed in his ecclesiastical and
pastoral duties. He has become estranged from the suffering of Lebanon and
indifferent to the injustices, oppression, violations of rights,
marginalization, and division his community and country have endured since he
was installed as Patriarch by agents of occupation. It would have been better if
he had shut the doors of Bkerke, locked himself in with his civilian and
ecclesiastical team, who are immersed in worldly, material pursuits, and
retreated in prayer, humbly seeking forgiveness and repentance for the mistakes
and sins they have committed. Only after sincere repentance could they begin to
atone.
Many of us, both in Lebanon and abroad, ask: What did this so-called spiritual
summit achieve? It was nothing more than a summit of hypocrisy, blindness, and
deceit, ignoring the root causes of the war, and failing to hold accountable
those who dragged Lebanon into this conflict against the will of its people.
There is no doubt—the culprit is Hezbollah, the Iranian jihadist and criminal
entity.
Anyone who reads the summit’s final statement (attached below in both Arabic and
English) will immediately realize that it might as well have been written by
Hezbollah’s propaganda machine. The only thing missing was the forced mention of
the worn-out slogan, “Army, People, Resistance.”
The statement deliberately ignored Hezbollah’s heinous crimes and the group’s
declaration of war on Israel. It was filled with meaningless, outdated phrases
that no longer fool anyone, all aimed solely at attacking the State of Israel
while conveniently bypassing the core issue: Hezbollah’s destructive occupation
of Lebanon.
If the participants of this spiritual summit had truly wanted to help Lebanon—to
liberate it, to restore its sovereignty, independence, and free will, to end the
war, and to rid the country of Hezbollah’s Iranian-backed terrorist
occupation—they would have acted boldly. By now, they should have packed their
bags, headed straight to the United Nations Security Council, and demanded that
Lebanon be placed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter as a failed and rogue
state, needing international protection and intervention.
In short, this so-called spiritual summit was nothing but a gathering of
hypocrisy and deceit, completely detached from Lebanon’s mission and sanctity,
and utterly incapable of bearing witness to the truth and justice. It was doomed
to fail before it even began and will have no impact whatsoever on the course of
the war.
Elias
Bejjani/Text & Video: The Epic Failure of Maarab Conference No. 2—Maronite
Misery Defined by Geagea and Aoun
Elias Bejjani, October 14, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135690/
Let’s cut to the chase: the second Maarab Conference held
last Saturday was a colossal failure, just like the first. It was a disgrace to
the alienated Christian leadership, disconnected from the realities unfolding in
Lebanon and across the Middle East. The sole purpose of the conference was not
to address the concerns of Lebanon, its people, or the Christian presence under
Iranian occupation. Nor did it focus on the ongoing war between Hezbollah and
Israel, or the disasters plaguing the nation. What Geagea sought, and will never
achieve, is the fulfillment of his grandiose delusion of being the "one and only
Christian leader." This delusion has blinded him for years, and because of it,
untold catastrophes have befallen the Christians. Let us not forget that he
seized the leadership of the Lebanese Forces Party (LF) through violence,
without ever being elected to that position.
It is evident that this so-called conference achieved nothing but exposing
Geagea's illusions. There will be no presidency, no first lady, and it’s time to
wake up from these delusional daydreams. His obsessive hallucinations will
likely lead him to call for a third Maarab Conference soon, driven by the same
baseless fantasy of being the "sole Christian leader." Those who fail to learn
from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
On the other side, Aoun, his son-in-law, and their opportunistic herd held
prayers for the martyrs of October 13, 1990—the very martyrs they betrayed. It
was Aoun and his cronies who jumped over their blood, forming alliances with
those who killed them. Aoun and his son-in-law and their herd of puppets, just
like Geagea, live in a distorted reality and stuck in a 1990 déjà vu, as if they
were still in the presidential palace.
A Brief on Samir Geagea’s Failures
Geagea lacks any vision, and in every pivotal moment, his decisions have been
blind and destructive for the Christians. Some examples include: the execution
of two men he falsely accused of trying to assassinate him, his participation in
the killing of Tony Frangieh, his surrender of the Lebanese Forces’ weapons, his
drowning in the Taif Agreement, his idiotic alliance of mutual personal interest
with Aoun, his election of Aoun for presidency, and his failure to flee during
the Syrian occupation and stupidly go willingly to prison (even Christ
fled multiple times). He even extended condolences in Qardaha over Basil
al-Assad’s death, abandoned the South Lebanon Army members, and showed cowardice
in defending them. His hypocrisy knows no bounds, claiming Hezbollah’s martyrs
are like those of the Lebanese Forces, while also falsely stating that Hezbollah
liberated the South when he knows Israel withdrew by internal decision. His
shameless flattery of Hezbollah's MPs, calling them Lebanese representatives of
the Shiites, while in reality, Hezbollah holds the Shiite population hostage and
imposes its MPs by force. He opposed the Orthodox electoral law and sidelined
every intellectual in his circle. All this, coupled with his narcissistic
delusion of being the "sole Christian leader," leads to a total lack of
leadership and vision.
In conclusion, All Maronites' Failures, Disasters, and Downfalls since 1986 are
the Direct Products of Aoun & Geagea's Narcissistic and Blind Agendas"
How Similar the Fate of Constantinople’s Fall is to the
Tragic Fate Awaiting Lebanon Under Judas-like Leaders
Edmond El-Chidiac/October 18/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135879/
(Free Translation & quotation by LCCC website editor & publisher)
In this reflective piece, my dear patriotic friend, Edmond El-Chidiac draws a
vivid comparison between the fall of Constantinople and Lebanon’s current
crisis, echoing his concerns for his beloved homeland. He says:
“Constantinople is falling… and its people are arguing and debating over the
gender of angels. Constantinople is being bombarded at its walls… while brothers
quarrel and fight over scraps of leadership titles and empty symbols of
resistance against foolish and laughable occupations, while the crucified one
groans on the cross. Constantinople is losing its identity and collapsing… and
its great men shrink, fighting over a glory that fell with the fall of true
resistance, identity, sovereignty, and principles. Constantinople’s civilization
is being lost and violated… while its wise men grow foolish, preoccupied with
hollow identities — Arabization from here, Arabism, Persianization, Islamization,
Syrianization, and Phoenicianism from there. Constantinople falls just as 15,000
martyrs fell, but the difference is that it falls without hope, without
comrades, without a cause, without a cross to lift and sacrifice for… instead,
on the cross, and everyone is casting lots for its garment, its history, and its
fleeting spoils. Constantinople dies without hope for a resurrection on the
third day, because faith, commitment, and sacrifice were the hope of the first
resurrection. But today, there is no faith, no commitment, no vision, and no
will to sacrifice within the walls of Constantinople as it falls. Let us pray
for even a mustard seed of faith, commitment, the spirit of sacrifice, courage,
and vision, hoping that the souls of the martyrs will stir something within us
to save her and her people before it’s too late and her walls collapse
entirely.”
This heartfelt message, imbued with sorrow and a deep sense of loss, reflects
the writer’s despair over the situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, with the
complicity of its leaders, continues to erode the nation’s sovereignty,
identity, and dignity.
IDF kills Hezbollah Taybeh Brigade chief in southern Lebanon, strikes Hamas in
Gaza
Jerusalem Post/October 18/2024
Ramal had guided many terrorist activities against the State of Israel and IDF
troops. The IDF eliminated Hezbollah terrorist Muhammad Hassin Ramal, commander
of the terror group's Taybeh Brigade in southern Lebanon, the military announced
on Friday. The strike was carried out via an Israel Air Force (IAF) aircraft,
the military added, noting that Ramal had guided many terrorist activities
against the State of Israel and IDF troops. Separately, troops of the 7th
Brigade Hezbollah launchers that had been ready to fire at northern Israel. The
IDF noted that in parallel to these activities, during their operations in
southern Lebanon, soldiers of the 36th and 91st Divisions located numerous
weapons, among which were anti-tank missile launchers, rockets, and sniper
weaponry. In addition, an IAF aircraft eliminated terrorists who planned on
launching anti-tank missiles at the troops.
In Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, soldiers of the 162nd Division, in
conjunction with IAF jets, eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed terror
infrastructure. In the center of Gaza, troops of the 252nd Division struck a
military structure in which terrorists operated. The military noted that in the
past day, the IAF had struck some 150 terror targets in Gaza and Lebanon.
Lebanon PM slams Iran speaker’s remarks as ‘blatant
interference’
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/October 18, 2024
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday issued a rare rebuke of
Iran, charging it with “blatant interference” over remarks attributed to its
parliament speaker on a UN resolution on Hezbollah and Lebanon. The Security
Council resolution, adopted in 2006 and which states that only the Lebanese army
and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in southern Lebanon, has come into focus
during the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In remarks published by
France’s Le Figaro newspaper on Thursday, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammed
Baqer Qalibaf said that “Tehran would be willing to engage in concrete
negotiations on enforcing Resolution 1701, with France acting as a mediator
between Hezbollah and Israel.” This is seen as a precondition for a ceasefire.
Le Figaro reported that Qalibaf “does not say that Hezbollah did not respect
Resolution 1701, which calls for Hezbollah’s retreat beyond the Litani
River.”Mikati hit back, accusing Iran of “blatant interference in Lebanese
affairs and an attempt to establish an unacceptable guardianship over
Lebanon.”He said in a statement that “the issue of negotiating to implement
international Resolution 1701 is being undertaken by the Lebanese state.
Everyone is required to support it in this direction, not to seek to impose new
mandates.”Mikati said that Lebanon’s foreign minister would summon Iran’s charge
d’affaires to seek clarification on Qalibaf’s remarks. He said “he had
communicated to both the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the speaker
of the Iranian Shoura Council during their recent visits to Lebanon that it is
crucial to understand the Lebanese situation, particularly as Lebanon is
currently facing unprecedented Israeli aggression.”He also said that “Lebanon is
actively working with its allies, including France, to pressure Israel to cease
hostilities.”Mikati emphasized that “the responsibility for negotiating the
implementation of Resolution 1701 lies with the Lebanese state.”“Everyone should
support this approach rather than seek to impose new and unacceptable forms of
tutelage, which are rejected on both national and sovereign grounds,” he said.
Qalibaf visited Beirut on Oct. 12. Araghchi had previously violated the Lebanese
state’s sovereignty on Oct. 4, when he ignored the road map to end the war
launched by parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party
leader Walid Jumblatt just two days before his arrival.
The road map did not mention Hezbollah and focused on implementing a ceasefire,
electing a president and enforcing Resolution 1701. During his meetings with
Berri and Mikati, Araghchi believed that “Lebanon won’t remain without the
Resistance.”His statement was met with official disapproval, especially as
Lebanon is currently facing the destructive Israeli military machine. French
President Emmanuel Macron was among those who rejected the Iranian stance.“Iran
made the brazen choice of putting Lebanese at risk and protecting itself, which
accelerated the start of Israeli operations,” he said after the European summit
in Brussels. Hezbollah, he said, “has obligations, foremost among them the
renunciation of weapons, terrorism and violence, and it must allow the Lebanese
to come together.”
Qalibaf received harsh criticism within Lebanon, while Mikati was praised. Samir
Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces Party, said the prime minister’s stance
“gives us a glimmer of hope that the state, albeit unfortunately after the
devastating events, has begun to take responsibility.”He said he hoped Mikati
would “go further and say that the government demands a ceasefire based on the
implementation of Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701, as this is the only way to
stop the ongoing massacres in Lebanon.”Sami Gemayel, head of the Kataeb Party,
said: “Mikati’s stance is a good step toward restoring the state’s prestige,
sovereignty and decision-making power and we support such steps to put an end to
the blatant interference in Lebanese affairs. It is necessary to follow through
by asserting the state’s authority on the ground.” Bilal Hchaimeh, an
independent lawmaker who is close to the Future Movement, called for the
“rejection of any foreign interference in the sovereign affairs of our country,
especially when it concerns negotiations related to our national security.”A
source close to Qalibaf said on Al-Mayadeen TV that “what the government and the
resistance in Lebanon support regarding the ceasefire, Iran will support as
well.”He said also that “what was reported about Qalibaf is completely
incorrect” and that “cooperation with Europe aims to help reach a ceasefire
agreement supported by the government and the resistance in Lebanon.”Meanwhile,
fierce clashes continued between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, with Israeli
airstrikes causing further destruction in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa. The
death toll over the past 24 hours was 45, with 179 injured, according to the
government’s emergency committee. Speaking at a briefing in Geneva, UNIFIL
spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said: “The devastation and destruction of many
villages along the Blue Line and even beyond is shocking. We’ve been targeted
several times, five times under deliberate attack.”He said also that “a trace of
the possible use of white phosphorous” had been seen close to a UNIFIL base.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khair, head of Lebanon’s High Relief Commission
said that the cargo from four of the 10 Saudi planes carrying aid for displaced
people in Lebanon had been unloaded and that the last of the flights would land
at Beirut airport on Tuesday. He said that an executive delegation from the
Kingdom, under the directives of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had also
arrived in Lebanon “to work alongside the commission, assist in the distribution
of donations and familiarize themselves with the needs of the displaced.”
The aid was greatly welcomed, he said.
About 1.2 million people have been displaced from Lebanon’s south, the Bekaa and
Beirut’s southern suburbs, with more than half of them now living in shelters.
On Friday, Hezbollah’s military media reported the targeting of the settlement
of Zevulun with a “large salvo of rockets, with sirens sounding in Acre, Haifa
Bay and vast areas in the Galilee.” In a statement to the residents of 23
southern towns, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said: “For your safety,
you must evacuate without delay and move to the north of the Awali River.”The
airstrikes focused on the area of Nabatieh, targeting residential and commercial
buildings in Aita Al-Shaab, Ramyah, Dhayra, Boustane, Maroun Al-Ras and Yaroun,
as well as on the outskirts of Bint Jbeil, Marwahin and Tarbikha in the western
sector. Hezbollah’s military media said: “The enemy’s losses, as observed by the
party, amounted to around 55 dead and more than 500 wounded officers and
soldiers. In addition, 20 Merkava tanks, four military bulldozers, an armored
vehicle and a troop carrier have been destroyed, and two ‘Hermes 450’ drones
have been downed.”
UNIFIL condemns ‘deliberate’ Israeli attacks, says
destruction in Lebanese villages is shocking
REUTERS/October 18, 2024
GENEVA: The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said on Friday it had come under
several “deliberate” attacks by Israeli forces in recent days and efforts to
help civilians in villages in the war zone were being hampered by Israeli
shelling. The UN mission, known as UNIFIL, is stationed in southern Lebanon to
monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel — an area that has
seen fierce clashes this month between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah
fighters. Two peacekeepers were wounded by an Israeli strike near a watchtower
last week, prompting criticism from some of the 50 countries that provide troops
to the 10,000-strong force. “We’ve been targeted several times, five times under
deliberate attack,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said by video link from
Beirut. “I think the role of UNIFIL at the moment is more important than ever.
We need to be here.”Israel says UN forces provide a human shield for Hezbollah
fighters and has told UNIFIL to evacuate peacekeepers from southern Lebanon for
their own safety — a request that it has refused. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu rejected accusations the force had been deliberately
targeted. However, Tenenti challenged this, saying that in one of the incidents
he described Israeli forces penetrated a UNIFIL site and remained there for 45
minutes. Asked whether UNIFIL would consider defending itself against Israel, he
said that it was an option but at the moment it was trying to reduce tensions.
Tenenti also voiced concerns about civilians remaining in southern Lebanon whom
he said aid workers were struggling to reach because of ongoing Israeli
shelling. “The devastation and destruction of many villages along the Blue Line,
and even beyond, is shocking,” he said, referring to a UN-mapped line separating
Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Asked about the
downing of a drone near a UNIFIL ship off the Lebanese coast on Thursday, he
said: “The drone was coming from the south but circling around the ship and
getting very, very close, a few meters away from the ship.”
An investigation is underway, he added. Tenenti also said that an investigation
several months ago had detected “a trace of the possible use of white
phosphorous” by the Israeli army close to a UNIFIL base. The UN Security Council
was aware of the case, he said. White phosphorus munitions are not banned as a
chemical weapon and their use — usually to make smoke screens, mark targets or
burn buildings — by the Israeli military is documented. However, since they can
cause serious burns and start fires, international conventions prohibit their
use against military targets located among civilians.
Israel’s military has previously said in response to Reuters questions that its
primary smoke shells do not contain white phosphorous and those that do can be
used to create smokescreens and that it “uses only lawful means of warfare.”
Lebanon issues rare rebuke to Iran over 'interference'
Reuters/October 18, 2024
BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon's caretaker prime minister on Friday made a rare
rebuke to Iran and said Tehran's envoy should be summoned over reported comments
by a senior Iranian official that it would be ready to help "negotiate" to
implement a U.N. resolution on Lebanon.
Lebanese PM Najib Mikati said in a statement the comments amounted to "a blatant
interference in Lebanese affairs".Criticism of Iran by top Lebanese officials is
unusual, particularly given Tehran's sponsorship of the powerful Lebanese armed
group Hezbollah, which is currently locked in battles against Israeli troops
along Lebanon's southern border. In an interview published in France's Le Figaro
on Thursday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf was quoted as
saying his country would be ready to "negotiate" with France to implement United
Nations Resolution 1701.
That resolution, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah in 2006, calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or
weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.
Mikati said on Friday that he was "surprised" by Ghalibaf's comments and said
they were an attempt to "establish a rejected guardianship over Lebanon". He
said such a negotiation was the prerogative of the Lebanese state and asked
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib to summon Iran's Chargé d'Affaires
in Beirut.There was no immediate comment from Ghalibaf or from Iran's embassy in
Beirut. An unnamed Iranian source close to Ghalibaf denied the interpretation of
the speaker's comments, telling pro-Iran broadcaster Al-Mayadeen that any
collaboration with Europe would aim to reach a ceasefire that is backed by
Lebanon's government and "resistance," in a reference to Hezbollah.
UN peacekeepers stick to positions in south despite
'repeated Israeli targetings'
Associated Press/October 18/2024
Forces in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon are maintaining
their positions despite “demands” to move from the Israeli army, a spokesperson
said Friday. Andrea Tenenti of UNIFIL, the interim force in Lebanon, says a
“unanimous” decision was taken by its 50 troop-contributing countries and the
U.N. Security Council to hold its positions and continue efforts to monitor the
conflict and ensure aid gets to civilians. “The IDF has repeatedly targeted our
positions, endangering the safety of our troops, in addition to Hezbollah
launching rockets toward Israel from near our positions, which also puts our
peacekeepers in danger,” he told a U.N. news briefing in Geneva by video.
Tenenti said deteriorating security in recent weeks in the fighting between
Hezbollah and Israeli forces had forced UNIFIL — which has some 10,000 personnel
— to suspend most, but not all, of its patrols near the “blue line” boundary
along the Lebanon-Israel border. “We are seeing at the moment hundreds of
trajectories, and sometimes more, crossing the blue line each day, forcing our
peacekeepers to spend extended hours in shelters to ensure their safety, which
remains our top priority,” he said from Beirut. Tenenti said UNIFIL was
maintaining its positions “despite IDF demands to move from positions close to
the blue line.”
Lebanese PM rejects Iran’s attempt to impose
‘guardianship’ over Lebanon
The Arab Weekly/October 18/2024
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister said on Friday he rejected Iranian
interference in a Lebanese matter, after the speaker of Iran’s parliament said
Tehran was ready to negotiate with France on implementing a UN resolution
concerning southern Lebanon.
UN Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, calls for the border area of southern
Lebanon to be free of weapons or troops other than those of the Lebanese state,
with the aim of keeping peace on the border with Israel. The speaker of Iran’s
parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, made his comments in an interview
published on Thursday. “We are surprised by this position, which constitutes a
blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish a rejected
guardianship over Lebanon,” a government statement quoted Prime Minister Najib
Mikati as saying. Mikati added that negotiating to implement UN resolution 1701
was a matter for the Lebanese state. Under Resolution 1701, the United Nations
Security Council authorised a UN peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL “to
assist” Lebanese forces in ensuring southern Lebanon is “free of any armed
personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon”.
Israel says the Lebanese army and UNIFIL have failed to secure the area. It
started a ground operation in Lebanon on October 1 after almost a year of
ongoing hostilities with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in parallel with the
war in Gaza.
The UN Security Council has expressed strong concerns after several UN
peacekeeping positions in southern Lebanon came under fire. Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that it
is time to withdraw UNIFIL. Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon told Reuters on
Monday he wanted to see “a more robust mandate for UNIFIL to deter
Hezbollah”.The peacekeeping mission is currently authorised until August 31,
2025.
Kremlin concerned about 'human catastrophe' in Gaza,
Lebanon after Sinwar killing
Agence France Presse/October 18/2024
The Kremlin said Friday it was more concerned about the "humanitarian
catastrophe" in Gaza and Lebanon, when asked about Israel's killing of Hamas
chief Yahya Sinwar. "For us, the main thing is the consequences for civilians
that we are seeing... The humanitarian catastrophe that is observed both in Gaza
and in Lebanon is the subject of our serious concern," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said.
Hezbollah targets Israel after announcing new
'escalatory phase'
Naharnet/October 18/2024
Hezbollah fired Friday a volley of rockets at Israel's Yoav barracks in the
occupied Golan Heights and another volley of rockets at the Zofolon area north
of Haifa. The Israeli army for its part called for the evacuation of 20 southern
Lebanese towns, and struck several southern towns including Jbaa, Aita al-Shaab,
Zrariyeh, Marwanieh, Bazourieh, Shaaytiyeh, Ebl al-Siqi, Malkieh, and Ansar. The
Israeli military said on Thursday that five soldiers had been killed in combat
in southern Lebanon, taking to 19 the number of troop deaths announced since
Israel began raids into Lebanon last month and Israeli reports said 31 troops
were wounded in a border drone attack. The Israeli army said Friday it will
deploy an additional brigade to its northern border "in accordance with the
situational assessment". Hezbollah had hit many Israeli tanks in south Lebanon
near the border with guided missiles in the past days, as the Israeli army tried
to infiltrate into Lebanon's border villages. Hezbollah fighters targeted "two
Merkava tanks" near the border village of Labbouneh "with guided missiles",
causing a fire and casualties, Hezbollah said Thursday. Hezbollah lawmaker
Hassan Fadlallah said Thursday that the Israeli army was not fully in control of
any south Lebanon village. Hezbollah on Thursday said it was launching a new
phase in its war against Israel, saying it has used precision-guided missiles
against troops for the first time.Hezbollah "announces a transition to a new and
escalatory phase in the confrontation with the Israeli enemy, which will be
reflected in the developments and events of the coming days," the group said in
a statement.
Israel army says five soldiers killed in Lebanon combat
Agence France Presse/October 18/2024
The Israeli military said overnight that five soldiers had been killed in combat
in southern Lebanon, taking to 19 the number of troop deaths announced since
Israel began raids into Lebanon last month. A military statement said five
servicemen "fell during combat in southern Lebanon," without elaborating on the
circumstances of their deaths.
Report: Egypt pressing for Israel to stop targeting
buildings outside south
Naharnet/October 18/2024
Egyptian officials are carrying out continuous discussions with U.S., Saudi and
French officials, separately and collectively, over the importance of
de-escalation in Lebanon, al-Akhbar newspaper reported. The discussions are
seeking to "press Israel to stop targeting civilian buildings outside the
southern region," the daily added.
Italian PM Meloni visits Lebanon after UNIFIL, meets Mikati
AFP/October 18/2024
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni went to Lebanon on Friday, her office
said, the first head of state or government to visit since an escalation between
Israel and Hezbollah last month. The premier was welcomed at Beirut
international airport by Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, with whom she was
due to hold talks before making a joint statement to the press. Italy has around
1,000 troops as part of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon which has come
under repeated fire in the Israeli-Hezbollah war in recent days. Five
peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest
seeing the UN force accuse Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and
entering one of their positions. Meloni has condemned the incidents as
“unacceptable”. UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli
forces after they invaded Lebanon, and to help the Lebanese government restore
authority over the border region. In Beirut Meloni also met the head of Italy’s
bilateral mission in Lebanon, MBIL, a training programme, Italian sources said.
The Italian premier, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G7 this
year, earlier on Friday met King Abdullah II of Jordan in Aqaba.
They discussed the escalating conflict in the region and joint efforts for a
ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages, according to Rome. Meloni
said on Thursday that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar cleared the way
for a “new phase” in the Gaza war, which was sparked by the militant group’s
deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The UN peacekeeping mission to Lebanon
is vital to ending war in the region and needs to be strengthened, not withdrawn
from combat zones as Israel has demanded, Italy’s defence minister said on
Thursday. “Israel needs to understand that these (UN) soldiers are not working
for any one side. They are there to help maintain peace and promote regional
stability,” Defence Minister Guido Crosetto told parliament on Thursday. He said
the resolution establishing the UNIFIL mandate was last revised in 2006 and
needed updating. “UNIFIL is a complex mission with a mandate that is difficult
to implement, has inadequate rules of engagement and forces that are not
equipped for the current conflict,” he said. Crosetto has called on the United
Nations to update its operational capacity, including creating a rapid
deployment force to enhance UNIFIL’s freedom of movement and giving them more
fire power.
Lebanon crowd-funded ambulances under fire in
Israel-Hezbollah war
Hashem Osseiran/The Arab Weekly/October 18/2024
Lebanese data scientist and volunteer rescue worker Bachir Nakhal started a
crowd-funding effort to buy new ambulances for south Lebanon months ago, fearing
Israel’s war in Gaza could spread to his country. But weeks into Israel’s war
with Hezbollah, his worst fears came true when an ambulance he had helped
purchase was bombed. “We were trying to get the number of ambulances up to the
bare minimum level,” he told AFP. “We weren’t expecting the ambulances … to get
directly targeted or bombed,” said Nakhal, who says the vehicle he had raised
money for was destroyed in an Israeli strike just four days after the volunteers
had received it. The October 9 strike, which took place in the southern village
of Derdghaiya, killed five rescue workers, including the head of the local team
and his son, according to the civil defence. The incident was among what the
United Nations says is a growing number of attacks on health care in Lebanon,
with paramedics, first responders and ambulances increasingly in the firing
line. “More attacks continue to be reported where ambulances and relief centres
are targeted or hit in Lebanon,” UN humanitarian agency OCHA said after the
Derdghaiya strike. The Israeli army has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to
transport weapons and fighters, though it has yet to produce any evidence.
“Necessary measures will be taken against any vehicle transporting gunmen,
regardless of its type,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote in Arabic
on social media platform X. Nakhal said a second crowd-funded ambulance,
dispatched to the southern city of Nabatiyeh on Monday, was barely on the road
for a day when it had a close call with heavy strikes. Israel had earlier in the
war issued an evacuation warning for Nabatiyeh, where Hezbollah and its ally
Amal hold sway. On Wednesday, 16 people, including a civil defence worker, were
killed in a strike on Nabatiyeh, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The ambulance was spared.
The vehicles are sorely needed with Lebanon’s healthcare system overwhelmed by
the escalation of cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel into an all-out
war last month. At least 1,373 people having been killed in Lebanon since
September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures,
though the real toll is likely higher. According to Lebanon’s Health Minister
Firass Abiad, more than 150 paramedics and medical workers have been killed
since cross-border exchanges started last year. More than 130 ambulances have
been damaged over the same period, he said in a press conference on Tuesday. The
Lebanese Red Cross on Wednesday said two paramedics were wounded in a strike
that hit the south Lebanon village of Jwaya while a rescue mission coordinated
with UN peacekeepers was under way. Paramedics were also lightly wounded and
ambulances destroyed by an Israeli strike in the country’s south on Sunday. As
Israel expands its operations, Nakhal too is beefing up his efforts, as he works
on securing a third ambulance for Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region. “It’s my way
of dealing with the war and doing my part in this. It’s one way of giving back
to my community,” he said.
He is working with Omar Abboud, a 30-year-old Lebanese data scientist living in
New York, who raised $15,000 for the first ambulance within a day through social
media. They hope to dispatch the latest ambulance to civil defence volunteers in
the Bekaa before the end of the month. The ambulance attacks are an “example of
the undeniable truth that Israel targets hospitals and ambulances with
impunity”, Abboud told AFP. “Whether the ambulances are on the road for five
days or five years is not relevant to me. When you’re dealing with destruction
and suffering at this scale, one life saved is enough.”
Bassil calls for unity, ceasefire, and presidential
consensus
Naharnet/October 18/2024
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has called for unity to confront
Israel, for a ceasefire, and for the election of a consensual president. In
remarks to al-Modon web portal, Bassil said the priority is for a ceasefire and
for deterring a possible re-occupation of south Lebanon. Bassil said he has
launched a new initiative that he discussed with the U.S., Saudi Arabia, France,
Egypt and Qatar. He said he also met with the British ambassador and with the
Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General. His initiative would start
with a ceasefire, followed by the election of a consensual president, Bassil
explained. He said that he is now collecting the names of all the presidential
candidates, including Hezbollah candidate Suleiman Franjieh, the army chief, and
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Bassil in his remarks called for the
implementation of U.N. council resolution 1701, said all Lebanese would not
accept an occupation and described Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as patriotic,
responsible, and wise. "Berri, is playing a patriotic and responsible role,"
Bassil said, despite long disagreements between the two leaders. "Berri is
acting with great wisdom," Bassil said.
Geagea says Hezbollah fully led by Iran after
Nasrallah's killing
Naharnet/October 18/2024
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused the Lebanese government of becoming
"a rescue committee" instead of a state and of allowing Iran to fight its
battles from Lebanon. In remarks published Friday in Asharq al-Awsat newspaper,
Geagea said that Hezbollah has dragged Lebanon to where it is now, while
Lebanese officials were "loafing around" instead of calling for the
implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. "The
government must convene and take a decision to deploy the army and implement
Resolution 1701," Geagea said, adding that after the killing of Hezbollah leader
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike, Hezbollah is now totally led by
Iran."The decisions are now completely Iranian and Iran will continue its fight
until the last (Hezbollah) fighter."
When Will Lebanese Shiites Expel the “Temple Traders”?
Hussein Ataya /Janoubia/October 17/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135818/
(Free Translation by LCCC website editor & publisher)
Since Imam Musa al-Sadr arrived in Lebanon and began working to establish a
sectarian Shiite institution, the narrative of the deprived Shiites and the
laboring Shiites at the Port of Beirut began to take shape. These stories were
largely fabricated to attract the Shiite masses, particularly in southern
Lebanon and the northern Bekaa Valley, as most educated and intellectual Shiites
belonged to other groups. They were either Arab nationalists, leftists, or
affiliated with traditional Shiite families such as the Hamada family in Bekaa,
the Asaad family in the South, the Safi al-Din and Khalil families in Tyre, the
Zain family in Nabatieh, and others who held prominent positions across regions
inhabited by Lebanese Shiites.
An Iranian Project
Musa al-Sadr came with an Iranian project under the Shah’s rule. Although he
spoke on Lebanese issues, calling for Lebanon’s finality as a state, he was
actually working to establish the “Movement of the Deprived” after founding the
Supreme Islamic Shiite Council. He also began forming the armed wing of the
Movement, known as the Amal Movement, which served as its military wing. The
existence of this militia was only revealed after a landmine exploded during
training, killing dozens. This militia was funded and trained by officers from
the “Fatah” movement, with support from its leader Yasser Arafat, and the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). During the Lebanese Civil War, al-Sadr
cooperated with Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and later attempted to
collaborate with the Iranian Mullahs during the Iranian revolution. This,
however, led to his downfall when his cooperation with the Shah was exposed,
leading to his murder in Libya during his infamous trip in August 1978. This
marked the beginning of the manipulation of Lebanese Shiites and the effort to
sectarianize them, despite Shiites previously being among the least sectarian
groups in Lebanon. Following the Syrian intervention and the regime’s
manipulation of the Amal Movement under Nabih Berri, Amal became firmly under
Syrian protection. We all remember the events in Beirut and southern Lebanon and
the conflicts between Amal and the Lebanese National Movement, as well as the
Palestinian revolutionaries, until the Israeli invasion in 1982, which saw
dubious practices unfold.
Hezbollah’s Emergence
Although the Lebanese National Resistance Front (Jammoul) included groups from
the Shiite community, these were politically aligned with leftist parties, with
only a few exceptions like the honorable fighters Mohammad Saad, Khalil Jaradi,
and their comrades from Amal, who resisted the occupation from day one. These
groups fought alongside Jammoul’s resistance. However, the intra-Shiite conflict
emerged, reflecting the Syrian-Iranian rivalry, which claimed the lives of
thousands of Shiites in fratricidal battles fought for Syria and Iran’s
interests. The conflict eventually led to a reconciliation and a division of
sectarian power between Amal and Hezbollah. The resistance efforts were later
monopolized by Hezbollah, and Jammoul’s fighters were eliminated by both Amal
and Hezbollah between 1986 and 1987, marking the end of Jammoul and leaving
Hezbollah in control of all resistance activities. Hezbollah, empowered after
2000, transformed into an Iranian force outside the control of the Lebanese
state, becoming a state within a state, fighting several wars, some of which
were endorsed by Rafik Hariri. However, Hariri was later assassinated by
Hezbollah operatives, as confirmed by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
From this point onward, Hezbollah monopolized the decisions of war and peace,
and the Lebanese state became a mere witness, unable to act under Hezbollah’s
threats. This began with the infamous May 7, 2008, invasion of Beirut, during
which Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, called it a “glorious
day” in the history of the resistance. From then on, Nasrallah began addressing
his followers as “the most honorable people,” classifying the Lebanese as either
those who supported him or those who did not, whom he regarded with disdain.
Power Monopoly and Corruption
The Supreme Islamic Shiite Council, founded by Musa al-Sadr, became a tool in
the hands of Amal and Hezbollah. Shiite citizens now see how their religious
taxes (khums) and donations (zakat), along with the revenues from the Islamic
University and Al-Zahraa Hospital, are squandered by the cronies of Amal and
Hezbollah, benefiting only a select few while the rest of the Shiite community,
including the poor, receive no benefit. This corruption runs from the top of the
council to the bottom, with resources being wasted on inappropriate matters.
University tuition fees and hospital charges remain high, burdening the
community, while the leaders live comfortably.
Hezbollah’s wars in 1993, 1996, 2006, and now in 2023—ongoing at this very
moment—have destroyed everything built by the Shiite community over decades.
This devastation is not for Lebanon or its Shiite citizens, but to serve the
interests of the Iranian Supreme Leader and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, for which
the Lebanese Shiites are paying a heavy price in blood and lost livelihoods.
Meanwhile, the head of the Supreme Shiite Council, Sheikh Ali al-Khatib, smiles
broadly during meetings, having fled the council’s headquarters in Dahieh to its
luxurious offices in Hazmieh, enjoying all comforts while the Shiite poor sleep
on the streets without shelter or blankets. This is the reality of the Lebanese
Shiites today, suffering under leaders who, at best, can be described as
treasonous, lacking any sense of responsibility toward their community, which
they falsely claim to represent.
Time for Change
How long will the Lebanese Shiites, once known for their patriotism and
leadership in the fight for change, remain silent while their children die in
futile wars, their properties are destroyed before their eyes, and they stand
silent like the Sphinx? We await the day when the Shiite community rises to
reclaim its leadership from those who have monopolized it, restoring their
Arab-Lebanese identity and leading the national movement for a better Lebanon,
respected by its people and admired worldwide.
Events in Gaza, Lebanon may bring Egypt and Iran closer
Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy/Arab News/October 18, 2024
The relationship between Egypt and Iran is one of the most complex in the Middle
East, largely due to significant political and ideological differences that have
persisted for decades. Recently, changing dynamics in the region, especially the
ongoing events in Lebanon and Gaza, have brought this relationship back into
focus. As regional tensions rise, observers are questioning whether these
developments will hasten the normalization process between Cairo and Tehran, two
historically influential players in the region.
As a result of Israel’s wars on Lebanon and Gaza, the prospect of rapprochement
between Egypt and Iran seems closer than ever. Both public and behind-the-scenes
communications are ongoing, culminating in Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas
Araghchi’s visit to Egypt on Thursday as part of his Middle East tour. The
discussions focused on ways to de-escalate the situation in Gaza and Lebanon, as
well as easing tensions between Iran and Israel. Through this visit, Iran sought
to improve relations with Egypt after years of stagnation. Since the March 2023
Saudi-Iranian agreement to resume relations, communication between Iran and
Egypt has increased. Oman has played a mediating role, conveying messages
between the two countries to pave the way for the potential resumption of
diplomatic ties. Despite the obstacles, there are encouraging signs of
diplomatic progress between Cairo and Tehran, particularly given the shared
security challenges in the region, such as the situations in Yemen and Gaza. To
understand the prospects for rapprochement or normalization between Cairo and
Tehran, it is important to consider the historical context of the crisis.
Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Egypt and Iran
enjoyed strong strategic relations. There was close political and military
cooperation, with Iran supporting Egypt in facing regional challenges during the
era of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The two nations maintained strong
diplomatic relations.
However, the relationship changed dramatically after the overthrow of the shah.
Relations entered a phase of continuous tension, largely due to the new Iran
regime’s opposition to the 1978 Camp David Accords. Egypt also viewed Iran as a
backer of extremist Islamist groups that threatened its national security, a
belief reinforced by the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in
1981. Iran further strained relations by naming a street in Tehran after Sadat’s
assassin, Khalid Islambouli. Despite the obstacles, there are encouraging signs
of diplomatic progress between Cairo and Tehran. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
relations remained cold, with both countries supporting opposing sides in
various regional conflicts. Iran was a key backer of Hezbollah in Lebanon and
Palestinian factions, while Egypt, under President Hosni Mubarak, remained a
pillar of the Sunni Arab order and maintained close relations with the US.
Despite these tensions, limited communication persisted, with economic and
cultural exchanges remaining open to some extent. This laid the groundwork for
potential reconciliation if the geopolitical landscape changed. Egypt and Iran
have often found themselves on opposing sides of many issues. For instance,
during the Iran-Iraq War, Egypt fully supported Iraq and opposed Iran’s
ambitions of regional expansion. Egypt also backed the Gulf states threatened by
Iran’s proxies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. When
conflict erupted in the region on Oct. 7. 2023, all possibilities became open.
Iran plays a central role in supporting Hezbollah on both the military and
political fronts, while Egypt views the situation in Lebanon with deep concern,
especially as further escalation could affect the stability of the entire
region. Despite disagreements between Cairo and Tehran over Iran’s role in
Lebanon, this crisis could open the door to new dialogue on how to contain the
situation.
In Gaza, Iran is a major military and financial backer of Hamas, while Egypt has
consistently acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas. Cairo is keen to
avoid a full-scale war that would negatively impact regional security. This
situation presents potential opportunities for direct understandings between the
two states. Araghchi’s visit to Egypt, following intensive communication, came
at a highly sensitive moment, with tensions in the region at unprecedented
levels. This suggests that Iran is seeking to improve its relations with
regional countries, including Egypt, to ease international and regional
pressure. Strengthening its ties with Cairo would bolster Iran’s regional
stance, particularly on issues like Lebanon and Gaza. For Egypt, maintaining
stability in Gaza is crucial for its national security. Meanwhile, Iran’s
support for Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
through financial and military backing, aligns with its broader anti-Israel
narrative. Tactical coordination could serve the interests of both countries.
Araghchi’s visit to Egypt, following intensive communication, came at a highly
sensitive moment.
Lebanon’s political and economic crisis also casts a shadow over the region.
Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, wields significant influence in Lebanese politics.
While Egypt has traditionally avoided engaging with Hezbollah, the deteriorating
situation in Lebanon has raised concerns in Cairo about potential instability
spreading across the Arab world. There is growing recognition in Egyptian
foreign policy circles that some form of cooperation with Iran may be necessary
to prevent Lebanon’s collapse, which could have far-reaching regional
consequences.
Another factor driving Egypt and Iran toward possible rapprochement is the
changing dynamics in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s closest Gulf ally, has
begun its own dialogue with Iran. Although relations between Riyadh and Tehran
remain strained, these talks indicate a broader trend towards regional
de-escalation. Egypt may see this as an opportunity to explore its own path to
normalization without jeopardizing its relationships with Gulf states. If Saudi
Arabia and Iran can engage diplomatically, there is room for Egypt to explore
rapprochement as well.
However, despite the realistic chances of rapprochement, major hurdles remain.
One is the ideological divide. Egypt remains skeptical of the political Islam
embraced by Iran, as well as its revolutionary narrative. Additionally, the two
countries have conflicting alliances, with Egypt closely tied to the West while
Iran remains heavily sanctioned. Iran’s support for groups like Hezbollah and
Hamas continues to be a point of contention, as Egypt views these groups as
destabilizing forces in the region. Iran’s continued backing of armed groups
across the region, which Egypt sees as a direct threat to Arab national
security, presents a major barrier. Furthermore, Iran’s expansionist policies in
Yemen and Syria are still key points of disagreement between the two countries.
Despite these challenges, the relationship may see at least temporary
rapprochement, as the two countries cooperate on shared regional issues like the
crises in Lebanon and Gaza. This scenario assumes that the two nations will work
to build trust through political and diplomatic dialogue. Whether this
rapprochement can help resolve the situations in Gaza and Lebanon remains
uncertain. Progress will depend on both parties’ ability to overcome these
obstacles and engage in effective political dialogue to address regional
challenges.
*Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy has covered conflicts worldwide. X: @ALMenawy
he Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on October 18-19/2024
Israel’s killing of Sinwar a ‘game changer’
but no quick end to war in Gaza is foreseen
The Arab Weekly/October 18/2024
“Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow but our task
has still not been completed,” Netanyahu said in a recorded video statement.
Friday 18/10/2024
Israel confirmed on Thursday the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar after a
firefight with Israeli troops in Gaza. But the chances of a quick end to the
destructive war in the enclave remain slim. The killing of Sinwar occurred
during an Israeli ground operation in Rafah on Wednesday, said the Israeli army.
US President Joe Biden, who spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu by phone, Thursday, said Sinwar’s death provided a chance for the
conflict in Gaza to finally end and for Israeli hostages to be brought home.
“Now’s the time to move on. Move on, move towards a ceasefire in Gaza,” Biden
told reporters after landing in Germany. Asked if he felt more hopeful about a
ceasefire, Biden said he did, and said the war would end “hopefully very
soon.”Biden said he was sending his top diplomat, Antony Blinken, to Israel in
four or five days and that talks would include post-war arrangements for Gaza.
But Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem just after the death was confirmed, warned
that the war in Gaza was not over and Israel would continue until its hostages
were returned. “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a
blow but our task has still not been completed,” he said in a recorded video
statement. “While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it’s the beginning of
the end,” he added. Many leaders and experts in the West said this pivotal event
in the year-long conflict offered an opportunity for the Gaza war to end. Elliot
Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington,
said the death of Sinwar “may be a game changer.”“I think it’s more likely that
a deal can now be done. The pressure on the Israelis to do a deal would also
grow,” he said. Efforts to bring peace to Gaza will be complicated, however, by
Israel’s parallel fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as Israeli
preparations to retaliate against Iran, which backs both the Lebanese militant
group and Hamas, for its ballistic-missile barrage this month. Also, with the
clock ticking down on his presidency and the US election looming, Biden may
struggle to get Netanyahu to fully heed his entreaties. Netanyahu, some analysts
say, may prefer to wait out the end of Biden’s term in January and take his
chances with the next president, whether the Democratic candidate, Vice
President Kamala Harris, or Republican rival Donald Trump, with whom the Israeli
leader has had close ties.
Jon Alterman, a former State Department official now at the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, expressed pessimism that
Netanyahu would respond to renewed pressure from Biden. “Bibi’s like a gambler
with a hot hand, and in his mind, all the big risks he’s taken in the last six
months, which people said were crazy, have paid off, and most spectacularly in
killing Yahya Sinwar,” said Alterman, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
While Sinwar’s death could give Netanyahu political cover to negotiate with more
flexibility, analysts believe any move to strike a deal with Hamas is likely to
face fierce resistance from far-right cabinet members who have opposed the
previously proposed terms for an agreement. Sinwar’s death could also dial up
hostilities in the Middle East where the prospect of an even wider conflict has
grown.
Another source of uncertainty is the future strategy of Iran and its proxies
after the killing of Sinwar as Israel widens its attacks in Lebanon and prepares
a response to Tehran’s October 1 missile attack.
David Khalfa, a Middle East expert at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, a Paris
think-tank, said the killing would have a “psychological” impact on Hamas. But
he noted that Sinwar was “Tehran’s man.” Even without Sinwar, Iran can still
influence the decisions, including the choice of a successor, within the more
hardline and loyal faction of Hamas. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group said on
Friday it was moving to a new and escalating phase in its war against Israel
while Iran said “the spirit of resistance will be strengthened” after the
killing of the Hamas leader.From the Israeli hardliners’ perspective, analysts
say, now might be the time to hit leader-less Hamas harder instead of backing
off, raising the prospects that the war could intensify. Already, Israeli
military chief Herzi Halevi vowed the military would keep fighting “until we
capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the
hostages home.”Continuation of the war, which has killed more than 42,000 and
displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza will add to the immense
suffering of Palestinian civilians in the enclave. The Hamas October 7 attack,
masterminded by Sinwar, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 Israelis and the
abduction of 251 of whom 97 are still being held in Gaza.
Gaza civil defense agency says Israeli strike kills 33
in Jabalia
AFP/October 19, 2024
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said an Israeli
strike near Jabalia in the territory’s north killed 33 people at a refugee camp
overnight from Friday to Saturday. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal announced “33
deaths and dozens of wounded,” while a medical source at the Al-Awda hospital
told AFP that it had registered 22 dead and 70 wounded after the strike on the
Tal Al-Zaatar camp for Palestinian refugees.
‘This is how a hero dies,’ say Gazans of Sinwar’s battlefield death
REUTERS/October 19, 2024
CAIRO: For one Gazan father, Yahya Sinwar’s death in battle trying to beat back
a drone with a stick was “how heroes die.” For others, it was an example for
future generations even as some lamented the ruinous cost of the war he sparked
with Israel. Sinwar, the architect of Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on
Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, was killed on Wednesday in a gunfight
with Israeli forces after a year-long manhunt, and his death was announced on
Thursday. A video of some of his final minutes, showing him masked and wounded
in a shell-smashed apartment trying to hurl a stick at a drone filming him
inspired pride among Palestinians. “He died a hero, attacking not fleeing,
clutching his rifle, and engaging against the occupation army at the front
line,” a Hamas statement mourning Sinwar’s death said. In the statement, Hamas
vowed his death would only strengthen the movement, adding that it wouldn’t
compromise on conditions to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel. “He died wearing
a military vest, fighting with a rifle and grenades, and when he was wounded and
was bleeding he fought with a stick. This is how heroes die,” said Adel Rajab,
60, a father of two in Gaza. “I have watched the video 30 times since last
night, there is no better way to die,” said Ali, a 30-year-old taxi driver in
Gaza.
“I will make this video a daily duty to watch for my sons, and my grandsons in
the future,” said the father of two. The attack Sinwar planned on Israeli
communities a year ago killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with
another 253 dragged back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent war has devastated Gaza, killing more than 42,000
Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the
rubble, say Gaza health authorities.Sinwar’s own words in previous speeches,
saying he would rather die at Israel’s hands than from a heart attack or car
accident, have been repeatedly shared by Palestinians online. “The best gift the
enemy and the occupation can offer me is to assassinate me and that I go as a
martyr at their hands,” he had said.
Recruiting tool
Now some Palestinians are wondering whether Israel will regret allowing the
fulfilment of that wish to be broadcast as a potential recruiting tool for an
organization it has sworn to destroy. “They said he was hiding inside the
tunnels. They said he was keeping Israeli prisoners next to him to save his
life. Yesterday we saw that he was hunting down Israeli soldiers in Rafah, where
the occupation has been operating since May,” said Rasha, a displaced
42-year-old mother of four children. “This is how leaders go, with a rifle in
the hand. I supported Sinwar as a leader and today I am proud of him as a
martyr,” she added. A poll in September showed a majority of Gazans thought the
Oct. 7 attack was the wrong decision and a growing number of Palestinians have
questioned Sinwar’s willingness to launch a war that has caused them so much
suffering. Rajab, who praised Sinwar’s death as heroic, said he had not
supported the Oct. 7 attacks, believing Palestinians were not prepared for
all-out war with Israel. But he said the manner of his death “made me proud as a
Palestinian.”In both Gaza and the West Bank, where Hamas also has significant
support and where fighting between Israeli occupying forces and Palestinians has
increased over the past year, people wondered whether Sinwar’s death would
hasten the war’s end. In Hebron, a flashpoint West Bank city, Ala’a Hashalmoon
said killing Sinwar would not mean a more conciliatory leader. “What I can
figure out is that whoever dies, there is someone who replaces him (who) is more
stubborn,” he said. And in Ramallah, Murad Omar, 54, said little would change on
the ground. “The war will continue and it seems it won’t end soon,” he said.
What’s next for Hamas after its leader Yahya Sinwar’s death?
AP/October 19, 2024
BEIRUT: The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli forces in Gaza this
week leaves the Palestinian militant group considering new leadership for the
second time in less than three months.
Will Hamas now turn away from its hard-line wing or will it double down, and
what will it mean for the group’s future and for the revival of ceasefire and
hostage exchange negotiations between Hamas and Israel? Sinwar replaced Hamas’
previous leader, Ismail Haniyeh, after Haniyeh was killed in July in a blast in
Iran that was widely blamed on Israel. As an architect of the Oct. 7, 2023,
attack in southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, Sinwar was a defiant
choice at a time when some expected the militant group to take a more
conciliatory approach and seek to end the conflict.
Sinwar’s killing appeared to be a chance front-line encounter with Israeli
troops on Wednesday.
Sinwar’s death has little immediate impact on Hamas
Killing Sinwar marked a major symbolic victory for Israel in its yearlong war
against Hamas in Gaza. But it has also allowed Hamas to claim him as a hero who
was killed in the battlefield, not hiding in a tunnel.While the group is on the
defensive and has been largely forced underground in Gaza, it continues to fight
Israeli forces in the enclave and to exert political influence. Bassem Naim, a
Qatar-based member of the group’s political bureau, said in a statement that
Israel had killed other Hamas leaders, including its founding leader, Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin, and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who were killed by
airstrikes in 2004. “Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these
leaders became an icon for future generations,” he said. The impact of Sinwar’s
death on military operations in Gaza remains to be seen. But Sadeq Abu Amer,
head of the Turkiye-based think tank Palestinian Dialogue Group, said that
“there will be no significant impact on the political structure of Hamas.”When
Sinwar was appointed, “the situation was basically arranged so that Hamas could
manage its political affairs and manage the organization independently of Sinwar”
because of the difficulties of communication between Sinwar and Hamas’ political
leaders outside of Gaza, he said. Most matters were managed by “collective
leadership” between the head of the group’s Shoura Council and officials in
charge of the West Bank, Gaza and regions abroad, he said. The notable
exception: Sinwar controlled all matters related to Israeli hostages in Gaza.
The search for a replacement
Sinwar’s term was a temporary one and would have expired in the second half of
2025. “Hamas will not move urgently at the present time to choose a head of the
political bureau,” Thabet Al-Amour, a political analyst in Gaza, said. He noted
that Khalil Al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy based in Qatar, was already managing
executive affairs and can continue to do so. Abu Amer agreed that Hamas might
opt to keep running with the current “formula of collective leadership.” Another
possibility, he said would be the election of one of the three regional leaders:
Al-Hayya, who is in charge of Gaza; Zaher Jibril, in charge of the West Bank; or
Khaled Mashaal, in charge of areas outside of the Palestinian territories. The
group also might select a leader without publicly announcing the name “for
security reasons,” he said.
Who are the contenders?
If Hamas names a replacement for Sinwar, Khaled Mashaal and Khalil Al-Hayya,
both members of Hamas’ political leadership based in Qatar, are widely
considered the most likely contenders.
Al-Hayya had served as Sinwar’s deputy and as the head of the group’s delegation
in ceasefire negotiations, both in the current war and during a previous
conflict in 2014. He is a longtime official with the group and survived an
Israeli airstrike that hit his home in Gaza in 2007, killing several of his
family members. Al-Hayya is seen as close to Iran, but as less of a hard-liner
than Sinwar. He was close to Haniyeh. In an interview with The Associated Press
in April, Al-Hayya said Hamas was willing to agree to truce of at least five
years with Israel and that if an independent Palestinian state were created
along 1967 borders, the group would dissolve its military wing and become a
purely political party. Mashaal, who served as the group’s political leader from
1996 to 2017, is seen as a relatively moderate figure. He has good relations
with Turkiye and Qatar, although his relations with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah
have been troubled due to his support for the Syrian opposition in the country’s
2011 civil war. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a founding member of Hamas and the first
head of its political bureau, is another potential candidate who is seen as a
moderate. Some have suggested that Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, a key military
figure in Gaza, could replace him — if he is still alive. Al-Amour downplayed
that possibility. “Mohammed Sinwar is the head of the field battle, but he will
not be Sinwar’s heir as head of the political bureau,” he said. Rather, Al-Amour
said the death of Sinwar, “one of the most prominent hawks within the movement,”
is likely to lead to “the advancement of a trend or direction that can be
described as doves” via the group’s leadership abroad.
Ceasefire negotiations
In the first public statement by a Hamas official after Sinwar’s death, Al-Hayya
appeared to take a hard line on negotiations for a ceasefire deal that would see
the release of some 100 Israeli hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that
sparked the war and who are believed to be held in Gaza.
There will be no hostage release without “the end of the aggression on Gaza and
the withdrawal (of Israeli forces) from Gaza,” Al-Hayya said. But some believe
that the group may now moderate its stance. In particular, Mashaal “shows more
flexibility when it comes to collaborating with the Qataris and Egyptians to
reach ceasefire in Gaza, which would also have a positive impact on the
situation in Lebanon,” Saad Abdullah Al-Hamid, a Saudi political analyst, said.
But Sinwar’s death could leave some “practical difficulties in completing a
prisoner exchange,” Abu Amer said. The Gaza-based leader was “the only one in
the Hamas leadership who held the secrets of this file,” he said, including the
location of all the hostages.
Hamas mourns Sinwar, vows no hostage release until war ends
AFP/October 18, 2024
JERUSALEM: Hamas vowed on Friday it would not release the hostages it seized
during its October 7 attack on Israel until the Gaza war ends, as it mourned the
death of its leader Yahya Sinwar. The killing of Sinwar, the mastermind of the
deadliest attack in Israeli history, had raised hopes of a turning point in the
war, including for families of the Israeli hostages and Gazans enduring a dire
humanitarian crisis. However, as Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya
mourned Sinwar in a video statement on Friday, he reiterated the group’s
position that no hostages would be released “unless the aggression against our
people in Gaza stops.”And Israeli forces pummelled Gaza with air strikes on
Friday, with rescuers recovering the bodies of three Palestinian children from
the rubble of their home in the north of the territory, according to Gaza’s
civil defense agency.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived the war would end and our lives
would return to normal,” Jemaa Abou Mendi, a 21-year-old Gaza resident, told AFP.
“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has
not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
Sinwar was Israel’s most wanted man and his death — announced by the Israeli
military on Thursday — deals a major blow to the already weakened group. Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Sinwar’s killing an “important landmark
in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”He added that while it did not spell
the end of the war, it was “the beginning of the end.”
After Sinwar’s killing was announced, some hailed the news as a sign of better
things to come. US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms
provider, said Sinwar’s death was “an opportunity to seek a path to peace, a
better future in Gaza without Hamas.”
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged Israel’s
government and international mediators to leverage “this major achievement to
secure hostages’ return.”“Now that Sinwar is not a formal obstacle in the way of
the release of the hostages, it is unacceptable that they would stay in
captivity even one more day,” said Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of killed
hostage Yoram Metzger. But she added: “We (are) afraid that Netanyahu does not
intend on stopping the war, nor does he intend to bring the hostages back.”After
Sinwar’s death, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi vowed to keep fighting
“until we capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and
bring all the hostages home.”Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam
Brigades, said that “our fight will not stop until Palestine is liberated.”Hamas
sparked the war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on
October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians,
according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures. During the attack,
militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including
34 who Israeli officials say are dead. Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and
bring back the hostages has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority
civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run
territory, figures which the UN considers reliable. A “conservative” estimate
puts the death toll among children in Gaza at over 14,100, said James Elder,
spokesman of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF. “Gaza is the
real-world embodiment of hell on Earth for its one million children,” Elder said
on Friday. “And it’s getting worse, day by day.”Criticism has been mounting over
the civilian toll and lack of food and humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, where the
UN has warned of famine.
Sinwar was the head of Hamas in Gaza at the time of the October 7 attack, rising
to become the group’s overall leader after the killing of its political chief,
Ismail Haniyeh, in July.
The Israeli military said Sinwar was killed in a firefight in southern Gaza’s
Rafah, near the Egyptian border, while being tracked by a drone. It released
drone footage of what it said was Sinwar’s final moments, with the video showing
a wounded militant throwing an object at the drone.
It is unclear whether his successor will be named in Qatar, where Hamas’s
political leadership has long been based, or in Gaza, the focus of the fighting.
Sinwar’s death created “a leadership vacuum,” Middle East analyst Andreas Krieg
of King’s College London said. Krieg said that next leader was likely to be
someone from the operational level of Hamas. But among those on the battlefield,
Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed Sinwar has emerged as a favorite, he added.
Israel is also fighting a war in Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah opened a
front by launching cross-border strikes that forced tens of thousands of
Israelis to flee their homes. Israel ramped up its bombardment on September 23
and by the end of the month sent ground troops across the Lebanese border. On
Friday, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon warned that the escalating war “is
causing widespread destruction of towns and villages in south Lebanon.”The
UNIFIL mission has accused Israeli troops of firing at its positions in south
Lebanon, which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni branded as “unacceptable”
on Friday. The war since late September has left at least 1,418 people dead in
Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though
the real toll is likely higher. The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned
armed groups, including in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.Iran on October 1 conducted a
missile strike on Israel, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.
Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels all mourned the death of Sinwar,
vowing continued support for their Palestinian ally Hamas.
Biden: it’s time for Gaza war to end, Blinken to visit
Israel
Jerusalem Post/October 18/2024
“We’re going to work out what is the day after now,” Biden said, explaining that
this means, “how do we secure Gaza and move on.”US President Joe Biden called
for the Gaza war to end and for hostages to be freed as he confirmed that US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken would visit Israel next week to discuss the
new geopolitical reality created by the IDF’s assassination of Hamas leader
Yahya Sinwar. “I’m sending Tony Blinken to Israel,” Biden told reporters upon
landing in Germany early Friday morning for a trip in which Biden is expected to
meet with German, French, and British leaders to discuss Ukraine and the Middle
East, including Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies. “We’re going to work out
what is the day after now,” Biden said, explaining that this means, “how do we
secure Gaza and move on.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his public
remarks on Thursday, indicated that Sinwar’s death heralded the “beginning of
the day after Hamas in Gaza.” He also stressed that it created new opportunities
to secure the release of the hostages and “brings the end of the war
closer.”Netanyahu, however, did not indicate that he was ready for a Gaza
ceasefire. Biden told reporters in Germany, “Now is the time to move on — move
on, move towards a ceasefire in Gaza.”He explained that he had delivered the
same message to Netanyahu when he spoke with him from Air Force One late
Thursday night. “It’s time for this war to end and bring these hostages home.
And so, that’s what we’re ready to do,” Biden said. During his conversation with
Netanyahu, whom he referred to by his nickname of Bibi, Biden said he had
congratulated him on the successful assassination of Sinwar. “It’s a good day
for the world. We got [Sinwar] — I called Bibi Netanyahu to congratulate him on
getting Sinwar. He has a lot of blood on his hands — American blood, Israeli
blood, and others," Biden said. “And I told him that we were really pleased with
his actions,” Biden stated. One reporter asked him if he was hopeful that the
war would now end. “I do. I do feel more hopeful,” Biden said. He was then asked
if he thought Netanyahu would agree to end the war. "Hopefully, he — very soon,”
Biden said, appearing to answer in the affirmative. Blinken in advance for his
visit called Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday, as well as his Qatari
and Saudi counterparts. Herzog and Netanyahu met on Friday morning, according to
Herzog’s office.
Window of opportunity “During the conversation, both emphasized that after
the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, there was a significant window of opportunity –
importantly to advance the return of the hostages, and the elimination of Hamas,”
Herzog’s office stated. The US has blamed Sinwar for the absence of a hostage
deal, explaining that he had blocked the advancement of a three-phase deal first
unveiled at the end of May. The US has spoken of returning to that deal, which
was first proposed by Israel. But Netanyahu appeared to indicate on Thursday
night that he would also seek to make individual deals with Palestinian captors
in Gaza willing to release the hostages they hold. Mossad Chief David
Barnea held consultations Thursday on how to advance a hostage deal in the
aftermath of Sinwar’s death.
Biden says it may be easier to reach a cease-fire in
Lebanon than Gaza
Associated Press/October 18/2024
U.S. President Joe Biden has suggested that negotiating a cease-fire deal
between Israel and Hezbollah could be easier than forging one between Israel and
Hamas. Biden said he discussed the way ahead to end the Middle East conflict
following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza when he met with
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German
Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Friday. Biden told reporters that the
leaders “think that there is a possibility of working for a cease-fire in
Lebanon and it’s going to be harder in Gaza.”He continued: “But we agree there
has to be an outcome of what happens the day after.”Sinwar was killed Wednesday
by Israeli forces in Gaza, and Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu by phone the following day. Biden declined to say whether Netanyahu
gave him assurance during that conversation that the Israelis are ready to get
back to negotiations toward a cease-fire and the release of hostages.“We’re in
the middle of discussions about that,” Biden said, adding: “I’m not going to get
into that.”Asked whether he had an understanding of when and how Israel may
respond to Iran’s missile barrage on Israel earlier this month, Biden responded,
“Yes and yes.” He declined to offer any further details on Israel’s potential
retaliation.
Hamas confirms IDF eliminated its top leader, Yahya Sinwar
Jerusalem Post/October 18/2024
Naim also placed doubt on Israel's ability to dismantle the organization by
killing off leadership.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by the IDF, Hamas official Basem Naim
confirmed on Friday, Israeli media reported. Naim serves as the terror
organization's political bureau head. Upon confirming Sinwar's death, Naim said,
"Hamas becomes stronger and more popular with each elimination of its leaders.
It hurts to lose people, especially unique leaders like Yahya Sinwar, but we are
sure we will win in the end." Naim also placed doubt on Israel's ability to
dismantle the organization by killing off leadership. "Israel seems to believe
that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the
Palestinian people. They can believe what they want, and this is not the first
time they have said that," he added. Sinwar's assassination confirmed by IDF
before Hamas. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by the IDF in Tel Sultan in
Rafah on Wednesday in an unplanned operation, sources close to the matter
confirmed to The Jerusalem Post Thursday evening, several hours after rumors
arose that he had been killed earlier Thursday. Shortly after, around 7:45 p.m.,
the IDF, Shin Bet, Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz, and others confirmed that
Sinwar was dead. Evidence that Sinwar is dead included matching both his dental
records and fingerprint records which Israel had from the period when he was in
Israeli prisons until 2011. So far all indications were that no hostages were
killed during the unplanned operation. Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jacob Laznik, and Maya
Gur Arieh contributed to this report.
UN denounces Israel's use of 'war-like' tactics in West Bank
Reuters/October 18, 2024
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations humanitarian office on Friday denounced
Israel's use of what it described as "war-like" tactics against Palestinians in
the occupied West Bank, saying nine Palestinians had been killed there in a
week. OCHA also voiced concern about Israeli settler attacks against
Palestinians and olive trees during the annual October-November harvest, saying
it was affecting the economic lifeline of tens of thousands of Palestinian
families. "Israeli forces have been using lethal, war-like tactics in the West
Bank, raising serious concerns over excessive use of force and deepening
people's humanitarian needs," OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters at a
Geneva press briefing, saying that nine people had been killed between Oct.
8-14, including one child. Laerke added that Israeli forces had accused most of
those killed of being involved in attacking Israelis. He also said there had
been dozens of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians during the olive harvest
this month. OCHA has received reports that a Palestinian woman was killed while
harvesting olives in Jenin, he added. "It is, frankly, very concerning that it's
not only attacks on people, but it's attacks on their olive groves as well," he
said, adding that hundreds of olive trees and saplings had been vandalised,
sawed off or stolen by Israeli settlers.
Israeli military says it killed two attackers crossing from
Jordan's Dead Sea area
Reuters/October 18, 2024
The Israeli military said on Friday it had identified what it called "a number
of suspects" in Jordan's border area trying to cross into Israel south of the
Dead Sea region and had killed two of them after they opened fire on Israeli
forces. "Two terrorists who crossed a few metres over the border into Israel and
opened fire toward the forces were eliminated by two IDF (Israel Defence Forces)
reservists in the Home Front Command," the military said in an updated
statement. "During exchanges of fire with the terrorists, an IDF soldier and an
IDF reservist were lightly and moderately injured and were evacuated to a
hospital to receive medical treatment."The military added that Israeli security
forces continued to conduct searches "due to the suspicion of the presence of an
additional terrorist in the area". A military source with the General Command of
the Jordanian Armed Forces said in a statement posted on its website that there
was "no truth" in reports that Jordanian soldiers had crossed the western border
of Jordan into Israel. The Jordanian military stressed the necessity of
receiving information from official sources and not circulating rumours, the
source added. The latest incident follows a separate attack on Sept. 8 when a
gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border
crossing in the occupied West Bank before security forces shot him dead.
Anti-Israeli sentiment runs high in Jordan, and the Allenby Bridge attack was
the first of its kind along the border with Jordan since Oct. 7, 2023, when
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out an assault on southern Israel,
sparking the war in Gaza that has escalated throughout the region. Israel and
Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and have close security ties. Dozens of
trucks cross daily from Jordan, with goods from Jordan and the Gulf that supply
both the West Bank and Israeli markets.
Israel sends more troops into north Gaza, deepens raid
Nidal al-Mughrabi/CAIRO (Reuters) /October 18, 2024
The Israeli military said on Friday it sent another army unit to support its
forces operating in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps,
where residents said tanks blew up roads and houses as they thrust further into
the territory. Residents of Jabalia in northern Gaza said Israeli tanks had
reached the heart of the camp, using heavy air and ground fire, after pushing
through suburbs and residential districts. They added that the Israeli army was
destroying dozens of houses on a daily basis, sometimes from the air and the
ground and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.
The Israeli military said its forces, which have been operating in Jabalia for
the past two weeks, killed dozens of militants in close-quarters combat on
Thursday and carried out aerial strikes and dismantled military infrastructure.
The escalation of Israel's Jabalia operation came a day after it said it had
killed the country's number one enemy, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's chief, whom it
blamed for ordering the Oct 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the history of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli military says its operation in Jabalia
is intended to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping for more attacks. Residents
said Israeli forces had effectively isolated the far northern Gazan towns of
Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya from Gaza City, blocking movement except
for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.
APPEAL FOR IMMEDIATE HOSPITAL SUPPLIES
On Friday, health officials appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be
sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of
patients and injuries. At the Kamal Adwan Hospital, medics had to replace
children in intensive care with more critical cases of adults badly wounded by
Israeli air strikes on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia on
Thursday, killing 28 people. The children were moved to another division inside
the facility, where they were being well taken care of, he said. "All those
cases are critical and they need medical intervention," said Hussam Abu Safiya,
Kamal Adwan's director in a video sent to the media. Philippe Lazzarini, head of
the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said on X that the attack on the
school was the third on an UNRWA facility this week, adding the agency had now
lost a total of 231 team members in the past year of fighting. Abu Safiya said
300 medical staff, who had been working for 14 days, were becoming too
exhausted, especially at the failure of the hospital to provide them with
adequate food as all supplies were depleting. Doctors at the Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda
and Indonesian hospitals have refused to leave their patients despite evacuation
orders issued by the Israeli military at the start of its Jabalia push. Northern
Gaza, which had been home to well over half the territory's 2.3 million people,
was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel's assault on the territory a
year ago. Israel began its military campaign after the Oct. 7 attacks on
southern Israel by Hamas-led fighters, who killed 1,200 people and captured 250
hostages, according to Israeli tallies.More than 42,000 Palestinians have been
killed in Israel's offensive so far, according to Gaza's health authorities.
'Worst-case' famine possible in Gaza as 1.84 million acutely malnourished,
report says
Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAY/October 18, 2024
Gaza is in the grip of a critical food emergency as 1.84 million people in the
enclave suffer from acute malnutrition at a level ten times higher than before
the Israel-Hamas war began, according to a new report. "Given the recent surge
in hostilities, there are growing concerns that this worst-case scenario may
materialize," according to a report released by the International Food Security
Phase Classification initiative on Thursday. On Tuesday, the Biden
administration threatened to stop arms shipments to Israel if the number of aid
shipments allowed into the beseiged coastal territory did not increase.
From September to this month, the entire territory's population is classified as
level four, or experiencing a food emergency, the report says. In the coming
months, the population experiencing food catastrophe, the fifth and highest
level, will likely triple, the report said.
The entire population is experiencing a food emergency, according to a report
released on Thursday. Aid workers and U.N. officials have warned of widespread
famine in Gaza since the conflict began more than a year ago on Oct. 7, when
Hamas fighters overran the border with Israel and killed 1,200 Israelis.
Israel's siege of Gaza in response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and
plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. "There is famine – full-blown
famine – in the north and it's moving its way south," Cindy McCain, director of
the World Food Program, said in May. The U.N. first warned that famine was
"imminent" in parts of Gaza in mid-March. Winter's arrival could also bring
colder temperatures and heighten the risk of transmitted diseases, as clean
water runs short, according to the IPC report. The fighting has already
destroyed 70% of Gaza's crop fields, and dismantled livelihoods and food
systems, the report found. Conflict has severely hampered humanitarian
operations and collapsed public health services and accessible water and
sanitation systems. Nearly two million people are displaced – most are living in
makeshift tents "with an alarming density" of nearly 24,800 people per square
mile, according to the report. The World Health Organization on Tuesday launched
a program to vaccinate tens of thousands of children in Gaza after the fighting
restricted vaccine access and caused flareups of polio in the enclave. Israel's
military and Hamas had negotiated pauses in the fighting for the vaccination
program, but the U.N. said an Israeli strike on Monday evening struck a refugee
tent camp near al Aqsa Hospital, killing four people and and injuring dozens,
including many children. Graphic video of the strike's aftermath appeared to
show a person burning alive. News of the strike prompted condemnations from the
Biden administration the next day. "We have made our concerns clear to the
Israeli government,” Sean Savett, a spokesman for the National Security Council,
said. In a letter to their Israeli counterparts the same day, Secretary of State
Antony Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned Israel that it
must increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk losing military
aid. "We are writing now to underscore the U.S. government's deep concern over
the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained
actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory," they wrote.
South Korean intelligence says North has sent troops to aid Russia's war in
Ukraine
Hyung-jin Kim And Kim Tong-hyung/SEOUL, South Korea (AP) October 18, 2024
South Korea's spy agency said Friday that North Korea has dispatched troops to
support Russia's war against Ukraine, a development that could bring a third
country into the war and intensify a standoff between North Korea and the West.
The National Intelligence Service said in a statement that Russian navy ships
transferred 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the Russian port city
of Vladivostok from Oct. 8 to Oct. 13. It said more North Korean troops are
expected to be sent to Russia soon. The North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia
have been given Russian military uniforms, weapons and forged identification
documents, the NIS said. It said they are currently staying at military bases in
Vladivostok and other Russian sites such as Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and
Blagoveshchensk, and that they will likely be deployed to battle grounds after
completing their adaptation training. The NIS posted on its website satellite
and other photos showing what it calls Russian navy ship movements near a North
Korean port and suspected North Korean mass gatherings in Ussuriysk and
Khabarovsk in the past week. South Korean media, citing the NIS, reported that
North Korea has decided to dispatch a total of 12,000 troops formed into four
brigades to Russia. The NIS did not immediately confirm the reports. If
confirmed, it would be North Korea's first major participation in a foreign war.
North Korea has 1.2 million troops, one of the largest militaries in the world,
but it lacks actual combat experience.
Many experts question how much the North Korean troop dispatch would help
Russia, citing North Korea’s outdated equipment and shortage of battle
experience. Experts also said that North Korea likely received Russian promises
to provide security support over the intense confrontations over its advancing
nuclear program with the U.S. and South Korea. During a meeting in Pyongyang in
June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin
signed a pact stipulating mutual military assistance if either country is
attacked, in what was considered the two countries’ biggest defense deal since
the end of the Cold War. South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement
that President Yoon Suk Yeol had presided over an emergency meeting earlier
Friday to discuss North Korea’s troop dispatch to Russia. The statement said
participants of the meeting agreed that North Korea’s troop dispatch poses a
grave security threat to South Korea and the international community. But the
presidential office gave no further details like when and how many North Korean
soldiers have been sent to Ukraine and what roles they are expected to play.
Russia has denied using North Korean troops in the war, with Presidential
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing the claims as “another piece of fake news”
during a news conference last week, according to Russia media. Ukrainian media
reported earlier this month that six North Koreans were among those killed after
a Ukrainian missile strike in the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region on
Oct. 3. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his government
has intelligence that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join
Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading
into the hostilities could turn the conflict into a “world war.”“From our
intelligence we’ve got information that North Korea sent tactical personnel and
officers to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told reporters at NATO headquarters. “They are
preparing on their land 10,000 soldiers, but they didn’t move them already to
Ukraine or to Russia.” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the western
alliance “have no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight.
But we do know that North Korea is supporting Russia in many ways, weapons
supplies, technological supplies, innovation, to support them in the war effort.
And that is highly worrying.”The U.S., South Korea and their partners have
accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artillery shells, missiles and
other equipment to help fuel its war on Ukraine. Outside officials and experts
say North Korea in exchange possibly received badly needed food and economic aid
and technology assistance aimed at upgrading Kim’s nuclear-armed military. Both
Moscow and Pyongyang have repeatedly denied the existence of an arms deal
between the countries.
Hyung-jin Kim And Kim Tong-hyung, The Associated Press
Putin says BRICS will generate most of global economic
growth
Reuters/October 18, 2024
The BRICS group will generate most of the global economic growth in the coming
years thanks to its size and relatively fast growth compared with that of
developed Western nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.
Putin hopes to build up BRICS - which has expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia,
Iran and the United Arab Emirates as well as Brazil, Russia, India, China and
South Africa - as a powerful counterweight to the West in global politics and
trade. The Kremlin leader is due to host a BRICS summit in the Russian city of
Kazan on Oct. 22-24. "The countries in our association are essentially the
drivers of global economic growth. In the foreseeable future, BRICS will
generate the main increase in global GDP," Putin told officials and businessmen
at BRICS business forum in Moscow. "The economic growth of BRICS members will
increasingly depend less on external influence or interference. This is
essentially economic sovereignty," Putin added. Next week's summit is being
presented by Moscow as evidence that Western efforts to isolate Russia over its
actions in Ukraine have failed. Russia wants other countries to work with it to
overhaul the global financial system and end the dominance of the U.S. dollar.
China, India and the UAE confirmed on Friday that their leaders would attend the
summit in Kazan. Putin cited some of the initiatives that Russia has previously
outlined ahead of the summit, including a joint cross-border payments system and
a reinsurance company. He called on the New Development Bank, the BRICS' only
functioning multilateral development institution, to invest in technology and
infrastructure across the countries of the Global South. "As a development
institution, the bank already serves as an alternative to many Western financial
mechanisms, and we will naturally continue to develop it," Putin said. He called
for more investment in e-commerce and artificial intelligence. Putin sought to
promote Russia's new transport megaprojects such as the Arctic Sea Route and the
North-to-South corridor, linking Russia to the Gulf and Indian Ocean through the
Caspian Sea and Iran. "It is the key to increasing freight transportation
between the Eurasian and African continents," he said.
Trial of Salman Rushdie’s assailant will remain in the
New York county where the stabbing happened
AP/October 18, 2024
NEW YORK: An appellate court on Friday denied a request to move the trial of the
New Jersey man charged with attacking author Salman Rushdie with a knife in
2022, clearing the way for the trial to move forward in the western New York
county where the stabbing occurred.
Hadi Matar’s trial was put on hold days before the scheduled Oct. 15 start of
jury selection, pending a decision by the Rochester court. A new trial date was
not immediately set. Matar’s attorney, Nathaniel Barone, argued that Matar would
not receive a fair trial in Chautauqua County because of extensive publicity and
the lack of an Arab American community in the county whose population is 93
percent white. District Attorney Jason Schmidt opposed the move. Matar, 26, is
accused of running onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution as Rushdie was
about to speak and stabbing him more than a dozen times until being subdued by
onlookers. The “Satanic Verses” author was severely injured, including being
blinded in one eye. The event’s moderator, Henry Reese, was also wounded. Matar
has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault. He also has pleaded not
guilty to related terrorism charges in US District Court in Buffalo.
The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous
sources
on October 18-19/2024
‘He’s still alive' vs. 'died courageously': The battle for Sinwar's death
narrative begins
Ohad Merlin/Jerusalem Post/October 18/2024
Arab reactions on social media ranged from praise to disbelief to celebration
As Israel formally announced the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,
online reactions to the news began to accumulate, ranging between praise to
disbelief and rejection, with some trying to build a narrative of a courageous
death rather than a fleeing attempt.
Glorification and praise
One notable trend was an endeavor to glorify Sinwar’s death in an attempt to
cloak his assassination with an aura of majesty. Many of these attempts focused
on the fact that Sinwar was killed in a building and not in a tunnel, a fact
used by many to portray him as “fighting in the front with his soldiers and
dying during armed clashes with the enemy.” One pro-Hamas commenter named Nawras
wrote, “Military quiver, ground engagement, and martyrdom. Just as he wanted.
Martyrdom of leader Yahya Sinwar after clashing with enemies of God in Rafah.”
Hafid Derradji, a popular Algerian journalist with almost 3.5 million followers,
tweeted: “If the news of the martyrdom of the leader Yahya Sinwar is true, then
congratulations to him for the martyrdom that only the honorable attain. If it
is not so, then we ask God to prolong his life and grant him martyrdom. We
always remember the men’s saying: ‘When a master is absent, a master rises. The
resistance is not diminished by the martyr who departs,’ because all of our
people are potential martyrs. Welcome to God’s will and destiny.” One anonymous
blogger tweeted a viral post that reached hundreds of thousands of users,
adding: “News about the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar, Allah willing, in a clash
with the Israeli army. If this news is true, then it is enough honor for him
that he butted heads with the enemy and did not hide in a tunnel as was the case
with the deceased Hassan Nasrallah.”
Another user praised Sinwar for being a “martyr,” adding, “Sinwar won, by the
Lord of the Kaaba, and Allah fulfilled his wish to die a martyr...Another Sinwar
will appear, and another...until Palestine is liberated...The fighter expects to
be killed at any moment...so what about the one who wishes for the death of a
martyr? The news of the martyrdom of the leader saddened us, and the loss was
made easier for us by the fact that he was martyred as a fighter with his
weapon.” One user added: “Allahu Akbar. If Yahya Sinwar is alive, he will remain
the symbolic leader, the hero who fights in the field with the heroic mujahideen
(religious fighters). And if he is killed, God will increase his honor with
martyrdom, so that he may be killed as a martyr in the trench of battle, not in
hotels abroad or hiding in tunnels. He was martyred on the battlefield,
defending Islam, land, and honor.”
Another user tweeted: “No Zionist will ever be able to stand and be proud of
assassinating Yahya Sinwar. Today, Israel has failed to assassinate him forever.
Abu Ibrahim was one step ahead of them, even in his death. He was martyred in a
clash on the front!” Disbelief and rejection
Some replied with disbelief to the news of Sinwar’s death, with Hamas-affiliated
outlets warning users against believing the news. Hamas-affiliated outlet Gaza
Now posted: “Warning, the news that spoke about the assassination of Hamas
leader Yahya Sinwar is completely false, and the occupation’s publication and
circulation of this news is an attempt to collect intelligence information, and
it did previously with leader Muhammad al-Deif. Please be careful.”
Another user posted: “Sinwar is alive, God willing, unless Hamas issues a
statement about his martyrdom.” Yet another posted the photo of a person
resembling Sinwar and was arrested by the IDF in Gaza several months ago,
adding: “Focus, guys. Everyone in the pictures here looks like Sinwar, and it’s
natural that all Palestinians look like Sinwar because he’s Palestinian, not
Russian. In any case, the resistance has previously said that it is the only one
that announces the martyrdom of its leaders. Wait,”
Celebrations and exhilaration
Adhwan Al-Ahmari, a journalist at Independent Arabia, wrote, “Nasrallah is
finished, Sinwar followed him after they left Beirut, and Gaza destroyed and
caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands and left them homeless. Iran
was paying the salaries, and it was the one who gave the orders. There was no
destruction in Tehran, but the destructive tools exploited the name of
Jerusalem, so the Golan and northern Gaza were lost. Palestine was not
liberated, and no state was established.”Some users referred to older videos
circulating of Gazans cursing Sinwar. A blogger named Zahran added, “Our joy at
the death of Sinwar is due to religious, humanitarian, and moral motives, thank
Allah. I congratulate this bereaved woman (in the video) and millions of other
victims. May God curse all the (Muslim) Brotherhood, living and dead.” Likewise,
a Saudi user, showing another video of a woman slamming Sinwar, wrote, “Tell
this honorable Palestinian old woman that the head of the treasonous (Muslim)
Brotherhood movement Hamas, the Zoroastrian Brotherhood member, the impure Yahya
Al-Sinwar, has been annihilated, and the (Iranian) agent has gone to the dustbin
of history.”
A third Saudi user named Abdullah wrote, “I ask you by God, O people of Gaza:
Tell her, Tell her, Tell her. Give this poor bereaved woman the good news that
Allah has taken revenge for her on the rat Yahya Sinwar.”
Amjad Taha, an Emirati peace activist and blogger, added, “Congratulations to
humanity on the death of the terrorist, rapist of women, kidnapper of children,
and despicable Yahya Sinwar. To hell and a miserable fate.”
Khaled Bin Thani, another Emirati writer, wrote, “I do not rejoice at the
killing of anyone, whether Sinwar, Nasrallah, Haniyeh, or others. Rather, I feel
sorry for them because they lived deceived by an illusion, like millions of Arab
and Muslim people. They are the sons of this environment. The only difference
between them and these millions is that they have found the opportunity for
leadership and command with the temptations of money and power.”Likewise,
another Saudi user named Abdullatif tweeted: “Our joy today is very great with
the death of Sinwar. Congratulations to every Arab and Muslim in the East and
West of the Earth.”Hani Mashour, also from the Gulf, added, “We congratulate the
people of Gaza and the beloved people of Palestine on getting rid of Yahya
Sinwar.”
Likewise, Lebanese blogger Raymond Hakim wrote, “He for whom Lebanon was
destroyed has died.”
Finally, another user posted an infographic reading: “He is not a martyr and not
a hero. He carried out the idiotic October 7 on Iran’s orders and went to hide
under the houses of the innocent so that they would suffer the consequences. He
died while running away, hiding, like a foreign agent who carried out Iran’s
agenda at the expense of Gaza’s innocent. He died and decomposed after the
escape of all of his companions. He led to the death of over 50,000 martyrs.”
Mutual fear and mistrust denying Palestinians a state
Ross Anderson/Arab News/October 18, 2024
It is an axiom in negotiations that those who are especially good at the job
have an ability to place themselves in the shoes of the people with whom they
are negotiating: to understand why they think as they think, do what they do,
say what they say.
This ability gives such negotiators two advantages. First, they know what offers
and concessions to make, within their powers, that will sway the opposition.
Second, they can identify useful weak points in the other side’s case.
A criticism often leveled at Israel is that its political leaders appear to be
willfully ignorant of the genuine anger and frustration of the Palestinian
people. It is not that they hear it and choose to ignore it: it is that they do
not understand it in the first place.
Quite why this should be so is difficult to comprehend. Few Palestinian victims
of the Nakba remain, but their descendants do, and the trauma of 750,000 people
being driven from their homes and land at gunpoint has been passed down through
families for more than 75 years. Nor did it end there. Successive generations
have endured, at the hands of the Israeli state, systematic repression,
subjugation, humiliation and denial of their nationality to an extent suffered
by no other people on Earth for such an extended period of time. The catastrophe
of 1948, and the oppressive military occupation and land grabs that succeeded
it, are a collective trauma that defines the Palestinian identity: how could
anyone — especially Jews, with their own long history of persecution — not grasp
that?
So, the criticism of Israel is fair: you would be looking at Benjamin Netanyahu
for a long time before “empathy” was the word that sprang to mind. Uncomfortably
for many in the Middle East, however, there are also few people in this region
who truly comprehend what it means to be Jewish. And that is just as
debilitating as Israeli blindness to Palestinian pain.
A criticism often leveled at Israel is that its political leaders appear to be
willfully ignorant of Palestinians’ genuine anger
Some of my best friends are Jewish, mostly in London, where I lived and worked
for 20 years. In the British capital, the Jewish community, insofar as such a
thing can be said to exist, is varied and diverse. It ranges from the 15,000 or
so strictly Orthodox Hasidic Jews strolling the streets of Stamford Hill in
North London in their quaintly traditional dress and hairstyles, to the slightly
less committed who observe Jewish rituals and holidays but not the whole
demanding lifestyle, to the completely secular bordering on atheist who are
nevertheless deeply proud of their ethnicity and heritage.
Aside from their Jewishness, obviously, and the fact they are far removed from
their fellow Jews in Israel and the Occupied Territories, all these people have
one thing in common: they live in permanent, abject fear that something awful is
going to happen to them because they are Jews. As with Palestinians and the
Nakba, every Jew has been told stories by relatives who survived the Holocaust,
or about other less fortunate relatives who did not. These stories do not
inspire optimism about the benevolence of the human race. I have one friend in
particular whose grandmother lived through the horrors of Auschwitz and achieved
a healthy old age. But until the day she died, she kept a fully packed suitcase
under her bed in case there was a knock on the door in the middle of the night
and she had to flee before it all kicked off again.
The same friend believes that the chant of “From the river to the sea” heard at
pro-Palestinian marches is an open threat to murder every Jew, beginning in
Israel and then everywhere else. There is no point in telling him that this is
not true, and that his fear is irrational; no point in telling him that he is
safer in London than he currently would be in the country created, ironically,
as a safe refuge for Jews; no point because the rational part of him already
knows these things — but the irrational part, the visceral genetic memory, does
not.
There are two significant differences between the Jewish experience and the
Palestinian one. The first is the baseless nature of Jewish fear: Jews in Europe
and America are not about to be murdered in their beds, the Holocaust will not
happen again, and there is no realistic “existential threat to the state of
Israel” — however much Netanyahu bangs on about it. Palestinian fear, on the
other hand, is very much grounded in fact: you need only look at the daily death
toll in Gaza and the organized violence of settlers in the West Bank to
understand why.
Collectively, the ‘achievement’ of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Netanyahu in the
past year has been to widen the mutual trust deficit
The other difference is that, while Palestinians were in no way responsible for
the slaughter of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, the state of Israel is
wholly responsible for the murder of countless Palestinians over the past seven
decades — with the tacit connivance of a largely apathetic world.
Despite these differences, the mutual trust deficit remains: and, collectively,
the “achievement” of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Netanyahu in the past year has
been to widen it, ensuring that no meaningful steps on the path toward
Palestinian self-determination can be taken for at least a generation. After the
Hamas attack last October, no Israeli Jew alive today would countenance the
creation of a Palestinian state on their doorstep. In a situation awash with
irony, a prominent one is that, before Hamas’ butchery, the laid-back liberal
Jews of southern Israel were more likely than most to entertain the concept of
living in harmony with their Palestinian neighbors, for the good reason that
many already did. Not any longer.
On the other side, Netanyahu’s vengeful bloodlust masquerading as self-defense
in Gaza and Lebanon, and the assassination of the very people with whom Israel
was supposed to be negotiating, guarantee that no sane Palestinian will sit
round the table with Mossad for fear that their interlocutor will pull out a
Glock and blow their head off. It is self-evident, or should be, that Israel
will never achieve safety, stability and a healthy relationship with its Arab
neighbors (plus the bonus of shooting Iran’s fox) without a pathway toward a
viable Palestinian state: and that, although external powers may have a role to
play, only Israelis and Palestinians can take the first steps. Mutual fear and
mistrust are not a good place to start.
*Ross Anderson is associate editor of Arab News.
Disarming the militias is Iraq’s only solution
Farouk Youssef/The Arab Weekly/October 18, 2024
While Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani was telling the Iraqis that
the militias, which are supposed to be under his authority as commander-in-chief
of the nation’s armed forces, had promised him to stay out of the war and
pledged not to drag Iraq into any conflict, Israel announced that two of its
soldiers were killed and dozens wounded in the Golan Heights as a result of a
drone strike originating from Iraq. The only explanation for this turn of events
is that the militias, which are supposed to be part of Iraq’s armed forces, do
not in fact obey the orders of their commander-in-chief. They are instead
beholden to the instructions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which are
responsible for their training and organisation. Their ties to the state of Iraq
are limited to receiving the funding they need to finance their activities.
The militias do not object to being described as “loyalists,” in reference to
their declared loyalty to Iran. Some of these militias have chosen not to be
sucked into a war, where the balance of power is not in their favour. But there
are other militias that have not concealed their eagerness to walk the path of
martyrdom. I do not think that Sudani was terribly disappointed when his orders
were disobeyed by the militias. What only worried him are the repercussions that
could result from the drone strike launched from Iraq, as he is certain his
government is not prepared to deal with the consequences that may follow. He
knows better than anyone else that his administration is weak and that he cannot
rely on its backing, considering its fragility. His government relies instead on
a political alliance, which is an umbrella group of Shia parties and formations
under the aegis of the “Coordination Framework”.
Since this Coordination Framework itself is not strong enough to confront the
Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which alone embodies Iranian influence in
Iraq, Sudani has no choice but to wait for Israeli retaliation.
This is because he does not have the right to question the actions of any group
that is part of the PMF, and it is not safe for him to summon any particular
leader of a faction that has openly declared its wish to turn Iraq into an arena
of confrontation.
Sudani will not enter into conflict with the militias. His predecessor, Mustafa
Al-Kadhimi, did so, and this resulted in the militias bombing his home in an
attempt to kill him.
Sudani has chosen the least of all ills in dealing with the militias, and he is
right to do so. He does not stand on the firm ground of a strong state and there
is no armed force that could protect him. As the commander-in-chief of the armed
forces, he knows that those forces are a paper tiger infiltrated from all
directions and that he does not stand a chance in the face of the Iran-backed
militias. I do not think that Sudani has the means to negotiate with Israel. His
only communication conduit is the United States, which will spare no effort to
save his government. But in exchange, he will not be able to control the moves
of the militias nor be informed about their secret plans except by turning to
Tehran. This state of affairs clearly undermines his constitutional legitimacy.
In order to ensure that the militias based in Iraq do not rush to war,
ironically he must resort to a foreign country to control the weapons of those
militias. In today’s Iraq, no one can seek to disarm the militias. Whoever does
so will be accused of betrayal, both of the Shia and the Resistance. This will
provoke Iran, which is today in dire straits after the elimination of vital
structures of Hezbollah and Hamas. The Houthis in Yemen are expecting a severe
punishment from which I do not think they can recover.Sudani is not in an
enviable position. Despite his acquiescence to the activities of the militias
and his tolerance of their troubled relationship with the state, he finds
himself today in a more difficult situation than that of his predecessor,
Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who opposed the militias and was not eager to win their
friendship.
Saudi Arabia is ‘sincere’ and an ‘acceptable’ venue for
potential Ukraine peace talks, Putin says
FAISAL J. ABBAS/Arab News/October 18, 2024
MOSCOW: Saudi Arabia is “sincere” in its efforts and would be an acceptable
location for Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin
said on Friday, but any negotiations would be dependent on Ukraine lifting its
ban on dealing with Russia.
During a press conference following the launch of the BRICS Business Forum in
the Russian capital, Putin said in response to an Arab News question that he was
open to the idea of participating in a peace conference hosted by Saudi Arabia,
but noted that while the Kingdom would be an acceptable venue, the substance of
the discussions would matter more than the location. “If such measures are
organized in Saudi Arabia and the place, the venue, is acceptable, that would be
acceptable to us,” he said, replying to a question from Arab News
Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas. However, Putin stressed that the focus of any
talks should be based on previous negotiations, specifically the draft agreement
initially reached in Istanbul in 2022, which he says Ukraine later backed away
from. “We are ready to continue a dialogue to attain peace, but building on a
document that was prepared for detailed discussions for many months and was
initialed by the Ukrainian side,” he said, adding that it was Ukraine, not
Russia, that had halted negotiations. Saudi Arabia, despite condemning the
Russian offensive at the United Nations, has taken a balanced stance,
maintaining strong relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and has expressed a
willingness to help resolve the crisis. Putin acknowledged the Kingdom’s
balanced approach and its ability to engage both sides in dialogue. He clarified
that Russia remained open to peace negotiations. “We would be ready to come
back,” he said. “Like no other, Russia is interested to continue it as soon as
possible by peaceful means.”Putin also welcomed initiatives from other
countries.
Praising Moscow’s ties Riyadh, Putin said: “We have good relations with both the
King and friendly personal relations with the crown prince. I know, and I’m
sure, that whatever Saudi Arabia does on this track, it does sincerely. No doubt
here.”He noted that Saudi Arabia had shown itself to be an invaluable
intermediary, balancing its friendly relations with both Moscow. The 16th annual
BRICS summit will take place in Kazan, Russia, next week between the namesake
five countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — as well as the
first meeting for new members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE.
Saudi Arabia, which was invited last year to join the bloc, will be represented
by Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. For nearly a year, the Saudi
foreign minister has been engaged in intense diplomatic efforts aimed at global
recognition of a Palestinian state and finding a way to end the conflict in the
Middle East. Putin told Arab News that the Israel-Palestine crisis would be on
the agenda in discussions between the countries. He reiterated the Kremlin’s
support for the implementation of the two-state solution, adding that he was in
contact with authorities in Israel and Palestine and had invited Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas to take part in next week’s summit. Putin told Arab News
Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas at the briefing that the Israel-Palestine crisis
would be on the agenda next week in discussions between the BRICS countries.
(Screenshot) “Our stance is well known,” Putin said. “The baseline of our
position was that we need to put into practice the UN Security Council
resolution on building two states — Israel and the State of Palestine. It is the
root cause of all problems.”He also said resolving the Palestinian issue could
not be reduced to economic measures alone, underscoring the need to address the
deep “historical” and “spiritual” dimensions of the conflict. “In my opinion, in
addition to just material concerns, there are aspects related to the spiritual
domain, to history, to the aspirations of peoples living in certain
territories,” he said. “I think it is a much deeper idea, and it is more complex
too.”In Putin’s view, the solution lies in ensuring the Palestinians have the
right to return. He was clear that Russia’s stance, established during Soviet
times, remains unchanged. “The main method to address the Palestinian issue is
to create a full-fledged State of Palestine,” he said. Putin also criticised the
disbanding the Middle East Quartet, a group that included the UN, the EU,
Russia, and the US which aimed to mediate between Israelis and
Palestinians.“Unfortunately, it was the wrong thing to do to disband the
(Quartet). I mean, they (the US) are not to blame for everything, but the
(Quartet) was working. They (the US) monopolized all the work. But eventually it
failed, unfortunately.” During the briefing, Putin also said that 30 other
countries had expressed interest in cooperation with BRICS nations, and said
that its “doors are open, we are not barring anyone.”He echoed India’s Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and said that BRICS was “not an anti-Western alliance,
just a non-Western alliance.”
How Sinwar’s Death Could Change the War
Ghaith al-Omari, Neomi Neumann/The Washington Institute/October 18/2024
The demise of the Hamas leader and October 7 plotter could create significant
diplomatic opportunities for Israel and the United States.
The killing of Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar—a unique figure who combined
military and political credentials and masterminded the October 7, 2023,
terrorist attack against Israel—marks a highly significant blow to Hamas and a
dramatic military and psychological achievement for Israel. His death will have
implications for the structure and dynamics of Hamas’s leadership, its strategic
trajectory, and its future control of Gaza, as well as hostage release and
ceasefire talks. While Hamas will likely appoint a replacement as soon as
possible, no prospect is likely to be as effective as Sinwar, and not all will
be committed tactically to his path.
On the political level, the remaining Hamas leadership in Gaza does not include
a figure capable of succeeding Sinwar. The next leader will almost certainly
come from the movement’s leadership in Doha, where the two main aspirants hold
differing views on the ceasefire issue and Hamas’s regional alliances,
particularly with Iran.
Khalil al-Hayya, the number-two in Hamas behind Sinwar, was a close ally of the
late leader and headed the group’s delegation in ceasefire negotiations, as well
as recent reconciliation talks with the rival Fatah movement. He will likely
seek to continue Sinwar’s path both in the Gaza war front and in staying close
to Iran. Khaled Mashal, the other likely candidate, served previously as Hamas’s
leader for two terms. His relations with Iran are practically nonexistent, and
he has long tried to move Hamas away from the Iranian axis and closer to the
movement’s origins in the Muslim Brotherhood. He is likely to be more interested
in reaching a ceasefire and in thus capitalizing diplomatically by positioning
Hamas as the indispensable Palestinian interlocutor. Neither of these leaders,
however, has the heft or relationships to effectively wield authority over the
military wing in Gaza.
Whereas both Hayya and Mashal have a measure of political clout within Hamas, no
current figure has the military stature of Sinwar, especially given Israel’s
killing earlier this year of both Marwan Issa and Muhammad Deif. The two
remaining contenders are Izz al-Din Haddad, Hamas’s military head in northern
Gaza and a member of the movement’s military council, and Muhammad Sinwar, the
late leader’s brother and right-hand man, who rose to prominence for his part in
the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. A division of labor between
the two is not out of the question.
In the short term, Sinwar’s killing will undoubtedly create additional chaos on
the ground, with possibly dire implications for the hostages. The remaining
Hamas leadership will try to show that it is undeterred by launching rockets
into Israel and redoubling its efforts to destabilize the West Bank, although
its ability to do either may be limited. Harm to the hostages could be carried
out either as an act of revenge or to impose a cost on Israel.
The effects of Sinwar’s killing on Gaza public opinion also bear watching. The
steep costs of the war have driven what appears to be growing anger at Hamas, as
well as at Israel, and fear of the group is likewise persistent. The killing
likely will embolden some Gazans to more openly express dissent.
In the longer term, Sinwar’s killing could emerge as a true game changer that
opens up the possibility for political initiatives. Sinwar was seen as the main
Hamas obstacle to a ceasefire deal, and his absence may reopen prospects for
one. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has already offered hostage
takers an option to surrender alive. President Biden also noted the potential
for a breakthrough. But for this to succeed, these ideas need to be translated
into operational policy very soon.In particular, Israel needs to be willing to
present a “day after” plan that creates the conditions for ending the war and
rebuilding Gaza. Such a plan will need to be based on a hostage deal and Hamas’s
disarmament, as well as the expulsion of its leadership and military operatives
abroad. But it also needs to include a role—even if symbolic—for the Palestinian
Authority (PA) and a pathway to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This
will be required to enable third parties, particularly regional ones, to play a
role in postwar Gaza. If coupled with efforts to rehabilitate the PA and create
a credible pathway to ending the broader conflict, it could also shift the
Palestinian balance of power away from Hamas.
More broadly, if new dynamics created by Sinwar’s killing can be leveraged
toward a ceasefire, this could have implications for ending the war in Lebanon.
Such a shift would deprive Iran of two of its most valuable regional assets and,
in doing so, diminish its pernicious influence in the region. All these
developments create new potential, but the U.S. administration will need to take
the initiative and grasp the opportunity.
*Ghaith al-Omari is the Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow at The Washington
Institute. Neomi Neumann is a visiting fellow at the Institute and former head
of the research unit at the Israel Security Agency.
The Real Purpose of a U.S.-Saudi Security Agreement/A Deal
Could Reduce Direct American Intervention in the Middle East
Michael Singh/Foreign Affairs/October 18/ 2024
Earlier this year, the United States and Saudi Arabia were close to sealing a
bilateral defense treaty. The agreement’s terms have largely been set, but its
formal signing was postponed amid the present conflict in the Middle East.
Analysts have frequently viewed this deal as but a piece of a larger puzzle. As
conflict has racked the Middle East since Hamas’s heinous October 7 terrorist
attack, the potential treaty tends to be characterized as one element of a
“megadeal” aimed at pacifying the region: a cease-fire in Gaza would set the
stage for the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel in return for a U.S.
security guarantee and strengthened American and Israeli commitments to
Palestinian statehood. But that is the wrong way to look at a U.S.-Saudi treaty.
In reality, the impetus for such a treaty preceded the conflict in Gaza. If
signed, the agreement will not merely be another transaction in which the United
States pays for an Arab state to normalize ties with Israel. The strategic
context for it is global, not regional: if successful, a U.S.-Saudi treaty will
pave the way for better security integration of U.S. partners in the Middle East
and less direct American intervention there. In the long run, it will not tie
the United States down in the region but help free Washington to act with
greater latitude elsewhere. And the deal will draw Washington’s most capable
friends in the Middle East deeper into efforts to address global challenges,
including that posed by the rise of China.
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
Few in Washington question the current wisdom that the United States must
increase its focus on the Indo-Pacific or that doing so will require a decreased
focus on the Middle East, a region that continues to drain U.S. resources. Yet
this tradeoff holds only if one considers the Middle East of middling importance
in the United States’ competition with China or conceives of U.S. national
security strategy as akin to a zero-sum game in which policymakers merely push
their pieces from one region to another.
Stay informed.
In-depth analysis delivered weekly.
In reality, the Middle East remains vitally important to both U.S. and Chinese
interests. The past year’s turmoil demonstrates not that U.S. attention to the
region has been futile but that the United States cannot ignore the region,
however much it may wish to do so, and that it urgently needs a new, more
sustainable strategy for securing its interests there. A bilateral defense
treaty with Saudi Arabia may seem an unusual response, as it might appear only
to promise deeper U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But if successful, a
U.S.-Saudi defense treaty would in fact shift more of the burden of addressing
the region’s troubles onto U.S. partners, limit Chinese influence, and even draw
partners closer in U.S.-led efforts to address global challenges and entrench
Washington’s preferred norms. Such a treaty would bring three potential
strategic benefits. First, it would more closely bind Saudi Arabia and the
United States, solidifying one of Washington’s most important partnerships in
the Middle East. A mutual defense guarantee would be the centerpiece of any
U.S.-Saudi treaty, but any such treaty would also facilitate cooperation between
the two countries in sensitive high-tech areas such as artificial intelligence
and related supply chains as well as Saudi access to U.S. defense technology.
Such cooperation on technology would also limit China’s opportunities in these
areas and circumvent controversies that often arise in the transactional,
issue-by-issue negotiations that typically characterize U.S. partnerships in the
region. More frequent and routine collaboration in technology could also help
entrench Washington’s preferred norms and practices for data privacy and the
regulation and transfer of technology, potentially enabling their spread
throughout the Middle East, given Saudi Arabia’s economic and financial weight
there.
Second, the treaty would help Saudi Arabia—and by extension, the region—manage
and resolve crises without extensive U.S. intervention. Saudi Arabia is already
one of the world’s top buyers of American and other Western arms. But this
reliance is becoming more of a strategic liability for Washington. With needy
partners in Europe and Asia, it is difficult to justify putting Saudi Arabia
first in line for U.S. arms sales, even if Riyadh pays up front and without
assistance, unless it plans to use those systems to advance mutual interests
with the United States. Selling one more shell or jet to Taiwan or Ukraine, for
example, accomplishes far more for U.S. interests than sending those tools to a
partner that will not or cannot use them. In a world of rekindled contention
between great powers, this strategic math is just as important as the financial
calculus of arms sales, if not more so.
If successful, a U.S.-Saudi treaty will pave the way for better security
integration of U.S. partners in the Middle East.
A U.S.-Saudi defense treaty would presumably bring more frequent military
exchanges and exercises, enabling the United States to better shape critical
Saudi reforms that aim to turn its military into a modern fighting force. These
improved capabilities must of course be accompanied by a willingness to act.
Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has demonstrated greater
will than in the past to project its power and influence—for example, in its
military campaign in Yemen—but its capabilities and strategic planning have not
matched its ambition. As a result, some in the West have distanced themselves
from Saudi Arabia; a more effective approach would forge a closer working
partnership that can channel Saudi ambitions toward shared ends.
The United States doubtless hopes that a formal defense partnership with the
Saudis would serve as the foundation for deeper multilateral coordination of
U.S. defense relationships in the Middle East than the pacts it has signed so
far with smaller (yet still critical) regional partners. This process began with
the Abraham Accords and has already yielded collaboration, such as military
exercises sponsored by the U.S. Central Command that have brought together
Israeli and Arab officers. It has also led to the impressive effort by the
United States, Israel, and an array of regional partners in mid-April to
intercept the approximately 300 missiles and drones that Iran launched against
Israel. But while this showed the potential for regional defense cooperation, it
also demonstrated the region’s continued dependence on the United States.
Washington would like to continue bolstering the former while reducing the
region’s requirement for the latter. Perhaps counterintuitively, this would be
best accomplished not by stepping away from the region but by even more intense
training of regional forces through mechanisms that a bilateral treaty would
likely produce. By strengthening U.S. partners, such a treaty would free up
American forces and allow Washington to attend to priorities in the Indo-Pacific
and elsewhere without abandoning its interests in the Middle East. The accord
would also underline a competitive advantage that the United States has over
China: the United States can act as both a security integrator bringing parties
across the region together and as a security guarantor providing new military
technology, neither of which China can offer at this stage.
Finally, a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty could bring the Saudis and perhaps others
in the region further into efforts to tackle global challenges. Riyadh has
already demonstrated interest in exercising its global influence beyond
adjusting its oil supply to world markets. In August 2023, Saudi Arabia hosted
an international summit on the war in Ukraine. It has also sought a more
prominent role in meetings of multilateral groupings such as the G-20.
Washington, for its part, has increasingly recognized Saudi Arabia’s potential,
as well as that of the United Arab Emirates and other wealthy Gulf states to
leverage wealth and diplomatic influence in addressing transnational issues such
as climate change and critical minerals processing. After decades of viewing
Middle Eastern states as objects of U.S. foreign policy, Washington increasingly
sees them as partners in it. A U.S.-Saudi defense treaty can further aid in
drawing these partners out of their regional bubble by increasing their natural
links and commonalities with U.S. allies in Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.
UNDERSTANDING THE RISKS
A U.S.-Saudi defense treaty will not be without its risks, but the real risks
are often misidentified. There is little reason to believe a treaty would
increase the chances of a war between the United States and Iran. Even though
the United States declined to respond militarily to Iran’s attack on Saudi oil
facilities in 2019, any future U.S. president, treaty or not, will likely feel
motivated to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense—or to that of another Gulf partner
or strategic shipping route—in the event of a major Iranian attack. By
formalizing what is already close to a de facto commitment, the United States
can better deter Iran by eliminating any doubt that an attack on Saudi Arabia
would prompt a strong U.S. response. And a treaty would not necessarily tie U.S.
forces down in the region more than they already are. Evidence from the Middle
East and elsewhere suggests that the involvement of U.S. forces in a given
region is connected to threat levels and other factors, not the existence of a
treaty. American forces have surged into the region recently in response to
Iranian threats, for example, even though the United States has no formal treaty
allies there.
The real risks are twofold. The first is of misaligned expectations.
Policymakers in Washington will likely expect that by signing a bilateral
defense treaty, Saudi Arabia will be committing to refrain from any actions that
jeopardize U.S. security and to contribute more constructively to stability in
the Middle East. Increasingly, policymakers expect allies to refrain from
cooperating with U.S. adversaries not only in traditional military and defense
matters but also through indirect actions that will enhance U.S. rivals’ broader
military-industrial complexes. Such actions could simply involve providing
adversaries with access to certain technologies or even, in the case of Russia
especially, cooperating to protect their revenues through mechanisms such as
OPEC Plus, which includes 22 of the world’s major oil exporters. Washington will
be looking for Saudi Arabia not only to show preference for the United States at
the margins but also to make a firm commitment to the U.S.-led alliance system
that it would join after inking a treaty. Saudi normalization with Israel would
be vital to securing ratification of the accord by the U.S. Senate and to
realizing the full benefits of multilateral security cooperation in the region.
It would also serve as a strong signal from Riyadh that Saudi Arabia is making a
strategic and not merely a tactical shift in its foreign policy.
The second risk involves the fickleness of U.S. foreign policy, of which Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf states have found themselves disproportionately on the
receiving end. Twenty-plus years of quixotic nation-building efforts should have
taught U.S. policymakers that the United States can hold fast to its own values
without imposing them on others. Washington can harbor strong and valid concerns
about the human rights or political practices of partners such as the Saudis
while still working practically to promote reform—or better yet, supporting
partners’ own programs of reform, such as Riyadh’s Vision 2030—rather than
recklessly threatening to break relations after every new unsavory revelation.
Riyadh sees the treaty ratification process, which requires approval by a
two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate, as a way of ensuring that Washington
sticks to its commitments, just as the United States sees Saudi normalization
with Israel as a signal of Riyadh’s long-term commitment.
THE MIDDLE EAST GOES GLOBAL
There is no imminent great-power shift in the Middle East. Yet competition
between the United States and China there, as elsewhere, is indeed growing, and
it is regarded by U.S. partners as a serious risk. Many have responded by
choosing “omni-alignment,” that is, participating in both U.S.-led multilateral
institutions and newer Chinese-led alternatives, to minimize the risks and
maximize the benefits they can accrue from contention between the two powers.
Even countries that understand China’s limits as a partner worry that the United
States has become increasingly unpredictable and transactional as its attention
shifts between short-term crises in places such as the Middle East and long-term
priorities, notably in the Indo-Pacific.
A U.S.-Saudi defense treaty could help ameliorate this dynamic in the Middle
East, both by tightening the bonds between Washington and one of its most
important partners in the region and by putting those partners in a better
position to address crises on their own. Some may worry that the treaty would
trap the United States in the Middle East. In reality, a closer bilateral
partnership on defense could over time limit Chinese inroads in the region,
bolster Riyadh’s and other partners’ capacities to act without U.S.
intervention, and even bring Saudi Arabia deeper into common efforts to tackle
global challenges. Along with the increasing activism by countries such as India
and Japan, the expansion of these efforts could help arrest the global order’s
decline into a stalemate between two great powers. Rather than worry about the
emergence of a new cold war, Washington should work to build a new global
diplomatic-security concert, toward which a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty can be an
important step.
'Pure Genocide': Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria and
the Great Press Cover-Up
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./October 18, 2024
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21033/christians-slaughtered-in-nigeria
Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians [in Nigeria] in just the four
years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on
average per year—or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours. —
Report, Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, August 29, 2024.
The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized
Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the
night, when Fulani are most prone to attack.
[I]n 2014, there were 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in
Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4 million. — "NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs
displaced by extremist violence in Nigeria," Open Doors, September 1, 2024.
Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are
Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian.
When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the
Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their
victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable
byproduct of climate change — which is, ostensibly, forcing "herders" (Muslims)
to encroach on the lands of "farmers" (Christians).
In another AP report on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50
Christian worshippers dead, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" —
never appear. Rather, readers were told, "It was not immediately clear who was
behind the attack on the church."
"Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" — never appear. Rather, readers were
told, "It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church." To
maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to mention that Islamic terrorists have
stormed hundreds of churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians "for sport"
over the years in Nigeria....
"It's tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn't a religious conflict since
what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black [like ISIS], chanting 'Allahu
Akbar!' and screaming 'Death to Christians.'" — Sister Monica Chikwe,
cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019.
"Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden
the increasingly authoritarian government there." — Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel
for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending Freedom International,
catholicnewsagency.com, November 23, 2021.
For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims
apparently do not matter.
Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians in Nigeria in just the four years
between 2019 and 2023. For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives
taken by Muslims apparently do not matter. Pictured: The Church of Christ in
Nations building in Mangu, Nigeria, photographed on February 2, 2024, after it
was torched by Islamic terrorists. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images)
(Image source: iStock)
The "pure genocide" of Christians in Nigeria, as it has been characterized by
several international observers, is reaching unprecedented levels, according to
two separate reports.
"Countering the myth of religious indifference in Nigerian terror (10/2019 –
9/2023)," a comprehensive, 136-page report published by the Observatory for
Religious Freedom in Africa on August 29, 2024, found that Muslim militants
slaughtered 16,769 Christians in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That
comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year — or one Christian
murdered for his/her faith every two hours.
More than half of these killings (55%) were committed by radicalized Muslim
Fulani herdsmen, who over the last decade have become greater persecutors of
Christians than more internationally recognizable terror groups, such as Boko
Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) — although the ISWAP, too,
are playing their part in the genocide: Fulani killed 9,153 Christians between
2019 and 2023; all other terrorist groups killed 4,895.
The second report, "NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs displaced by extremist violence
in Nigeria," published by Open Doors on September 1, 2024, states that the
persecution, slaughter, and displacement of Christians in Nigeria is
"unrelenting" and "a time bomb." Because "militant Fulani groups have
deliberately targeted Christians or Christian communities, their livelihood,
faith leaders and places of worship," Christians are becoming "an endangered
species" in Nigeria, where they once amounted for more than half of the West
African nation's population (the other half being Muslim).
The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized
Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the
night, when Fulani are most prone to attack. "My children," a parent is quoted,
"each time they hear anything, they panic or go into hiding because it triggers
the trauma. The terror of the attacks has not stopped, rather it has increased."
In just the last decade, the amount of people to be displaced by the havoc and
chaos caused by the Islamic groups has tripled: in 2014, there were 1.1 million
internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4
million.
One of these displaced persons, a Christian Pastor, Benjamin Barnabas, who has
been living in a tiny tent for five years, shared his story. He and his family
were working on their farm when Fulani militants "came with guns, machetes and
sticks," thrashing the pastor and his family:
"We lost everything that I had. Everything in my home and village was burnt, I
was left with nothing... We are displaced because of violence. The news doesn't
care about it, we are remaining in darkness—being forgotten, being disregarded."
That the media is indifferent, or worse, concerning the plight of Christians —
and that it obfuscates the identity of their tormentors — was emphasized by the
Observatory:
"For over a decade atrocities against civilians in Nigeria have been downplayed
or minimized. This has proved a major obstacle for those seeking to understand
the violence. Misleading euphemisms, such as 'armed herdsmen' and 'cattle
grazers' are used to describe continual waves of invasion, torture and killing
in rural communities. Descriptions of attacks as 'ethnic clashes',
'farmers-herders clashes' or retaliatory attacks are seriously misleading. The
use of the phrase 'bandits' to refer to militias carrying out mass kidnaps, and
enforcement of serfdom on communities, is another case in point. And a policy of
concealing the religious [Christian] identity of victims also serves to distort
the true picture."
Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are
Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian. Although the Observatory
report focuses mostly on Nigerian media's distortion of events, Western
mainstream media has also been devoutly refusing to use the most obvious,
bottom-level identifiers of both the attackers (Muslims) and the attacked
(Christians).
When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the
Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their
victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable
byproduct of climate change—which is, ostensibly, forcing "herders" (Muslims) to
encroach on the lands of "farmers" (Christians).
In another AP report, on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50
Christian worshippers dead, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" —
never appear. Rather, readers were told, "It was not immediately clear who was
behind the attack on the church." To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to
mention that Islamic terrorists have stormed hundreds of churches and
slaughtered thousands of Christians "for sport" over the years in Nigeria—a fact
that just might have offered a hint as to "who was behind the attack."
Or consider the words of President Barack Obama's then-Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, after Muslim terrorists slaughtered
50 Christian church worshippers on Easter Sunday, 2012: "I want to take this
opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving
extremist violence [in Nigeria]."
Instead, "inequality" and "poverty"— to quote former US President William J.
Clinton — are "what's fueling all this stuff" ("this stuff" being the Muslim
genocide of Christians).
Back on the ground in Nigeria, most Christians see these ongoing attacks for
what they are. As the nun, Sister Monica Chikwe, once observed:
"It's tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn't a religious conflict since
what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black [like ISIS], chanting 'Allahu
Akbar!' and screaming 'Death to Christians.'"
The recent reports also include quotes and anecdotes that underscore the true
source of the hostility. According to one survivor:
"When the Fulani gunmen came to attack, they could be heard shouting 'Allahu
Akbar (Allah is the greatest), we will destroy all Christians.'.... The Fulani
started to shoot, burning houses. They burnt our animals and maize plants."
As the Christian Association of Nigeria once rhetorically asked:
"How can it be a [secular or economic] clash when one group [Muslims] is
persistently attacking, killing, maiming, destroying, and the other group
[Christians] is persistently being killed, maimed and their places of worship
destroyed?"
In 2018, when the attacks were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the National
Christian Elders Forum of Nigeria succinctly summarized the ultimate source
behind the genocide of Christians in Nigeria:
"JIHAD has been launched in Nigeria by the Islamists of northern Nigeria led by
the Fulani ethnic group. This Jihad is based on the Doctrine of Hate taught in
Mosques and Islamic Madrasas in northern Nigeria as well as the supremacist
ideology of the Fulani. Using both conventional (violent) Jihad, and stealth
(civilization) Jihad, the Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn
Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as
the National Ideology.... We want a Nigeria, where citizens are treated equally
before the law at all levels...."
Both reports agree that every day, often nominal Muslims — whom the terrorists
see as little better than apostates — are also suffering and being displaced by
the chaos, Christians "have been singled out for violence, face harsh living
conditions and experience faith-based challenges throughout their displacement
journey." The Observatory points out that "Since 2015, there have been
consistent reports of disparate treatment meted out to Christian and Muslim
captives by members of Terror Groups":
Forced Labor: Christian captives, including men, women, and children, are
routinely subjected to forced labor and grueling physical tasks, often under
inhumane conditions. By contrast, their Muslim counterparts are typically spared
from such treatment.
Sexual Violence: Christian women and girls are frequently subjected to rape,
sexual abuse, and other forms of sexual violence inflicted by their captors.
Muslim women, on the other hand, are generally not subjected to such atrocities.
Ransom Demands and Release: Muslim captives who cannot afford to pay ransoms are
sometimes released without payment -- a form of preferential treatment.
Christian captives, however are rarely granted such leniency.
Execution Risks: According to media reports and research conducted over the past
10 years, Christian captives are more likely to be executed than Muslim captives
held by the same terror groups. There are numerous instances where Christian
captives were brutally murdered by their abductors, even after ransoms were
paid.
The "radicalization" in Nigeria is such that even local officials discriminate
against and persecute Christians: "some efforts to pressure, coerce or force
conversion to Islam by the local government and members of public were
described." For example, "to gain access to critical support" in Borno State
camps, "some have felt compelled to convert to Islam or deliberately hide their
faith... [and] in some places of education they could not gain access with
Christian names."
Unfortunately, the persecution continues. Below are a few headlines to appear in
August and September of 2024, right around the publication times of these two
reports and therefore not included in them:
Oct. 3: Herdsmen Kill Christians in Northern and Central Nigeria
Oct. 1: Herdsmen Kill Christians in Plateau State, Central Nigeria
Sept. 23: Fulani Herdsmen Kill Christians at Church Services in Nigeria: Pastor
and 30 others kidnapped.
Sept. 2: Fulani Herdsmen Kill Six Christians in Central Nigeria
Aug. 20: Fate of Pastor, Daughter Kidnapped in Nigeria Unknown: Captors receive
ransom payment but demand another.
Aug. 14: Muslims Burn Down Church Building in Central Nigeria: RCCG worship
auditorium destroyed for second time.
Aug. 13: Nigeria Continues to Tolerate Terrorism, USCIRF States
Aug. 12: Bandits Kill Church Cleric, One Other, Abduct Eight Persons In Kaduna
State Community
Aug. 9: Herdsmen, Criminal Gang Kill at least 50 Christians in Nigeria
Aug. 7: Herdsmen Injure Four Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria: One farmer
who was shot suffers a shattered hand.
Aug. 1: Prominent Christian Woman Kidnapped from Church in Nigeria: Policeman,
driver are killed in attack.
In 2020, President Donald J. Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department's List
of Countries of Particular Concern — meaning nations which engage in, or
tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Trump, moreover and with
characteristic bluntness, went on to ask the then Nigerian President Muhammadu
Buhari, "Why are you killing Christians?"
During the term of President Joseph R. Biden, on the other hand, the State
Department inexplicably removed Nigeria — where one Christian is butchered every
two hours — from the list. Secretary of State Antony Blinken apparently made
this concession three days before meeting with Muhammadu Buhari.
At the time, many observers responded by slamming the Biden administration. As
Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending
Freedom International (ADF), noted:
"Outcry over the State Department's removal of Country of Particular Concern
status for Nigeria's religious freedom violations is entirely warranted. No
explanations have been given that could justify this decision. If anything, the
situation in Nigeria has grown worse over the last year. Thousands of
Christians, as well as Muslims who oppose the goals of terrorist and militia
groups, are targeted, killed, and kidnapped, and the government is simply
unwilling to stop these atrocities.... Removing Country of Particular Concern
status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government
there."
That is the current state of affairs: for many years now, a jihad of genocidal
proportions has been declared on the Christian population of Nigeria — even as
American media and government bizarrely present Nigeria's problems in purely
economic terms.
For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims
apparently do not matter.
**Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar,
Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman
Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
© 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.