Ben Gvir calls for execution of Palestinian prisoners with ‘shot in the head’
The Cradle, Jun 30 2024
Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, WAFA reported on Jun 30. In a video statement, Ben-Gvir said that Israel should kill Palestinian prisoners with a “shot to the head.” He urged the passing of the bill in the Israeli Knesset for executing prisoners, saying they should be given just enough food to keep them alive until the law is enacted.
The Israeli Knesset’s General Assembly approved the preliminary reading of the bill in early Mar 2023. The proposed law, which requires two more readings in the Knesset to go into effect, mandates courts to impose the death penalty on Palestinians who have carried out resistance operations against Israeli occupiers. The law describes these Palestinians as those “committing a murder offense motivated by racism and intending to harm the State of Israel.”
In April, Ben Gvir advocated the killing of Palestinian prisoners to alleviate “overcrowding” in Israeli prisons. Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in its network of prisons and detention camps, where torture and rape of both men and women is widespread.
Arrests and abductions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have skyrocketed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October. The Palestinian Prisoners Association (PPA) told Reuters earlier this month that Israel has abducted more than 9,170 Palestinians from the West Bank since Oct 7. Israel has “forcibly disappeared” thousands more from Gaza and refused to disclose how many Palestinians from Gaza it was holding. Former detainee Ataa Shbat said following his release:
We have left, but we call on you to get the rest out. Many detainees believe their families assume they are dead. People are dying. Torture which you cannot imagine unless you taste it. Suffering which you cannot imagine unless you taste it.
At least 18 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since the start of the war, the PPA added, including six from Gaza. Among them was orthopedic surgeon Adnan al-Bursh, who Israeli forces tortured to death after detaining him for four months.
Some of the most horrific accounts of Israeli torture have emerged from former detainees at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center. The NYT reported in early June that detainees from Gaza were being raped with hot metal rods and shocked in electric chairs at the desert camp.
The NYT report follows revelations reported by CNN that Israeli guards were shackling Palestinian detainees so tightly that inexperienced doctors at the camp were forced to amputate their limbs. CNN added that at Sde Teiman, the “air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.”
Fierce clashes shake Gaza as Hamas says ‘no progress’ in truce talks
The Cradle, Jun 30 2024
Fierce clashes between the Israeli army and the Palestinian resistance are raging in northern Gaza as well as the southernmost city of Rafa as progress to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal remains stalemated.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that it carried out drone strikes on Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood in the north of the strip, where troops are currently operating and taking heavy losses. Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, announced several deadly operations against Israeli forces in Shujaiya on Jun 29, adding that helicopter flights to evacuate dead and wounded soldiers were ongoing. The Qassam Brigades said in one of its several statements on Saturday:
Our Mujahidin continue to confront the Zionist forces penetrating the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, through complex ambushes prepared in advance, causing deaths and injuries among their ranks, with more than one plane landing to evacuate them.
Other groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Quds Brigades, are involved in the fighting. The Israeli military announced on Jun 29 that two of its soldiers were killed in Shujaiya on Friday Jun 28. The Qassam Brigades announced several deadly operations and ambushes against Israeli troops in Gaza City and in Rafah on Friday.
Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling pounded Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood on Jun 27 as the army rolled into the area with its tanks and ordered Palestinians to evacuate, marking the start of the first Israeli ground operations in the neighborhood since the beginning of the war. The north Gaza neighborhood is where the Israeli army has faced some of the stiffest resistance since the start of the ground war on Oct 27.
Operations in the north are taking place despite Tel Aviv’s announcement in January that Hamas had been “dismantled” there. Israeli troops are also currently facing fierce resistance in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa area, north of the strip, as well as Rafah in the south. The commander of the army’s 12th Brigade said on Jun 29 that fighting in Rafah was “slow” and “difficult.” Meanwhile, efforts to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement remain stalemated. Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said on Saturday said there has been “no progress” in talks. He tweeted:
Regarding US messages and proposals being circulated, we say that the occupation’s position is still evading commitment to the ceasefire.
Hamdan added that Hamas would “deal positively” with any proposal that ends the war. Axios reported on Jun 29, citing anonymous officials, that the Biden administration has been working on “new language” for the latest truce proposal “in an effort to bridge the gaps between the parties and reach an agreement.” Netanyahu said last week that he would only accept a “partial deal” that would bring back some prisoners and allow Tel Aviv to continue the war. Under pressure, Netanyahu said a day later that he was still committed to the proposal but reiterated that he would not end the war until Hamas was defeated.
Hamas took issue with Biden’s push for a deal last month, given that the proposal being advanced did not include a permanent ceasefire and end to the war in the first stage, but instead a “temporary cessation of hostilities” that would be followed by open-ended talks for a permanent ceasefire. Given the proposal does not guarantee an end to the war and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, Hamas’ main terms, the resistance group proposed amendments to the initiative earlier this month. A senior Israeli negotiator cited in Hebrew media at the time said Hamas’ proposed amendments constituted a “total refusal” of a deal and vowed that Israel will continue the war.
Israel FM says Iran ‘deserves to be destroyed’ for promising to defend Lebanon
The Cradle, Jun 30 2024
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Jun 30 that Iran deserves to be destroyed for vowing to support Hezbollah in resisting a possible all-out Israeli war on Lebanon. In a tweet on Friday, Iran’s mission to the UN said that Tehran considers Israel’s threats to invade Lebanon as “psychological warfare,” but “should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue.” The Iranian mission also said that if Israel invades Lebanon, “all options, including the full involvement of all resistance fronts, are on the table.” Resistance factions in Iraq and Yemen continue to coordinate with Iran and Hezbollah to oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide.
In response, the Israeli foreign minister stated on social media, “A regime that threatens destruction deserves to be destroyed.” He also said Israel will act with “full force” against Hezbollah if it does not stop firing at Israel from Lebanon and withdraw from the border. Though Katz is a member of Israel’s security cabinet, Netanyahu and Gantz are viewed as dictating Israel’s war policy. Netanyahu said last week that the “intense phase of the war with Hamas is about to end” and that the army’s focus may shift to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
The Israeli military claimed in January that it had dismantled Hamas’ military infrastructure in northern Gaza. However, the Palestinian resistance movement, along with other groups, including Al-Quds Brigade, Mujahidin Brigades, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, continue to fight occupying Israeli troops across Gaza. Over the past three days, major fighting between fighters from Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and Israeli troops has been taking place in Shujaiya and Tal al-Hawa in northern Gaza, as well as in the southernmost city of Rafah.
Arab League drops Hezbollah ‘terrorist’ designation
The Cradle, Jun 30 2024
The Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League announced on Jun 29 that the body had canceled its designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Hossam Zaki said in a statement televised live on Egypt’s Al-Qahera news channel:
In previous Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions leading to the severing of communication, based on these decisions. The member states of the League agreed that the label of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed. The designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization no longer applies. The Arab League does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.
Al-Akhbar reported on Friday that Zaki visited Beirut and met with the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Muhammad Raad, marking the first contact between the league and Lebanon’s resistance in over ten years. An Arab League statement on Jun 28 said that Zaki met with other Lebanese officials, discussing de-escalation on the country’s southern border, as well as Lebanon’s presidential vacuum. The Arab League designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in Mar 2016, shortly after GCC countries labeled it as such. At the time, the League declared:
We call upon Hezbollah to cease promoting extremism and sectarianism, refrain from meddling in the internal affairs of countries, and withhold any support for terrorism and terrorists in the region.
The decision came three years after Hezbollah entered the war in Syria to help government troops battle extremist groups, which also posed a significant threat to Lebanon and its security. The years that followed Hezbollah’s entry into the Syrian conflict saw a large-scale propaganda campaign against the group, led namely by western and Gulf media. Zaki’s announcement comes as Hezbollah has been launching daily operations against Israeli border sites in support of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. The attacks have emptied over 40 settlements and have decimated the economy, business, education, and daily life across Israel’s north.
Tel Aviv has recently intensified threats against Lebanon over Hezbollah’s operations, and said that battle plans have been approved for expanding its already brutal campaign of airstrikes on south Lebanon into a wider-scale operation. Hezbollah has vowed not to stop its operations until the war in Gaza is brought to an end, saying it will fight “without limits, rules, or restraints” if Israel waged a broader war against Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant this week said Israel is “not looking for war” and that a diplomatic solution was “preferable.”
If the war expands, will western facilities become the new target banks?
The Cradle’s Military Correspondent, Jun 28 2024
Israel’s brutal, nine-month military assault on Gaza has full support from several western-allied states, not only in supplying the occupation army’s war machine with a broad range of armaments and ammunition but also through direct military participation. The United States and Britain, for example, have provided vital reconnaissance and intelligence data and have sent their special forces to assist Israel in military operations. A Jun 8 NYT report revealed that US forces assisted the Israelis in retrieving four Israeli captives from Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 274 Palestinian civilians and three additional captives and leaving over 698 wounded. According to the paper’s Israeli sources, the US and UK provided intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel could not obtain on its own.
On May 29, the Declassified UK media project reported that London authorized an unprecedented 60 Israel-bound flights using cargo planes that took off from the UK’s RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus, a facility covertly used by the USAF to move weapons to Israel. The British government has not revealed the content of the air cargo transported, and maintains that no “lethal aid” is included. London instead claims that RAF flights to the occupation state are used to support its “diplomatic engagement” with Tel Aviv and repatriate British subjects, an odd use of military aircraft when Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport is still operational for regular passenger travel. London has vigorously invoked its D-Notice since just after the war’s onset, a military and security directive aimed at preventing media outlets from publishing information that could harm national security, specifically relating to British airborne Special Forces (SAS) operations in Gaza. No further information has been revealed since the directive was issued on Oct 28 2023.
But all those concealment efforts were cracked open during Israel’s disproportionate military operation to secure the release of captives during the recent Nuseirat camp fiasco. Trending videos appeared of an Israeli helicopter landing next to the recently-installed $320m US’ aid pier’ and of ‘aid trucks’ carrying special ops teams that were flanked by armored vehicles during the operation. Media then reported that dozens of US and UK drones assisted in the Nuseirat camp assault, ostensibly by providing reconnaissance services to the Israeli military. These incidents highlight not only direct western military participation in the war on Gaza but also the brazen exploitation of diplomatic cover or humanitarian work to prepare and carry out military actions that have led to mass civilian casualties and war crimes, as described by many UN institutions. The question now is whether western facilities and troops will come under target as the war expands, potentially to Lebanon, given the evident collusion of western states in Israel’s aggressions – especially those in flagrant violation of international norms and law.
Although the use of embassies and civilian institutions, in the modern sense, as bases for intelligence-gathering and launching special missions is not a new practice and dates back to at least the nineteenth century, current developments in technology and computing have enabled these facilities to act as spying and eavesdropping centers, monitoring and storing information for an entire country. What was previously impossible has become reality through wireless communication and the Internet. Signal intelligence formerly gained by planting eavesdropping and listening devices can now be accessed via the common smartphone, with data funneled to these centers inside sovereign states.
Aerial view of the US embassy complex, northern Beirut.
Spawling approximately 174k sq m, around 13 km from Beirut, lies the second largest embassy in West Asia, and the world. The new US Embassy in Beirut is surpassed in size only by its counterpart in Baghdad’s “Green Zone.” Subtracting from the massive size of the embassy and its cost of nearly $1b, there are many questions about the need for such facilities and what they contain. The computer-generated images published by the embassy show a complex featuring multi-story buildings with tall glass windows, entertainment areas, a swimming pool surrounded by greenery, and views of the Lebanese capital. According to the project website, the complex includes an office, representative housing for employees, community facilities, and associated support facilities. In May 2023, the Intelligence Online website reported that the massive billion-dollar complex will include a data collection facility, preparing the site as the new regional headquarters for US intelligence. The report says:
Because of its proximity to Syria, Lebanon is considered a safe and strategic location for the deployment of intelligence agents already in the region as well as new personnel, who are selected directly from Washington-based agencies.
Construction of the new US embassy.
Although it is not possible to obtain precise information about the design of this embassy, the excavations below surface level, the use of reinforced concrete in the structure, and its fortified location on top of a hill suggest that there is more to its operations, especially since several precedents of the US Beirut diplomatic mission being implicated in the work of intelligence services exist. The 1983 bombing of the US Embassy revealed a high CIA death toll, with eight killed, including the CIA’s chief West Asia analyst and Near East director, Robert Ames, station chief Kenneth Haass, James Lewis, and most of the CIA’s Beirut employees. The embassy was not only used as a CIA hub but also as a key regional intelligence base due to Lebanon’s proximity to both the sea and two British NATO bases in southern Cyprus, Dhekelia and Akrotiri, from which reinforcements or helicopter transfers can arrive rapidly onto Lebanese soil. A recent example, in 2020, is Washington’s smuggling of its agent Amer al-Fakhouri from the US embassy using an Osprey helicopter.
British Watchtowers on Lebanon’s borders
On May 3, Lebanon announced the visit of an official delegation and a senior British intelligence officer the previous month to discuss the construction of new UK-built watchtowers. These are in addition to the more than three dozen watchtowers built by Britain during the Syrian war along the sensitive border between Lebanon and Syria. According to leaks reported by Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar, the British delegation had asked the Lebanese army “to approve a plan to establish watchtowers along the border with occupied Palestine, similar to those existing on the eastern and northern borders with Syria.” Following the low-profile visit, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati disclosed:
Establishing the towers and taking measures along the border are Israel’s conditions for stopping the war with Lebanon.
Last February, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry received an official Syrian protest note classifying the British watchtowers as a threat to Syrian national security on several levels. The main threat is the tower systems’ sensitive intelligence and espionage equipment, which “shines deep into Syrian territory and collects information about the Syrian interior.” According to Al-Akhbar’s report:
The information output from this equipment reaches the hands of the British, and the Israeli enemy benefits from the output to target Syrian territory and carry out strikes deep inside Syria.
The Syrian memorandum also refers to “the presence of some British officers at the towers.”
A 30ft British watchtower near the Lebanese-Syrian border.
The 38 British watchtowers that claim to assist Lebanese authorities in “combating smuggling” raise many questions instead, among them the reasoning behind the erection of such a large number of these structures. Why, too, do the towers contain thermal monitoring, eavesdropping, signal intelligence, and communications equipment, especially in light of the close relationship between Tel Aviv and London and the periodic presence of British officers in these towers under the pretext of training the Lebanese army? A commanding officer of the Lebanese Armed Forces, interviewed at length by The Cradle in Aug 2021, contradicts London’s public claims about the towers, saying:
The aim of the towers today is to monitor the movements of Hezbollah and the Syrians.
Dutch special forces in Dahiyeh
In March, Hezbollah captured several Dutch military forces operating covertly in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut which hosts several offices of the Lebanese Resistance. The detainees, discovered with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of military equipment on their persons and in the vehicles, claimed they were operating under cover of the Dutch Embassy in Lebanon and were found with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of military equipment and advanced communications devices on their persons and in their vehicles. During investigations, the Dutchmen claimed they had entered the southern suburb as part of a training exercise for evacuating Dutch citizens and diplomats in the event of a war. However, no Dutch nationals of the embassy resided in that area. It was also found that the servicemen had not communicated about their mission with the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese security services, or their country’s embassy. That same month, a Spanish citizen was arrested for filming inside the same southern suburb of Beirut, only to discover later that he had a diplomatic passport and that his phone contained advanced software that prevented access to its data. These events and a myriad of other examples show that some western governments continuously use western diplomatic and civilian facilities to gather intelligence or conduct special missions training in sovereign Lebanon.
These actions constitute a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on International Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which prohibit embassy diplomats from carrying out espionage activities. These actions don’t only place civilian populations in danger but also the thousands of professional diplomats in the country, all diplomatic missions, and the civilian facilities used as cover for illicit operations. They also drag otherwise immune diplomatic facilities into the legal framework of “hostilities,” intentionally or accidentally. This danger is reinforced by Israel’s repeated violations of diplomatic and international norms, which are either ignored or protected by western allied states. Israeli unprecedented military strikes against Iran’s consulate building in Damascus in April, for instance, did not receive the deserved condemnation from most western capitals, which helped it avoid the requisite UNSC censure. Since the basic value of international norms is the precedent and event on which this law is built, the possibility increases that such western-supported attacks will backfire wildly and lead to the retaliatory targeting of western facilities and embassies, all in the context of new legal precedents and customs created that no longer prohibit strikes on suspect non-military facilities. It is yet unknown to what extent western governments can expect to maintain their double standards in the application of international law and customs, especially if the Gaza war they are materially supporting expands to Lebanon or other West Asian regions.
The Resistance Axis, which has, in the past nine months, normalized military strikes on Israel, missile attacks on Israel-destined shipping vessels, and weekly strikes on US and UK naval fleets, are but one escalation away, as in a declared war on Lebanon, to create a new set of target banks that surpass their last ones. Does that then include the US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the region and the world, hosting 10k US employees and troops, or, closer to home, the second largest embassy in West Asia, the US embassy in Beirut? It is difficult to imagine that such facilities will remain immune if western involvement remains apparent, which we already know to be a constant, daily flow of armaments to fuel Israel’s war machinery and provide Tel Aviv with military intelligence and target banks. It will be even harder to protect diplomatic missions if they reveal themselves to essentially act as military command centers or intelligence hubs during the conduct of war. Targeting these facilities, which are already in breach of the Vienna Convention, can easily fall within the framework of self-defense and reciprocity as long as western states and Israel continue to normalize these illicit activities. If the Gaza war established entirely new rules of engagement throughout the region, do Israel’s western allies expect to escape unscathed in an expanded war? How do they think they can arm military aggression against a country and yet remain safely in its capital city?
Niqnaq 