Draft ceasefire plan for Lebanon published - is it a good deal?

The Jewish Policy Center published what appears to be a set of discussion points for American and Lebanese negotiators over a Lebanon ceasefire, phrased as an announcement.

It includes:

- Full cessation of hostilities by both sides.

- Both sides maintain the right to self-defense.

- Only UNIFIL and the Lebanese army will deploy south of the Litani line.

 - Lebanon will be responsible for stopping the rearmament of Hezbollah. They are tasked with stopping arms from coming in and Hezbollah from reestablishing infrastructure.

- During a 60 day period Israel will remain in Lebanon and during that time the removal of Hezbollah to above the Litani line will commence.

- Only if the sides are happy with the progress of the disarmament will the conflict end permanently. That means after 60 days, Israel gets to evaluate progress.

- If satisfied, Israel and Lebanon will proceed to talks on how to fully implement Resolution 1701 and resolve border disputes.

There is also an outline for a verification mechanism:

- A monitoring mechanism will be chaired by the United States. If there are violations, that mechanism will look into them within a reasonable timeframe.

- There will be consequences for violations including sanctions.

- Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas.

- Israel has the right to recon overflights over Lebanon.

Times of Israel analyst Haviv Rettig Gur  thinks this is "incredibly favorable to Israel."

The question is, compared to what? 

There are some significant gaps in this plan that could, and would,  be exploited by Hezbollah. 

For starters, how do we know the Lebanese army will do what it has refused to do since 2006? Assuming it doesn't, all this accomplishes is buying Hezbollah time to regroup, re-arm, re-establish conduits for money and weapons from Iran (which Israel could not bomb,) and then in 60 days...the Biden administration will be lame ducks and nothing would happen.

The idea that Israel can just resume fighting in 60 days without paying a huge political price is fantasy. Hezbollah can stay and re-establish itself up to the border and as long as it isn't actively firing, Israel would have a hard time resuming airstrikes without even Western friends condemning them.

"Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas" - this is meaningless. Because probably 90% of Israel's actions are based on reliable but secret intelligence, so if Israel bombs a food convoy that is hiding weapons, that would not be a "recognized violation." It would take third parties weeks to sort out what happened, and Hezbollah would stop them from doing so. 

In the end, the only party that can clear Lebanon south of the Litani is Israel.  There is an outside possibility that the Lebanese Army would be emboldened to do what it hasn't done yet now that Hezbollah is weaker, but chances are slim. As soon as Shiite "civilians" who housed Hezbollah weapons in their houses return they would physically block the LAF from entering and the army would do everything to avoid a confrontation like that.

 Israel can continue overflights - that's great (and no different than 2006-2024) - but is restricted in its actions. The monitoring mechanism will look at Israeli evidence, Hezbollah denials, and play it safe by ruling against Israeli action. 

Practically, there are no teeth in the plan - the only consequence mentioned for violations is sanctions, and Hezbollah is already under sanctions. 

Anything that seems to favor Israel in this plan is mostly window dressing. Israel does not want to occupy southern Lebanon, but it needs a far better deal to ensure that Hezbollah completely withdraws, and that is the basis for everything else. 

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Kuwaiti media figure attacked for telling the truth: Some Gaza women are forced into prostitution by aid workers to get food

A Kuwaiti influencer named Meshal Al-Nami is under huge criticism for making a video where he quote a witness who visited Gaza that some Gaza women are forced to turn to prostitution in order to get much needed food and aid.

No one is mentioning that the UN and NGOs quietly agree - and admit that their own aid workers are often the ones who blackmail women into prostitution to get aid that should be free.

As we've noted, a May report by the UN said, "Insufficient and unreliable aid, distributed under conditions of insecurity that do not allow adequate targeting, expose vulnerable groups to violence, exploitation and abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, including by aid workers. " 

It referred to an April report by the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Network - which is no longer linked on its website, but can be seen here - that says, "Food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, and acute aid dependency are highly engendered matters that further expose women and children to SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence] and VAC [violence against children], including by Aid Workers" and that there is a danger of an "epidemic of SEA [sexual exploitation and abuse] abuses committed by personnel related to humanitarian operations."

But the truth doesn't matter to the Arab world as much as honor. When Al Nami wanted to expose the abuse and protect Gaza women, the Arab world shot the messenger.

Al-Nami says he heard this secondhand from a Muslim Brotherhood member who said that  "the situation in Gaza is so dire that women are resorting to prostitution." He named a social media figure who recently visited Gaza as the source of the information. Al Nami's point is to show how desperate the situation is in Gaza, not to impugn Gaza women.

The reaction to Al Nami's video was swift and furious. Thousands of people were upset at him tarring the reputation of upright, moral Gaza women. A typical comment:

The people of Gaza are the memorizers of the Quran, patient in hardship and distress, and the remembrance of the Lord of the Worlds is never absent from their tongues. We see the chaste women of Gaza, in the most difficult moments of helplessness and oppression, with their full veil, cover, and chastity. So you and your ilk, you dogs of Hell and mounts of the Jews, come and slander their honor with your filthy tongues? But it is said that only those whose sperm is suspicious and whose origin and lineage are doubted find it acceptable to talk about people’s honor.  

A group of 27 doctors who visited Gaza "refuted" his story, saying,

By entering the Gaza Strip during this heinous and ongoing aggression, we witnessed the extent of the noble morals of the people of Gaza, which overwhelmed us from every direction and side. Their men, with their chivalry, courage, and generosity, on the one hand, and their women, with their chastity, dignity, and keenness to ensure that the Gazan woman remains an eternal example [for the world.]  We did not imagine that even the most extremist of the Zionist entity would use attacking the chastity and honor of the women of Gaza as a cheap weapon in this battle...pure, honorable and chaste women, and those who are cited as an example of patience, steadfastness, support for resistance and jihad.

Absence of proof is obviously not proof of absence. No one is claiming that desperate Gaza women are walking around half naked and publicly offering themselves to men. 

At least two criminal complaints were filed in Kuwait against Al Nami for attacking the dignity of Gaza women.

This mentality, where publicizing the crime it is considered worse than the crime itself, is shared by the NGOs who briefly reported on the story and then covered it up. The PSEA Network report warns of publicizing their own findings:

Safeguarding claims, nonetheless, shows the pick of the iceberg of misconduct of aid workers and poses risk for the communities, aid staff and aid institutions alike. 

Identified risks are: 

- Humanitarian aid diverted causing further harm to the community and increasing tensions

- Potential retaliation against aid workers (physical harm) 

- Lost of trust in aid institutions calling for further acts of incivility: deterioration of the operational environment 

- Media attention to safeguarding incidents which can also have an uncontrolled political manipulation 

Everyone cares more about protecting the reputation of Gaza women more than protecting their bodies. NGOs don't want publicity for aid workers committing horrific abuses, and Arabs don't want publicity that they believe would hurt Gaza women's "honor" in the Arab world. 

So the abuse continues, and the people who claim to care the most about Palestinians are the ones who are ensuring that nothing is being done.

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

In Syria, dead militants outnumber civilians by a 6-1 ratio

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has been keeping a tally of those killed by Israel in Syria this year:

These strikes killed 269 combatants and injured 188 others. The fatalities are distributed as follows:

25 Iranian members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

53 members of the Lebanese Hezbollah.

28 Iraqi persons.

75 Iranian-backed Syrian militiamen.

24 Iranian-backed non-Syrian militiamen.

62 regime soldiers.

Two unidentified persons.  

In comparison, there have been 48 civilian victims, meaning about a 6-1 ratio of combatants to civilians.  

The largest number of civilian victims seems to have been from this incident in early October where ten civilians, unfortunately, were killed:

The fatalities are a Yemeni doctor, his wife and his three children, a woman and her child, a young female doctor, another woman and a man.

That is indeed tragic. But they were not the target.

As SOHR reported at the time:

Three people, two members of Lebanese “Hezbollah” and one unidentified person, were also killed as a result of a direct airstrike on an apartment frequented by leaders of the “Resistance Axis” and vehicles parked in front of the building.

Residents fear recurrence of Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings, where they urge the combatants to leave the buildings out of concern for their safety.

The civilian victims were human shields. The civilians who live there know this and complain about it. The neighborhood is known to be a place where lots of Iranian and Hezbollah members gather (the Iranian embassy is there.) A week earlier, Israel targeted a commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah in that neighborhood.

For some reason, even though this is well documented, the media and NGOs never even consider that Israel uses the same care in protecting civilians in Gaza and Lebanon as they do in Syria - and that every civilian death is the result of the terrorists hiding among them and using them for cover.

 

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!