Former Lebanese ambassador in danger after US asks him to negotiate with Israel

Lebanon’s former ambassador to the US Simon Karam’s life insurance premiums must have rocketed, after he was asked by his government to represent it in talks that the Trump regime had asked it to hold with Israel.

Karam is heading Lebanon’s team of ‘civilian representatives’ meeting Israeli counterparts at the United Nations’ peacekeeping base in Naqoura, southern Lebanon. The talks, which are now underway, form part of the US-brokered 2024 ‘ceasefire’ deal with Israel. But just like its ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza, Israel has never observed it; frequently bombing and shelling those it decides it wants to kill, along with anyone else who happens to be in their vicinity.

Lebanon and Israel start negotiations

Being a peace negotiator dealing with Israel is a dangerous business — or for that matter, being anywhere near a peace negotiator dealing with Israel. Earlier this year, the occupation bombed a villa in Qatar’s capital of Doha — US-ally — with the intention of murdering the Hamas peace negotiators it was supposed to be, well, negotiating with. The attack missed its targets who were not in the building, but murdered at least six people in the building unconnected with Hamas — including a Qatari — and maiming others. Like Lebanon’s civilian representatives, the Hamas peace team were there at the request of Donald Trump.

CCTV footage of the Doha bombing.

Unlike its Doha failure, Israel succeeded in murdering Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in Iranian capital Tehran. Haniyeh was, until his death, Hamas’s official negotiator responsible for trying to agree a ceasefire with Israel.

Trying to negotiate with Israel, when it wants what you have, is an extremely risky business — and Israel definitely wants what Lebanon has: Lebanon. The historic West Asian nation is on the menu of Israel’s extremists and a target for Netanyahu’s ‘Greater Israel’ project — and Israeli settlers are already holding real estate sales for land in southern Lebanon.

A bit like Russian roulette

The Lebanese team has no guarantee of safety just because the talks are being held in a UN peacekeeper base. Israel has fired repeatedly on blue-helmeted UN troops and has, of course, heavily bombed UN facilities in Gaza. Nor is there safety at home: Israel’s ‘Where’s daddy’ AI-driven targeting system is known to time attacks on its victims just as they arrive home — these included journalists, doctors, other essential workers and, of course, Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer.

Israel’s ‘civilian representative’ is Uri Resnick of the National Security Council – Israel’s main body for national security coordination, integration, analysis and monitoring, reporting directly to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu claims the talks are “an initial attempt to create a basis for a relationship and economic cooperation between Israel and Lebanon”, though he reportedly only agreed to any talks under pressure from the US. He may well see targeting the Lebanese delegation as an easy way out of the ‘talks’.

Israel launched a wave of terrorist ‘pager’ attacks on Lebanon in autumn last year, murdering and maiming several thousand people including children, then quickly invaded southern Lebanon. Israel failed to hold any territory during the war, but as soon as the ceasefire agreement took effect, it seized 5 points inside of Lebanon. It has now escalated its never-ceased attacks on southern Lebanon and killed civilians in Beirut last month when it targeted a senior Hezbollah militia commander despite the ‘ceasefire.’ The US then reportedly demanded that the Lebanese return an unexploded US-made ‘small diameter gliding bomb’ so that the Russians and Chinese don’t get their hands on the technology.

Israel and US play ‘bad cop, bad cop’

Israel is also threatening to launch a renewed invasion if the Lebanese government fails to disarm the Hezbollah resistance, a measure that the militia group is sure to resist. The occupation considers that the ‘ceasefire’ only applies to Lebanese forces and that it considers itself — with US approval — to have the right to attack targets in Lebanon whenever it chooses.

This one-sidedness is admitted, even boasted of, by Israeli media. The Times of Israel wrote this week that:

In addition to hundreds of airstrikes amid the ceasefire, the military said, ground troops have conducted over 1,200 raids and other small operations in southern Lebanon, mostly in areas surrounding the five “strategic” border posts, to prevent Hezbollah from restoring its capabilities.

It is to be hoped that, having put him in the hot seat, the Lebanese government will be putting former ambassador Karam and his family somewhere very secure and very, very secret.

Featured image via the Canary