Wednesday, July 03, 2024

ZIONIST AGRESSION AGAINST LEBANON
Lebanon says Israeli GPS jamming confounding ground, air traffic

By AFP
July 2, 2024

Whacky location data on apps have caused confusion in Lebanon, as fears have grown of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah - Copyright AFP JOSEPH EID
Laure Al Khoury

Uber driver Hussein Khalil was battling traffic in Beirut when he found himself in the Gaza Strip — according to his online map, anyway — as location jamming blamed on Israel disrupts life in Lebanon.

“We’ve been dealing with this problem a lot for around five months,” said Khalil, 36.

“Sometimes we can’t work at all,” the disgruntled driver told AFP on Beirut’s chaotic, car-choked streets.

“Of course, we are losing money.”

For months, whacky location data on apps have caused confusion in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah militant group has been engaged in cross-border clashes with Israel.

The near-daily exchanges started after Hamas, Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally, launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering the ongoing war in Gaza.

In March, Beirut lodged a complaint with the United Nations about “attacks by Israel on Lebanese sovereignty in the form of jamming the airspace around” the Beirut airport.

Khalil showed AFP screenshots of apps displaying his locations not only in the Gazan city of Rafah — around 300 kilometres (185 miles) away — but also in east Lebanon near the Syrian border, when he was actually in Beirut.

With online maps loopy, Khalil said “one passenger phoned me and asked, ‘Are you in Baalbek?'” referring to a city in east Lebanon.

“I told her: ‘No, I’ll be at your location (in Beirut) in two minutes’.”

Numerous residents have reported their online map location as appearing at Beirut airport while they were actually elsewhere in the capital.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel has taken measures to disrupt Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality for the group and other opponents.



– Drones, guided missiles –



The Israeli army said in October that it disrupted GPS “in a proactive manner for various operational needs”.

It warned of “various and temporary effects on location-based applications”.

Specialist site gpsjam.org, which compiles geolocation signal disruption data based on aircraft data reports, reported a low level of disruption around Gaza on October 7.

But the next day, disturbances increased around the Palestinian territory and also along the border between Israel and Lebanon.

On June 28, the level of interference showing on the site was high above Lebanon and parts of Syria, Jordan and Israel.

An AFP journalist in Jerusalem said her location appeared as if she was in Cairo, Egypt’s capital about 400 kilometres away.

The interference has at times extended to European Union member Cyprus, some 200 kilometres from Lebanon, where AFP journalists have reported their GPS location appearing at Beirut airport instead of on the island.

“Israel is using GPS jamming to disrupt or interfere with Hezbollah’s communications,” said Freddy Khoueiry, global security analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at risk intelligence company RANE.

It is “also using GPS spoofing… to send false GPS signals, aimed at disrupting and hindering drones’ and precision-guided missiles’ abilities to function or hit their targets,” he added.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has “a large arsenal” of such GPS-assisted weapons, he noted.

The cross-border exchanges have killed more than 490 people in Lebanon — mostly fighters — according to an AFP tally, with 26 people killed in northern Israel, according to authorities there.

Fears have grown of all-out conflict between the foes that last went to war in 2006.



– ‘Compass and paper map’ –



Asked about GPS jamming in northern Israel, where Hezbollah has concentrated its attacks, a spokesperson for Israel’s defence ministry told AFP’s Jerusalem office that “currently, we are unable to discuss operational matters”.

Lebanon’s civil aviation chief Fadi El-Hassan said that since March, the body has asked pilots flying in or out of Beirut to “rely on ground navigation equipment and not on GPS signals due to the ongoing interference in the region”.

Ground navigation equipment is typically used as a back-up system.

Hassan expressed frustration that “in this technological age, a pilot who wants to land at our airport cannot use GPS due to Israeli enemy interference”.

Lebanon is ensuring “the maintenance of ground navigation equipment at all times in order to provide the necessary signals for pilots to land safely,” he said.

Avedis Seropian, a licenced pilot, said he had stopped using GPS in recent months.

“We got used to the situation. I don’t rely on (GPS) at all… I fly relying on a compass and paper map,” he told AFP.

But he said not having GPS, even as a fallback, was disconcerting.

When geolocation data is wrong and visibility is poor, “you can suddenly find yourself in a state of panic”, he said.

“That could lead to an accident or a disaster.”

Israel prepares for possible war with Hezbollah as Hamas conflict drags on

LEBANON HAS THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE 

Hamas has been weakened but could recover, concerned officials admit.

ByMatt Gutman
July 2, 2024

IDF orders more evacuations from southern Gaza
More than 250,000 civilians have been ordered to evacuate the southern city of Khan Younis as operations continue



TEL AVIV -- The Israeli military is preparing a phased pullout from Gaza and quietly pressing the government to broker a truce with Hamas as quickly as possible, as the military works to clear the decks ahead of what officials say could be a withering war with the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

One Israeli official said today that if the barometer is destroying Hamas’s pre-war capabilities – which included clearly designated battalions with sophisticated coordination and communications – and removing Hamas from as Gaza's government, then Israel has already achieved that.

Multiple Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have signaled that Israel will begin to draw down forces in Gaza as it enters into what it has called "Phase C" of its war, with a significantly reduced number of troops focusing on what one official described as “fighting Hamas hotspots and hunting high-value targets.”

Another Israeli official conceded to ABC News that “Hamas still has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza – that’s the main thing. We need to try to create an alternative.”


Black smoke billows following an Israeli air strike that targeted a house in the southern Lebanese villag...Show more
Rabih Daher/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s own status map, which depicts the fighting condition of all of Hamas’ 24 pre-war battalions, designates one of the battalions in Rafah as green, which means operational, and another as orange, which is semi-operational.


Hamas' continued influence in Gaza has not fully mitigated lawlessness there. with European and Israeli officials warning for months that the Gaza Strip could turn into “Mogadishu on the Mediterranean,” a reference to the decades of internecine fighting and instability in Somalia’s capital.

In high-level meetings in Washington last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed potential "day after" plans for Gaza, according to four U.S. and Israeli officials who spoke to ABC News.

One of the plans would comprise an international "board of directors" that U.S. officials are likening to a steering committee of nations that would include the UAE, Egypt, and possibly Jordan. Morocco would send peacekeepers to Gaza, with the U.S. somehow providing general oversight and command and control. The response from Arab states to the proposal has been lukewarm, a senior official with direct knowledge of the situation told ABC News.

MORE: What is Hezbollah? Lebanon's militant group has long been one of Israel's biggest foes


The "board of directors" would be coupled with a new a "bottom up" force that the U.S. would train and that would include contingents from the Palestinian Authority to lend it legitimacy, though not so many Palestinian contingents that Netanyahu, who has publicly dismissed any Palestinian Authority role in a future Gaza, would reject the plan, a senior Israeli official told ABC News.


An Israeli flag flies from a pole as behind smoke plumes rise from a fire in a field after rockets launched
Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images

The training of the Palestinian force in Gaza would be supervised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, United States Security Coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority who is based in Jerusalem. These units would begin to operate in small enclaves in Gaza.


Officials said it remains doubtful that these kinds of alternatives could be stood up quickly, which would potentially leave Hamas to control the power vacuum in Gaza. But a group of top Israeli officials interviewed this week said crushing an already debilitated Hamas, currently capable only of small-scale attacks on Israel, should be sidelined in favor of countering Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to the state.

MORE: Israel is 'closer to war' with Hezbollah than ever, senior Israeli official says


To that end, the officials said, Israel should muster forces and conserve ammunition for an impending confrontation with Hezbollah, which has boasted of tens of thousands of Iranian-trained fighters, many of them seasoned from fighting in Syria’s civil war, and further thousands of missiles and rockets that could well overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.

The Israeli officials said Israel has sufficient offensive munitions for a war with Hezbollah, but could use more from the U.S.

Hezbollah said it began its cross-border war with Israel on Oct. 8, following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, out of solidarity with the Palestinians. Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, told the Associated Press Tuesday, "If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion.”


An Israeli army main battle tank moves along an area near the border with the Gaza Strip and southern
Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

But Hezbollah also has signaled that it wouldn't agree to the U.S.-brokered deal until Israel ends the war in Gaza. The Israeli sources told ABC News that Hamas was stalling on committing to terms on the internationally brokered cease-fire knowing that a potential war with Hezbollah would significantly weaken Israel.

MORE: US sends USS Wasp assault ship and Marines to eastern Mediterranean


The larger issue is that regardless of the approach, it will take time, which is working against the process, U.S. and Israeli officials say, but is working in favor of Hamas. Multiple, multi-day operations in which Israel has reentered areas it cleared months ago and where Hamas has since regrouped have shown that the terrorist group has slowly and quietly reasserted itself in Gaza.

“Hamas has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza and that’s the main reason we need to try to create an alternative,” an Israeli official told ABC News. "You even see that over the effort Hamas has taken to control the looting of aid convoys."

Right now, Hamas has a head start, and it’s unclear whether an international force can be deployed, or a suitable local force can be trained, before it regains a potentially indomitable level of local control.

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