WarSclerotic

Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah has set up an observation post under the guise of an environmental advocacy group less than a mile from the Israel-Lebanon border, the Israel Defense Forces said on Monday.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior IDF officer said the outpost, in the village of Al-Adisa,  is the sixth such post spotted over the past two years. One photo from the site shows a uniformed man peering through a window with high-tech binoculars.

The officer said the new observation post violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and bans the presence of armed groups south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. However, since that war, the U.N. has largely turned a blind eye to Hezbollah’s violations, which has allowed the group to amass an arsenal believed to include well over 100,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel.

The officer said Hezbollah was using a tree-planting campaign by Green Without Borders, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization, as a cover for its activity along the border to gather intelligence on Israeli troops. The organization has acknowledged its affiliation with the terrorist group but claims its purpose on the border is purely environmental.

The officer also said the IDF discovered five Hezbollah posts in 2017 in breach of the U.N. resolution.

“We haven’t seen any Hezbollah arms yet [in the new post], but we can see military infrastructure and it’s clear this is part of extensive activity in southern Lebanon and in Lebanon as a whole that is a threat to the IDF and to Israel,” the officer said.

“This is, of course, a buildup that we cannot tolerate. Green Without Borders has no forest rangers, because there are no forests in this area. Hezbollah is using the organization to establish observation posts close to the border with the goal of gathering intelligence on IDF troops.”

The officer said the observation posts are constantly monitored by the IDF.

“They are manned and have reconnaissance equipment. Their activity is not even remotely related to protecting the environment,” he said.

“Hezbollah thinks the IDF is not aware of its activities and has stopped the U.N. from carrying out its mission because it claims this is private property. The U.N. is trying to enforce the resolution and we are applying pressure to do so. When we give the U.N. information, it is duty-bound to act.”

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which is tasked with enforcing the cease-fire, said the peacekeepers have “not observed any unauthorized armed persons” at the position and the organization “continues to monitor activities closely,” including those of the environmental group.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit also issued a statement.

“Hezbollah is violating the language of Resolution 1701, which prohibits the presence of any armed group south of the Litani River. It is patrolling along the border with armed personnel and has been establishing military infrastructure along the border, under the guise of a fictitious environmental group. It has also been engaged in a military buildup in Shiite villages in southern Lebanon. In 2017, five observation posts were spotted, and now another post has been discovered, and the goal of those positions is to bolster the organization’s intelligence reach. The IDF routinely monitors Hezbollah’s activities,” the statement said.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday said it would be impossible to reach an agreement with Hamas.

Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Monday, Lieberman declared that “it hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future.”

He said, “We have reached a point where we have no other choice. Nothing short of the strongest and heaviest blow we can deliver to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will help.”

Lieberman went on to say that Israel must not agree to any truce with Hamas unless the terrorist organization agrees to end the violence on the border, agrees to a prisoner exchange, removes a clause in the terrorist group’s official charter that calls for Israel’s destruction, halts its rocket production, stops digging terror tunnels and stops incitement in Judea and Samaria.

Hamas is holding the remains of two Israeli ‎soldiers, Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul and Lt. Hadar ‎Goldin, who were killed in the Gaza Strip in 2014, ‎as well as two living Israeli captives, Ethiopian ‎Israeli Avera Mengistu and Bedouin Israeli Hisham ‎al-Sayed, both mentally unstable, ‎who wandered voluntarily into Gaza (in 2014 ‎and 2015 respectively) and were captured by the terrorist group.

According to Lieberman, the Palestinian border riots, which have grown increasingly violent since they began in late March, are “not a popular protest but rather a display of institutionalized violence by Hamas.”

Meanwhile, firefighters battled five separate fires sparked in Israeli territory by incendiary balloons launched from Gaza. Police sappers and paramedics arrived at one of the communities in the Ashkelon Regional Council after a civilian discovered what appeared to be an incendiary balloon.

Rioters on Gaza’s border with Israel near Kibbutz Zikim burned tires and threw grenades, Molotov cocktails and other explosives at IDF forces.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said 20 protesters were wounded by Israeli fire.

The protests took place as Egyptian mediators were in Gaza for cease-fire talks.

Also on Monday, an Egyptian delegation headed by Egyptian intelligence official Ahmed Abdel Khalek arrived in Gaza to meet with senior Hamas officials, Arab media reported.

Khalek’s arrival appears to be laying the groundwork for the arrival of Egyptian General Intelligence Service head Maj. Gen. Abbas Kamel later in the week.

Iran is building factories to manufacture and upgrade missiles in Iraq, in addition to its efforts in Syria and Lebanon, Israeli intelligence has discovered.

According to reports, Iran has already shipped missiles to Shiite militias in Iraq and helped Iraq set up missile factories in its territory.

This latest development has the potential to bring Iraq onto the Iranian axis of countries that pose potential threats to Israel.

Last month, reports revealed that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had supplied the Iraqi Shiite militia Hashd al-Shaabi with mid-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.

Earlier in October, reports revealed that the United States had decided to shut down its consulate in Basra, a key Shiite stronghold and the third-largest city in Iraq, after discovering a Revolutionary Guard plot to attack it.

The latest revelation comes after Fox News reported on Sunday that Iran has ‎stepped up its shipments of advanced weapons to ‎Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based proxy, and that some ‎shipments now include sophisticated GPS systems meant ‎to improve the accuracy of Hezbollah missiles.

According to the report, the shipment made its way ‎from Tehran to Damascus aboard a Qeshm Fars air cargo plane. From there, the plane made its way to ‎Beirut, before returning to Iran via Qatar.‎

On Sunday, several speakers at a Jerusalem Institute of Security Studies devoted to the Iranian-Israeli conflict warned that Iran was trying to threaten Israel on multiple fronts.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan informed participants that Hezbollah, heavily supported by Iran, currently has a stock of some 150,000 missiles.

“The commander of Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, wants to create another Hezbollah in Syria,” Erdan warned. “When [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas’ time is up, I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran tries to expand its influence to Judea and Samaria, too, as the Palestinian governance dwindles and they are in need of money and support.”

“At any minute, Iran can set off clashes that will expand to Syria and Lebanon, and we cannot rule out the possibility of [Iran] using Iraq as a base from which to fire missiles at Israel,” Erdan said.

Mossad Director Yossi Cohen said Monday at a meeting at the Finance Ministry that he had recently met an American official who had asked him what would happen if Iran were defeated.

“I told him, ‘If we beat Iran, I’ll be out of of work, jobless, but if Iran isn’t defeated, I’ll find myself homeless.’ I prefer the first option,” Cohen said.

Cohen stressed that “if we don’t push Iran out of the Middle East … we will find ourselves in a position of Iranian forces spreading throughout the Middle East, unchecked, even inside the Gaza Strip.”

“But of course, everything is affected by changes in the approach at a very high level since [U.S. President Donald] Trump took power, which I think is very good for Israel. There is a sense that there is a simpler, clearer distinction being made between good and evil,” the Mossad chief said.

Security forces of the rival Palestinian governments in both the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests, among other tactics, to quash dissent by peaceful activists and political rivals, a Human Rights Watch investigation has found.

The charges come in a report issued Tuesday by the New York-based watchdog following a two-year investigation that included interviews with nearly 150 people, many of them former detainees.

In the report, the group accused both the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and militant Islamist Hamas in Gaza of using “machineries of repression” to stifle criticism.

Human Rights Watch also said the systematic use of torture could amount to a crime against humanity under the United Nations’ Convention against Torture, and called on countries that provide funding to Palestinian law enforcement to suspend their assistance.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ government joined the convention after Palestine was accepted as a nonmember state at the U.N.

“Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.

“Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent,” he said.

According to the report, the leaders in both the West Bank and Gaza engage in similar tactics, in most cases without holding anyone to account.

Among their alleged abuses are: whipping people’s feet, forcing detainees into painful positions such as hoisting their arms up behind their backs with rope, and coercing suspects into granting access to their mobile phones and social media accounts.

Both Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority denied all the allegations.

The two Palestinian factions split in 2007 after Hamas violently seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Abbas. For more than a decade, Hamas has maintained an iron grip on power and suppressed any signs of public dissent, including street protests and social media posts.

Despite having Western backing, Abbas has also silenced dissent in the areas of the West Bank he administers under past agreements with Israel. Last year, he clamped down on social media and news websites with a vaguely worded decree that critics say allows his government to jail anyone on charges of harming “national unity” or the “social fabric.”

Abbas’ security forces also work closely with Israel to keep Hamas in check in the West Bank. Critics accuse Israel of holding Palestinian detainees without charge for extended periods and also of torture.

Mohammed Khatib, a 20-year-old law student and activist with Hamas’ student branch in the West Bank, told The Associated Press he was arrested last month and held for 19 days at an intelligence center in Ramallah. He said he was forced to stand for hours at a time and hung by his handcuffed hands to a door for 15 minutes, a stress position meant to cause pain but leave no sign of injury.

“This is not only a violation of human rights, it is a violation of human dignity, a violation of basic morals,” he said, adding that he believed the aim was to intimidate him.

HRW’s report also highlights other tactics used to silence Palestinian dissent and punish activists, among them the seizing of phones, leaving investigations and charges open, and coercing detainees to promise to stop any further criticism.

In Gaza, Taghreed Abu Teer, a 47-year-old journalist, told the AP that she was held by Hamas authorities for 11 days and interrogated under “humiliating conditions” for her activities with the rival Fatah movement.

She said she was kept in a dark cell for days at a time and forced to stand for lengthy periods. Although she was not physically beaten, she said she could hear the screams of men being tortured nearby, and that at one point, a man with a whip threatened to beat her as well. More than a year and a half later, she still cries when she recalls the “unforgettable experience.”

“As long as I was in the cell, I was wondering what had led to me ending up here,” she said. She spoke at a relative’s home so her six children would not hear about the ordeal.

Abu Teer said interrogators threatened to charge her with collaboration with Israel, widely feared as a stigma, and that most of the questions focused on a three-day trip she made to the West Bank, where she met senior Fatah officials and briefed them about the situation in Gaza. She said interrogators accused her of inciting the Palestinian Authority to make financial cuts and other punitive measures against Gaza, a tactic meant to squeeze Hamas.

She denied all the allegations, saying she had only led protests and lobbied for ending the Hamas-Fatah split.

While she was never charged, Hamas officers advised her “to be quiet” and focus on her home and family, “which I considered a veiled threat rather than advice,” she added.

Human Rights Watch also said it has encouraged the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into both Israeli and Palestinian conduct in the Palestinian territories. It called on both Palestinian authorities to pledge to stop carrying out arbitrary arrests, end torture, establish an oversight mechanism or body over its detention practices and hold credible investigations into allegations of misconduct.

In a rare step, the report also called on countries that provide funding to either territory’s law enforcement agencies to withhold assistance until concrete steps are taken to end the practices.

Among the aid is millions of dollars for the West Bank security forces from the United States, which has continued its support even after slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in other assistance to the Palestinians. The report said Hamas receives assistance from Iran, Qatar and Turkey.

Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, denied any allegation of systematic torture and said authorities investigate claims and punish perpetrators.

“These testimonies are not accurate. They are testimonies of political activists who belong to political parties with political agendas, and of course they will put any blame they can on the Palestinian Authority,” he told the AP.

In Gaza, Hamas denied arresting critics or opponents on political grounds. Faraj al-Ghoul, a Hamas lawmaker, said the report was “unfair,” and that Human Rights Watch was welcome to inspect the group’s prisons.