BEIRUT — While President Joseph Aoun is leading a Lebanese delegation to participate in the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, Israel committed a new massacre in Bint Jbeil on Sunday afternoon, resulting in the murder of five citizens, including three children.

The crime occurred as U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus chaired a meeting of the committee supervising the implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel on the eve of the first anniversary of the large-scale U.S.–led Israeli aggression against Lebanon.  

According to informed sources, Ortagus expressed her appreciation for the Lebanese Army's achievements in confiscating weapons south of the Litani River, but considered it incomplete, and that the state must be more decisive.

For their part, the enemy’s representatives emphasized that the initial stages of the plan should include the Bekaa Valley, which they claim houses advanced weapons depots.  

Following the meeting, Ortagus left Beirut without meeting Lebanese Army Commander Rudolph Heikal, who insists on implementing his plan without political pressure and provided that the Israeli attacks come to an end and the regime withdraw from the areas under its occupation.

Meanwhile, in tacit and renewed support for the Israeli enemy’s ongoing genocides, U.S. envoy to Syria Thomas Barrack admitted in an interview with Sky News Arabia that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t care about borders and red lines.

“He will go anywhere and do anything if he feels Israel is threatened,” Barrack stated, adding that “peace is just an illusion. There has never been peace before, and there probably won’t be in the future because everyone is fighting for legitimacy.” 

Barrack noted that “some say they are fighting on borders, but in reality, that is not what they are fighting for,” claiming that “borders are just a negotiation process, and the end result is that one party wants hegemony, and that means the other party must submit,” and that “ultimately, economic prosperity is the only solution.”

For his part, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to resort to military force if “peaceful” efforts to disarm Hezbollah failed, warning that his country “will not stand idly by” in the face of what he described as “Lebanon’s transformation into an Iranian military base on Israel’s border.”

According to what was prevalent in official circles prior to the arrival of Ortagus, and what was reported by Saudi envoy Yazid bin Farhan, Israel is heading toward further violence in Palestine and Lebanon.

Informed sources pointed that the meeting between the President of the Republic and Saudi envoy Yazid bin Farhan last week did not address Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem’s initiative to open up to Riyadh.

Meanwhile, MP Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, said the government is responsible to confront the repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon, noting that “these attacks are further evidence to the state that this enemy cannot be confronted with only official condemnations.” 

Fadlallah considered that “the government has many means it can resort to at political, diplomatic, and international levels to pressure those who sponsored this agreement to stop these attacks, this violation, and this violation of the country’s dignity and sovereignty.”