Lebanon PM cancels trip to UN, says stopping Israel a priority
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has cancelled a trip to the United Nations General Assembly after deadly attacks in the past week, which he decried as a “horrific massacres”.
Mikati said in a statement that he cancelled his trip “in light of the developments linked to the Israeli aggression on Lebanon”, after an Israeli raid on Beirut’s southern suburbs and attacks on Hezbollah devices blamed on Israel.
He said that no priority was higher than stopping Israel’s “massacres” and the various wars it is waging and called on the international community to take a stand against such actions.
‘We’re dealing with criminal wars’
Israel has committed a war crime when it blew up thousands of communication devices in Lebanon, says Geoffrey Nice, a British human rights lawyer who led the prosecution of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.
“The pagers and walkie-talkies were of unknown position and destination when they were activated, therefore, it was impossible for Israel to contemplate whether the outcome would be proportionate,” Nice told Al Jazeera, speaking from Canterbury in the UK.
“The international community needs to confront that we’re dealing with criminal wars. And the only value the law can provide is to be encouraged to investigate,” he said.
‘Painful blows’ to Hezbollah require ‘dramatic retaliation to deter Israel’
Ali Rizk, a security and political affairs analyst based in Lebanon, says the decentralised nature of Hezbollah means it will “survive” after Israel’s spate of deadly attacks, but it will need to regroup.
“Hezbollah is facing something unique, I don’t think it’s faced anything like this before. The pager detonation was something not even the world has witnessed before. Israel has shown it’s capable of hitting high-value targets,” Rizk told Al Jazeera.
“Hezbollah does face this challenge security and intelligence-wise, and it remains to be seen how it’s going to deal with that particular situation. These painful blows have inflicted damage and they do require retaliation that is dramatically more different than the actions it’s taken thus far in order to deter Israel from committing such acts.”
Escalating tensions with Hezbollah unlikely to achieve meaningful gains
Author and analyst Gideon Levy says the Israeli army escalating tensions with Hezbollah and fighting wars on two fronts would be a “terrible mistake”.
“Israel has some very good claims, namely that 60,000 people are away from their homes in the north, and they have the right to return,” Levy, a columnist with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Al Jazeera.
“The question is will another war be a solution?”
Reflecting on the continuing conflict in Gaza, he noted Israel failed to meet its objectives there, and suggested a war in Lebanon will likely be even more devastating.
“I think that everything could have been totally different by achieving a ceasefire in Gaza and pulling out the troops from Gaza. This will solve, at least for now, the whole problem and save many, many lives,” Levy added.
