The United States said it could impose a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. This was declared on November 29 for a period of 60 days. Just enough for Biden to say to himself that he did “the job” and hand over to Trump at the end of January.
An inglorious end to his reign for “Genocide Joe” who spent the entire year supporting, arming and ultimately encouraging the Israeli genocidal escalation.
Since October 8, 2023, Israel has targeted Lebanon, particularly the south, claiming to attack Hezbollah “terrorists” but waging the same style of war as that on Gaza. This policy accelerated at the beginning of August 2024 and, following the so-called beeper attacks, Israel waged war on all of Lebanon: flights at the speed of sound, threats to airspace, widespread bombings in working-class neighborhoods and inhabited both in the north and in the south. The objective was clear: to create the conditions for a civil war to obtain a change of regime that would be more favorable to it.
A fragile ceasefire and
no stop in Gaza
The initial conditions of the ceasefire included the end of the offensive in Gaza: these clauses are no longer requested by Hezbollah which has agreed to withdraw north of the Litani River. Israel did not really have to withdraw since its offensive never succeeded in positioning it in a lasting manner in South Lebanon.
The temporary ceasefire offers respite to the Lebanese populations who had fled the south due to bombings. Several thousand people return to the south of the country to find their villages and homes devastated. The damage is extremely significant: several dozen villages almost completely razed, infrastructure devastated and another 4,000 deaths to report. All this for a temporary and fragile ceasefire since several violations of the agreement (52 in total, at the time of writing) on the part of Israel have been noted. For the moment, the escalation has not taken place but it is feared that it will only be temporary.
Indeed, in operational terms, Netanyahu was somewhat forced into a ceasefire: army of exhausted reservists, no tactical (on the ground) or political victory in Lebanon and a wait for rearmament.
However, the front on Gaza has not been interrupted at all. The massacres in northern Gaza continue amid general indifference and blindness. Especially since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed 192 journalists in Gaza. The death of humanitarian workers from the American association Kitchen of the World, which caused a scandal in April, has this time gone unnoticed in the media…
Destabilization of the region
UNRWA has decided to stop all deliveries of humanitarian trucks through the northern entrance to Gaza. The UN association accuses Israel of letting armed gangs attack trucks, either demanding ransoms or stealing the goods directly. Some of these groups have clashed with Hamas. He accuses the Israeli army of complacency with the thieves. The disastrous consequence is that all of northern Gaza is left to its own devices without any means of subsistence. Even if a Hamas delegation was received in Cairo to resume ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, it is clear that Israel has no intention of stopping the destruction and massacres.
Israel has deeply destabilized the region. Palestine, Lebanon but also Syria with a renewal of struggles between armed factions in the Aleppo region (see page 4). For decades, the presence of the colony in Palestine has been the main cause of instability in this region of the Middle East. It is high time that this exhausted and increasingly dangerous colonial state collapses and becomes a state without apartheid, without occupation and without military expansionism.
Édouard Soulier