Hezbollah Israel Ceasefire Crumbles Within Hours!

Right, so that didn’t take long did it? Less than a day in fact for Israel to have apparently violated the ceasefire agreement that came into effect in the early hours of Wednesday morning Israel time, a 60 day truce as it effectively is, not really a ceasefire, since it has a clock on it, between Israel and Lebanon during which time Israel is meant to withdraw completely from Southern Lebanon as are Hezbollah, instructed to withdraw north of the Litani river, all in all the whole deal a watered down version of the UN resolution which has kept the peace since 2006.
These are not the actions of a state interested in peace or a ceasefire, these are provocations and suddenly we’re all left thinking, so Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire this time around, where he has flat refused to entertain the idea and scuppered measures to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, yet it all amounts to the same thing, where his troops are still seemingly defying that ceasefire or are they just still following his orders, because his word when it comes to ceasefires is utterly worthless? If that’s the case can there ever be a lasting peace in the region when you can never trust Netanyahu to keep his word and with tensions running high still, it wouldn’t take much to push matters over the edge once again, so let’s break down what has happened, because I doubt you’ll have heard a word of this in western media.
Right, so yesterday I did a video saying I didn’t expect the ceasefire to last very long, but for it to last less than a day, or to be violated at least in less than a day, within hours in fact by the IDF was faster than I expected, it’s like the ceasefire never happened, like it doesn’t matter to them, like they don’t count because they’re so used to exceptions being made for them. It’s a good job I’m not the I told you so sort, if this had been James O’Brien saying this you’d never hear the end of it, it could never last though because Netanyahu cannot afford to upset his far right coalition partners who will never agree to a permanent peace and he’s still hoping to get out of corruption charges by keeping this war going, even as he’s due in court on the 2nd of this month.
Yet, within hours, Israel has attacked Hezbollah fighters, attacked journalists and denied villagers permitted to return south to actually reach their homes in some cases, restricting movements completely against the terms of the ceasefire.
The only thing Israel should be doing right now is leaving. I figured Israel would welcome some time to recover, because they have in no uncertain terms had their backsides kicked in Lebanon, Netanyahu got a 60 day break passed in the Knesset, he made excuses that he wanted to focus on Iran as his reasoning for that, Israel still expecting an Iranian retaliation for their last attack on Iran and yet some in the IDF at least have carried on like nothing had changed.
Over the last two months of Israel’s attempted invasion, more than 130 IDF soldiers have been killed and over 1,250 injured. Israeli losses include 59 Merkava Tanks, 11 military bulldozers, 2 Humvees, 2 armoured vehicles and two personnel carriers.6 Hermes 450 drones have been shot down, as have 2 Hermes 900 drones and a quadcopter and every single attempt to advance, occupy and seize land in southern Lebanon to establish a military buffer zone has failed.
Israel attempted to move into the border towns of Khiam, which it was forced to retreat from three times, along with the towns of Ainata, Taloussa, Bint Jbeil and Qawzah. Attempts to advance in the west on the towns of Bayada and Shamaa turned the area into a ‘graveyard for tanks’ and again Israel were forced to retreat.
All in all, you’d think Israel therefore would take the break, but apparently not.
That town of Khiam, the scene of three attempts to advance by Israel is one of those areas where the ceasefire has seemingly not applied.
As part of the agreement and showing that Lebanon at least are acting in good faith, the Lebanese Armed Forces deployed in Khiam in response to an Israeli attack within hours of the ceasefire commencing.
One resident of the town was filming to upload to social media the state of the town walking past a Merkava tank as he did so and unbeknownst to him at the time, the tank was tracking his movements, aiming its gun at him.
Aside from people filming their lives there though, there was journalistic presence there too, the press, protected under international law in a war zone, were, as we’ve become used to, fired upon by the IDF. The Cradle have footage capturing the injury of a photojournalist called Mohammad al-Zaatari, wounded as he was in that attack, after a ceasefire came into force.
This wasn’t even the first incident of the day that violated the ceasefire agreement either, that appears to have been the killing of several alleged Hezbollah operatives, along with the arrest and detention for interrogation of several Lebanese citizens, who it is also claimed are Hezbollah, because isn’t everything? We’ve become used to that go to catch all excuses of the IDF, but a ceasefire was in place. If Hezbollah were still south of the Litani river, in violation of the ceasefire agreement, I’d point to Israel still being in southern Lebanon and raise them one by shotting at journalists and still killing people despite a ceasefire being in place? It’s not as if Israel are even trying to hide these killing either because they held a press statement about it and wheeled out our old friend Mr Pointy, Daniel Hagari to issue the statement. Anadolu Agency covered it, an excerpt reading:
‘The Israeli army said Wednesday that it killed Hezbollah operatives and detained others in southern Lebanon despite a cease-fire agreement with Lebanon.
The cease-fire deal took effect early Wednesday to end more than 14 months of fighting between the Israeli army and Hezbollah.
"The soldiers identified suspects who approached no-go zones, detained them, and fired warning shots. We also killed 'terrorists' today,” Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said during a press briefing at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv.
He noted that Israeli warplanes are continuing to patrol Lebanese airspace, warning that “Any violation of the agreement will be met with fire.”
“This morning, the cease-fire with Lebanon came into effect,” Hagari said, emphasizing that the Israeli military's role is to enforce the agreement.
Earlier in the day, two journalists were injured by Israeli army fire in the southern Lebanon town of Khiam while covering the return of displaced civilians to the area, the state news agency NNA reported.
Hagari said that Israeli forces killed Hezbollah operatives and arrested others in southern Lebanon, without providing further details.
“Fighter jets, under the direction of the Intelligence Directorate, struck Hezbollah's largest precision-guided missile production site in Bekaa's Janta area,” he added.
The military spokesperson said that Israeli forces hit a compound for the Radwan Unit, Hezbollah’s elite military force, in the same area.’
You’re supposed to be packing up and leaving, not killing more people, injuring journalists covering people returning to their homes, making arrests or patrolling with warplanes.
The return of people to their homes has had a very mixed welcome too.
Where those who have made it back to their home towns and villages, the sight before them has been shocking.
People who have returned to places such as Sidon, Nabatiyeh, Tyre have found their homes so heavily bombed that they don’t recognise them anymore, that these places now look foreign to them, yet these are among the more fortunate displaced people, in that at least they’ve got there. Israel have been stopping them returning elsewhere again in violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Another example highlighted by Al-Akhbar stated that Israeli forces fired shells towards the outskirts of the village of Odaisseh and fired bursts of gunfire towards the village of Markaba and In Mays al-Jabal, they fired shells towards the town centre to terrorise people returning home there.
Orders from Netanyahu’s office apparently instigated an overnight curfew on Lebanese people attempting to return home who had fled north of the Litani river, barred from returning to their homes and in light of attacks on civilians the Lebanese authorities have asked their own people not to enter towns and villages still occupied by Israeli forces for their own safety.
As for Hezbollah, they’ve remained quiet despite all these incidents so far, perhaps out of a desire not to be seen as the violators, knowing western media will be all over it if they are the ones seen violating the ceasefire, as Israel gets a free pass to do so anyway, once again it is foreign and independent media who are doing all the journalism here so do support your favourites so they can absolutely keep doing so and keep providing the stories for commentators like me to highlight.
Israel are taking the Mick. In short they’ve gone look, Hezbollah, lets get them and then claimed it is Hezbollah who have violated the agreement, despite them very much still being inside Southern Lebanon and showing no signs of going. Where they’ve got 60 days to leave however, it has not been made public if Hezbollah had a time frame to leave Southern Lebanon. Such is the problem with not making the full text of the agreement publicly available, Israel can make claims like this and we can’t necessarily call them out, however we also only have their word that these people are who they say they are and given the arrests of a handful a citizens in one place, doesn’t excuse the harm to journalists, the terrorising of civilians or the other incidents that have happened within hours of the ceasefire taking effect at Israel’s hands, it has made a joke of this ceasefire or truce, however you want to put it, Israel clearly not acting as honest brokers and nailing that on as I was just finishing the writing of this, it has been reported now that a raid by Israel on the Tebna area of Southern Lebanon has just occurred, and so it continues. No shame, no remorse, no intention of stopping. Sanctions on Israel now.
Frankly it was a surprise the ceasefire ever really got going considering how close to collapse it was, but perhaps in light of how seriously Israel clearly are not taking it anyway, perhaps that was a moot point. For more on this story and how we got here check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.