Having not used its considerable leverage to bring Israel’s gleeful slaughter of Arabs to heel,1 the Biden Administration late in the game is trying to Do Something as Israel escalates and Hezbollah ratchets up its responses by what it deems to be a corresponding amount. That “Something” is the bankrupt and too-obviously Democratic-Party-serving idea of a 21-day ceasefire.
Since even in the unlikely event it were to get done, it would be a bridge to nowhere, or more accurately Son of Gaza Floating Pier, this looks like a gimmick to get a hotter war in the Middle East out of the headlines for a smidge, and hope that the pace of the resumed fighting was not so precipitous as to demand that the Administration Do Something More, as in support Israel’s campaign in a bigger way than it is now.
Perhaps the Administration should have gotten some “kick the can” lessons from the EU, which has had way more practice than the US.
In fact, this idea seems to be dying the fast death it deserves. Less than 24 hours after briefly being a prominent news story (the Financial Times had it as its lead item; interestingly, by contrast, the Wall Street Journal had it below the fold), the updated story at the Wall Street Journal carries the headline, Israel Casts Doubt on Hezbollah Cease-Fire as It Launches More Airstrikes. One must point out (and this may not be deliberate) that “Hezbollah Cease-Fire” could be read as something Hezbollah, as opposed to the US and the 12 countries it got to go along, wanted.
We’ll still poke what is probably a warm course for edification value. An overview from the Financial Times’ initial account:
The US and France have led international calls for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, hours after an Israeli military chief told troops to prepare for a potential ground offensive in Lebanon.
The initiative, backed by the G7, EU, Australia and three Arab nations, on Wednesday called for a swift endorsement of the truce, in a statement issued on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York….
One senior US administration official said a temporary ceasefire could “shake things up” and create space for a longer-term resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group along their shared border, while helping avert the threat of a wider regional war.
And this part was rich:
US officials said they hoped the pause in hostilities would also put pressure on Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza, which has eluded the US for months.
We can stop here. This Administration loves the idea of ceasefires as opposed to solutions. Recall that there was no ceasefire when the US negotiated its withdrawal from the Vietnam War; the fighting among the remaining belligerents continued. In a more positive example, Russia did not stop prosecuting its fighting with Ukraine when the two parties agreed on a detailed but still preliminary set of terms in Istanbul in March-April 2022.
To restate what ought to be obvious: a big reason for Biden fixation with ceasefires, at least with Israel’s genocide campaigns, is to get them out of US headlines and try to appease US Muslims and other Zionism opponents.
And “genocide campaigns” is no typo:
“There is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Lebanon will be annihilated. It will cease to exist.”
— Israel’s Minister of Education
pic.twitter.com/y461oY1YbH— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) September 21, 2024
Your humble blogger is not alone in reaching this conclusion:
“Lebanon is at the brink.
The world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
The level of impunity is morally intolerable.”
Said today UN SG @antonioguterres to the world leaders.
Will they hear? Will they act? #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/qZTZ775SKb— Fadi Daou (@fdaoulb) September 24, 2024
The President of Honduras accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people and urges that ‘Lebanon must not become another Gaza Strip.’ pic.twitter.com/jplNUZ4izQ
— Esmail (@Esmail490292289) September 26, 2024
Having said all of that, there might have been reasons for Israel to go along, but they would have been nefarious. Perhaps they could have gotten logistical support better in place for the ground invasion Netanyahu insists he intends to make (recall that Hezbollah leader Hassam Nasrallah recently begged for Israel to do precisely that), or perhaps also called up more reservists. And Netanyahu could have further surmised that 3 weeks would take Israel up till the third week of October, which could still be enough time for Israel to then deke Hezbollah into a forceful enough response for Israel to go crying to the US for backing. Many commentators see Netanyahu as taking advantage of the “No one in charge” status of the Administration to force a crisis. Perhaps a smidge closer to the election could work as well?
But many experts, and Netanyahu’s own apparent sense of urgency, suggest he sees the “Is anyone minding the store?” phase of the Biden Administration as Israel’s best opportunity evah to get Hezbollah or maybe even Iran to act in way that Israel can depict as an outrage and demand the US throw full military support behind Israel. More time betters the odds of pulling that off before there is an adult again in charge.
How about the Lebanon side? First, there is absolutely zero reason for Lebanon or Hezbollah to trust any US-orchestrated process. The US is again putting forward the discredited (in the eyes of much of the Arab world) Amos Hochstein, a dual Israeli-US citizen who has been leading the failed feeble negotiation attempts with Lebanon.2 Hochstein is seen as the opposite of a fair broker and out to secure US and Israel interests.
Second, a tacit assumption is that Hezbollah has been seriously weakened by the Israel pager/walkie talkie terrorist attacks, then targeted air strikes that killed two senior Hezbollah officials, then the heavy bombing that so far has killed nearly over 500:
#BREAKING from @AP Death toll from two days of #Israeli strikes in #Lebanon reaches 558, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says. That is nearly half the number of people killed during the 34-day war in summer 2006 that left about 1,200 dead in Lebanon
— Bassem Mroue باسم مروه (@bmroue) September 24, 2024
But that is not so clear. The problem is that Hezbollah is well bunkered but civilians are not. And Israel as we have seen in Gaza has no compunctions about slaughtering civilians with thin pretexts. Consider the claim that Hezbollah has gotten civilians to hide missiles in their homes. From Middle East Eye:
Israel’s former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is facing a fierce backlash and accusations of spreading “propaganda” to legitimise attacks on civilians after alleging that Lebanese households are being used to hide rocket launchers for Hezbollah.
“Many Shiites in Lebanon have a unique revenue stream. In their home, they have a special ‘Rocket Launcher Room’. They’re paid monthly rent by Hezbollah to host this launcher and be prepared to shoot rockets at Israel communities on demand,” Naftali Bennett claimed on Monday in a post on X, without providing evidence.
“The IDF [Israeli army] is now systematically destroying these death machines. Anyone man who turns his home into a death launch pad puts his family in severe danger, and only he is responsible for the consequences,” he continued.
One of the tweets included in that article:
By his own logic Bennett is defining Israeli households as ‘death machines’, since most Israelis have to fight in or have fought with the IDF. Saying this kind of thing is all just human shield propaganda designed to legitimise killing of civilians, it’s reprehensible https://t.co/9rcT3oObj9
— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) September 24, 2024
And the IDF is working hard to legitimate this fabrication. Note all the evidence is mere mock-ups:
Notice also how Netanayahu is retailing this fabrication. This story can’t be playing in Lebanon despite that being his pretended audience; the targets are presumably citizens in Israel and Israel-friendly communities:
Netanyahu in direct message to the Lebanese people:
“I urge you – take this warning seriously. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger your lives and the lives of your loved ones. Don’t let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon. Please, get out of harm’s way now.” pic.twitter.com/REb0hAUVnr
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) September 23, 2024
Alastair Crooke, who has visited Hezbollah rocket-launching facilities, says they are all underground. Crooke also has repeatedly said that Hezbollah has also created a lot of decoys and ghosts to keep the IDF busy. So the reports in the Western media that Israel strikes have been degrading Hezbollah capabilities by destroying rocket launchers are yet another fabrication. Crooke did say that Israel uses AI to try to find places in the valleys and the forests where it thinks launchers may be. But this is garbage in, garbage out, since movement tracking seems to be a major detection device. So Israel may somewhat reduce Hezbollah’s strike capabilities if they bomb a location where a buried rocket exit point is located. How often do you think that is likely to happen?
A second issue, which we discussed long form in an earlier post, is the pager/walkie talkie terrorism did not harm Hezbollah’s military operations much if at all. They don’t use either device for their comms; they were distributed to members of the civilian units, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, and social workers. Hezbollah fighters probably were in proximity of some of the explosions and injured or even killed. But is is more likely that the big impact was psychological: both the extent and viciousness of the maiming, and that Hezbollah forces probably have more family member in Hezbollah civilian service than the population as a whole.
That does not mean, however, that Hezbollah is not hurting, just not in the way many assume. The Lebanese economy is in disastrously bad shape. Hezbollah is a political party, not just a military group. It risks losing its legitimacy and the support of Lebanese society if the cost of fighting Israel is perceived to be too high.
However, the flip side that air bombing campaigns tend to solidify opposition to the enemy rather than create new schisms. Israeli officials stating flat out that the intend to ethnically cleanse (intially only part of) Lebanon makes clear the stakes are existential. But is that view widely shared within Lebanon?
Let’s look at the Israel side. Media reporting is very skewed thanks to the major media being able to report on the damage inflicted on Lebanon, while Israel has impose a strict and so far pretty well observed press blackout from Haifa and parts of the country to the east all the way to the northern border. The metro area of Haifa has close to 1.2 million residents.
In response to the Israel escalation, Hezbollah is engaging in what one might call a demarcated escalation (on this I am recapping various accounts, many of which are on YouTube and therefore hard to track down exact references in a reasonable time frame). They are striking at military targets at what seems to be 80 miles from the Lebanon border, which is a big increment in their fire range.3 Despite the press embargo, it’s been widely reported that Hezbollah did enough damage to the Ramat David airbase near Haifa, one of Israel’s three major airbases, that military planes had to be diverted to Cyprus. Hezbollah also hit production facilities of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, one of Israel’s three biggest arms makers, again near Haifa.
If you take the media blackout area, which presumably represents the new Hezbollah attack area, its population is reportedly 2 million, as compared with the 60,000 to 100,000 settlers in the northern border that were displaced by Hezbollah shelling. Even if Hezbollah is only attacking military targets, civilians are still exposed since air defense missiles can fall anywhere, as can successfully downed offensive missiles. So a much larger proportion of the total population will be subjected to having to hide in safe rooms or going to shelters every time they get missile attack warnings.
So Hezbollah has a path to victory, and Larry Wilkerson set it out a few months ago. All Hezbollah has to do is fire 100-150 rockets a day into Israel, every day. Israel would exhaust its Iron Dome defenses in somewhere between six weeks to at the very outside a few months. Wilkerson, in keeping with Finkelstein in our first footnote, does not see Israelis as willing to take much punishment. The exodus from the country would accelerate. The premise of Israel was safety for Jews and a European standard of living. An open-ended rocket campaign would severely undermine that.
But even though Israel has a glass jaw, Lebanon as a country is debilitated. Can it take a sustained air campaign by Israel while Hezbollah wears it down? Could its new friend China, which said it was going to stand with its Arab brothers after the pager attacks, provide a substantive boost, say by promising to help fund reconstruction?
In other words, this escalation is more evenly matched than it appears.
So back to the news trigger, the US ceasefire gambit. Even the initial report at the Financial Times was skeptical:
However, a western diplomat in the region said there was scepticism about the diplomatic initiative.
The conditions that have led to a stalemate in the hostages-for-ceasefire talks over Gaza still exist, so “why would you think you can push Israel and [the Palestinian militant group] Hamas to accept one now. What changed?” the diplomat added.
“Netanyahu will never agree to linking the two fronts,” the diplomat added, saying this was exactly what Hizbollah and its main backer, Iran, “had been attempting to do for 12 months”.
“Hizbollah is very slowly and carefully calculating every next move. They were hit very bad but they are not defeated,” the diplomat said.
By that the source means that Hezbollah started its strikes into Israel over the Gaza genocide and Nasrallah has repeatedly affirmed that Hezbollah will not stop until Israel ends its war in Gaza.
And from the updated Wall Street Journal story:
Israel launched more strikes it said targeted Hezbollah on Thursday, including in Beirut’s southern suburbs, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling troops to fight at full force even as diplomats raced to establish a temporary cease-fire along the border and head off a possible Israeli ground invasion.
“Diplomats raced”? This is comical. Diplomats do not “establish” ceasefires. Principals do. There is no evidence either side is receptive (admittedly, Lebanon did make some minimally polite noises). This looks like an echo of the pattern we described with respect to Ukraine peace efforts and Alexander Mercouris has gracious highlighted: the Western side (here with Arab friendlies, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and I assume captured Jordan as the third) all negotiating a scheme among themselves without taking the stated interests of the key parties into account. Of course if they did, they would be forced to admit there was no overlap in positions.
Now to the money quote:
Netanyahu’s office pushed back on the idea that a cease-fire might be close at hand, saying he has yet to respond to the proposal circulated by the U.S. and France and that he has told the military not to let up with its fighting in Lebanon.
_____
1 This characterization comes from Norman Finkelstein in a recent interview with Glenn Greenwald:
However, Israel loses hands down in a ground invasion, and Israel dreads a ground invasion for the very simple reason that, believe it or not, Israelis don’t want to die. They like to kill. It’s fun to kill Arabs. It’s more fun than shooting fish in a barrel. They are positively exhilarated and euphoric at the prospect of killing Arabs, including children. They like to shoot children in the skull, as was fairly common according to physicians who served in the hospitals in Gaza the past year. They said children came in without any shrapnel on their body, just bullets to their head. And during the Great March of Return in 2018, as the UN report—an exhaustive 250-page single-spaced report—said, Israel targeted children. And in particular, when it didn’t kill them—because killing too many unarmed children doesn’t fly too well in the press, to the extent that it’s covered—they targeted their kneecaps and below their kneecaps to inflict what are called life-changing injuries.
In any event, Israelis like to kill Arabs, humiliate Arabs, degrade Arabs, torture Arabs, but they don’t like to fight them.
.2 This is not just my view. Former Lt. Colonel and State Department official Larry Wilkerson regularly gets exercised when Hochstein’s name comes up. He sees Hochstein as a living, breathing example of how much the US has subordinated its interests to those of Israel.
3 Search engines say that at its shortest distance, Haifa is 85 miles from the Lebanon border, but perhaps the Ramat David air base and the Raphael facilities were closer. The Cradle says only 50 km, but perhaps they confused the new increment from the old targeting range with the total distance from Lebanon. I am excepting a bit heavily since the piece confirms that Hezbollah is far from bowed:
Hezbollah has not concealed that Israel’s terror and assassination attacks last week, which continue heavily today in Lebanon’s south, where hundreds of civilians have been killed since the morning, have had a chilling and demoralizing effect. However, several indicators show that the Lebanese resistance has been able to absorb these blows and adapt rapidly without impacting its structure or operations capabilities…
Hezbollah continues to firmly maintain its position on Israel ending its military assault on Gaza and has quickly rearranged its internal affairs to retaliate against the occupation state – even launching a new phase of the conflict, which it calls the “open-ended battle of reckoning,” as announced by Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem during the funeral of Commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut….
Through its initial retaliation and declaration of the new battle phase, Hezbollah is sending the following messages:
First, the resistance’s command-and-control system was not damaged or exposed to failure.
Second, Hezbollah responded to Israel’s massive expansion of strikes by immediately deepening its retaliatory strikes to over 50 kilometers inside the occupation state. This is part of the resistance’s deterrence formula imposed on Tel Aviv: an “expansion for expansion.”
Third, Hezbollah will meet Israeli gradualism with gradualism to shuffle the military cards constantly and push the enemy to change many of its calculations.
Fourth, it will not just launch minimal retaliations to disrupt the enemy’s goals, but will meet it with forceful and demoralizing strikes as well.