Lebanon’s Unbalanced Ceasefire Teeters on the Brink

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

Only Israel has opened fire since the start of the “ceasefire”, and Israel has done so repeatedly. Nobody has fired back.

Israel has for three days in a row attacked alleged Hezbollah rocket sites with bombs or missiles, killing at least four people and probably more. Israel has opened fire on journalists. It has critically wounded two mourners at a funeral. There are numerous reports of Lebanese civilians returning to their homes in the South coming under fire from Israeli troops.

This video shows the two people shot by snipers at a funeral. The man is saying that they had permission for the funeral from UNIFIL and from the Lebanese Army.

Israel has also used the “ceasefire” to advance its forces including tanks into towns and villages from which they had been repulsed and which Israel could not take by fighting. It has entrenched positions in Southern Lebanon, issued orders to Lebanese civilians not to return to over sixty villages in South Lebanon – none of which it had managed to permanently occupy in the fighting – and is reinforcing, re-arming and re-equipping.

South Lebanon | ambulance smashed

Israeli soldiers of the 7th brigade deliberately runs over a Lebanese ambulance as published today on their private social media accounts pic.twitter.com/NXo8Xw15D2

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) November 29, 2024

Israel in fact is treating the “ceasefire” as unconditional surrender. All of this was entirely predictable, not only from Israel’s past and normal behaviour, but also on the face of the “ceasefire” document itself, which is a wildly unbalanced document.

It offends my own sensibilities as a former diplomat that the Lebanese foreign ministry signed up to such an abject and undisguised document of submission.

Let us start by analysing paragraph 2 of this document:

2. From 4am, November 27, 2024 forward, the Government of Lebanon will prevent Hezbollah and all other armed groups in the territory of Lebanon from carrying out any operations against Israel, and Israel will not carry out any offensive military operations against Lebanese targets, including civilian, military or other state targets, in the territory of Lebanon by land, air or sea.

You see the imbalance immediately.

Lebanese armed groups will be stopped from carrying out “any operations against Israel” whereas Israel will not carry out “any offensive military operations.”

There is no way that Lebanon should ever have accepted that the term “offensive” is inserted for one side only. There is no possible way of parsing this, other than that Israel is still allowed to fire, and nobody else can. Israel has in fact fired, killed and wounded with abandon since the ceasefire came in to force, and of course characterises this as “defensive” military action.

The Lebanese government have recorded 51 breaches of the ceasefire by Israel in three days.

The United States and its allies have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation – a FTO in US legal parlance. The USA – which is set up as the arbiter of the ceasefire – therefore views any military action by Israel against anyone or thing deemed “Hezbollah”, anywhere and anytime, as a legitimate counter-terrorism operation.

The USA therefore simply takes the view – and the UK will take the same view – that each and every attack by Israel is not a violation of the ceasefire, but legitimate counter-terrorism.

There is no doubt of this whatsoever.

Lebanon can do nothing to monitor or prevent the reinforcement of Israeli positions in Southern Lebanon (spoiler – Israel has no intention of ever withdrawing) because the ceasefire stipulates not only that the Israeli army has sixty days leisure to leave Southern Lebanon, but that in that sixty days the Lebanese armed forces cannot enter the areas Israel is occupying: including cannot take control of their own Southern border and thus cannot check what troops and weapons Israel is moving across unopposed.

12. Upon the commencement of the cessation of hostilities according to paragraph one, Israel will withdraw its forces in a phased manner south of the Blue Line, and in parallel the LAF will deploy to positions in the Southern Litani Area shown in the attached LAF Deployment Plan, and will commence the implementation of its obligations under the commitments, including the dismantling of unauthorised sites and infrastructure and confiscating unauthorised arms and related materiel. The Mechanism will co-ordinate execution by the Israel Defence Forces and LAF of the specific and detailed plan for the phased withdrawal and deployment in these areas, which should not exceed 60 days.

“The mechanism” comprises of the United States, France and the United Nations through the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). But it is plainly the United States which is calling the shots. The United Nations “hosts” the mechanism while the United States “chairs” it.

This distinction between “Hosting” and “Chairing” is a new one on me. It appears to mean that the United Nations will be permitted to make the tea.

At para 11 the Agreement states that the Lebanese Armed Forces will “upon the commencement of the cessation of hostilities” deploy troops to control all border crossings, but this is immediately negated by para 12 which stipulates the LAF will only enter the Israeli controlled area – including the border – in a phased manner over sixty days.

What the LAF will do instead is set up a new Southern Lebanese border along the Litani river. That is the practical meaning of para 11. It is in effect a new border, and the Israelis control to the South of it

In addition, the LAF will deploy forces, set road blocks and checkpoints on all the roads and bridges along the line delineating the Southern Litani Area.

This is why the day before the ceasefire, the Israelis flew in a platoon of special forces for a few seconds of photo opportunity on the Litani River, so they could claim their armed forces had reached to there.

The United States holds all of the cards. The Lebanese Armed Forces are the only army I can think of in modern history which “remained neutral” when their country was invaded. The Lebanese Armed Forces are literally in the pay of the United States.

This is a complex country. The truth is that the majority of the soldiers of the Lebanese Army would in fact defend their country against Israel given half the chance, while their leadership has other ideas entirely and has US backed political ambitions.

The United States is a party to the conflict. The bombs falling on Lebanese heads are American bombs, dropping from American planes. The United States is put in charge of the “peace” by this Agreement. The current US Imperial hegemon is having its coat carried by the former colonial power France, in exchange for which honour France granted immunity to Netanyahu for war crimes.

People in Lebanon are desperate for peace. It is at United States insistence that Lebanon has no air defences – historically the USA insisted on removal of those given by Syria, and the USA has ensured they were never replaced. The USA is holding Lebanon down for Israel to violate.

The United States wants to see Lebanon divided, weak and at the mercy of Israel, and wants to see a reduction of the Shia population. The second largest US Embassy in the world is being built here as a hub of regional influence, and on the day the ceasefire came into force the USA and Israel activated the attack on Aleppo by their proxy army in Syria.

Hezbollah is not officially a party to the Ceasefire Agreement, which is between states, but is the largest political party in the Lebanese parliament and a member of Lebanon’s coalition government. Hezbollah must therefore have agreed to the ceasefire deal. They have been desperate to portray this agreement as a victory, the confirmation that they fought off the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon.

We should not forget that well within living memory Israel occupied and held Beirut, with US and French support. So I fully understand that preventing that from happening again is an achievement. It is still more of an achievement given Hezbollah’s major losses in assassinated leadership, and crippled personnel from the terrorist pager attacks.

But this ceasefire agreement gives away any good result from the fighting.

Israel has shown that is has both the ability and the will to devastate Lebanon from the air just as it has devastated Gaza. It has shown it will attack the same life sustaining infrastructure and commit widespread acts of brutality without compunction. Lebanon has seen that, like Gaza, it has no defence and that the international community will do nothing to stop the slaughter in the short term.

Israel has spent 72 hours blatantly violating the ceasefire without a word of protest from the western powers. The moment anybody fires back a single shot the USA and its satellites will voice outrage, heavy bombing of Beirut will recommence and Israel will start trying to advance again from its new upgraded Southern bases within Lebanon.

I see this happening sooner rather than later. Peace deals which entirely favour one side never last, barring effective extermination of the injured party, and that has not happened.

Yet. Here is a reminder of Israel’s capacity for morality.

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The post Lebanon’s Unbalanced Ceasefire Teeters on the Brink appeared first on Craig Murray.

Source: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/11/lebanons-unbalanced-ceasefire-teeters-on-the-brink/