News Digest — 11/4/24
Foreign Ministry Tells UN: The Agreement With UNRWA Has Been Canceled
Foreign Minister Israel Katz officially announced on Monday morning (4th) the cancellation of the 1967 agreement between Israel and UNRWA, the UN agency for ‘Palestinian refugees.’ This agreement formed the legal basis for relations between the State of Israel and UNRWA.
The announcement comes after the Knesset last week approved the law halting UNRWA’s activities in Israel.
Minister Katz said, “UNRWA – the organization whose employees participated in the October 7 massacre and many of whose employees are Hamas operatives – is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution.”
He added, “The UN was presented with innumerable evidence about Hamas operatives working at UNRWA and about the use of UNRWA’s facilities for terrorists purposes, and nothing was done about it. Moreover, UNRWA chose not to apply even the recommendations of the UN itself, written in the Colonna report.”
The foreign minister also stated, “Don’t believe those who tell you that there is no substitute for UNRWA. Already now the vast majority of humanitarian aid is delivered through other organizations, and only 13 percent of it is delivered through UNRWA. The State of Israel is bound by international law and will continue to allow the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip in a way that will not harm the security of the citizens of Israel.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said in response to the letter, “Following the legislation on UNRWA, we officially informed the President of the General Assembly of the termination of the cooperation with the organization. Despite the overwhelming evidence we submitted to the UN highlighting how Hamas infiltrated UNRWA, the UN did nothing to address this reality.”
“As I have emphasized several times, UNRWA is controlled by Hamas in Gaza. The State of Israel will continue to cooperate with humanitarian organizations but not with organizations that promote terrorism against the State of Israel,” added Danon.
The bills banning UNRWA’s activities in Israel were approved in the Knesset last Monday (10/28th) with a historic majority 92 out of 120 MKs. Only 10 MKs voted against the bill. Even opposition parties supported it and one party abstained.
The bills received initial Knesset approval in July.
Responding to the approval of the legislation, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that the vote in the Knesset “is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent. It opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law.”
“This is the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to Palestine Refugees,” he charged.
UNRWA, which has long been criticized for cooperating with Hamas, has come under increased scrutiny as its workers have been found to have been directly involved in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel revealed in January of this year that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks. It then presented a dossier showing that the UNRWA workers who participated in the Hamas massacre kidnapped a woman, handed out ammunition and actively took part in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri where 97 people were murdered.
Netanyahu: With Or Without Deal, We’ll Push Hezbollah Back To Litani
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on military might Sunday (3rd) as the best way to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon as US ceasefire efforts appeared to falter.
“With or without an agreement, the key to returning our residents in the north safely to their homes is to distance Hezbollah beyond the Litani River,” he said during a visit to the northern border.
In a short video that showed him wearing a Khaki flak jacket, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF would thwart Hezbollah’s attempts to rearm and would “respond firmly against any action against us.”
What’s needed, Netanyahu said, is “Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.”
He also stressed that “Hezbollah’s oxygen pipeline from Iran through Syria” must also be cut off. “We are committed to all of this.”
In the background smoke rose from Hezbollah targets hit by the IDF in south Lebanon. “From here.” Netanyahu said, “You see and hear how reality is being changed — there are planes above and heroic fighters on the ground below, eliminating the entire underground terrorist infrastructure that Hezbollah prepared for its invasion of the Galilee,” Netanyahu said.
“Such an invasion would have been much larger than the Hamas invasion on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. “It won’t happen anymore,” he said.
The Biden administration had engaged in an intense two-week diplomatic blitz to finalize a ceasefire deal that would end the year-long war between the IDF and Hezbollah by resurrecting UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
That Resolution, which set the ceasefire terms that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006, has never been implemented.
US special envoy Amos Hochstein was in both Lebanon and Israel in the last two weeks as he sought a mechanism by which to enforce the resolution, which mandates that Hezbollah must not operate between the Litani River and the Israeli border.
The Lebanese army is the only armed force authorized to be in that area. In practice, it has been controlled by Hezbollah.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was tasked with monitoring the situation, was never able to ensure the enforcement of Resolution 1701.
Efforts for a ceasefire are now unlikely to bear fruit until after the US election on Tuesday (5th), as Israel and the region wait to see who will replace US President Joe Biden on January 20.
US To Iran: Avoid Strikes Or Face Unrestrained Israeli Retaliation – Report
The Biden administration recently cautioned Iran against launching another attack on Israel, emphasizing that it could not restrain an Israeli response if provoked again, Walla News reported on Saturday evening (2nd).
The warning follows Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, which retaliated against Israeli targeted operations. Israel’s response included strikes on military targets but excluded strategic sites like nuclear and oil facilities. These facilities could be potential targets should Iran initiate further attacks.
A senior US official disclosed to Walla that Washington informed Tehran it would not be able to prevent Israel from reacting or ensure that any response would remain as limited and precise as before. This communication marked a rare direct message between the US and Iran.
According to a former Israeli official, the message was transmitted via the Swiss diplomatic channel, a longstanding conduit for US-Iran communications. The White House declined to comment and the Iranian mission to the UN did not respond to requests for comment.
White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated on Friday (1st) that Iran should avoid any response, underlining continued US support for Israel in case of Iranian aggression. Pentagon Spokesperson Gen. Pat Ryder announced additional military measures, including deploying destroyers for missile defense, a fighter squadron, refueling aircraft, and long-range B-52 bombers to the region. Ryder emphasized that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made clear the US would act decisively to protect its forces and interests should Iran or its proxies strike.
On October 25th, Israel executed a significant military response following a massive ballistic missile attack from Iran three weeks prior. The Israeli counter strike, coordinated with the US, targeted pre-approved sites, excluding nuclear and oil facilities.
Recent Israeli intelligence assessments indicate that Iran is preparing to launch an attack on Israel from Iraqi territory, potentially within days and possibly before the US presidential election. Officials in Israel stated that this potential assault could involve Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps collaborating with Shiite militias using drones and ballistic missiles. American sources confirmed the likelihood of such an attack in the short term.
Israel and the US believe that if Iran utilizes militias in Iraq, it aims to avoid a direct confrontation that would provoke another Israeli strike on its territory. Israel and US officials emphasized that Israel’s response would be contingent on the scale and impact of any such attack.
IDF Reveals Commandos Captured Man In Syria Gathering Intel On Border For Iran
Israeli commandos recently carried out a raid in southern Syria where they captured a Syrian man who was allegedly carrying out surveillance operations on the border on behalf of Iran, the IDF revealed Sunday (3rd) in a rare acknowledgment of a ground operation in its northeastern neighbor.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, the raid in Syria was carried out in recent months by the Egoz commando unit, along with field interrogators of the Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504.
The commandos captured Ali Suleiman al-Asi, a Syrian man who lived in the village of Saida, in the Daraa Governorate.
The IDF said that al-Asi worked on behalf of Iran, and was involved in collecting intelligence on the Israeli military’s operations along the Syrian border “for future terror activity.”
The military was “closely monitoring” al-Asi before he was captured and taken into Israel for questioning.
His arrest has “prevented and disrupted a future attack and led to the exposure of the modus operandi of Iranian entities on the Golan Heights front,” the IDF said.
The detained Syrian man told Israeli interrogators that he was instructed by the Iranian-linked source to just observe the borders,” while under the guise of Syria’s military intelligence, and pass on information on Israeli patrols.
He told interrogators that, among other things, he passed on information about troop and tank movements on the Israeli side of the border.
Israel has been carrying out airstrikes inside Syria since the outbreak of that country’s civil war in 2011, mainly targeting attempts to transfer weapons to the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah terror group or to keep Iranian fighters themselves from gaining a foothold near Israel’s border.
In July, Israeli special forces allegedly carried out a raid on an Iranian weapons facility in the Masyaf area in Syria, which has long been associated with the manufacture of chemical weapons and precision missiles by the Syrian regime and Iranian forces.
The raid was said to have been carried out alongside Israeli air strikes on military facilities in the area that reportedly killed at least 14 people and wounded 43.
Local Syrian media reported at the time that the strike hit the area surrounding the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, which according to Israel is used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision surface-to-surface missiles.
Various reports in foreign media claimed that Israeli troops operated on the ground during the action at Masyaf, which lies about 124 miles north of Israel, though only about 18 miles from Syria’s western coastline.
The reports said that commandos of the Israeli Air Force’s Shaldag Unit rappelled down from helicopters and raided CERS. Israeli troops removed equipment and documents and then laid explosives to destroy the facility.
The IDF has not publicly confirmed the details of the operation.
Since Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023 massacre, which saw some 1,200 people killed in southern Israel and 251 kidnapped, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed terror targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army aid defenses and some Syrian forces.
Iran Executes Jewish Man Who Acted In Self-Defense
An Iranian Jew sentenced to death for killing a Muslim has been executed in Iran.
Arvin Ghahremani, 20, was convicted of murder after he acted in self-defense. In 2022, Ghahremani was ambushed by seven men in the city of Kermanshah. One of the attackers , a 40-year-old Muslim man who allegedly owed him money, stabbed Ghahremani, who fought back and used the same knife to fatally stab his attacker.
Ghahremani was arrested and convicted of murder for killing a Muslim man, despite the fact that he acted in self-defense and was not the attacker in the case.
He had been set to be executed earlier this year, but international pressure, as well as pressure by human rights organizations to cancel the sentence, caused Iran to delay the execution.
The Jewish community also worked with the family of the Muslim man, attempting to pacify them so that they would appeal to the court to erase the sentence, but these efforts did not bear fruit.
In Ghahremani’s case, the court allowed the “victim’s” family to forgive him, which would have led to the sentence being canceled.
Iran has not issued an official confirmation of the execution, but independent journalists succeeded in finding Ghahremani’s death certificate.
In the past, the Iranian Jewish community said that the reason for the ambush and stabbing of Ghahremani was a monetary dispute, and that the Muslim man owed him money.
Israel Is Now The Middle East Strong Horse – Dr. Dan Diker
• The 14th-century Arab Muslim historian and political theorist Ibn Khaldoun assessed that history is a cycle of violence in which strong horses replace weak horses. After Hamas’ October 7 massacre, Israel, by necessity, has become the Middle East’s strong horse in its ongoing battle against the Iranian regime and its terror proxies.
• The Arab world knows this. They witnessed the IDF’s destruction of both Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s command structure and leaderships, and the detonation of much of their weaponry and ammunition stockpiles. They then watched as Israel’s air force decimated Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses and dominated Iranian air space.
• Arab League members widely denounced Israel’s counter-assault against the Iranian regime, while at the same time, Abraham Accords diplomats from Bahrain, Morocco and the UAE have remained in Tel Aviv, as have ambassadors from Jordan and Egypt, and even assisted Israel during Iranian regime missile and killer drone attacks.
• Israel’s strong horse status is a key to winning peace and moderation in the Middle East but has been misunderstood in the West. America’s mistaken mirroring of Israel as a small version of itself has constrained it from defeating radical enemies.
• Victory cannot be achieved against radical Islamic terrorism using Western principles and methods of compromise, ceasefire, diplomacy, and territorial concession. The Middle East does not work that way. Different rules apply.
• Compromise signals weakness. A ceasefire is merely a cessation of hostilities to rearm and resupply. Territorial concession is the fate of the vanquished. The unilateral territorial concession of Gaza in 2005 led to five Hamas wars, climaxing in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. “Goodwill diplomacy” and territorial compromise opposite jihad, as demanded by the US and Europe, proved to be a strategic disaster and existential threat to Israel.
• Israel’s evolving self-awareness as an indigenous ethnic minority in a chaotic, unstable and unforgiving Middle East recognizes that there is no alternative to the strong horse.
The writer is President of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs.
