TEHRAN – The Lebanese government has been left at the \u201cmercy\u201d of the US and Israel after signing on to the Washington-brokered framework agreement, argues Ziad Abu Rish, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College in New York.<\/p>\n
He noted that Zawthar al-Gharbiya remains the only village Israeli forces have withdrawn from under the framework agreement and Israel has since publicly declared it is no longer interested in creating additional withdrawal zones, Al Jazeera reported.<\/p>\n
The initial \u201cpilot zones\u201d, Abu Rish argued, were established as part of what \u201cwe could call the momentum of Lebanese-Israeli-US negotiations to undermine the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and its Lebanon clause\u201d.<\/p>\n
The first clause of the Iran-US framework agreement states:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Israel\u2019s refusal to withdraw further caused negotiations with Lebanon to \u201cend rather abruptly\u201d in Rome this month.<\/p>\n
Abu Rish went on to describe the agreement as \u201can attempt by a few personalities in the Lebanese government\u201d \u2013 specifically President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji \u2013 to \u201calign with the Israeli and US\u201d position on Lebanon and \u201cto portray Hezbollah as the problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
In doing so, \u201cthey have put all their eggs in the US-Israeli basket,\u201d he said, and \u201chave lost any leverage they have\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are now at the mercy of the United States and Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd what we\u2019ve seen in Gaza, what we\u2019ve seen in Syria and now what we\u2019re seeing in Lebanon is that the United States has absolutely no interest in pressuring Israel to take corrective action for its belligerent invasion and occupation of Lebanese and other territories.\u201d<\/p>\n
11 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon in one of the deadliest days of attacks since an agreement aimed at reducing hostilities was announced in June.<\/p>\n
Lebanon’s prime minister said seven people were killed in a strike on a house on the outskirts of Ansar, 70km (43 miles) south of the capital, Beirut. Three children and two women were among the dead.<\/p>\n
Later on Saturday, another round of strikes hit the town of Deir al-Zahrani, killing four and wounding five others, the Lebanese ministry of health said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEHRAN – The Lebanese government has been left at the \u201cmercy\u201d of the US and Israel after signing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[69647,17702,100,34,37,93,17063,69],"class_list":["post-251520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-basket","tag-eggs","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-leverage","tag-tehran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117105898399792398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}