• 291 Posts
  • 265 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 30th, 2023
  • fukhueson@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•France calls on Israel to stop Lebanon strikes: ministry
    12·
    10 hours ago

    https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah

    Hezbollah essentially operates as a government in the areas under its control, and neither the military nor federal authorities can counter this, Arab Barometer analysts MaryClare Roche and Michael Robbins write for Foreign Affairs. It manages a vast network of social services that include infrastructure, health-care facilities, schools, and youth programs, all of which have been instrumental in garnering support for Hezbollah from Shiite and non-Shiite Lebanese alike. Even so, Arab Barometer polling in 2024 found that “despite Hezbollah’s significant influence in Lebanon, relatively few Lebanese support it.”

    At the same time, Hezbollah maintains its military arm. Under the 1989 Taif Agreement, which was brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria and ended Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia allowed to keep its arms. The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2020 that the militia had up to twenty thousand active fighters and some twenty thousand reserves, with an arsenal of small arms, tanks, drones, and various long-range rockets. Analyst and Brigadier General (Ret.) Assaf Orion, of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, says Hezbollah possesses “a larger arsenal of artillery than most nations enjoy,” and a 2018 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies called it “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.” In June 2024, experts speculated that Hezbollah has 150,000–200,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges.

    Critics say Hezbollah’s existence violates UN Security Council Resolution 1559—adopted in 2004—which called for all Lebanese militias to disband and disarm. The UN Force in Lebanon (UNFIL), first deployed in 1978 to restore the central government’s authority, remains in the country and part of its mandate is to encourage Hezbollah to disarm.

    In October 2019, Hezbollah became a target of mass protests. Government mismanagement and years of slow growth had saddled Lebanon with one of the world’s highest public debt burdens, at 150 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens disillusioned by the economic slump called for the government, including Hezbollah, to cede power to a new, technocratic leadership. The formation of a Hezbollah-backed government under Prime Minister Hassan Diab in January 2020 failed to appease antiestablishment protesters, who saw it as a win for the country’s entrenched elites. Unemployment, poverty, and debt soared under the new government, and demonstrations persisted for months despite lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The protest movement spanned religious backgrounds, and even fellow Shiites openly criticized Hezbollah.

  • fukhueson@lemmy.worldOPtoNews@lemmy.world•How Jill Stein could derail Democrats again
    1·
    21 hours ago

    I see.

    https://www.newsweek.com/jill-stein-vladimir-putin-war-criminal-1954965

    Hasan later asked Stein why she had labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, but not Putin.

    “Well, as John F. Kennedy said, we must not negotiate out of fear and we must not fear to negotiate,” she replied. “So, if you want to be an effective world leader, you don’t start by name-calling and hurling epithets.”

    “So, how will President Stein negotiate with Israel then if you’ve called Netanyahu a war criminal?” Hasan asked in response.

    “Well, because he very clearly is a war criminal,” Stein said, prompting Hasan to ask: “So Putin clearly isn’t a war criminal?”

    “Well, we don’t have a decision—put it this way—by the International Criminal Court,” Stein said.

    The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Putin, alleging that he is responsible for war crimes. No such warrant has been issued for Netanyahu, whose war on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. However, the chief prosecutor of the ICC has applied for an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.

  • fukhueson@lemmy.worldOPtoNews@lemmy.world•U.S. preparing plan for temporary Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire
    11·
    3 days ago

    Perhaps they want Hezbollah weakened?

    https://www.csis.org/analysis/israel-hezbollah-escalation

    The U.S. government is deeply sympathetic to Israeli efforts to weaken Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a foreign terrorist organization, and the U.S. government doesn’t talk to Hezbollah. As mentioned previously, Hezbollah is a militia that operates with impunity from the rules of the state of Lebanon. From the perspective of the U.S. government, diminishing Hezbollah’s capabilities is not a bad thing. Rather, the United States’ challenge is ensuring that this escalation does not tip the entire region into war. The region is a tinderbox. There are already issues of increasing violence in the West Bank, there’s a war in Gaza, and Iran is certainly involved in many regional activities, including Houthi threats to navigation in the Red Sea.

    While the Biden administration is concerned that things could get out of control, there is also a broader context. When Israel has taken military action in the past, the U.S. government has often waited a couple of weeks before trying to roll things back. This week, the president is preoccupied with his address to the UN General Assembly. There’s a sense that Israel is still doing necessary—and perhaps from the view of some members of the U.S. government—useful work by knocking Hezbollah back. If the escalation stays within manageable parameters, the United States will likely try to apply pressure on Israel in the next week. From an Israeli perspective, they can act with relative impunity this week. After the pager attack, Hezbollah doesn’t trust its communication systems and doesn’t seem to be pressing toward war. From an Israeli perspective, Iran doesn’t seem to be pressing toward war either, which makes it less risky for Israel to act strongly against Hezbollah. Looking toward the weekend, there will likely be a continued escalation in Israeli actions, although it is unlikely that the situation will tip into an all-out war before then.

  • fukhueson@lemmy.worldOPtoNews@lemmy.world•Hezbollah asked Iran to attack Israel, Israeli and Western officials say
    42·
    5 days ago

    Source for those interested (it is also sourced in the article to another axios article):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iranian_strikes_against_Israel

    On 13 April 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, in collaboration with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and the Ansar Allah (Houthis), launched retaliatory attacks against Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights with loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. The attack was codenamed by Iran as Operation True Promise (Persian: وعده صادق, romanized: va’de-ye sādeq). Iran said it was retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on 1 April, which killed two Iranian generals. The strike was seen as a spillover of the Israel–Hamas war and marked Iran’s first direct attack on Israel since the start of their proxy conflict.

    …

    The attack was the largest attempted drone strike in history, intended to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses. It was the first time since Iraq’s 1991 missile strikes that Israel was directly attacked by the military of another state. Iran’s attacks drew criticism from the United Nations, several world leaders, and political analysts, who warned that they risk escalating into a full-blown regional war. Israel retaliated by executing limited strikes on Iran on 18 April 2024.