Next Thursday, at the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron, France will organize an “International Conference in Support of Lebanon,” due to the war taking place there between the Israeli army and Hezbollah.
Neither Israel nor Iran, which supports Hezbollah, will participate in this meeting, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, whose country is Israel’s first ally, will be absent. from him, which shows little chance that he will make progress towards a ceasefire, even if it could lead to humanitarian aid initiatives, according to Agence France-Presse.
The director of the Center for Studies on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva, Hosni Obaidi, told AFP that it was one of his favorite things to hold the conference, noting that “since the beginning of campaign innovative of the French and Americans, this is the same thing. ongoing diplomatic dynamic.”
A few days after Israel began an intensive campaign of airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, at the end of September last year, Paris and Washington proposed an international plan for a temporary ceasefire, but the this campaign.
On September 27, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli attack on the south bank of Beirut, the stronghold of the party.
Three days later, the Israeli army began limited ground operations in southern Lebanon, announcing its intention to remove Hezbollah from the borders in southern Lebanon and to stop firing rockets to allow with more than 60,000 displaced residents in northern Israel to return.
On October 8, 2023, Lebanon’s Hezbollah opened a front of “support” for Gaza, the day after the war between Israel and Hamas began, with the movement launching an unprecedented attack on Israeli sites and territories. After exchanging cross-border skirmishes daily for almost a year, this conflict turned into an open war as of September 23, 2024.
At least 1,470 people have been killed in Lebanon within about a month, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on figures from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, while the authorities announced that more than 1.4 million an exterminator.
The spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry, Christophe Lemoyne, said last Friday that the plan proposed in New York “is still on the table. “
France is constantly pushing for a solution based on Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Resolution 1701 established a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah after a devastating war they fought in the summer of 2006. The resolution also calls for Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon, strengthening the deployment of the United Nations Interim Force United in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and limiting the military presence in the border area to the Lebanese army and the international force.
The issue of strengthening the Lebanese army will be one of the topics that will be raised at the conference on Thursday.
“Palliative Care”
Researcher Agnès Levallois, from the Institute for Research and Studies on the Mediterranean and the Middle East, told AFP, “Years have passed and Emmanuel Macron has rightly emphasized the need for a way to give to this army,” noting that the army is ultimately “the only one. base in Lebanon that works.”
But she expressed “great doubt” about the real results that should be expected from the conference, and said, “If the president intends to hold a summit to confirm that he is not abandoning Lebanon, he plays his role, but I don’t expect much.”
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told Agence France-Presse last week that he hopes to get the support of the Lebanese people and the military.
He said, “We will ask for humanitarian assistance and security assistance” for the army and internal security forces, expressing his willingness to reinforce army numbers in the south to control the border area if a ceasefire is reached. fire with Israel.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reveal any objectives in numbers for the conference, nor did it announce the list of participants.
Karim Bitar, a professor of international relations at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, told AFP, “The needs are so great that although the aid amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars, it is probably more likely to palliative care. “
He also asked about the level of aid that the Gulf countries would provide, their traditional contribution to Lebanon, and “we do not notice that they want to participate in large aid at the moment.
Another diplomatic source pointed out that the Saudis have withdrawn their attention from Lebanon in recent years, keeping the political class responsible for the country’s breakup and the collapse of its economy.
But as signs of a regional war loom between Israel and its American ally on the one hand, and Iran on the other, he said that Riyadh “understands” the need to support any process aimed at on settling the Lebanese crisis.
Bitar said, “This conference is better than nothing, but we would like to have a political road map and more emphasis on Israel. “
He thought the timing was inappropriate, explaining, “It’s early because we still don’t know what will cause the battles, and maybe it’s also late because the tragedy happened.”
2024-10-22 08:45:00
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