Israel’s Latest Attacks on Lebanon Mark Significant Escalation, Journalist Warns

Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri responds to the latest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the drawn-out ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which Khouri calls a “fictitious political dynamic” that is primarily used as diplomatic cover for Israel’s warfare. “The ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to bring about a ceasefire,” he says. “It’s pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an immediate deescalation after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire over the weekend. Early Sunday morning, over a hundred Israeli warplanes struck about 40 sites in Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching hundreds of drones and rockets at Israel. Three deaths were reported in Lebanon and one in Israel. Israel described its attacks as preemptive, saying the raid was conducted to blunt an imminent attack by Hezbollah, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah rejected that claim.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] What happened was an aggression, not a preemptive action. And if we were to assume this was a preemptive action, it left no impact whatsoever on our military operations today, neither on its missiles, nor on its drones, nor on its fighters.

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah also spoke about the Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo, Egypt.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] Our operation today, in any case, may be very useful for the negotiations, for the Palestinian side or the Arab side that is negotiating alongside the Palestinian team. And its message is clear to the enemy and to those behind the enemy, to the Americans, that any hopes of shutting down the supporting fronts, whether in Lebanon, in Yemen or in Iraq — these fronts are actually open — these hopes are dashed.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah will continue.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] What happened today is not the end of the story. Hezbollah tried to attack the state of Israel with rockets and drones early in the morning. We instructed the Israeli army to carry out a powerful preemptive strike to remove the threat. The Israeli army destroyed thousands of short-range rockets. All of them were intended to harm our citizens and our forces in Galilee. In addition, the Israeli army intercepted all the UAVs that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in the center of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C.

Rami, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this escalation of violence. I mean, we haven’t seen anything like this on the northern border between Israel and Lebanon in many months.

RAMI KHOURI: It’s an escalation of aggression by Israel and resistance by Hezbollah. And the mutual attacks back and forth have been going on for probably the last 16, 18 years, since the 2006 war between them. But this is significant for several reasons. First, it’s a much higher level of attack in the number of fighter jets from the Israeli side, and sites attacked and the number of rockets and drones sent by Hezbollah. Both sides are claiming things that we can’t verify, so we just have to wait a little bit, a couple days more, for the actual factual evidence to come out.

But what’s significant from the Hezbollah side is that they used Katyusha rockets mostly, which are kind of old-fashioned, limited-capability rockets, not very good in terms of hitting — being aimed, etc. And then they used some drones. And their focus was to detract the defense system in Israel, the air defense system, with the rockets, and then get the drones in to attack some military sites. They’re clearly targeting military sites. And the Israelis say everything is fine. Hezbollah says they hit some of their targets, but they’re assessing the situation now. But the more sophisticated weapons that Hezbollah has, with much better guidance systems, much more accurate and can evade the Israeli defense systems, haven’t been used yet. So, this is a sign from Hezbollah that they’re going to attack, to avenge the killing of their commander in Beirut about a month ago, and they are going to do it with increasingly sophisticated weapons system down the road.

Their aim is to do psychological warfare, as well as actual damage. They want the whole country to remain on edge. They want the army to be preoccupied in the north. They want the 70,000, 80,000 civilians who were evacuated from north Israel to remain evacuated and annoyed and angry, disruption to businesses, to tourism, to all kinds of investments, and to keep the military guessing what’s going to come next. So, this is an escalation of a pattern that’s been really the norm for many, many years.

And both sides, remarkably, but expectedly, said earlier today that they have finished this phase, and therefore, they’re not going to continue large-scale attacks today or tomorrow, it seems, that they’ve done what they did. And this is the pattern that one side does something, the other does something of equal magnitude.

And it’s going to go on until two things happen: The Israelis get out of Gaza, and Palestinians can rebuild their lives there, and, second of all, some signs of action or movement towards resolving the overall Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflict, some signs of that materialize, because, until then, this is going to continue. There will continue to be this antagonism by the Hezbollah and Lebanese and Syrians and Palestinians and others and Yemenis towards Israel for what it’s done in Palestine. And this has to be resolved politically. It can’t be resolved militarily.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Israeli army spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, speaking Sunday.

DANIEL HAGARI: [translated] We look around the state of Israel all the time, also at Yemen, also at Iran. I remind you that Hezbollah is an extension of the Iranians. They are financed, armed, targeted by the Iranians. And I am convinced that this widespread shooting is also directed by Iran, also under Iranian responsibility. And we will attack and remove threats wherever necessary.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Rami Khouri?

RAMI KHOURI: This is a typical Israeli Zionist propaganda message that has been going on for years and years. They will always — and with the U.S. close behind them, following their lead. They’ll always find some threat in the Middle East. Before, it used to be Saddam Hussein. It was al-Qaeda. It was the Russians. It was the PLO. Now it’s Iran is behind everything bad. And they will focus a lot of attention on addressing that issue, trying to evade the central reality that the Palestine-Israel conflict, the conflict between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine, which has been going on for a hundred years, that’s the real core of the problem. So, these are evasive tactics, diversionary tactics.

Iran is a very close ally of Hezbollah. They’re deeply involved in increasing its technical and military capabilities, as they are with Hamas and the Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Houthis. But to say that Iran directs them and tells them what to do, I believe, is a bit of a stretch. So, it’s like the relationship between Israel and the United States. They’re very close in armaments and strategy, and the U.S. now is actively, almost enthusiastically, supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel does what it feels it needs to do, and the U.S. doesn’t seem to be able or willing to stop it. And I think we have a similar relationship between Hezbollah and Iran. They’re very close, but Iran doesn’t command, direct Hezbollah in telling it what to do.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what’s happening right now, this whole — the Gaza ceasefire negotiations? Hamas sent representatives to Cairo. Israel had their delegation. Egypt and Qatar are involved. But it looks like they broke down once again, though they say they’re continuing.

RAMI KHOURI: Well, they had reached an agreement in early July, when Biden announced his so-called plan for a ceasefire. And Hamas accepted it. Biden said this came from the Israelis. And then, when Hamas accepted it, the Israelis, Netanyahu came back and added more conditions. And this has been the pattern ever since. And whenever Hamas accepts it, they add more conditions, suggesting that Netanyahu doesn’t really want a ceasefire. He wants to just keep negotiating.

And I think it’s pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years, which also was under U.S. management or direction. And the ceasefire talks seem to be, in the eyes of most analysts and observers in the Middle East, seem to be a mechanism just to delay anything serious from happening to allow Israel to continue with its genocidal killing of — you know, the figures, the official figures, are over 40,000. Most people say it’s closer to 150,000 dead, but we’ll find that out in the future. So, the ceasefire talks are a fictitious political dynamic.

And the reason they’re fictitious is because the United States is trying to be the main driver of the peace process, to the point where Biden announced an agreement back in early July, but the U.S. is also the main funder, arms supplier and political cover provider, diplomatic protector of Israel in the U.N. and other places. So, you can’t have the one party that is the major force for letting the genocide happen, technically and politically, and at the same time claim to be a mediator that’s trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas. This is the kind of fiction and fantasy that comes out of the State Department and the White House, and most of the world just watches this on TV, thinking, “Oh, something might happen.”

The important point is the Hamas — and you see it in Hezbollah — is that they have taken a much harder position. They say, “We accepted the ceasefire that Biden provided, that came from Israel. What more do you want from us? We are ready to stop the fighting, exchange prisoners and hostages,” etc., etc. But they have certain hardcore demands. And what’s obvious now is that both Hezbollah and Hamas refuse to play the game that all the Arab governments, and Fatah under Arafat and now under Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leadership, played for so many years, which is to make concession after concession after concession, rely on Western or other international intervention, and then expect something to happen.

We’ve realized — everybody in the Arab region has realized that this is not a serious process. This is the latest manifestation of a colonial process managed by white, Northern, racist, militant groups, countries — it used to be England, now it’s the United States — that keeps playing games with the people of the region for the benefits of either the Western powers or, today, for Israel. So, the ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to actually bring about a ceasefire. They are better seen as an indication of the skewed relationship between Western imperial powers and Israel, which is their closest manifestation in the region, settler-colonial power — relations between them and between the Palestinians, who are standing steady. Hamas is holding its ground and saying, “Look, we are prepared to make peace. We’re prepared to coexist with the current Israeli state as a Jewish-majority state.” They’ve made these offers many times. But their refusing to make more concessions is an important indicator of where they are. And this is something that the Western — Israeli and Western imperial powers don’t know how to handle. They’re not used to steadfast Arab parties. They’re used to compliant Arabs, who, you know, roll over and say, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” And this isn’t happening anymore.

So this is an important moment. You know, it’s the generational change in leaderships in the Arab countries. And this is why the majority of ordinary people in the Arab world stand by Hamas and the Palestinians. They might not support the actual actions that it had used, whether either on October 7 or previously in terms of terror attacks inside Israel, you know, attacking buses and pizza parlors and stuff, but they support its basic political stand that we have rights; we are prepared to achieve those rights through a peaceful negotiation; we are not prepared to play cartoon games with people like Antony Blinken, and Dennis Ross before him, and people who are not serious about the real resolution that is required to address the real core of the problem, which is the conflict between Zionist Israel and Zionism, on the one hand, and Arab — Palestinian Arabism, on the other. There is a resolution to that conflict, a peaceful resolution that can be done, just like there is a resolution in Gaza, but the Israelis don’t want to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khouri, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C.

When we come back, a federal judge has dealt a major blow to calls for justice in the police killing of Breonna Taylor, throwing out felony charges against two former Louisville police officers for their roles in her fatal shooting in her own home. We’ll speak with the family attorney, Ben Crump, as well as the Tyre Nichols case and more. Stay with us.