Rights and Accountability 5 October 2024
Firefighters work at buildings damaged in Israeli airstrikes in Beirut on 3 October.
Xinhua News AgencyIsrael is embarking on a maximum pressure strategy in Lebanon as it has done in Gaza, hoping that it will succeed in forcing a surrender by the resistance in the former where it has failed in the latter.
According to Amos Harel, an analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, that country’s intensive airstrikes in Lebanon “looks like a pressure campaign to impose a speedy agreement.”
Israeli media reported on Friday that “a senior Israeli security official” told the families of Israelis being held captive in Gaza that the military will be fighting in Lebanon for another two or three weeks, with the goal “to reach a diplomatic agreement with Hizballah that would allow Israel to secure a hostage deal.”
The strategy is backed by the US, which has provided unconditional support for Israel during its genocide of the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, and now for its military offensive in Lebanon.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller admitted during a press briefing this week that “we’ve never wanted to see a diplomatic resolution with Hamas,” saying that the US was “committed to the destruction” of the Palestinian resistance group.Miller then said that “I wish that Hamas would come to the table and work with us on a ceasefire” – the implication being that the only such agreement that would be accepted by Washington would be the complete surrender of Hamas.
There is little reason to think that the US would like to see anything besides a total capitulation of Hizballah as the result of any supposed diplomacy process to bring quiet to Israel’s so-called northern front.Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, observed that designation of the Lebanese resistance group as a terror organization by the US and other Western powers “has effectively empowered Israel to escalate its campaign of state terrorism in Lebanon,” replicating in that country the “new model” of brutal warfare wrought in Gaza.
The proscription of Hizballah has “given Israel the cover to commit war crimes against the Lebanese people and depopulate Shia areas” of the country, according to Saad.
It has “also granted Israel the license to potentially carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Shia community when it inevitably realizes that its extreme violence is incapable of defeating Hizballah.”
Ayatollah’s speech
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a historic speech on Friday – part of it directed towards the Palestinian and Lebanese people and delivered in Arabic.
But it also delivered a clear message to Tel Aviv and Washington that there will be no defeat of Hamas and Hizballah.
Khamenei said that the regional resistance will not back down after the martyrdom of its leaders.While “we are all grieving and mourning” following the death of Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hizballah killed in a massive attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week, “our mourning does not mean being depressed, distressed or losing hope,” Khamenei said.
Unbowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s thinly veiled threat of regime change in Iran, Khamenei asserted that Israel is in its most precarious position since its establishment.
Operation al-Aqsa Flood – the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – and the year of resistance in Gaza and Lebanon that followed “has bought the usurping entity to the point where its main concern is to preserve its existence,” Khamenei said.
Israel has tried to delink its southern and northern fronts by assassinating Nasrallah and several other founding commanders of Hizballah. The Lebanese resistance group has vowed to keep firing missiles and drones towards Israel until it ends its attacks in Gaza.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, who met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut on Friday, “said Tehran supported efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hizballah and simultaneous with a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” according to Reuters.
Khamenei’s speech, a rare Friday sermon delivered in public at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran, should leave little doubt that Iran will not back down from its key role in the regional resistance.
Iran fired a massive barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, forcing the majority of Israel’s population to seek safety in bomb shelters as military bases were hit in the center of the country in retaliation for the strikes that killed Nasrallah.
Khamenei emphasized that countries in the region have a shared interest in defeating the threat posed by Israel, the common enemy of the Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian, Yemeni and Syrian peoples.
Unity would lead to the defeat of all enemies, Khamenei said, and Iran would fulfill its duties with resolve. Acting with neither hesitation nor haste, Iran will do what is logical, reasonable and correct, he said.
As if to underscore that the regional resistance would not be cowed, a strike from a drone launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers and injured 24 others in the Golan Heights – Syrian territory under Israeli military occupation since 1967 – on Thursday.
Israel is poised to strike Iran following the barrage of ballistic missiles fired from the country on Tuesday. Israeli officials have reportedly told their US counterparts that the country’s attack will be “calibrated,” according to Reuters.
Experts interviewed by the news agency said that Israel would likely avoid highly sensitive targets like oil facilities and nuclear sites so as to avoid an “escalated Iranian response including the potential targeting of the oil production sites of US allies in the region.”
Daily attacks on Gaza shelters
While Iran and Israel teeter on the precipice of open war, Tel Aviv’s use of heavy bombs in densely populated areas of Lebanon and Gaza continue unabated.
At least 29 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Friday, according to health authorities in the territory.
On Thursday, the UN human rights office called on Israel “to immediately end the pattern of strikes in Gaza on buildings acting as shelters” for displaced Palestinians.
“Such attacks have become an almost daily event,” the UN office said, with at least six schools hit in the previous 72 hours, “resulting in tens of fatalities, including women and children.”
“In September alone, our office recorded at least 14 schools struck in Gaza by the Israeli military, and in August one school attack every other day,” the UN stated.
Such blatant violations of the laws of war, normalized over the past year in Gaza – during which time nearly 42,000 Palestinians in the territory are confirmed to have been killed – are now being perpetrated by Israel in Lebanon.
More than three dozen people were killed and 151 injured in the 24 hours prior, the Lebanese government said on Friday, bringing the total number of fatalities in the country to more than 2,000.
More than 100 children had been killed in Lebanon over the past week and a half, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said on Friday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that it “remains concerned about the safety and well-being of civilians as Lebanon experiences a surge in airstrikes and displacement orders.”
Israel targeted the Masnaa border crossing between Syria and Lebanon, “a major axis for relief supplies coming into the country and used by families fleeing to Syria in search of safety,” according to OCHA.
“It is imperative that all civilians be allowed to flee to safer areas, and that they be protected whether they stay or leave,” OCHA added.
At least four hospitals in Lebanon suspended work due to Israeli attacks, the AFP news agency reported on Friday.
Health workers killed in Lebanon
On Thursday, Imran Riza, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, said that at least 73 health workers had lost their lives in escalated attacks in southern Lebanon.
“In the past 24 hours, 28 health workers have been killed,” Riza added, “underscoring the alarming escalation of violence and its devastating impact on those providing life-saving care.”
On Wednesday, Israel bombed a relief center in central Beirut in “another dangerous escalation,” Riza said, resulting “in the deaths of paramedics, civil defense and relief officers who were actively assisting displaced and affected communities.”
Riza said that such attacks “are serious violations of international humanitarian law, undermining humanitarian efforts and threatening the safety of those providing life-saving assistance.”
Following the killing of healthcare workers in Beirut overnight Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said “I condemn this violation of IHL [international humanitarian law].”
But condemnations will do little to protect paramedics and other health workers targeted by Israel in Lebanon, especially as Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesperson, gave Israel the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its attacks on hospitals during a press briefing on Thursday:
Paramedics in Lebanon interviewed by The Guardian said there was a pattern of Israel launching airstrikes “whenever they arrived at a location to start rescue operations.”Rabih Issah, a commissioner with a medical organization active in south Lebanon, said paramedics have received phone calls “with a voice speaking Arabic on the other end, warning them to evacuate their medical centers,” according to The Guardian.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon who worked in Gaza during the first weeks of the genocide, told the UK publication that Israel was repeating in Lebanon what it had done in Gaza.
“He said he was concerned that damaging the health system in south Lebanon is part of an Israeli strategy to clear areas along the Lebanon-Israel border of its inhabitants,” The Guardian reported.
Months earlier, Human Rights Watch published a report stating it had documented the use of American weapons in Israel’s unlawful attacks on aid workers in Lebanon.
The organization said at the time that the US “should immediately suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel” and called on Lebanon to pursue war crimes investigations at the International Criminal Court.
Comments
attacks on civilians and healthcare facilities, refugee centers
Permalink C. Antonio Alvarez-Moreno replied on
Once again the Israeli Nazi Zionist mass murderers are showing us their true face. For decades we in the so-called free democratic peace-loving, 2,000 lb bunker busting bomb supplying West, have been fed propaganda of how sweet and democratic the Israeli's are and how mean and brutal the Arabs are. It's the other way around. It's always been the other way around.
Israel's Sacred Terrorism
Permalink Paula replied on
Moshe Sharett and His Personal Diary outlines tactics still used today by Israel to blame their provocations on others and has done so since the 40s and 50s. If ever there were a terrorist organization, it is the state of Israel. This diary proves it. You can find it here in PDF format: https://archive.org/stream/pdf...
From the publication: "While these threats were made during the period covered in the Sharett diary, consider what actually happened later, during the 1960s, '70s, '80s: In 1967, lsrael's war against three Arab states not only gave Israel possession of eastern Palestine (the West Bank), Gaza, the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights, but also enabled Israel to capture the headwaters of the Jordan and Manias rivers. In addition, Israel destroyed Jordan's East Ghor Canal and its Khaled Dam on the Yarmuk River, which flows into lsrael's Nahariva Pool. In the 1978 "Litani Operation," Israel established firm control over the Wazzani River, which flows into the Jordan, as well as almost the entire length of the Hasbani River. And in the 1982 "Operation Peace for Galilee," the entire length of the Litani River came under Israeli control."
End Nazi Zionist Israel settler-colonial occupation of Palestine
Permalink Lou Stone replied on
"They" only want one thing, which just happens to be EVERYTHING! Seriously! How do I know? The ecological crisis, not jesus, tells me so. Anecdotally, there's another way we know this: Now the U.S. is admitting what I described months ago based on other evidence, that their everything requires the other part, TOTAL, ABSOLUTE, SURRENDER by Hamas, et.al., and the Axis Of Resistance. In addition, the genocide team, led by Netanyahu and allies, in the fascist Orwellian Goebbels' tradition, created their narrative that the occupied, who now resist, are what? Yep, that's right; the terrorists: Indeed, in the aggressor's narrative, the occupied Palestinians in an open-air prison called Gaza since 1948, are the terrorists. It's not always fun being correct, as you can become "the dog that caught the car" banghead[1].gif
Meanwhile, Harris continues with Biden, to repeat their instructions from Nazi Zionist Israel, that the IDF did not use gun ships to kill and burn their own Jewish Kibbutzims and not to "see" the debunked lies about rapes and beheading babies (all by Hamas of course) while Hamas was not equipped to torch homes and all the vehicles of the concert goers. That's why this NZI narrative was quickly called "the Israeli '911". And this narrative repeats the W Bush-GOP "New American Century" document from the late 1990s that spelled out what "911" was going be. WTF, we caught the car, it happens to be Trump's car, he's driving his passengers Biden-Harris and crew. OMD!
US FINALLY admits it doesnt want a diplomatic solution
Permalink David Richards replied on
One hopes the oil price gets pushed North of $100 per barrel for the populations of the Europe and America (if not their leaders) to realize diplomacy will only work after 78 years of Israeli war crimes. I have seen videos of how Palestine looked and prospered before the Balfour doctrine and the twice promised land was allowed to be forced down the Arab throats.
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