BEIRUT – It was not without a vicious goal in mind that after meeting Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, in the occupied Palestinian territories Netanyahu said “the Israeli-American harmony around a strong Lebanese state capable of confronting Hezbollah and disarming it.” 

In 1969, following the signing of the Cairo Agreement, the Lebanese villages adjacent to occupied Palestine were transformed into military headquarters for the PLO et. al. Their influence expanded following the eruption of the civil war in 1975.

On March 11, 1978, a PLO group led by female martyr Dalal Mughrabi infiltrated the occupied territories, killing 37 and wounding 76 Zionists. 

This operation sparked the “Operation Litani” that lasted 7 days. Around 300,000 Lebanese were displaced and about 1,500 were massacred. An area of 1,100 km2 of the Lebanese territory was also occupied by the Israeli army.

On March 19, 1978, following a complaint submitted by Lebanon to the Security Council, UN Resolution 425 was issued, which stipulated the withdrawal from the occupied territories.

The Israeli enemy forces, however, kept a 700-km border area under the command of its notorious ally Saad Haddad, on the pretext that the Lebanese army alone was not qualified to take charge. 

Later, Haddad announced the establishment of the “State of Free Lebanon” in the areas under his control, which expanded after the 1982 invasion. 

Now, after about 4 decades, it seems the enemy is betting on repeating the same scenario that Hezbollah squashed on May 25, 2000.

Netanyahu wants the Lebanese army’s sole mission restricted to controlling the border areas and suppressing the voices like what happened on Friday on the airport road in which the army turned against peaceful demonstrators who rejected the US-Israeli tutelage. 
 
Meanwhile, an informed source told the Tehran Times that Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Parliament, urged President Joseph Aoun to pressure Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to find a solution on the landing of Iranian aircraft in Beirut amid fears that Iranian figures, official and public, would be prevented from attending the funeral of Sayyed Nasrallah and Sayyed Safieddine, two Hezbollah chiefs who were martyred in the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. 

This morning, the occupation forces were supposed to withdraw from Yaroun, Maroun al-Ras, Blida, Mays al-Jabal, Markaba, Houla, Adaisseh, and Kfar Kila, except 5 strategic hills: 1 Labbouneh in the outskirts of Naqoura; Jabal Blat between Marouhin and Ramieh; Jabal al-Bat in the eastern outskirts of Aitaroun; al-Dawair on the Markaba-Houla road; and Tallet al-Hamams in Khiam due to their field importance in terms of surveying the area by sight and fire, as they are higher than the colonial settlements in northern Palestine.

US General Jasper Jeffers, head of the ceasefire supervision committee, had already stated that Israeli forces would withdraw from the internal neighborhoods but stationed on the eastern outskirts of occupied Palestine.

On Sunday, Khadija Atwi, the orphan of Hezbollah martyr Hussein Atwi, was martyred while the residents were trying to liberate her town of Houla. Until the late hours of the night, enemy soldiers prevented Lebanese army soldiers from evacuating her body and treating the wounded.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has confirmed a clear axiom: any regional party that abandons the option of resistance must prepare itself to implement American-Israeli dictates, whether it likes it or not.

Netanyahu wants the Lebanese government to complete the mission that he failed to achieve. This means that the plan is to involve the Lebanese army in fighting the resistance, coinciding with the attempt to displace the people of Gaza.

Now more than ever, their colonial scheme requires escalating the political and media discourse against Hezbollah, with a focus on preventing Iranian donations from financing the reconstruction of destroyed homes and infrastructure, especially in the border villages, from October 2023 to November 2024 in Israeli massive bombardments.

This is the current mission of the spoiled boy in the American embassy in Beirut, who have already launched anti-resistance campaigns to promote the advantages of the “Abrahamic normalization,” a task that requires, above all, controlling all decision-making bodies or institutions, and government facilities, including the airport and ports, in addition to hiding the file of demarcating the land and sea borders and the file of returning the displaced Syrians in the drawers of oblivion forever.