Biden to Offer Saudi Arabia Treaty In Exchange for Official Ties with Israel
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 9, 2024
The White House is prepared to roll out a plan that will make Saudi Arabia a Japan-style ally in exchange for Ryiadh developing official ties with Tel Aviv. While the Biden administration has invested substantial effort to get the deal inked, it is likely dead on arrival because Saudi Arabia refuses to normalize with Israel unless Tel Aviv agrees to the creation of the Palestinian state.
According to American, Israeli, and Saudi officials speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Washington is prepared to sign an agreement to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh establishes regular ties with Tel Aviv. However, it would not be a peace agreement as the two countries are not at war.
Several hurdles must be cleared before the deal can be finalized, and it is unlikely that will happen. As Biden is seeking to make Saudi Arabia a treaty ally, it would need the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. Additionally, the deal would require Tel Aviv to end the onslaught in Gaza and take permanent steps toward a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to take either step.
Despite the obvious obstacles to the agreement, the Joe Biden administration has pressed forward with negotiations. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan explained last month, “We should not miss a historic opportunity to achieve the vision of a secure Israel, flanked by strong regional partners, presenting a powerful front to deter aggression and uphold regional stability.” He added, “We are pursuing this vision every day.”
If it went through, it would make Riyadh Washington’s only treaty ally in the Arab world, a status that even Tel Aviv does not have. The deal would also give the US access to Saudi airspace. The treaty is also part of negotiations of a larger deal that would also see the US transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
For President Biden, the deal could be politically problematic. As a candidate, Biden promised that he would treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah state for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
To add to the potential domestic resistance to the agreement, there are widespread protests in the US against Biden’s support for Israel amid its war on Gaza. As the treaty is a bribe to Riyadh to accept official relations with Tel Aviv, Americans may object to becoming an ally with Saudi Arabia to secure Israel’s regional interests.
Blind and deaf: how Israel lost the north
By Indrajit Samarajiva | indi.ca | June 5, 2024
It’s fascinatingly boring how Hezbollah has decimated Israel’s “eyes and ears.” For months, the Lebanese resistance’s videos have been methodically mundane, blowing up this communication tower, that building, that listening station.
It seemed like a bunch of nothing, but it adds up. Hezbollah had a list of Israel’s intelligence gathering posts in the north and has spent months methodically eye poking them, like Odysseus and the Cyclops. Now – however big the Israeli military might be – they’re effectively blinded.
Map shows the new buffer zone in the north, as reported by Haaretz
As Hezbollah opens bigger and bigger gaps in the occupation state’s air defenses, they can fire larger missiles with more frequency into Israel, with better and deeper penetration. For Israel, this attrition is a compounding problem. Their air defenses are a connected system and the network is increasingly returning 404. Take for example, the destruction of the $230 million dollar SKYDEW blimp/spy balloon.
This balloon is designed to detect low-flying drones and missiles, especially important as this is the vector most used by the Resistance. SKYDEW can stay up much longer – and is relatively cheaper – than planes, and can ‘see’ much further than ground-based systems. It was also placed in a highly strategic area that allowed them to cover attacks from Syria, Iraq and, to a lesser degree, from Hezbollah, specifically on the port of Haifa. But now the party’s over. Look at the balloon now:
SKYDEW is now shriveled and useless – a big loss, which also signals a big breakdown. As the SKYDEW ‘Target Card‘ (from Hezbollah intelligence) says, it was “protected by an electronic monitoring and jamming system against drones and UAVs,” and “secured by three layers of missile interception systems: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Hetz [Arrow].” That all got sliced through like the layers of an onion, leaving Israeli defenses naked.
The northern front is porous now, as Israeli settlers know better than anybody. To quote Moshe Davidovitz, head of the Asher regional council:
“Ten rockets fell in the center of the country and the media is in an uproar — the country is in turmoil,” he wrote. “But every day dozens of rockets are fired towards the confrontation line settlements and the Galilee, including anti-tank missiles and suicide drones, and the country remains silent. Once again, it’s proof that the north is not being counted.”
Hezbollah of course, has counted the north. They have a list of Israeli military targets and they go through them one by one. Take, for example, the Mount Meron Air Surveillance Base, one of the two main bases in the occupation state. This is what a senior Israeli air force official says about the base, in a 2016 article by Maariv:
“The air control system is crucial for the operational capability of the Air Force. Its main duty is to protect the occupied airspace. Through the control system, we activate all capabilities to protect the sky, including helicopters, aircraft, missiles, and other classified systems.”
And this is what Hezbollah intelligence released, as they were bombing it:
Firstly, the Meron Air Surveillance Base is located on the summit of Mount Jarmaq [“Mount Meron”] in northern occupied Palestine, the highest peak in occupied Palestine. Meron Base is the sole center for administration, surveillance, and air control in the northern part of the usurping entity and there is no major alternative to it. It is one of two main bases in the entire usurping entity: “Meron” in the north, and the second being “Mitzpe Ramon” in the south.
The Meron Base is responsible for organizing, coordinating, and managing all air operations towards Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Cyprus, and the northern part of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, this base is a main center for electronic jamming operations in the aforementioned directions and is staffed by a large number of elite officers and soldiers of the zionist forces.
Secondly, the fighters of the Islamic Resistance at 07:50 AM on Saturday, January 6, 2024, as a part of the preliminary response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri and his martyr brothers in the southern suburb [Dahiyeh] of Beirut, targeted the Meron Air Surveillance Base with 62 missiles of various types, inflicting direct and confirmed hits.
Hezbollah has aired its attacks on Meron Air Base in countless videos now, and they have been relentless. It can get boring because the whole thing never fireballs, but each small hit adds up. Every time a hole in Israeli air defenses opens, the hole widens, because Hezbollah is damaging complex, interconnected systems.
Today, the Meron base can barely defend itself, let alone the region. Tel Aviv has responded by assassinating Hezbollah and allied leaders, but the resistance just name missiles after those martyrs and send more.
This is a battle of attrition and Hezbollah is paying attention while Israel is mindlessly lashing out. Completely distracted by its brutal military assault on civilians in Gaza, in the south, Israel has lost the battle for the north.
After months of this boring de-administrative work, Hezbollah has finally arrived at the good stuff. The occupation state’s northern air defenses today are like a ragged old mosquito net that the dog chased the cat through. It’s full of holes, and big ones. Hezbollah can increasingly fire at will, with increasingly accurate weapons. For example, here is Hezbollah taking down a SKYSTAR 330 by drone-striking its Battalion 869 operator.
In this case, Hezbollah targeted not the spy balloon itself, but the balloon controllers, in three locations at the same time. With the operators eliminated, the balloon drifted out of control, landing in Lebanon where some kids recovered it. This is the state of Israel’s eyes and ears in the north. They’re on the ground.
Iron ‘Done’
Israel has nothing worth calling an air-defense in the north anymore. The Iron Dome is done. Hezbollah can fire at will, and has for every single day for seven months now. Iraqi Resistance missiles are flying right over them, towards Haifa. Iran can overwhelm the entire national system whenever it wants. Israel can still offend the conscience, but they’re missile defenseless now. Even Hamas is hitting them, from within traumatized Gaza. It’s open season, and the settlers know it.
Israeli settlers openly bemoan their unsettled state all over the Hebrew press. Some were so pyrrhicly incensed they threatened to secede from the entire state and form the new State of Galilee. As The Jerusalem Post has said:
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the prime minister’s answer at the cabinet meeting to a question by Benny Gantz, as reported by N12. Gantz wondered if the residents would return to their homes on September 1, for the start of the school year, and Netanyahu replied, “What’s the worst that will happen if they return a few months after September 1?”
This is of course the worst that can happen. The entire premise of Israel’s decades of grooming international actors to accept and expect bad behavior from Tel Aviv is that they can do whatever they want. If the Iron Dome doesn’t work, Israel doesn’t work, and now the Iron Dome doesn’t work. It’s the Iron Sieve now. Holy warriors have poked it full of holes.
An Iron Dome battery targeted by Hezbollah
This is a huge problem because the Iron Dome is not just Israel’s physical defense mechanism, it’s their psychological defense mechanism. It’s what makes the whole colonial project believable, that they can bully everyone in the region and suffer no consequences. Belief in the ‘Iron Dome’ is belief in ‘Israel’ and neither is believable anymore. Thus the northern Jewish settlements have emptied out and they’re not coming back anytime soon. As the Resistance News Network (RNN) said (on May 29th):
930 settler houses in northern occupied Palestine have been damaged by Hezbollah rockets in 86 settlements since October 7th, according to the zionist Ministry of War.
In Al-Manara for example, 130 out of 155 houses were destroyed. Metulla has just 34 residents left in the settlement, at most. Kiryat Shmona, one of the largest (northern) settlements, has seen its population plummet from 24,000 to under 4,000, and 124 houses have been damaged within it.
This comes as over 200,000 settlers in the north are displaced by the resistance, having built their own refugee camp. Some want to secede from “Israel” and build their own state, while others, such as the settlement of “Margaliot” have severed their ties with the entity as of yesterday.
Perplexingly, the IOF reportedly plans to significantly cut down the number of soldiers it has on the northern border and nearby settlements, citing funding reasons, or perhaps to lessen the number of targets available to Hezbollah.
Let’s look at one example of Hezbollah eliminating one target, an Iron Dome battery. They systematically do this over and over. This report describes how Hezbollah first gets the battery to reveal itself by firing rubbish at it, then hits it with drones.
The exclusive footage reveals the monitoring and reconnaissance operations that enabled Hezbollah to uncover the positions of “Iron Dome” batteries stations near the settlement of “Kfar Blum” using a tactic called “fire luring.”
The footage shows Hezbollah launching munitions toward the sites and documenting the interception process carried out by the Iron Dome, which enabled Hezbollah to execute a high-precision qualitative operation.
The scenes at 4:25 show a successful targeting of the Iron Dome batteries, without them being able to detect, track, or thwart the attack. Published photos also reveal Hezbollah’s intelligence penetration of the Israeli soldiers in these newly established sites, and their ability to document the geographical details and size of the fortifications used.
Hezbollah has done this over and over, methodically hunting and seeking Iron Dome batteries one by one. Given that the rest of their surveillance equipment is decimated and they can’t see what’s coming, Israel is forced to then draw its military assets even further from the border. Otherwise this is what happens:
This is the moment Hezbollah hits the garrison unit of Barkat Risha with an Iranian Almas top-attack ATGM [Anti-Tank Guided Missile]. ‘Unlike Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel has not spent the past 20 years tunneling underground, so their troops are all exposed without the Iron Dome. Take also, for example, the IOF’s 769th Brigade Headquarters, or what’s left of it.
The colonial project will shrink rapidly without air defenses. When the soldiers leave, the settlers have to leave. This is not a strategic retreat, it’s strategic defeat. This is not a solution, just dissolution. But it’s all Israel can do. It hasn’t simply lost control of the north, it has lost control of the tempo of this war. Hezbollah can keep turning the heat up until Israel is cooked. Behold Kiryat Shmona (occupied al-Khalisa), which was literally in flames a few days ago:
This is directly because the Iron Dome is not intercepting drones and Hezbollah has fire control of the whole region. Hence it burns. Settlers now see a “welcome” board that has literally melted.
As Israel retreats further and further from its border with Lebanon, the collapse of the northern front also opens up the occupation state to attacks from Syria and Iraq, which can fly straight through. This is all causing massive psychological damage to Israel because the Iron Dome was their primary safety blanket.
Hezbollah has reported destroying over 1,650 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition (ISR) equipment since 8 October, 2023. The Lebanese resistance had an actual strategy while Israel was wildly bombing ambulances and homes with no military value. Now Israel has lost northern Palestine and it’s not coming back.
‘Until genocide stops’: Colombia to suspend coal exports to Israel
Press TV | June 8, 2024
Colombia has said it would stop its coal exports to the Israeli regime as long as the latter sustained its months-long genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
“We are going to suspend coal exports to Israel until the genocide stops,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in a post on X on Saturday.
He also posted a draft decree, which said that coal exports would only resume if the regime complied with a recent order by the International Court of Justice that mandated that Tel Aviv withdraw its troops from the Gaza strip.
Data provided by Colombia’s National Statistics Department shows that the exports were worth more than $320 million in the first eight months of the last year.
According to the Colombian government, the export ban will enter into force five days after the decree was published in the official gazette.
On May 1, the Colombian head of state said the country had decided to cut its diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime over the war.
“And we here in front of you, the government of change, the president of the republic informs that tomorrow diplomatic relations” with the Israeli regime “will be cut,” he said at the time, adding, “[We cut diplomatic ties] because of them having…a genocidal president.”
More than 36,801 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the war that began after Al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation staged by Gaza’s resistance groups.
Houthis to Try New Hypersonic Missile in Continued Targeting of US Carrier Group
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 07.06.2024
The Yemeni militia targeted the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Nimitz-class supercarrier in the Red Sea last week amid the continued intensification of American and British air and missile strikes inside Yemen, which have killed scores of civilians.
The Houthis will hit the American aircraft carrier parked in Yemen’s backyard harder next time around, militia leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has vowed.
“The American aircraft carrier Eisenhower will remain a target for our Armed Forces whenever the opportunity arises,” al-Houthi said in his weekly address on Thursday.
“The facts will become clear no matter how much the Americans try to deny the targeting operations, and the upcoming strikes will be more effective,” al-Houthi added.
Offering new details on last week’s Houthi missile and drone barrage targeting the USS Eisenhower amid American denials that the operation did any damage to the supercarrier or its escorts, the Houthi leader emphasized that the attack was more successful than Washington is letting on.
“The operation targeting the aircraft carrier Eisenhower was successful, and overflights stopped for two days following the attack,” al-Houthi said, referring to American attacks over Yemeni airspace. The official added that while the US warship was situated about 400 km from Yemen before the Houthi attack, it was forced to sail 480 km northwest to safety in its aftermath. The operation was “one of the most notable and important operations to be carried out this week,” al-Houthi said.
“American warships flee and change their source when the operations are successful,” the militia leader said.
US Central Command on Friday vociferously denied Houthi claims that the USS Eisenhower was damaged in the Yemeni militia’s attacks.
“There is no truth to the Houthi claim of striking the USS Eisenhower or any US Navy vessel. This is an ongoing disinformation campaign that the Houthis have been conducting for months. While the Houthis intend to target our vessels, we can confirm that there has never been a successful attack on any US Navy vessel,” CENTCOM told Sputnik.
The Houthi attack on the carrier followed a spate of joint US-UK attacks targeting Yemen in an attempt to degrade the militia’s fighting capabilities, with the militia saying last week that the most recent strikes had killed at least 16 people and wounded 42 others.
The Houthis reported Friday that US and UK forces had carried out four new air strikes targeting the airport in Hodeidah, and launched a separate attack on northwestern Yemeni seaport of Salif.
Houthis Go Hypersonic?
Al-Houthi’s comments Thursday came a day after the Yemeni militia released footage of a new “locally made” hypersonic missile called the Palestine being launched toward the embattled Israeli Red Sea port city of Eilat this week.
Israeli officials confirmed Monday that Eilat had been targeted, but indicated that there was no damage or injuries to report.
In the footage, the new Yemeni solid-fuel missile’s warhead was painted in a checkered pattern reminiscent of a keffiyeh scarf. Western observers spotted outward similarities to the Fattah – an Iranian hypersonic missile unveiled in 2023 which can travel up to 1,400 km at speeds up to Mach 15. The range and speed characteristics of the Houthi missile remain unknown, but the distance between Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and Eilat is closer to 1,700 km.
Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected claims by the US and its allies that it has provided arms to the Houthis. However, Iranian media recently confirmed that the country does give its anti-US and anti-Israeli Axis of Resistance allies “technical knowhow” enabling the homegrown production of sophisticated missiles. It remains unclear whether this applies to the new Palestine missile or not.
The Houthis have been teasing their fledgling hypersonic capabilities since the spring, with an informed source telling Sputnik in March that the new Houthi missile could accelerate to speeds of up to Mach 8 (nearly 10,000 km per hour) and had a solid fuel engine, which means reduced launch preparation time and improved ease of transport in Yemen’s difficult conditions.
“Yemen intends to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel,” the source, who was not at liberty to speak publicly, said at the time.
Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi warned in March that the militia’s enemies, friends and Yemenis alike would soon “see a level of achievement of strategic importance which will place our country and its capabilities in the ranks of few countries in this world,” promising that Ansar Allah had “surprises” in store for the US and Israel which have yet to be revealed.
Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik in March that if the Yemeni militia really has managed to speed a missile up to Mach 8 or more, “that will mean that the ship-based air defense systems of the American naval group will be powerless.”
“The air defenses of the carrier strike group presently parked off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula and sporadically firing at the Houthis will not be able to intercept these missiles if they approach at Mach 8. And if the Houthis have managed to make them even a little maneuverable, that’s it, they won’t be possible to intercept. If the Houthis learn to accurately hit warships with these missiles, we will see America’s defeat,” Leonkov said.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed an order last week to extend the Eisenhower carrier group’s deployment in the Middle East for a second time, holding off the rotation of the supercarrier and its three missile destroyer and cruiser escorts out of the region, where they have been stationed since last October.
Biden claims Israel ‘has not invaded Rafah’ as jets, tanks raze city
The Cradle | June 7, 2024
US President Joe Biden told ABC News on 6 June that the Israeli government has listened to his “concerns” about a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
“They were going to go into Russia – into Rafah – full bore, invade all of Rafah, go into the city, take it out, move, move with full force. They haven’t done that. And what they’ve done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement,” the US president said as Israeli warplanes continued their months-long blitz of residential areas and displacement camps in the city.
Residents of Rafah who spoke with Reuters on Friday morning described the latest raids as “one of the worst nights,” adding that “some people were wounded inside their homes before being evacuated this morning.”
Residents also said that Israeli tanks that have taken control along the border with Egypt made several raids towards the west and the center of the southern city.
“I think he’s listening to me,” Biden added when asked by ABC News if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heeded his warnings.
Elsewhere in the interview, Biden claimed Netanyahu will stick by his own ceasefire proposal. “He’s publicly said he is. Our European friends are in on it. We have to get a ceasefire.”
“What [Israel has] done is they’ve agreed to a significant agreement that if in fact Hamas accepts it,” the US president said before adding that the offer is backed by much of the Arab world.
“We’ll see. This is a very difficult time,” Biden said.
On Thursday, senior Hamas officials revealed that the Israeli ceasefire proposal “does not mention stopping the aggression or the withdrawal [of troops from Gaza].”
“The Israeli documents speak of open-ended negotiation with no deadline, and it speaks of a stage during which the occupation regains its captives and resumes the war. We had told the mediators that this proposal is unacceptable,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Thursday.
The Cradle columnist Khalil Harb earlier this week described the proposal presented by Biden as a “repackaging of last month’s Hamas-approved agreement, which he is now repositioning as an Israeli-sanctioned deal.
Israeli lobby silencing anti-Zionist academics at Australian university
By Maram Susli – Al Mayadeen – June 6, 2024
Yet another University of Sydney academic has been targeted for offending the Australian Zionist lobby, a major funder of the university.
In a lecture to first-year students, Professor Sujatha Fernandes accused “Israel” of lying about “Hamas beheading babies and carrying out mass rape,” and accused the Australian media of spreading those lies to shore up support for “Israel’s” ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, demanded that Professor Fernandes be investigated, and the university has capitulated to the demand. The Rupert Murdoch media has also initiated a witch hunt against the professor.
This comes two weeks after the University of Sydney won its appeal over the unfair dismissal of Sydney Lecturer Dr. Tim Anderson, who was similarly attacked by the Zionist lobby for criticising “Israel.
When asked to comment on the case of fellow academic Professor Fernandes, Dr. Anderson, said:
“The Murdoch media claims she is being ‘investigated’ for her comments, exactly how they started with me. I am sure they will further target her for speaking the plain truth about the Israeli regime.”
Dr. Anderson fought a lengthy legal battle with the university, starting in 2019, after being dismissed for including a lecture slide that compared Israeli atrocities to those of Nazi Germany. The case began with university managers claiming Anderson’s social media comments had offended Israelis and their supporters.
Intellectual freedom in Australia is defined in industrial agreements. In Dr. Anderson’s case, the Federal Court initially affirmed the right to academic freedom, but its most recent decision has muddied that position. In particular, Judge Michael Lee now asserts that the burden is on the individual claiming intellectual freedom to prove that they were acting in the highest professional standards, without providing clear criteria. Overall, five Federal Court judges ruled in favour of Anderson, but the last two tipped the balance against him.
Regarding his dismissal, Dr. Anderson stated:
The reasons behind my sacking were:
(1) Pressure from the Israeli lobby, including corporate media and Israeli funding at the University of Sydney.
(2) Corruption by University of Sydney managers, and
(3) Reactionary politics at the Federal Court of Australia, which dismantled five years of previous decisions on intellectual freedom.
The power of the Zionist lobby in Australia comes from their direct funding of universities and their influence in the media. The National Advisory Committee on Jewish Education, which has donated more than half a million dollars annually to the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, exemplifies this. The committee’s chair, Emeritus Professor Suzanne Rutland, noted on her CV that the committee was a branch of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), one of the groups instrumental in the creation of “Israel”. Additionally, the committee provided bonuses to all University of Sydney senior managers based on their performance, creating a financial incentive to target professors who criticize “Israel”.
Growing concerns arise regarding evidence of foreign interference in Australian universities due to these practices. The witch hunt against these professors has caused a chilling effect, and academics may begin to self-censor in future academic discourse on “Israel”.
The Israeli and US funding for the University of Sydney has corrupted managers and killed intellectual freedom at Australia’s oldest university.
The continued attacks on these academics come in the context of the International Court of Justice ruling that there is credible evidence that “Israel” is committing a genocide in Gaza. The story of babies being beheaded on October 7th has been conclusively debunked, and the story of rapes on Oct 7 was found to have a lack of evidence. After examining all of the 5,000 photos, 50 hours of videos, and audio from October 7, the UN Secretary General’s report said, “No tangible indications of rape could be identified.” The report goes on to say that the UN did not find a single victim of sexual violence on Oct 7, despite their best efforts to encourage victims to come forward.
In spite of the control that the Zionist lobby has over the faculty, students of Sydney University continue their weeks-long protest against the genocide in Gaza, demanding that Sydney University divest from “Israel”.
Hundreds killed by Israel in south Lebanon since 8 October
The Cradle | June 6, 2024
According to statistics published by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks on south Lebanon have resulted in a total of 1,603 casualties, including 401 deaths, since 8 October.
The data published on the ministry’s website indicates that 87 percent of casualties were men, 96 percent were Lebanese nationals, and 57 percent were aged between 25 and 44 years.
The primary causes of these injuries are evident, with 44 percent resulting from blunt trauma, 35 percent from the blast radius of bombings, and 16 percent from chemical exposure – in many cases, white phosphorus.
The data additionally underscores a daily average of 18 casualties, five of them requiring urgent medical treatment at local hospitals, and one fatality.
According to Hezbollah’s military media, around 330 of its fighters have been killed by Israel on the battlefield. Going by the numbers reported by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, the remaining 71 deaths are those of civilians and journalists.
Additionally, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that 94,126 residents of southern Lebanon have since been displaced.
Israeli aggression has caused significant damage to Lebanon’s forests and agricultural land.
Earlier this week, Hezbollah rockets ignited massive wildfires in the Israeli north, resulting in extensive damage to forest reserves and several hospitalizations due to smoke inhalation.
Hezbollah has been gradually escalating its daily operations against Israeli military sites and settlements since October. The movement opened a front against Israel on 8 October, one day after the start of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, in support of the Palestinian resistance factions.
Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem have made it clear that Hezbollah’s operations will not stop until Israel stops its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Beyond Rafah: What the Zionist entity is headed toward
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | June 5, 2024
The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the Resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has set the invasion of Rafah as the route to a comprehensive victory against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza. This is a lie, and the Zionist regime will not achieve its war goals, so what comes next when the Israeli public is faced with the truth?
The Zionist entity launched its genocidal military campaign against the Gaza Strip, claiming that it sought to both dismantle Hamas and retrieve its captives by force. Neither was achieved in around 8 months of confrontations, despite having inflicted massive death and destruction on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Vietnam War.
Before the Israelis launched their ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, the line of propaganda was to pretend as if their unprecedented bombing campaign was going to dismantle the Palestinian Resistance’s complex web of tunnels underneath the besieged coastal territory. We heard about all the various munitions that were supposedly going to penetrate the tunnel systems and destroy the majority of them, prior to any face-to-face fighting.
When “Israel” did invade the Gaza Strip, it soon became clear that they were not even trying to penetrate the majority of the tunnels, despite their propaganda. The Zionist army came in on the ground, choosing to set up positions in open areas, before packing their soldiers in armored personnel carriers, tanks, and militarized bulldozers, refraining from using infantry to clear areas prior to penetrating them. They were subsequently met with tough resistance from the Palestinian armed factions. As for the tunnels and the attempts to recapture their captives, the rescue missions were all foiled, and the Israelis seemed to only be sealing off tunnel entrances they found, instead of sending forces underground to fight face-to-face.
The Zionist entity then set its sights on Gaza City, choosing to target the northern sector of the coastal territory in the initial stages of the invasion. Despite their attempts to completely ethnically cleanse the north, hundreds of thousands remained steadfast on their lands and refused to leave. Petty tactics were then employed by the Israeli ground forces, such as flying their flag in areas they managed to reach temporarily in their armored vehicles and tanks.
All this was going on as their leadership claimed that the “Hamas headquarters” was situated under the Al-Shifa Hospital, for which they released a CGI video depicting a multi-layered tunnel system. After finally invading the Shifa medical complex, the Zionist regime was outed as a bunch of liars as no headquarters was found there. Nonetheless, their evidence-free conspiracy theories about Hamas using hospitals as military headquarters’ and bases continued to drive the invasion of the north.
Suddenly, after being pointed out as having fabricated evidence in the north of the alleged “Hamas bases” and “Hamas headquarters” underneath hospitals, they began to pivot to Khan Younis. Khan Younis is the “real Hamas headquarters” they told their own settler population and the international community, deciding to invade the city in December, after the conclusion of a brief cessation of hostilities and prisoner exchange. In early January, they had already besieged the city of Khan Younis completely, finding no “Hamas headquarters”, and then began to obsess over the southernmost city of Rafah.
For months, the threats to invade Rafah were constant, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserted that his regime could not win the war without invading Rafah, and we repeatedly heard about the authorization of the operation to force a ground incursion into the area. This was met with international condemnation and a series of contradictory remarks from the US President, Joe Biden, who still can’t decide on what his “red line” actually is.
On May 6, Hamas called the Israeli-US bluff and accepted a ceasefire proposal. This was despite the fact that Netanyahu had been talking about his unwillingness to accept any ceasefire with Hamas for over a week prior. Although the Israeli premier was promising an invasion of Rafah, the US Secretary of State was publicly lauding the ceasefire proposal and urging Hamas to take it during his visit to West Asia. When Hamas decided to accept the proposal, which was almost identical to the one that was promoted by the US and elements within the Israeli regime’s leadership, it caused shockwaves, and the Zionist military responded by launching its invasion that same day.
The Israelis made a fatal mistake, however, deciding to also invade the al-Zaytoun neighborhood near Gaza City and Jabalia, both located in the north of the Gaza Strip. The invasion of Jabalia appeared to be an attempt to try and pull off a propaganda victory, by extracting the bodies of Israeli captives killed by their own airstrikes. However, they were surprised by the level of fighting waged against their soldiers by the Palestinian Resistance, who not only inflicted heavy losses on the Zionist invaders but, in the case of Jabalia, managed to pull off one of the toughest battles of the entire war as well.
The Zionist entity is renowned for concealing its casualties, but it could not hide all of them, and the public was exposed to daily reports about incidents in which their soldiers were killed and dismembered. This was a major embarrassment because the Israelis had told their own people that they managed to dismantle all of the Resistance battalions in the north months before, which clearly was not true.
Then came the announcement last Saturday from Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, who informed the world that an ambush had taken place in which the Resistance group managed to capture, kill, and injure the members of a force that they lured into a tunnel. The very next day, after increased rocket fire into the surrounding settlements during the weeks prior, al-Qassam launched a barrage of rockets from Rafah that struck north of “Tel Aviv”, managing to cause impacts and bypass the Iron Dome system. Embarrassed and in disarray once again, the Zionist entity decided to commit a series of massacres against civilians, the most egregious taking place against refugees sheltering in tents northwest of Rafah City.
All of this is to say that the Zionist regime is now faced with a dead end, as it will not find victory in Rafah and will fail as it did everywhere else. Not one of the dozen armed Resistance groups operating in the Gaza Strip have been defeated, let alone Hamas. The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering. Moreover, the captives have not been extracted by force and now they have lost even more in Jabalia. So what is next?
The Zionists are out of real options in the Gaza Strip, they have not found any reasonable plan for a day-after scenario, and once they meet failure in Rafah, there is nowhere else they can claim is the “real Hamas headquarters” any longer. This is why they have to pivot away from Gaza and find another target.
The single biggest thorn in the side of the Israelis right now is the Lebanese Resistance. Over the course of the war, Hezbollah and its allies have annihilated the Israeli monitoring and defense capabilities, smashed their military sites to pieces, destroyed many settler housing units in the bordering settlements, and forced over 100,000 Israeli settlers to flee in fear. The Israeli economy in the north has been paralyzed and the image of the Zionist army has been dismantled, as Hezbollah uses Israeli soldiers and military bases as test subjects for its military equipment.
What the Israelis could do is to either wrap up their invasion of Rafah quickly or continue it in a slow fashion, while deciding to launch a limited military operation against Lebanon. In the event that this occurs, it is not likely for the Zionist regime to commit suicide, and so, it is more likely that, despite the propaganda that they will release about such an operation, they would attempt to prevent it from spilling over into a full-scale war.
If “Israel” chooses this option, it understands well that Hezbollah will respond with unprecedented strikes that will shake the entity to its core, which will result in the sidelining of the Gaza war. Not only will the Israeli settler population be focused almost entirely on Lebanon, but so too will most of the world and certainly the international community. This would provide them with the opportunity to bring a close to the Gaza war and conclude a prisoner exchange while ensuring that it looks like they are attempting to restore their broken image. Such a scenario would also buy Netanyahu and his leadership more time in power.
If this happens, the course of the struggle will not come to a conclusion, however, as there is another very obvious front and that is the occupied West Bank. It is possible that the Israeli leadership could then shift its focus again, this time to the usurpation of what is known as area C of the West Bank; an area which constitutes around 60% of the total territory. For a long time, the Zionists have sought to seize this area, but due to external pressures from their allies, they have refrained from doing so.
The excuse in the West Bank will be the Resistance groups, which are primarily operating in the north of the territory and would work to justify a large-scale military campaign. In the event that a ceasefire is already concluded in Gaza, they could then go in without the fear of the resistance in the Gaza Strip pulling off a major defensive attack and seizing the land they seek. This would be the embodiment of their decades-long plot to divide the four parts of Palestine from each other, that being the 1948 territories, occupied eastern part of al-Quds, the West Bank, and Gaza. If Netanyahu manages to end his bloody campaign of terrorism and genocide in the West Bank, it is the one place where he can actually extract what appears on paper to be a victory and it may be enough, in his mind, to save him from the inevitable political death he is slowly dying today.
What is mentioned above may not occur in the exact order listed, but it is almost inevitable that the war on Gaza is going to shift to Lebanon and the West Bank in the foreseeable future. Unless the Zionist regime comes up with another excuse to maintain the course of the war in Gaza for a longer period of time, which will delay the pivot to other fronts, it seems like what lies beyond Rafah will be Lebanon and/or the West Bank. The decision to delay the invasion of Rafah for so long seems to have been down to the fact that this will be the end of their justifications for remaining at war in Gaza. The response to what the Zionist Entity is planning will be in the hands of the resistance.
Laws of War – Matt Orfalea
Matt Orfalea | May 25, 2024
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