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‘US wields diplomacy as a weapon of mass destruction’
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor and expert on Hezbollah, has said that Israeli forces committed “a significant number of war crimes in Lebanon over the past 72 hours, facilitated by US political cover”.
As we’ve reported this week, US envoy Amos Hochstein held talks in Beirut on Monday with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Blinken was in Israel on Tuesday for meetings with Israeli leaders.
The Axios news website reported on Sunday that Israel had given Hochstein its conditions for ending the war, including a demand that the Israeli military be allowed “active enforcement” in Lebanon and the freedom to operate in the country’s airspace.
In a series of posts on X, Saad-Ghorayeb slammed the purported plan as one that “exclusively serves Israel’s interests and makes a mockery of Lebanon’s sovereignty”.
“Israel’s characteristic colonial hubris and grandiosity may explain its belief that it can subjugate Lebanon and force [Hezbollah] to capitulate despite failing to make any meaningful military gains,” she said. “What’s more perplexing is how the US, typically more rational than Israel, could expect this approach to succeed.”
ICRC calls for protection of hospitals and medical staff in Lebanon conflict
Shawky Amine Eddine, the humanitarian affairs adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera that “hospitals are beacons of hope and sanctuaries of human life” which is why they should be protected in wars.
Doctors and nurses “cannot save lives while they are worried about their own”, he added.
Israel waging ‘scorched earth campaign’ in Gaza, Lebanon: UN rights expert
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, says Israel’s destruction of villages in southern Lebanon shows that its objective “is not military, but extermination and annexation”.
“Israel doesn’t just wage war – in Gaza and now in Lebanon – but a scorched earth campaign that levels all houses, mosques, schools and signs of habitation,” Rajagopal added in a post on X.
