Paris meanwhile suggests French or international forces could replace Israeli troops at strategic sites from which they refuse to withdraw
ed note–as we have discussed many times as of late here on this humble little informational endeavor and its attending podcast, POTUS DJT’s statement viz ‘taking over and owning Gaza’ needs to be seen and understood as the mere ‘first step’ towards eventually moving US military assets to every corner where the Jypsy State borders Arab lands.
It will all be done (of course) under the pretext of ‘protecting’ poor little defenseless Israel, but what it actually represents is the very same campaign that began with the Romans under Pompey the Great in bringing peace and order to the region by clamping down on the insane Torah Terrorists who are incapable of creating/maintaining a sane, functioning state, and who must be handled within the immutable and irreconcilable confines of the nature of what they are–pirates, brigands, thieves, murderers and Ju-hadists who–like a skunk bringing its foul smell with it everywhere it goes, bring instability and war in every locale they inhabit.
France and the United States are trying to encourage Israel to fully withdraw from south Lebanon by suggesting the deployment of a peacekeeping force or even private security companies in strategic areas.
All Israeli troops were due to leave Lebanese territory by Tuesday, as the deadline passed for the full implementation of the ceasefire deal that brought an end to a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
While residential border towns are now free of Israeli soldiers, they nonetheless remain in five key areas of the south.
According to an American diplomatic source, Israel proposed to maintain control over these five points at least until 28 February to ‘supervise the safe return’ of Israelis to their communities near the Lebanese border.
However, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has strongly rejected this proposal.
A spokesperson for the presidency said that Lebanon will consider any continued Israeli presence as an occupation, and that it has the ‘right to adopt all means’ to ensure the withdrawal.
France, a member of the five-country oversight committee monitoring the ceasefire, similarly rejected the Israeli proposal.
A French diplomatic source told Middle East Eye that President Emmanuel Macron personally intervened, contacting Aoun and informing the Israelis that Lebanon rejected any continued occupation.
France offered to deploy French troops or UN peacekeepers at the sites instead.
However, according to Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji, Israel rejected the plan.
‘We are relying on international pressure… We are working with the international community to pressure Israel to withdraw in accordance with Resolution 1701,’ Rajji told local media on Monday, referring to the UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and is used as a basis for the current ceasefire.
US proposal: Private Military Contractors
The US, which co-brokered the ceasefire deal, offered to deploy private military contractors, according to an American diplomatic source.
This strategy is similar to what has started happening in the Netzarim corridor in the Gaza Strip, with private security firms sending staff to man a checkpoint.
A Lebanese source close to the presidency told MEE that Lebanon firmly rejected this idea.
While the US repeatedly said that it supports Israel’s full withdrawal from Lebanon, it has not yet overtly opposed the continued Israeli presence at the five sites.
Israel has already built fortifications at the locations, which have commanding views of both south Lebanon and northern Israel.
Al-Oweida hill, located between the Lebanese border towns of Meis al-Jabal and Blida, oversees many Israeli kibbutzim, according to a Lebanese security source.
Al-Hamamim hill near Khiam is 900 metres high, providing a clear view of Israel.
Jabal Blat is considered a strategically sensitive location between the Lebanese towns of Marwahin and Ramiya. It overlooks vast sections of southern Lebanon and allows for easy movement as it is an uninhabited area with little infrastructure.
Al-Labbouneh hill, located on the western side of Lebanon’s border with Israel, oversees much of Lebanon’s southwestern region, including the city of Tyre and the Burj al-Shamali Palestinian refugee camp.
Finally, al-Aziza hill overlooks the Israeli towns of Metula and Kiryat Shmona, which were regular targets for Hezbollah’s rocket attacks during the war.
Where does Hezbollah stand?
Leading up to the ceasefire agreement’s deadline, Hezbollah, the Lebanese movement that began clashing with Israel in October 2023, repeatedly said that it opposes any remaining Israeli presence in Lebanon.
Its leader, Naim Qassem, has said that his party will deal with Israelis in Lebanon as an occupying force should they remain. Hezbollah waged an insurgency against Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon, forcing it to retreat in 2000.
However, a source close to Hezbollah told MEE that the group ‘will not react to the Israeli side remaining in the five points and will leave that to the Lebanese state and the Lebanese army’.
‘In its calculations, [Hezbollah’s] priority is to reorganise its internal situation and rebuild the destroyed areas, especially since the next stage has many challenges regarding how the funds for reconstruction will arrive,’ the source added.
The party will hold a mass funeral for its late leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his brief successor Hashem Safieddine, both of whom were killed by Israel during the war, on Sunday.
There are no guarantees that Israel will end all attacks on Lebanon after Tuesday either.
A Lebanese security source said Israel may continue carrying out air strikes and assassinations across Lebanon, despite the agreement demanding respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Despite these complications, Lebanon’s southerners have flocked to the border areas, eager to return to their hometowns.
Most of the border villages from which Israel withdrew are razed to the ground.
Israel started clashing with Hezbollah in October 2023, when the Lebanese party launched what it called a ‘solidarity front’ with the Gaza Strip.
The situation escalated into a full-blown war in September 2024 when Israel launched a widespread bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israel’s attacks killed over 4,000 people in Lebanon, most of them between September and November of last year.
The war was ended by a US and French-brokered ceasefire in late November, which ordered Israel to leave Lebanese territory.
Israel was initially meant to withdraw by 26 January, but the truce was extended until 18 February.
Israel said that it needed more time before fully withdrawing and accused Lebanon of not fulfilling its part of the agreement, which involved Hezbollah retreating north of the Litani River to be replaced by the Lebanese army.
Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement hundreds of times, carrying out several deadly air strikes and shooting civilians returning to their villages, killing dozens.
Trump just authorized more 2000 lb bombs to israel, a state indicted for war crimes in Gaza after a self inflicted false flag attact to justify ethnic cleansing.
and genocide. Trump is totally controlled by Israel through Epstein blackmail. If you really think we are there to stop israel from expanding you are a fool or a liar. A false flag attack by israel will draw the usa into the conflict and americans will die for Satan’s synagogue.
ed note–here’s some REALLY SIMPLE MATH for you…
IF POTUS DJT were the things you are alleging, i.e. that he is ‘totally controlled by Israel through Epstein blackmail’, then none–NONE–of what he has done with relation to Gaza, the Middle East, Russia, and Ukraine would have been permitted to take place.
You got that? NOTHING.
Which then begs the obvious rational question–what’s the nature of the game being played here?
Here is a very simple answer for you–
POLITICS.
Like the commander of a SWAT team that has set up outside of a hostage situation with multiple kidnappers armed with lots of guns and explosives, great care has to be taken in order to mitigate the obvious dangers that exist to the hostages. The cops can’t just storm the place and ‘hope for the best’, but must wait things out, try and negotiate, and only as a last resort, storm in using overwhelming force in the hopes of saving whoever can be saved.
But according to your theory, the fact that the cops are not storming in means that they must, MUST be ‘in cahoots’ with the kidnappers and that the SWAT team is only there as a ‘charade’ to make it appear that there is a rescue operation taking place.
And lastly, your comments concerning us being either ‘fools’ or ‘liars’ viz our stance that POTUS DJT is INDEED out to contain Israel and prevent her from making good on her 3,000 years old plans for ‘Greater Israel’, why has he not just given her the green light to take Gaza, take the entirety of the West Bank, take Lebanon, etc, etc, etc, as Biden clearly did?
Sorry to have to break the bad news to you in such an uncomplimentary manner, but the only ‘fool’ in this discussion is you and those who think in the same one-dimensional way that you obviously do.
It’s all smoke and mirrors dummy. Raymond is right. You’re a fool, liar or both.
ed note–THIS is the best you can do? ‘Smoke and mirrors’ and ‘dummy’?
The only ‘smoke and mirrors’ involved any of this is the delusional and over-inflated sense of intellectualism that seems to predominate amongst ‘keyboard warriors’ such as yourself and your cohort Raymond. Whether it is ‘Trump is owned by d’Jooz’, ‘No one died at Sandy Hook’ or any of the other retarded ideas and concepts that serve as the daily fare from ‘troooof mooovmnt’ types such as yourself and Raymond, what it betrays is how dangerous ‘informational democracy’ is when the lower intellectual rungs of society are afforded the ability to express their under-informed opinions on complicated political matters and who in the end, wind up sounding more like children writing letters to Santa before Christmas than they do intelligent adults.
Now, don’t disappoint us, make sure to retort with something as vapid and vacuous as your original comment since this does indeed represent the very best that you can do.
It is patently obvious to those who spend more than a mere 3 seconds looking at the superficial externals of the Trump/Netanyahu relationship that there is more going on here behind the scenes than meets the eye.
Trump’s anger with Netanyahu is a fait accompli as he made clear with his ‘Fuck him’ comments to that Israeli writer years ago. He is also on the record going back 8 years that it is his determined plan to bring peace to the Middle East and to create a state for the Palestinian people. He secured the ceasefire deal and the returning of hostages by Hamas before he even took the oath of office, something that Netanyahu opposed and continues to oppose, but yet, according to some of the commenters here, Trump is ‘controlled by Israel’?
This obviously does not compute.
Unfortunately, I must agree with the ed note in one of the comments concerning the ‘democratization’ of information, as it has spawned legions of noise makers much like the ‘groggers’ used by the Jews in their yearly Purim festival and who think they are doing a service to the truth, but in fact, wind up being useful idiots for Zion.
I understand why some folks arrive at the conclusions that they do about Trump and his relationship with the Jews, but now, 8 years later and with everything that has taken place in that time period, there is no more justification for a lot of the incomplete and, quite frankly, hair-brained positions that a lot of people take.
People such as these look at the gestures he has made towards Israel and the Jews and conclude from this that he loves them and is out to do their bidding, but what about the gestures that Netanyahu makes concerning America being ‘Israel’s greatest friend’ and the American people being ‘Israel’s greatest allies’? Do were conclude from this that Netanyahu is actually telling the truth, or rather, that he is saying what he needs to say because of politics, but that what he really thinks and how he really feels is something entirely different?
A lot of this is pure emotion. The American people and quite frankly, most of the world is sick of the Jews and the control they wield over American politics and therefore lots of people always assume the worst when a US Prez like Trump does some of the things he is forced by political realities to do.
I do share the webmaster’s impatience with the ‘Raymond’ and ‘Draco’ types however, as they wind up doing a lot of damage to what might be our last best hope of preventing WWIII. They might have good intentions, MIGHT, but then again, they could just as easily be members of the Hasbarah division in Israel who sit at computer terminals all day a long and poison the public mind with disinformation.
Not saying they are, saying they could be.
At what point do the Israeli-Firsters in “our” Congress figure this out, or are told by OJI (the true majority Whip) that they need to go into attack mode against these deals and/or plans by Pres T?
IMHO, it is irrelevant what “others” do or want. The Zio-psychopaths, like their evil twin, the US, have never lived up to any agreement made, in their entire history(ies). On top of that, it/they ignore International Law and make up their own “law” as they go. Trump sees everything through the lens of his business brain. In some things, that may be helpful, but in the “business” of running a country or in international affairs, that can also be a hindrance, because governments are not, and have never been, about profit. That doesn’t mean they should be fiscally irresponsible, just that their focus is governance, not profit. Seems to me that the only “good” way out of this mess, is for Israel to collapse from within.
A little something for posters who indulge in ad-homenim attacks … when the writer is ‘attacked’ without sufficient and ample verifiable FACTS, the post just reflects poorly on your efforts or opinions, and consequently becomes a wasted-effort. Do bare-in-mind that the writer has invested considerable time-and-effort to try to be as informative about whatever is being proferred and rudeness, without justification serves no purpose at all, other than to infuriate and detract from ‘the message’. After all, given the chance, we can ALL be such great arm-chair critics.
For my tuppence-worth, ALL reasonable discussion is worth airing, and the writer/s here at TUT do a great job of presenting views which might or might not always accord with an individuals ‘mood-of-the-momment’ …
Personally, I believe that Trump is a slimy, slippery dick-head … but that is ONLY this mugs opinion.