What Can Trump Do For The Hostages?
CrossFireArabia- December 2, 2024
US President-elect Donald Trump threatens that if Israeli prisoners are not released prior to his inauguration on January 20 “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East.”
Ya’aloun: Israel is Ethnic Cleansing Gaza
- CrossFireArabia
- December 1, 2024
The Israeli former defense minister Moshe Ya’aloun told the Israeli radio that Israel is conducting an ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Ya’alon said that “the army is committing war crimes” in the Gaza Strip and “is trying to hide them,” stressing that he bears responsibility for his previous statements regarding his country’s army committing “ethnic cleansing crimes” in the northern Gaza Strip.
This came in an interview conducted by the Israeli Public Radio on Sunday with Ya’alon, the day after he confirmed that the “army” was committing ethnic cleansing in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ya’alon said: “I bear responsibility for what I said about carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.”
On Saturday, in an unprecedented statement by a former official of Ya’alon’s stature, in an interview with the local Israeli channel /democratv/, excerpts of which were republished by the official broadcasting authority, he said that “Israel” is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the northern Gaza Strip, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of leading the entity to “ruin.”
Ya’alon added in an interview today: “I speak on behalf of the leaders serving in northern Gaza, there are war crimes being committed there.”
He continued: “Israeli soldiers are putting their lives at risk and will be subject to lawsuits in the International Criminal Court.”
He continued: “I must warn about what is happening there (in northern Gaza) and they are trying to hide it from us, as they are committing war crimes there.”
Regarding Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip, Ya’alon said: “Smotrich is proud of the opportunity to reduce the population of Gaza by half.”
He went on to ask: “What do you call that? He has no moral problem with killing two million Gazans, we were a democratic country.”
Last November, Smotrich called for reoccupying the Gaza Strip and reducing the number of Palestinians there by half by encouraging what he called voluntary migration.
Regarding the policy of the right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Ya’alon said: “We are now being dragged into occupation, annexation, ethnic cleansing – look at the northern Gaza Strip – displacement, and Jewish settlement.”
Ya’alon, who served as Minister of Defense between 2013-2016, accused Benjamin Netanyahu in the same interview of leading “Israel towards ruin.”
The Israeli occupation army, supported by the United States and Europe, continues its aggression on the Gaza Strip for the second year, where its aircraft bomb the vicinity of hospitals, buildings, towers and homes of Palestinian civilians, destroying them over the heads of their inhabitants, and preventing the entry of water, food, medicine and fuel.
The aggression left about 149,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly people, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world according to Jo24.
Naim Qassem: ‘Hezbollah Achieved a Great Victory…’
- CrossFireArabia
- November 30, 2024
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem confirmed that the party achieved a great victory over the Israeli occupation, and stressed the continuation of support for Palestine in various forms, and presented five pledges for the post-war period, including assistance in reconstruction, and completing the contract of constitutional institutions, most notably the election of a president for the republic.
On the third and fourth pledges, Qassem said; Our national work will be in cooperation with all forces that believe that the homeland belongs to all its sons, and we will also cooperate and dialogue with all forces that want to build a unified Lebanon on the basis of the Taif Agreement.
In his first speech after the ceasefire in Lebanon he said: “I decided to announce as a result, officially and clearly, we’ve one a great victory that exceeds the victory of July 2006.”
Qassem added: “We won because we prevented the enemy from destroying Hezbollah, we won because we prevented it from ending the resistance and/or weakening it…”
Qassem also attributed the victory to the long duration of the Israeli aggression, the ferocity of the battle, and the sacrifices made by the Lebanese, in addition to the American and Western support provided to Israel.
Sheikh Qassem also pointed out that Israel suffered heavy losses in its battle with Lebanon, as a result of the strikes directed at it by Hezbollah, and hundreds of thousands were displaced from northern Israel, and because of the resistance’s steadfastness, Israel’s horizon was blocked.
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General added in his speech that in light of what he called the defeat surrounding Israel, the ceasefire agreement came, which he said was “not a treaty or a new agreement that requires the signature of countries, but rather a program of procedures related to the implementation of Resolution 1701.”
He said that the agreement confirms the withdrawal of the Israeli army from all the places it occupied and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south of the Litani River to assume its responsibility for security and for expelling the enemy from the region.” He also confirmed that Hezbollah will coordinate with the Lebanese army.
Sheikh Qassem also noted in his speech that “the agreement was made under the umbrella of Lebanese sovereignty, and we agreed to it with our heads held high in our right to defend ourselves.”
On 27 November, 2024, a ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and the Israeli army came into effect after months of mutual military operations between the two parties due to Hezbollah’s support for the Gaza front after Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa.
On the other hand, he stressed the continuation of the Lebanese resistance’s support for Palestine, and said: “Our support for Palestine will not stop and be in different forms.” In the same context, he recalled when Hezbollah began supporting the resistance in the Gaza Strip, it repeated it did not want war, but confirmed that it was ready if it was imposed on it.
Next stage
Sheikh Qassem spoke about the next stage, and made five pledges for the post-war stage, including assistance in reconstruction, and completing the constitutional institutions, most notably the election of a president for the republic, expressing his hope to achieve this on the scheduled date of 9 January, and said that the party’s presence in political and social life will be effective and influential in keeping with the country’s circumstances.
Regarding the third and fourth pledges, Qassem said: “Our national work will be in cooperation with all forces that believe that the homeland belongs to all its sons, and we will cooperate and speak with all forces that want to build a unified Lebanon on the basis of the Taif Agreement,” adding that “to those who bet on weakening the party, we regret that their bets failed.”
In his speech, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah also thanked Iran, Yemen and Iraq, according to Al Jazeera.
Israel Breaks Ceasefire
- CrossFireArabia
- November 28, 2024
The Israeli occupation breaches the ceasefire agreement and carries out several attacks on southern villages in Lebanon:
Three people were injured in a strike by Israeli drones on a car in the town of Markaba.
Israeli artillery targets the town of Al-Taybeh.
Three shells were fired at the town of Rmeish (Kharbet Kora), damaging a house and a supermarket, while Israeli aircraft flew at low altitude over Mount Lebanon and the south.
Gunfire was directed at civilians attempting to return to their homes in the city of Bint Jbeil.
An Israeli tank targeted the outskirts of Kfarshouba with two shells.
Ceasefire Conundrum
Dr Khairi Janbek- November 28, 2024
By Dr Khairi Janbek
It is really pointless to keep thinking in terms of the endless circle of whether this ceasefire is a Pyrrhic victory for Israel or for Hezbullah, because the real winners are all those people who can go back to their homes hopefully very soon. In fact the whole issue is not about victory, but about the losing side, and in actual fact it is the state of Lebanon and the Lebanese people.
One the one hand, with this ceasefire agreement, Lebanon has fallen under the mandate of the US, France and Britain on the one hand, as guarantors of it, and on the other, under the mandate of Iran as the other guarantor of the accord. So where is the Lebanese sovereignty under the circumstances?
Indeed, Israel treats the Lebanese state sovereignty in terms similar to how apartheid South Africa used to treat its Bantustans, giving itself the right to intervene in Lebanon whenever it sees fit.
Moreover, what is it exactly the western overseers of this ceasefire are guaranteeing to Israel, and what is it exactly Iran has agreed to as the other overseer? One is not raising doubts here, rather wondering how this ceasefire can be implemented. For all intents and purposes, a country, unfortunately with dubious sovereignty, is supposed to secure the areas from which Hezbullah has withdrawn; from the Litani River southward, and which the Israelis will withdraw from, with the UNIFL as the other go-between.
Now, it is legitimate to ask if the Lebanese army has armaments sufficient to carry out the job and is it logistically prepared for such tasks, because we haven’t heard anything of whether there will a massive rearmament programme to support the Lebanese, especially since they don’t intend, as it seems, to deploy their forces in the area.
On the other hand, what will the other mandate power, Iran, like to do? Evidently the talk of Hezbullah surrendering its weapons might drag on, dependent on the “chicken game” the mullahs in Tehran will play with coming US president Donald Trump. In a sense, who will blink first. How will president Trump deal with Iran ? Will he see Tehran as the arch enemy, or will he take conciliatory steps towards it.
If Tehran is pushed in a corner, it might not relinquish all of its gains in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, not to mention Lebanon, without a fight. Consequently, and depending on how the next Washington administration handles the situation, will determine whether the ceasefire holds or not. This will be the least of the region’s worries actually especially since Mr Trump is partial to proxy wars.
Dr Khairi Janbek is a Jordanian historian based in Paris and the above opinion is written exclusively for crossfirearabia.com.
