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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. |
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Northern Ireland25396 Posts
On January 07 2024 16:13 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2024 13:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Kinda hard to see Palestinians assimilating into Congolese society too well. Being a different race and not speaking the language in a place like that, Don't see it working out. Just a case of the Congo wanting some cash and Israel wanting these people out pronto so they can settle the land. Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” Also should note the vast majority of the 2 million affected are innocent civilians.Obviously Israels actions against them may cause them to become radicalised and anti-semitic (or moreso).Jews living overseas in countries these folks are forcefully relocated to should take note. You accidentally said the quiet part out loud again.
Is he wrong though?
I know very little about Congolese society so perhaps they’d be perfectly hospitable potential hosts. Generally speaking racial differences are still contentious, though they shouldn’t be in an ideal, logical world. And cultural differences even more so, although that’s much more reasonably predictable and understandable.
Never mind the rather gross ethnic cleansing overtones of the whole idea in the first place.
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The IDF has announced that North Gaza operation is complete. Guessing this the start of a long guerrila movement seeing how the IDF is still fighting off and on there... so it would appear that not all the tunnels have been discovered.
IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Saturday that the"dismantling of Hamas' military infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip has been completed."
Hagari outlined in the statement how Hamas operates throughout the region, utilizing civilian infrastructure and an uninvolved population. He announced that the dismantling of Hamas consists five objectives: targeting commanders, purging the area of terrorists, gathering intelligence, locating and destroying rockets, and eliminating the subterranean capabilities.
The IDF announced Saturday the death of a Nahal Brigade officer Lt. Col. Roee Yohay Yosef Mordechay who was killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip over the weekend.
Mordechay, 31, from Tel Aviv was appointed to be the next commander of Nahal’s 50th Battalion before he was killed. His death raises the toll of fallen troops in the ground offensive to 176.
Another soldier of the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion was seriously wounded in the same battle, the IDF says.
IDF announced on Saturday the completion of a widespread attack in Lebanese territory following rocket fire towards Israel. Fighter jets targeted two military facilities belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah, described by the military as "significant assets". One of them served as a ground-to-air missile unit for the terror group.
The Israeli Air Force and additional IDF forces also struck a series of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. According to the IDF, among the targeted sites were terror infrastructures, a terrorist cell, a launch site, and an operational command post.
Rocket sirens sounded throughout communities in northern Israel on Saturday following the IDF's attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. The military also reported a suspected enemy aircraft infiltrated Israel's airspace, and announced the incident was concluded shortly after.
Iran-backed terror organization Hezbollah took responsibility for a heavy rocket volley aimed at northern Israel on Saturday.
Source
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On January 07 2024 16:13 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2024 13:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Kinda hard to see Palestinians assimilating into Congolese society too well. Being a different race and not speaking the language in a place like that, Don't see it working out. Just a case of the Congo wanting some cash and Israel wanting these people out pronto so they can settle the land. Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” Also should note the vast majority of the 2 million affected are innocent civilians.Obviously Israels actions against them may cause them to become radicalised and anti-semitic (or moreso).Jews living overseas in countries these folks are forcefully relocated to should take note. You accidentally said the quiet part out loud again.
That being?
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Northern Ireland25396 Posts
Of all the world’s problems that shouldn’t be problems, race is probably number one, certainly top 3 anyway.
I don’t consider observing this as being in ‘lockstep’ with Nettles. Nor in a wider sense considering it a rather unethical proposition to begin with
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On January 07 2024 16:13 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2024 13:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Kinda hard to see Palestinians assimilating into Congolese society too well. Being a different race and not speaking the language in a place like that, Don't see it working out. Just a case of the Congo wanting some cash and Israel wanting these people out pronto so they can settle the land. Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” Also should note the vast majority of the 2 million affected are innocent civilians.Obviously Israels actions against them may cause them to become radicalised and anti-semitic (or moreso).Jews living overseas in countries these folks are forcefully relocated to should take note. You accidentally said the quiet part out loud again.
That's your takeaway? Palestinians aren't from the fucking Congo, it's not even nearby. There's no connection at all. It's like if the U.S. decided to annex Mexico and exile Mexicans to the Congo.
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It's not a real proposition anyway, I don't think. Obviously Palestinians aren't going to go to Congo. At its most serious it will be used by dishonest people to say "See we gave them the option of going to Congo so is it really Israel's fault if Palestinians are getting killed in the tens of thousands now"
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Hezbollah continues escalating attacks on Israel, firing another 60+ rockets into Israel today. Israel retaliates by taking out rocket launch sites.
Hezbollah said it launched 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron and that it scored direct hits. The group said rockets also struck two army posts near the border. The Israeli military said about 40 rockets were fired toward Meron and that a base was targeted, but made no mention of the base being hit. It said it struck the Hezbollah cell that fired the rockets.
The cross-border escalation came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was kicking off an urgent Middle East diplomatic tour, his fourth to the region since the Israel-Hamas war erupted three months ago.
In recent weeks, Israel has been scaling back its military assault in the north of the territory and pressing its heavy offensive in the south, vowing to crush Hamas.
Blinken began his latest Mideast trip in Turkey on Saturday. The Biden administration believes that Turkey and others can exert influence, particularly on Iran and its proxies, to tamp down fears of a regional conflagration. Those fears have spiked in recent days with incidents in the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
In talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Blinken sought Turkish support for still nascent plans for post-war Gaza that could include monetary or in-kind contributions to reconstruction efforts and some form of participation in a proposed multinational force that could operate in or adjacent to the territory.
From Turkey, Blinken was traveling to Turkish rival and fellow NATO ally Greece to meet Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at his residence on the Mediterranean island of Crete. Mitsotakis and his government have been supportive of U.S. efforts to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spreading, and have signalled their willingness to assist should the situation deteriorate.
Other stops on the trip include Jordan, followed by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday. Blinken will visit Israel and the West Bank next week before wrapping up the trip in Egypt.
Source
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To think it is odd seeing politicians of other countries be lunatics and use foreign policy to stay in power. We in the US are familiar with our country having a monopoly on such people... Biden could easily put this to bed by stating he will only approve Humanitarian aid going forward, no armaments etc. Allow Congress, and the Senate take the heat going forward. But for some reason he won't do that.
ISTANBUL — President Biden has dispatched his top aides to the Middle East with a critical objective: Prevent a full-blown war from erupting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has made clear it views as untenable the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border and may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon.
“We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”
U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.
In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.
More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a longtime U.S. adversary with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to U.S. officials, who say the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is seeking to steer clear of a wider war. In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah vowed a response to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But that view is not uniformly held within Israel’s government.
Since Hamas’s October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, U.S. officials said. That prospect has faced sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict — an eventuality that could compel the United States to respond militarily on Israel’s behalf.
Officials fear that a full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 and entail a massive evacuation of all of northern Israel,” said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
Hezbollah may strike deeper into Israel than before, hitting sensitive targets like petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region. “I don’t think it would be limited to these two antagonists,” he said.
The threat of a wider conflict continued to grow Saturday as Hezbollah launched about 40 rockets into Israel in response to its suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and six others in an airstrike in suburban Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, days earlier.
In recent weeks, Israel’s regular shootouts with Hezbollah along the border have grown more aggressive, drawing private rebukes from Washington, said U.S. officials.
According to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Post, the IDF has hit the positions of the U.S.-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) more than 34 times since Oct. 7, officials familiar with the matter said.
The United States views the LAF as the principal defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a key counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
On Dec. 5, four rounds of Israeli tank fire resulted in the killing of one LAF soldier and the injury of three others. On Dec. 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit LAF facilities, injuring an LAF soldier who inhaled the noxious fumes. On Nov. 4, Israeli fire against an LAF position at Sarda left a “large hole in a LAF structure,” according to the U.S. intelligence. Some details of these attacks were reported previously by CNN.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, but the White House National Security Council confirmed that Washington has conveyed to Israel that attacks on LAF and Lebanese civilians are “completely unacceptable.”
A National Security Council official said the Biden administration has been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue and has said Lebanese Armed Forces injuries and fatalities are not acceptable.
The official also said a priority was maintaining the credibility of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that the international community should be doing everything it can to bolster and support them, as they would be a vital component of any “day after” scenario in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is weakened and poses less of a threat to Israel.
The official emphasized, though, that Hezbollah is a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has a right to defend itself.
An Israeli official told The Post that Israel does not deliberately target LAF positions and blamed Hezbollah for ratcheting up tensions.
“Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, unprovoked, on October 8th and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of projectiles. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.
“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The state of Israel will not return to the prewar status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border,” the official added.
When Israeli officials first floated the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the opening days of the Gaza conflict, U.S. officials immediately raised objections, said a senior administration official.
Israeli officials initially were convinced that the Lebanese militant group was behind the Hamas incursion and had received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after Oct. 7, according to two senior U.S. officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would miss the signs of another violent assault.
Biden was on the phone up to three times a day, the senior administration official said, in part working to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have resulted in “all hell breaking loose,” the official said. The Israelis’ deep fears about the threat influenced Biden’s decision to fly to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according to one of the senior officials.
The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, said White House and State Department officials, but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.
“They have a freer hand to escalate,” said a U.S. official.
Another U.S. official said that the forces Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed to the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of combat. But Israel’s air force is also overworked, having conducted constant strikes since the war began in October, said the official, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment that an escalation in Lebanon would spread Israeli forces thin.
Pilots are tired, and airplanes have to be maintained and refitted, the official said. They would face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has little in the way of antiaircraft defenses to shoot down attacking planes.
On Thursday, Biden sent special envoy Amos Hochstein to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions at the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to start negotiating a land demarcation agreement that could delineate where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an effort to stabilize the situation.
U.S. and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government over a proposal that would have the Lebanese government take control of part of the Lebanon-Israel border, rather than Hezbollah, to help assuage Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
The White House declined to detail the plan.
“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” said the National Security Council official. “Getting Israeli and Lebanese citizens back into their homes, living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.”
U.S. officials concede that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while scores of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of Israel’s military campaign there.
Within the administration, there are differing perceptions about Netanyahu’s interest in a negotiated resolution to the Hezbollah conflict. One senior U.S. official said the Israeli leader’s pledge to create a “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is mere bluster aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict.
“The political logic for Netanyahu is to rebound after the historic failure of Oct. 7 and have some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, the Lebanon expert. “I’m not sure going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign will be far more challenging than the one in Gaza.”
When asked if political incentives are driving Netanyahu’s military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”
Before flying to Jordan, Blinken said reducing tensions at the border “is something that we’re very actively working on.”
“It’s clearly a strongly shared interest” among countries in the region, he said.
Source
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On January 08 2024 08:12 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:To think it is odd seeing politicians of other countries be lunatics and use foreign policy to stay in power. We in the US are familiar with our country having a monopoly on such people... Biden could easily put this to bed by stating he will only approve Humanitarian aid going forward, no armaments etc. Allow Congress, and the Senate take the heat going forward. But for some reason he won't do that. Show nested quote +ISTANBUL — President Biden has dispatched his top aides to the Middle East with a critical objective: Prevent a full-blown war from erupting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has made clear it views as untenable the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border and may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon.
“We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”
U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.
In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.
More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a longtime U.S. adversary with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to U.S. officials, who say the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is seeking to steer clear of a wider war. In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah vowed a response to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But that view is not uniformly held within Israel’s government.
Since Hamas’s October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, U.S. officials said. That prospect has faced sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict — an eventuality that could compel the United States to respond militarily on Israel’s behalf.
Officials fear that a full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 and entail a massive evacuation of all of northern Israel,” said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
Hezbollah may strike deeper into Israel than before, hitting sensitive targets like petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region. “I don’t think it would be limited to these two antagonists,” he said.
The threat of a wider conflict continued to grow Saturday as Hezbollah launched about 40 rockets into Israel in response to its suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and six others in an airstrike in suburban Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, days earlier.
In recent weeks, Israel’s regular shootouts with Hezbollah along the border have grown more aggressive, drawing private rebukes from Washington, said U.S. officials.
According to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Post, the IDF has hit the positions of the U.S.-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) more than 34 times since Oct. 7, officials familiar with the matter said.
The United States views the LAF as the principal defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a key counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
On Dec. 5, four rounds of Israeli tank fire resulted in the killing of one LAF soldier and the injury of three others. On Dec. 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit LAF facilities, injuring an LAF soldier who inhaled the noxious fumes. On Nov. 4, Israeli fire against an LAF position at Sarda left a “large hole in a LAF structure,” according to the U.S. intelligence. Some details of these attacks were reported previously by CNN.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, but the White House National Security Council confirmed that Washington has conveyed to Israel that attacks on LAF and Lebanese civilians are “completely unacceptable.”
A National Security Council official said the Biden administration has been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue and has said Lebanese Armed Forces injuries and fatalities are not acceptable.
The official also said a priority was maintaining the credibility of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that the international community should be doing everything it can to bolster and support them, as they would be a vital component of any “day after” scenario in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is weakened and poses less of a threat to Israel.
The official emphasized, though, that Hezbollah is a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has a right to defend itself.
An Israeli official told The Post that Israel does not deliberately target LAF positions and blamed Hezbollah for ratcheting up tensions.
“Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, unprovoked, on October 8th and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of projectiles. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.
“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The state of Israel will not return to the prewar status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border,” the official added.
When Israeli officials first floated the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the opening days of the Gaza conflict, U.S. officials immediately raised objections, said a senior administration official.
Israeli officials initially were convinced that the Lebanese militant group was behind the Hamas incursion and had received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after Oct. 7, according to two senior U.S. officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would miss the signs of another violent assault.
Biden was on the phone up to three times a day, the senior administration official said, in part working to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have resulted in “all hell breaking loose,” the official said. The Israelis’ deep fears about the threat influenced Biden’s decision to fly to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according to one of the senior officials.
The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, said White House and State Department officials, but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.
“They have a freer hand to escalate,” said a U.S. official.
Another U.S. official said that the forces Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed to the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of combat. But Israel’s air force is also overworked, having conducted constant strikes since the war began in October, said the official, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment that an escalation in Lebanon would spread Israeli forces thin.
Pilots are tired, and airplanes have to be maintained and refitted, the official said. They would face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has little in the way of antiaircraft defenses to shoot down attacking planes.
On Thursday, Biden sent special envoy Amos Hochstein to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions at the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to start negotiating a land demarcation agreement that could delineate where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an effort to stabilize the situation.
U.S. and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government over a proposal that would have the Lebanese government take control of part of the Lebanon-Israel border, rather than Hezbollah, to help assuage Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
The White House declined to detail the plan.
“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” said the National Security Council official. “Getting Israeli and Lebanese citizens back into their homes, living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.”
U.S. officials concede that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while scores of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of Israel’s military campaign there.
Within the administration, there are differing perceptions about Netanyahu’s interest in a negotiated resolution to the Hezbollah conflict. One senior U.S. official said the Israeli leader’s pledge to create a “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is mere bluster aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict.
“The political logic for Netanyahu is to rebound after the historic failure of Oct. 7 and have some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, the Lebanon expert. “I’m not sure going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign will be far more challenging than the one in Gaza.”
When asked if political incentives are driving Netanyahu’s military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”
Before flying to Jordan, Blinken said reducing tensions at the border “is something that we’re very actively working on.”
“It’s clearly a strongly shared interest” among countries in the region, he said. Source
That's because it is Biden's policy to support Israel militarily no matter what.
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Northern Ireland25396 Posts
On January 08 2024 03:10 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2024 02:42 Severedevil wrote:On January 07 2024 16:13 JimmiC wrote:On January 07 2024 13:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Kinda hard to see Palestinians assimilating into Congolese society too well. Being a different race and not speaking the language in a place like that, Don't see it working out. Just a case of the Congo wanting some cash and Israel wanting these people out pronto so they can settle the land. Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” Also should note the vast majority of the 2 million affected are innocent civilians.Obviously Israels actions against them may cause them to become radicalised and anti-semitic (or moreso).Jews living overseas in countries these folks are forcefully relocated to should take note. You accidentally said the quiet part out loud again. That's your takeaway? Palestinians aren't from the fucking Congo, it's not even nearby. There's no connection at all. It's like if the U.S. decided to annex Mexico and exile Mexicans to the Congo. Yes my take away from Nettles post is that he says race is the number 1 reason it won’t work. This shouldn’t be shocking for anyone who’s read nettles posts over the years. Obviously forced migration is a terrible idea for any large group to anywhere. My other take away is that when it comes to this topic many people who profess to deeply care about certain values turn it off or ignore them from people and groups they consider allies against Israel.
I mean he gave equal weighting in that one sentence to race and language barriers, and one could assume he also meant general cultural differences although the man himself didn’t write that.
Who are the people and what values are they ostensibly ‘turning off’ when it comes to this topic? Sometimes people will agree on something even if they’re at loggerheads on almost every other issue of the day.
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On January 08 2024 13:19 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2024 08:12 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:To think it is odd seeing politicians of other countries be lunatics and use foreign policy to stay in power. We in the US are familiar with our country having a monopoly on such people... Biden could easily put this to bed by stating he will only approve Humanitarian aid going forward, no armaments etc. Allow Congress, and the Senate take the heat going forward. But for some reason he won't do that. ISTANBUL — President Biden has dispatched his top aides to the Middle East with a critical objective: Prevent a full-blown war from erupting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has made clear it views as untenable the regular exchange of fire between its forces and Hezbollah along the border and may soon launch a major military operation in Lebanon.
“We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”
U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.
In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.
More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a longtime U.S. adversary with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to U.S. officials, who say the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is seeking to steer clear of a wider war. In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah vowed a response to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But that view is not uniformly held within Israel’s government.
Since Hamas’s October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, U.S. officials said. That prospect has faced sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict — an eventuality that could compel the United States to respond militarily on Israel’s behalf.
Officials fear that a full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 and entail a massive evacuation of all of northern Israel,” said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
Hezbollah may strike deeper into Israel than before, hitting sensitive targets like petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region. “I don’t think it would be limited to these two antagonists,” he said.
The threat of a wider conflict continued to grow Saturday as Hezbollah launched about 40 rockets into Israel in response to its suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and six others in an airstrike in suburban Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, days earlier.
In recent weeks, Israel’s regular shootouts with Hezbollah along the border have grown more aggressive, drawing private rebukes from Washington, said U.S. officials.
According to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Post, the IDF has hit the positions of the U.S.-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) more than 34 times since Oct. 7, officials familiar with the matter said.
The United States views the LAF as the principal defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a key counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
On Dec. 5, four rounds of Israeli tank fire resulted in the killing of one LAF soldier and the injury of three others. On Dec. 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit LAF facilities, injuring an LAF soldier who inhaled the noxious fumes. On Nov. 4, Israeli fire against an LAF position at Sarda left a “large hole in a LAF structure,” according to the U.S. intelligence. Some details of these attacks were reported previously by CNN.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, but the White House National Security Council confirmed that Washington has conveyed to Israel that attacks on LAF and Lebanese civilians are “completely unacceptable.”
A National Security Council official said the Biden administration has been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue and has said Lebanese Armed Forces injuries and fatalities are not acceptable.
The official also said a priority was maintaining the credibility of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that the international community should be doing everything it can to bolster and support them, as they would be a vital component of any “day after” scenario in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is weakened and poses less of a threat to Israel.
The official emphasized, though, that Hezbollah is a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has a right to defend itself.
An Israeli official told The Post that Israel does not deliberately target LAF positions and blamed Hezbollah for ratcheting up tensions.
“Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, unprovoked, on October 8th and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of projectiles. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.
“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The state of Israel will not return to the prewar status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border,” the official added.
When Israeli officials first floated the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the opening days of the Gaza conflict, U.S. officials immediately raised objections, said a senior administration official.
Israeli officials initially were convinced that the Lebanese militant group was behind the Hamas incursion and had received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after Oct. 7, according to two senior U.S. officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would miss the signs of another violent assault.
Biden was on the phone up to three times a day, the senior administration official said, in part working to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have resulted in “all hell breaking loose,” the official said. The Israelis’ deep fears about the threat influenced Biden’s decision to fly to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according to one of the senior officials.
The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, said White House and State Department officials, but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.
“They have a freer hand to escalate,” said a U.S. official.
Another U.S. official said that the forces Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed to the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of combat. But Israel’s air force is also overworked, having conducted constant strikes since the war began in October, said the official, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment that an escalation in Lebanon would spread Israeli forces thin.
Pilots are tired, and airplanes have to be maintained and refitted, the official said. They would face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has little in the way of antiaircraft defenses to shoot down attacking planes.
On Thursday, Biden sent special envoy Amos Hochstein to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions at the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to start negotiating a land demarcation agreement that could delineate where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an effort to stabilize the situation.
U.S. and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government over a proposal that would have the Lebanese government take control of part of the Lebanon-Israel border, rather than Hezbollah, to help assuage Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
The White House declined to detail the plan.
“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” said the National Security Council official. “Getting Israeli and Lebanese citizens back into their homes, living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.”
U.S. officials concede that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while scores of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of Israel’s military campaign there.
Within the administration, there are differing perceptions about Netanyahu’s interest in a negotiated resolution to the Hezbollah conflict. One senior U.S. official said the Israeli leader’s pledge to create a “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is mere bluster aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict.
“The political logic for Netanyahu is to rebound after the historic failure of Oct. 7 and have some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, the Lebanon expert. “I’m not sure going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign will be far more challenging than the one in Gaza.”
When asked if political incentives are driving Netanyahu’s military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”
Before flying to Jordan, Blinken said reducing tensions at the border “is something that we’re very actively working on.”
“It’s clearly a strongly shared interest” among countries in the region, he said. Source That's because it is Biden's policy to support Israel militarily no matter what. America's*
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On January 08 2024 02:57 Nebuchad wrote:
It's not a real proposition anyway, I don't think. Obviously Palestinians aren't going to go to Congo. At its most serious it will be used by dishonest people to say "See we gave them the option of going to Congo so is it really Israel's fault if Palestinians are getting killed in the tens of thousands now"
It's not real no. The story is already denied by Israel and Congo.
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On January 09 2024 01:04 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2024 17:16 WombaT wrote:On January 08 2024 03:10 JimmiC wrote:On January 08 2024 02:42 Severedevil wrote:On January 07 2024 16:13 JimmiC wrote:On January 07 2024 13:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Kinda hard to see Palestinians assimilating into Congolese society too well. Being a different race and not speaking the language in a place like that, Don't see it working out. Just a case of the Congo wanting some cash and Israel wanting these people out pronto so they can settle the land. Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.” Also should note the vast majority of the 2 million affected are innocent civilians.Obviously Israels actions against them may cause them to become radicalised and anti-semitic (or moreso).Jews living overseas in countries these folks are forcefully relocated to should take note. You accidentally said the quiet part out loud again. That's your takeaway? Palestinians aren't from the fucking Congo, it's not even nearby. There's no connection at all. It's like if the U.S. decided to annex Mexico and exile Mexicans to the Congo. Yes my take away from Nettles post is that he says race is the number 1 reason it won’t work. This shouldn’t be shocking for anyone who’s read nettles posts over the years. Obviously forced migration is a terrible idea for any large group to anywhere. My other take away is that when it comes to this topic many people who profess to deeply care about certain values turn it off or ignore them from people and groups they consider allies against Israel. I mean he gave equal weighting in that one sentence to race and language barriers, and one could assume he also meant general cultural differences although the man himself didn’t write that. Who are the people and what values are they ostensibly ‘turning off’ when it comes to this topic? Sometimes people will agree on something even if they’re at loggerheads on almost every other issue of the day. Guaranteed on other threads no one would have read it the way you and a bunch of others have given Nettles history. The dog pile would have been all over it, but that is saved for people who don’t hate Isreal strong enough on this thread. It’s crazy.
Checkmate libtards 😎
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Hard not to remember the equally pointless idea that Eichmann and the nazi apparatus contemplated of moving all european jews to Madagascar before settling for the « final solution »
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A friend of mine who lives in Egypt has an interesting perspective on how Egypt fits into this whole mess. Word on the street is that the US tried to convince Egypt to accept refugees who want to flee Gaza. Not relocation or anything, but people who are like "get me the fuck out of here, I don't give a shit about jihad bullshit over some land". This friend of mine is full-ass "Israel should not exist at all" and whatnot and insists the Egyptian government would be voted out in favor of a government that favors directly military action against Israel if there was an actual free election.
Anyway, the "seems reliable and true" rumors are that Egypt was offered full debt forgiveness and a clean slate if they just open their border to allow people to flee if they want to. Egypt supposedly declined this supposed offer, and my friend thinks Egypt's government believes they can simply play the waiting game until things get so bad that the west will pay any price.
According to my friend, the Egyptian economy is essentially in shambles and the country is kind of crumbling. His theory is that the government of Egypt plans to let things go to shit in Gaza/Israel until they receive an amazing offer they can't refuse. Imagine if Egypt got a freakishly large payout and continuous "aid" to be the curators of Gaza. All that UN money, with tons of extra for rebuilding, lots of US money for this or that, all debts forgiven, would basically supercharge Egypt's economy and be a bailout of sorts that would prevent a lot of dumpster fire situations they are rapidly approaching.
Whether an offer was ever made or not, I do think my friend is right about the fact that Egypt has every incentive to just keep the gates closed and wait for a better offer. Especially with how corrupt Egypt's government is. Having a huge pipe of Western/UN aid to siphon bits here and there through corruption and personal enrichment would be a great deal for them and would allow them to save their economy. As I see it, Egypt has no real incentive to "help" in any way. But Egypt is the only one other than Israel with an actual border with Gaza. So any solution is likely going to include Egypt either way.
What I think will happen is Gaza gets chopped in half at the choke point. Egypt becomes the curator of all the Palestinians who fled from the North. Egypt and Israel form a DMZ of sorts. Northern Gaza basically entirely empty and destroyed from the war. Northern Gaza becomes a part of Israel. Southern Gaza becomes part of Egypt. Probably the closest we'll ever get to a "long term solution". Treating Gaza and WB as separate entities makes the most sense in many ways. Figuring out Gaza right now would likely be a big benefit. But the world will need to realllly make it worth Egypt's time.
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EPT
