A Warning from Lebanon
In not quite one year since the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, Israel has broken the ceasefire 4,600 times. It has killed hundreds of people, including infants, demolished tens of thousands of homes and annexed five areas of Lebanon. It was supposed to withdraw completely.
This situation is being replicated in detail in Gaza. In particular, the ceasefire in Lebanon is “guaranteed” by the USA and France and overseen by an international committee referred to as “the Mechanism”. The “Mechanism” is chaired by the USA. Accordingly the guarantors have refused to acknowledge a single breach of the ceasefire because the US-controlled “Mechanism” calls them counter-terrorist operations aimed at disarming Hezbollah.
The United Nations defers to “the Mechanism” and thus to the USA, and the presence of UN peacekeeping troops in Southern Lebanon is therefore useless. Lebanon is now under control of the US/Israeli puppet administration of General Aoun and effectively being run by US Special Envoy Tom Barrack.
Barrack stated that the borders of Israel and Syria are meaningless and that “Israel will go where they want, when they want, and do what they want to protect the Israelis and their border to make sure on October 7th it never happens again”. This is from the “guarantor” of the Lebanese ceasefire agreement.
There can be no doubt that Trump’s US-chaired “Board of Peace” for Gaza will take exactly the same line as “the Mechanism” in Lebanon. It is axiomatic that Israel will never honor any agreement. They never have.
What we know from Lebanon is not just that the Israelis will break any agreement, but that the American “guarantors” will support their continued violence as “counter-terrorism”. While the Gaza peacekeeping force may not be UN blue-helmeted, it will also almost certainly have terms of engagement that defer to the US-chaired “Board of Peace”.
Back in February I discussed the failure of the Lebanese ceasefire agreement with the UN spokesman in Lebanon, and the primacy of the “Mechanism”. In light of the Gaza agreement negotiations, it is worth revisiting that interview.
Hamas were right to enter the ceasefire negotiations and the prisoner exchange is a good thing. I am not supportive of Hamas’s policy of taking prisoners, other than active service personnel, and I do not believe it has done their cause any good these last two years, particularly as Israel had taken more hostages than they have released in exchanges. The “hostage” narrative, however twisted and unfair, has muddied the waters and hurt the Palestinians. So I shall be pleased to see the end of that phase, and of course welcome the release of Palestinians.
Israel will still hold over 9,000 Palestinian hostages after the releases, and possibly many more.
I will not go through the 20 points of the Agreement, all of which are just headings requiring the substance. But the Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza is of course fundamental, and entirely obscure in its timing and completeness. The “first stage” still leaves the Israeli military in over 60% of Gaza.
Netanyahu has made plain to the Israeli public that he has no intention of the Israeli military leaving Gaza, or of agreeing to a Palestinian state. That this agreement is a phoney is not hidden at all – Israel is not pretending it will honour it.
But if the process gets three things into Gaza – food, journalists and peacekeepers – that will be a major improvement. I do not think you should underestimate the impact on world opinion once journalists can actually get into Gaza, witness the destruction and interview people. There is nobody more cynical than I about the mainstream media, but they are not going to be able to prevent the truth from bleeding into their coverage.
The victory for Palestine will take a few years. Israel is now a pariah state in the eyes of the majority of the inhabitants of this globe, and that will accelerate. Hamas are negotiating from a position of weakness, it is true. We are apparently going to see formal colonialism restored in Gaza for a while. There is more pain to be endured. But the balance is shifting.
I have two quotes for you, one from the West and one from the East.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
They plan, and they plan, but Allah is the best of planners.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster, human rights activist, and former diplomat. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. The article is reprinted with permission from his website.
